Chapter 28
Unlike Skyhub, doc min’s spacecraft exists inside a pressure bubble, meaning once the pod sweeps me away from Lament, over a hard-to-quantify distance through space and into The Parallax’s docking port, I don’t have to wait for the flight deck to seal before I step out—the area is already oxygenated and depressurized.
It’s advanced technology, and it’s fucking expensive.
Not even the Legion can justify that kind of cost.
It’s that knowledge, finally, that truly gets me scared.
I don’t know if I’ve really taken time to assess what I’m up against. The past four days have been such a whirlwind, starting with Nina’s abjectly distressing reappearance and ending with a frankly haphazard mission plan that, despite all my reassurances to Lament, is bound to go sideways.
My stomach tightens as I step off the transportation pod onto the flight deck, which looks a lot like the Sixth’s flight deck, except it’s ten times the size.
I spot an array of spaceships: a Maxton III (energy-shielded, bright blue, shaped like an arrowhead), a Black Eclipse (compact, solar powered, AI-assisted), plus a dozen others that look so new to market, I don’t even know their names.
They’re all battleships. All equipped with guns.
“Mr. Hartman,” comes a voice to my left.
I whip around to see Trey Morton striding through the sea of fighter ships, wearing a checkered vest and looking for all the world like a disappointed schoolteacher.
His long dress sleeves are rolled back, his loafers clicking on the glossy floor.
He adjusts his bowtie as he approaches. “I see you’ve made it. ”
“I think the phrase is I’m glad to see you’ve made it.”
“Hmm,” is his reply, which strikes me as unnecessarily ominous. He appraises my uniform, the weapon at my hip. “You’ve reclaimed your ray gun.”
I hesitate. Technically, Morton is the one who issued my red card. Given he’s a Director for the Legion and responsible for disciplinary matters, he should report me to Sergeant Forst right here and now—not, I reflect, just for the gun, but for sneaking off Skyhub in the first place.
Morton, however, only peers down his nose and says, “You will need to relinquish your weapon before meeting Ran. Protocol, you understand.”
“What?” I make a face of mock surprise. “Your simulation didn’t predict my good behavior?”
“This is not a joke, Mr. Hartman.”
No, it’s not, and that’s activating every single one of my fight-or-flight instincts. I spread my hands. “I’ll hand the gun over right before our meeting, and you’ll give it back as soon as we’re done. Until then, the weapon stays with me.”
“Mr. Hartman—”
“That’s nonnegotiable.”
Morton must see the resolve in my face, because he purses his lips. “I will allow Nina to make the final call. She is waiting to meet you now. In the meantime”—another pointed perusal of my figure—“are you concealing any other weapons?”
“No.”
“Blades, poisons, anything that might pose a threat?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll have no problem submitting to a bot scan.”
I think of the keening in my pocket. I plaster on my best look of innocence. “Of course not.”
A humanoid bot (which could pass as a man except for the metal face) arrives to conduct the scan. I fight the urge to fidget as it pulls out a sensor rod and slowly runs it around my limbs, my torso. Just a bit of lint, I think as the device moves past my pocket. Undetectable.
The bot straightens and flashes Morton a picture of my ray gun.
“Permissible,” Morton says. “For now. Anything else?”
The bot shakes its head.
“Very well.” Morton inhales a breath that I take to mean Let’s get this over with. “Follow me.”
We cross the flight deck in silence. Morton ignores the trio of guards stationed outside the entry doors, bypassing them to sweep his hand over a digital security pad. The doors spring open, there’s a blast of cool air, and like that, we’re in.
When Vera called this place a fortress, I assumed she meant it was just a really well-organized spacecraft and not, you know, a fortress.
With military- grade security detail, bands of marching soldiers, and what looks, I kid you not, like a moat carved right into the floor of the entrance chamber.
The water is dark, a little choppy from the subtle vibration of the ship. I can’t see the bottom.
“Are there sharks?” I ask Morton as he guides us across the moat’s bridge, past a group of Youspaka (two-headed aliens known for their ability to feel others’ emotions), and down a wide corridor.
“Excuse me?”
“Sharks. In the water.”
He frowns. “Why would there be sharks in the water?”
We travel deeper. I try to focus on the layout of the ship, the sleek black-and-gray halls, the endless series of doors. Some are shaped like hexagons, some like rectangles, others, circles. There seems to be a pattern to their order, but what it means—if it means anything—I can’t guess.
After what feels like an endless series of turns, we reach an unmarked door at the end of an unmarked corridor.
Morton glances at me, then angles his body to block my view as he punches a key code into the electronic panel.
The door releases a sound like air brakes (menacing air brakes) and splits snaggletooth down the middle.
The professor (still unclear if he’s actually a professor) makes a you first motion, and I step into a room that’s not quite big enough to qualify as a lounge but still far too large for just two people.
There’s a smattering of tufted chairs, a full bar, and those little table lamps that are meant to provide—I believe the technical term is—mood lighting.
It is … not what I was expecting.
“Keller,” says a voice, “you made it.”
I turn to see my mother standing off to the side, wearing the same smile she wore back on Skyhub: a little earnest, a little hopeful. There might be genuine affection there, too, if I cared to look closely. Which I do not.
My palms are going clammy, my pulse kicking up. I can hear Lament saying I worry you’re doing this for her, but I snap the lid closed on those thoughts. I need to stay focused. To keep my head on straight. As long as I concentrate on the mission and not on my own feelings, everything will be fine.
“Did you have any trouble mapping our coordinates?” Nina asks as she moves to greet us. “I know coming all the way out here to the Vacant Sector can be tricky.”
“No,” I say, and despite being tempted to leave it at a one-word answer, I add, “no trouble.”
“Mr. Hartman,” Morton tells Nina, “insists on keeping a gun on his person until Ran arrives. I have tried to confiscate the firearm, but he remains adamant.”
“Oh, that’s not a problem.” Nina is still smiling, her posture loose and natural, like she’s unaware of the tension. “Keller won’t cause any trouble. Now, if you could tell Ran we’re ready, that would be wonderful.”
Morton looks like he’s just been asked to strip naked and dance. “My duty was to deliver Mr. Hartman to you. I am not your errand boy.”
“Of course not, Trey, that was never my implication.” Nina’s voice is gentle. How is she always so gentle? “I only want a few minutes alone with my son. It’s been so long. You understand that, don’t you?”
Morton stands down almost instantly. He nods, going soft at her words, like he does indeed understand. It makes me feel strangely defensive. I certainly don’t understand.
“Very well,” Morton agrees. “I will let Ran know.”
“This may take a few minutes,” Nina tells me as the professor exits, motioning us toward a cluster of very shiny, very upright chairs. “Ran had a breakthrough with FPS last night. Something involving instantaneous data entry. It’s been hard to pull him away from the work.”
“I thought you said he’d be here,” I say, adding just a touch of petulance to my tone.
“He is,” she’s quick to assure me. “The simulation’s processing computers are located on board. At the center of this very floor, in fact.”
Which confirms the spot on Jester’s heat map that looked like it might be double armored, indicating contents Doc Min wants kept secured.
We sit. The chair’s sea-green fabric squeaks under my thighs. A bot (an MN-99, which looks harmless but can be reconfigured for battle if needed) appears with a serving tray balanced on each of its three hands. They rotate around its body like moons around a planet.
“Tea?” Nina asks. “Water? Coffee?”
My brain feels weird. Like there’s a crack in the middle and I can’t quite get the two halves to align. I’m on The Parallax. I’m on The Parallax fishing for intel and my mother is here and she’s offering me refreshments. “Um, coffee is fine.”
Nina plucks the appropriate tray from the bot’s metal hands and sets two cups onto the low table between us. “Let me guess,” she says, pouring the liquid in a practiced motion. “Cream and sugar?”
“Yes,” I reply warily, then can’t stop myself from blurting, “did the simulation tell you that?”
Nina’s smile softens. “It’s how I take mine.”
Which is like a knee to the stomach. For a moment, I can’t speak, so I just sit there while Nina adds exactly the right amount of cream and sugar to my mug. She stirs the coffee with a little spoon and slides it across the table.
I try to pick it up, but my hands are shaking too badly.
“So,” I say, trying to force my brain away from the strangeness of this moment and back to the mission. The simulation. Ask about the simulation. “Instantaneous data entry?”
“I don’t pretend to understand it,” Nina says, stirring cream into her own coffee. “The inner workings of FPS are mostly beyond me. The algorithms Doc Min uses to run the simulation are the first of their kind.”