Here Be Dragons (29 page)

She could see Rivkah’s eyes start to glisten, and had to look away. Ikenna floated over to the flight station and saluted.

“Thank you for not listening to me, Captain.”

“Mr. Okoye, I can say without a doubt that you are the best executive officer I’ve served with on this voyage.”

“And I’ll never serve under a finer commanding officer.”

She looked at him for a moment, then laughed.

“Captain?”

“It’s nice to see you smile, Ikenna,” Elena said. “Do it more often.”

“Is that an order?”

“Damn right.”

They saluted, and Ikenna reached out to shake her hand, placing his free one upon her wrist. He held it longer than Elena expected, and she waited for him to say something more. His mouth opened again, but he couldn’t seem to find the words. Ikenna laid her hand softly upon the armrest, and left silently, to take charge of the evacuation.

“Mr. Yukovych, you can transfer the helm to my station.”

Demyan did so, and leaned back, hands at his side. He looked so lonely without his control sticks that she had to smile.

“Come here, Demyan.”

He tried to come to attention, but he was shaking badly and ruined the effect. Elena reached out to take his hand, but he leaned in and wrapped his arms around her.

“I could fight this ship with my eyes closed, as long as I had you at the helm,” she said.

“It’s been a privilege flying with you, ma’am.” He pulled back and wiped his eyes, and gestured to the control sticks. “Do you even know how to fly?”

Elena laughed and winced, and he pulled himself straight to salute her.

“You’ll have your own ship one day,” Elena said, taking his hands once more. She felt the hard metal band of a wedding ring beneath his glove. “I hope you get your own Demyan along with it.”

He hugged her again, and squeezed her so hard that it hurt, but Elena said nothing, and let him hold her. Demyan spared one last salute for Hassoun in his chair, and then left the bridge without another word.

They were alone.

“Do you need me to leave anything?” Rivkah looked down to rummage through her bag. Her once pristine white uniform was a filthy collage of black, brown, and red. “I have—”

“No,” Elena said. “I won’t need anything.”

Rivkah threw the bag across the room, and it struck the far wall and spilled open.

“You shouldn’t have to be alone like this.”

“I won’t be alone,” Elena said.

Rivkah leaned in and put her hands on Elena’s face, and kissed her. Elena put a hand out, and it found Rivkah’s and held it. Those long, slender fingers squeezed hers tightly, and then Rivkah’s other hand was buried in her hair. Elena could feel the chair drop out from underneath her, and then everything else went away too.

When Rivkah pulled her mouth away Elena leaned in after it, eyes closed, licking her lips. For the second time since in as many hours, she’d kissed a woman that she loved. Rivkah put her hands on Elena’s shoulders and pressed against her, forehead to forehead. Elena could see crystalline teardrops floating between them, and there was blood on Rivkah’s mouth.

“I could stay with you.”

Elena put her hands on Rivkah’s wrists and pulled her arms down.

“No, Rivkah. You’re going to be needed. The crew needs you.”

“They need their captain.” Rivkah gently wiped a new spot of blood from the corner of Elena’s mouth.

“And they will have one. But they only have one doctor.”

Rivkah kissed her again, and when it ended their faces remained close together. In the hot air of the bridge Rivkah’s breath felt cool against Elena’s cheek.

“They should name the next one of these after you,” Rivkah said.

“There is only one ship for me,” Elena said.

“I’ll tell everyone what you did out here. For my people, and yours.” She pulled back to meet Elena’s eyes. “Is there anyone…I mean would you like me to—“

“Alejandra Estrella, and Ernesto Gonzales.”

“Anyone else?”

“Just you.”

Rivkah smiled. She didn’t let go of Elena’s hands.

“Thank you for what you did.”

“For all we know, I could have just given the world the war that’s been waiting for us.”

“No. No, I don’t think so,” Rivkah said. “I think the world will be just fine.”

“How do you know?”

Rivkah reached behind her head, and unclasped her necklace. She put in Elena’s hand, and wrapped her fingers around it.

“Because it has people like you in it.”

They kissed, and the world disappeared once more. When Elena finally opened her eyes, Rivkah was gone.

It took only another minute for the entire crew to report ready. Gaspar Tollande had rigged the engine room for remote control before he had been evacuated, and Elena activated the two intact fuel cells.
Gabriel’s
rockets fired, and she darted forward on a hard burn and accelerated.

The engine sputtered and died just before the cells reached their breaking point. Explosive bolts burst all over the ship, just like they had only an hour before, and six lifeboats were thrown clear. They continued forward under
Gabriel’s
momentum even as the ship’s thrusters retrofired.

Elena slowed
Gabriel
, and watched her crew leave her. There would be no need for the lifeboats to fire their own thrusters for weeks. Demyan had set
Gabriel’s
course carefully, and their trajectory would take them wide of the lagrange point, through the outside, and into the Belt. They would reach Union territory in less than three months.

But they wouldn’t be the first remnants of
Gabriel
to return home. Thousands of kilometers ahead her
stray missile, fired and forgotten as the battle had begun, had exhausted its propellant and coasted without power, cold and silent. There was little chance that the outsiders would find it before it had crossed the border and arrived safely in the vast gap on the other side. Once the missile was there, the radio transmitter that Ikenna had installed on Elena’s orders just two hours earlier would light up, and begin its broadcast. She had uploaded the recordings from her visor, just before her encounter with Vijay, and soon every second of it—
Gideon
, Esther, Anne—would be revealed to every radio operator in the solar system.

Elena knew that the Agency would probably track her missile down and kill the messenger, but it would be too late. By the time
Gabriel’s
crew returned home, the entire world would know what—who—they had found out here, and there would no longer be any need to destroy the evidence.
Gabriel
had won the war as soon as the first shot had been fired. She’d fought the battle only to see her children home.

Elena brought up the casualty list, and read the names of those who had fallen, those who would serve with her to the end. Montessori, Gupta, Wen, Suarez, Tshabalala, Mansur, Nizharadze, Hayashi, Vo, Masri. And Arnaud. She thanked them all, silently.

The watch screen flashed red.

Elena found that the gemlike outsider ship, which had seemed so menacing, and then so eerie, was now ordinary. She didn’t bother to arm the weapons. Inside were men and women just like her own, come to defend their homes. They knew that there had been a nuclear explosion, and that the outriders of the bloody world they had escaped had found them at last. Their worst nightmare had come true, and they had flown to meet it. The outsiders were no enemy of hers, but Elena would have been proud to die under their guns.

She waited for them to strike. Instead the ship began to tap
Gabriel
with laser pulses, just as
Metatron
had. The outsiders were speaking for the first time in a century. Elena briefly wished that she had allowed Rivkah to stay. She should have been here for this.

The pulses stopped, and Elena read the message. The letters were in the Roman alphabet, but the words themselves were Hebrew.

Shalom aleikem.

The computer couldn’t translate Hebrew, as no one had ever thought that it would be needed. She would have to guess. Elena bent over her remaining touchscreens and tapped at them with clumsy, stabbing fingers. Every time she moved lightning rode from her wrist to shoulder and back down, and each heartbeat brought with it a flicker of darkness like an eyeblink. Her hands and feet were cold.

This is Gabriel.

There was a pause before the pulses resumed.

Hashem sheli Yeshua.

The outsiders knew that one of the two
Archangels
had destroyed one of their own at the border, so many days ago. Elena wished to know its name and say it aloud, but she did not know how to ask. She would never know who it was that she had killed, the unknown soldiers whose ashes she had scattered to the winds of the sun.

Elena couldn’t name them, but she could salute them. She raised
Gabriel’s
last surviving gun to the stars, careful not to aim anywhere near
Yeshua.
It fired seven bursts, and with each cycle the lighting on the bridge dimmed and brightened. When it was finished Elena leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, mouth open and breathing shallowly. She heard the chimes from her station as the laser pulses resumed, and when they stopped she forced her eyelids to open.

Atah khassidey umot ha olam. Yishar koach.

Elena repeated the message aloud, sounding it out slowly between lips that didn’t want to stir. Faint, whispery words rose from her throat, but she heard only Rivkah’s voice in her ears. She thought that the message sounded very pretty, and wondered what it meant.

Elena didn’t respond. At least not in any way that the outsiders could hear. She reached out with a trembling finger and activated Delta, the critically damaged fuel cell. A warning light flickered, and Elena overrode it. She took control of the gyroscopes and aimed
Gabriel
carefully,
straight for Earth. Then she set a timer for sixty seconds.

The lights fell and then died entirely as power was routed to the main engines. Each of her screens flashed frantically for her attention, but Elena ignored them. She reached down and unstrapped herself, and pushed off from her chair and let herself fly. Floating there freely in the darkness at
Gabriel’s
heart, a thin red wake streaming behind her, Elena closed her eyes and began to sing.

El sol volvera, volvera, la noche se ira, se ira. Envuelvete en mi carino, deja la vida volar.

The timer hit zero, and the damaged fuel cell ignited.
Gabriel
burned a new star into the night sky, and then she was gone.