Spear of Light (24 page)

There was no reply.

A seabird picked up a jointed beach-crawler and held it close to its chest. A second one bombed it from the air—once, twice, over and over until the first bird released its find to squawk. The second bird took the prize, tried to fly away with it, but the weight of the meal eventually pulled it down. The first bird circled above its head, let out a furious screech, and dive-bombed it. Yi said,
The Revolution—and any other humans who are deeply frightened of you—maybe most other humans—will batter themselves to death against Next ships and Next cities. It makes no sense, but humans do not make sense.

The Jhailing stared out past the waves.
We understand this.

Do you?
I am losing some of my empathy. I can feel it slip slowly away, becoming a thing I think about rather than a thing I feel. How little, if any, remains in a being like you?

The Jhailing didn't answer. It almost never answered a question it didn't like.
While you are out there, will you report back anything you hear that relates to plans for other attacks?

Of course. There are not many humans we can talk to here, but we hope to find more.
On the beach, the two birds still fought over the morsel of food, which had now been picked up and dropped so many times that it no longer appeared to be alive.
Working in Hope and the Mixing Zone has put us in touch with humans who want to be us, but not with those who are our enemy. We would like to help them all survive.

Except for the ones that try to become like us and fail.

They choose that risk.
He tried not to think of the Katherine they had lost.

The Jhailing also watched the birds.
We cannot spend energy caring for individual human lives.

But you understand that we care?

I do. It is an acceptable concern on your part as long as you recognize the boundaries.

I understand.

Any humans who attack us will forfeit their lives. If you help them attack us, you will forfeit your lives, and we will take all of your lives—so that any way that any memory of you is stored in a Next system will be destroyed.

I understand.
The Jhailing was drawing the lines harder and tighter.
I did not expect an attack to surprise you. It is human to fight the things that frighten you. They have always done it, and that is almost certainly why they fought you before.

He had lost track of which bird was which. One of the birds came down on the other so sharp and hard that it fell over, screeching. When it struggled back to its feet, one of its wings had bent. The victor flew away with what would surely have made a meal for both birds.
Will you tell me what you—what we—came here for? All of this war and death and harm must be worth something more than power.

It is a truth that readily available sunlight is an abundance of energy and that we need to add many more souls to who we are. Like you. You were not a mistake.

Although you no longer use the method you forced on us.

We don't have to. You were not harmed; you were created to be an ambassador, given a more beautiful body than some will be, given meaningful work earlier than many.

It was possible that it would never really apologize to him.

So what is it that you do not yet know? Can you braid with me to tell me?

You are not yet ready for that. We have reason to believe there were crumbs of information left here for us. Some of the places that we asked to have . . . Neville, and Iron's Reach on Entare, are places where those crumbs might live. But they could be elsewhere.

Do you know what you're looking for?

No.

Do you know who left it for you?

We suspect, but we are not ready to share that yet.

I find that frustrating. I want to know all of what you know.

Perhaps you will in time.
It stood and looked out at the ocean and around at Nexity and back at Yi.
We do not want to tell you what our preconceptions might be. We think it is better if you are free to look.

It would not do to hide things from a Jhailing.
We did find ships that look like they were left by you, from a long time ago.

We know about those, in the cave in Ice Fall Valley. They may be a clue, although we believe we are looking for something more subtle, and older.

More subtle?

Information. Perhaps. We believe we are looking for something so old that it may be hard—even for us—to understand.

And you want me to look for it?

You can leave and we cannot. We had expected relations between us and the leaders of Lym to improve, and for us to have freedom to move around most of the planet by now. That has not happened.

That was an understatement.
I will do what I can.

We are still looking. We are, for example, beginning our city on Entare. But we want you to look as well.

I would have gone any time you asked me to.

But we were waiting for you to decide to go on your own. You may recall that we created you to be an ambassador for our kind before the great decision.

I do.

It stood up.
Good luck in your journey.

Yi watched the Jhailing walk away. He didn't really know what to think of it. It had not given him answers to anything, although it had added more precise instructions than usual, a serious threat, and one small mystery.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

NAYLI

The
Shining Danger
flew into Lilith's Station, cloaked in misinformation and the name
Lady of Stars
. Four or five crewmembers occupied various chairs around the command room. Stupid hovered near the ceiling in a barely visible virtual state that Nayli often left it in when she didn't expect to need it soon. Because they were stealth, she'd had no information for hours. She and Vadim had slept and sparred and made love and slept again since the last time they had any useful connection to the outside world. Anything to keep from fretting. Now they waited, letting the autobot on the ship and one in the station decide how and where to best dock what the station thought was a simple cargo ship owned by a family of traders.

They'd been buried in logistics and paperwork and stupid interminable meetings followed by boring interminable meetings punctuated with intense interminable meetings. It felt grand to be out and working, even if the stop here was merely to monitor what happened elsewhere. They had helped plan this mission, but they hadn't done the logistics, and Brea had refused to let them lead the warships.

Nayli didn't like this role; it left her feeling unmoored.

She wore her braid tucked into a maroon scarf. She'd made her face up to add a scar and lightened her skin tone by a shade or two, and she wore shoes that made her three inches taller. Her dress looked as modest as the scarf, and covered her tattoos. Simple black gloves hid her hands, including the small tattoos of roses—now four—on her wrist.

Once the ship slipped into a U-shaped dock and grapples connected it with the station, she and Vadim joined the boisterous stream of crew heading for the bars and restaurants in the station's exchange center.

They passed the first four or five bars, which were thronged and full of music and dance, and chose one half full of a mix of spacers and locals sharing quiet drinks. They slid into a large, comfortable booth, ordered, and sent a brief communication.

Two screens took up the free wall space, but neither showed the news Nayli was looking for. One broadcast some kind of cage-fight sport of augmented strong men against each other—surely staged. Another seemed to be delivering financial data, although the sound had been muted in favor of the grunts from the other screen, and it was impossible to be sure.

Even though their drinks arrived quickly, the person they had messaged arrived just behind them. The head of the Shining Revolution cell on Lilith's Station was a small, unassuming woman who barely came up to Nayli's shoulder, and Nayli was not particularly tall. They'd worked together for a full year once, and people had called them the dark and light twins. While lighter in color than Nayli, Maureen was . . . spicy. Red haired, green eyed, always well made-up to an overdone perfection.

She had been one of Nayli's favorite lieutenants for years. They had flown together on at least ten missions of various kinds, and shared command once when Vadim was on a special mission. Maureen waved, and when Nayli gestured her forward, Maureen leaned over her and gave her a short, tight hug before she hopped up into her seat. “Nice job—I would barely recognize you.”

“Thanks.”

Maureen smiled broadly at Vadim. “It's fabulous to see you, too.”

Maureen knew something was supposed to happen, but not what or precisely when. Just that she and her cell should be alert and that she should bring a slate they could watch news on to this meeting. “Any news yet?” Nayli asked her.

“Not the news you're waiting for, not yet.”

“Surely soon,” Nayli said. “Can we buy you a drink?”

Maureen ordered something, and Vadim perused the menu, pretending to care what was on it.

Maureen set her slate right in the middle of the table, tuned to a station that would surely show what they were looking for once the news broke. When Maureen's drink arrived, Vadim held up his own glass of hard spirits and said, “To killing robots.”

“To killing robots,” both women repeated.

Nayli did her best to help with small talk, although Vadim was better at it. Give her a ship full of crew or a large audience to impress, or, even better, a large and remote audience, and she knew herself to be one of the best leaders out there. But put her around a table filled with one or two more people, especially people she led, and she found herself awkward.

Luckily, she only had to wait an hour, which they filled by picking at a tray of nuts and cheese that then sat heavily in her stomach.

Maureen pointed. “Is that it?”

The screen lit up. Maureen handed out one earbud each, and Nayli fit hers in with a practiced move, immediately filling her ear with the vibrating hum of an excited announcer's voice. “The Next super-ship
Edge of Existence
has been attacked.” The screen showed one of the flagship Next machines. Nayli imagined it teeming with silvery robotic bodies and weapons. She leaned forward over the news slate, her throat dry. The
Edge of Existence
was the largest thing they had ever thought to attack, except of course for Nexity itself.

It came apart.

She took in a breath and let it out slowly, a smile daring to infect her.

The announcer droned on, but she barely heard him. The visuals were fabulous and precise.

Victory happened in pieces as an invisible explosion detonated in the core of the great machine's insides. Bit by bit, the ship swelled and separated. The gentle—and complete—coming apart was so satisfying.

Vadim's hand found hers and squeezed it. When she glanced up at him, he too smiled, and when he met her eyes a spark seemed to fly between them. She felt light.

Behind her, a cheer erupted, and then another one from a different table. Not everywhere, but then no place they had been was as united as they should be about the Next.

They kept watching as the great machine became a string of large separate parts connected with cables and unbroken strips of metals. From time to time, the screen zoomed in on individual parts, or on robotic bodies floating in space.

“Rescue operations are being planned but will not arrive for three days.”

They'd chosen a place between destinations, where immediate help would be impossible for the ship or crew. Three mechanics from the station Star Island Stop, where they had launched the successful destruction of the
Next Horizon,
had planted the explosives inside of a cargo bin that was supposed to be something else entirely. She'd never known what.

The announcer continued. “While no one has formally taken credit for the destruction, the Next have announced that it was not an accident. Our working hypothesis is that the Shining Revolution will eventually take credit.”

This was only part one, and it had gone very well.

Vadim ordered a scotch, but she ordered water, drinking it slowly. She could have had alcohol—it didn't really matter. Almost nothing in space required immediate response.

She slid a little closer to Vadim. He pulled her close, pressing his lips briefly to her bare forehead.

She pulled the earbud out and let the slate drone on, rehashing the news over and over. They
would
take credit, but after the next blow.

Vadim felt warm and sweet next to her, calm. The comfortable seats and the victory calmed her so much that her eyes were closed when Vadim pounded on her shoulder. “Wake up,” he hissed. “Watch.”

She fumbled for the earbud and jammed it back in. A woman's voice said, “—versal from today's earlier fortunes, a fleet of twelve heavily disguised Shining Revolution ships were completely destroyed by two Next ships outside of High Player station. The station itself took some damage.”

She sat all the way up and stared at the slate. Their fleet was already short by two ships. She only counted ten fighters where there should be twelve. Three needle-thin Next attackers flew at the fleet from behind, nearly grazing the Revolution ships and going on, unscathed.

A few moments after each pass one or two Revolution ships—
her ships!
—fell away from formation and drifted or jerked and crumpled.

Vadim's jaw clenched, and his hand fisted on her thigh. She took it and teased his fingers apart, reminding him that they couldn't overreact here.