She’ll let me use her first name, Abel thinks. No human being has ever allowed him that much liberty before. The thought pleases him, though he can’t determine why.
Nor does he know the reason why he glances over his shoulder, back at the equipment pod bay he has escaped twice today. Surely after thirty years he has seen enough of it.
Perhaps it’s just because it feels so good to leave that place behind.
“This is the navigational position for the pilot, right?” Noemi runs her hands through her hair as they stand on the Daedalus’s bridge. The curved walls allow the ship’s viewscreen to wrap almost entirely around and above them, displaying the surrounding star field in such detail that the bridge appears to be a dull metallic platform in the middle of outer space. “The captain’s chair is obvious, and I figure this is for external communications. And that’s the ops station.”
“Correct. Your technological sophistication is surprising for a soldier of Genesis.”
She turns toward him, frowning. “We limit technology by choice, not out of ignorance.”
“Of course. But in time, the first must inevitably lead to the second.”
“Why do you have to act so superior?”
Abel considers her assertion. “I am superior, in most respects.”
Noemi’s hands close around the back of the captain’s chair, gripping it too hard, and when she speaks again, she grinds out every word. “Could you. Knock it. Off.”
“Modesty is not one of my chief operating modes,” he admits, “but I will try.”
She sighs. “I’ll take what I can get.”
He assesses her as she paces the length of the bridge, her formfitting emerald-green exosuit outlining her athletic body vividly against the blackness of space. Amid the stars glow the larger, gently shaded planets of the Genesis system. Abel can make out the circle that is Genesis itself, brilliant green and blue, with its two moons visible as tiny pinpoints of white.
“Do we have fuel?” Noemi asks. “Can the Daedalus get back home?”
Abel replies, “Fuel stores are sufficient for full-ship operations lasting two years, ten months, five days, ten hours, and six minutes.” He leaves out the seconds and milliseconds. “The ship took damage in its final battle, but the damage doesn’t appear to have been extreme.” Hardly even threatening. He frowns at the readouts scrolling past on the console. Did Captain Gee panic? Did she convince Mansfield to abandon ship when there was no real need? “Travel through a Gate would be difficult—”
“We’re not going through a Gate. We’re going home.”
Of course. Earth is Abel’s home, not Noemi’s. He continues, “After minor repairs with instruments we have on hand, we should be able to reach Genesis without difficulty.”
“Good.”
What will become of him on Genesis? Will he be dismantled? Sent back out into space? Made to serve in their armies? Abel cannot guess, and thinks it would be a bad idea to ask. He has no control over the situation. He may as well learn his fate when it comes to pass.
Noemi sits heavily in the nearest chair, the one at the ops station, which like all the stations aboard the Daedalus is thickly padded and covered with soft black material. Running her hand along it, she frowns. “Was this some kind of luxury cruiser or something? Regular Earth ships can’t all be like this… can they?”
“The Daedalus is a research vessel, customized especially for its owner and my creator, Burton Mansfield.”
“Did you say Burton Mansfield?” She sits up straight and gapes at him. “The Burton Mansfield?”
At last. It’s good to see Noemi finally responding with appropriate awe. “The founder and architect of the Mansfield Cybernetics line? Yes.”
He watches for her reaction, anticipating her amazement—and instead sees her scowl. “That son of a bitch. This is his ship? You’re his mech?”
“… yes.” How dare she call his father such names? But Abel can’t object, so he forces himself not to think of it any longer.
“I can’t believe it,” Noemi mutters. “You’re telling me Mansfield himself came to this system thirty years ago, and he got away?”
“All humans aboard abandoned ship,” Abel answers as simply as he can. “As I wasn’t on the bridge at that time, I cannot know how successful their escape was, nor their reasons for abandoning a functional ship.”
“We scared them. That’s why they ran.” Energized, Noemi gets to her feet and reexamines every station on the bridge, as if it requires further consideration now that she knows who it belongs to. “But why would Burton Mansfield come to the Genesis system to start with? Why would he throw himself into the middle of a war?”
And there it is—the question Abel had hoped Noemi would not think to ask.
As long as she’s his commander, he cannot lie to her. However, he has enough discretion to… omit certain facts, as long as her questions are not direct.
He tries indirection first. “Mansfield had undertaken critical scientific research.”
“In a war zone? What was he researching?”
A direct question: Full disclosure is now required. “Mansfield was studying a potential vulnerability in the Gate between Genesis and Earth.”
Noemi goes very still. She’s realizing the true significance of what she’s found. “By vulnerability—do you mean a potential malfunction, or—tell me, exactly, what?”
Abel remembers the day Mansfield realized the worst. The endless hours of research and sensor readings required, the immense leap of insight it took for Mansfield to grasp the answer: All of this, Abel now has to deliver to a soldier of Genesis. “By vulnerability, I mean he was investigating a way a Gate could be destroyed.”
Noemi’s face lights up. Under different circumstances, Abel would be pleased to have brought his commander so much joy. “Did you find one?”
They ought to have foreseen it, Abel thinks. They shouldn’t have left me here. It was… tactically unwise.
Because I have no choice but to betray them.
“Answer me,” Noemi says. “Did you find a way to destroy a Gate?”
Abel admits, “Yes.”
9
HE’S LYING.
Noemi knows the mech—Abel—can’t lie to her while she’s his commander, which somehow she is. But the enormity of what he’s said makes it feel like the ship’s gravity is shifting beneath her feet, forcing her off-balance. Her grief for Esther weighs on her too heavily to allow for the sudden, staggering return of hope.
“How?” She takes one step toward Abel. The viewscreen dome shows fire-fog trails of the galaxy’s arm, stretching their glowing tendrils overhead. “How can anyone destroy a Gate?”