Noemi doesn’t appear to be impressed by this genetic connection. She rises and walks slowly toward the star field screen arching over them. Her gaze turns toward red-orange Cray, glowing almost as brightly as a star. “If we could get through the Kismet Gate, then nobody would see us. After that we’d need to get a T-7 anx, but we could do that on Kismet, right?”
“Correct. We should have sufficient credits, and the minefield will almost certainly be the only security at the Kismet Gate.” Almost certainly. Not entirely. Abel envisions a field of patrol ships, all of them piloted by Queens and Charlies, which would halt the Daedalus, arrest Noemi, and free him to find Mansfield. But that possibility is so unlikely he can’t understand why his mind even presented it.
Another operational oddity for him to investigate later.
“From Kismet we could get to Cray. We steal a thermomagnetic device, go back the way we came, and return right here. You get into my starfighter with the device, point it straight at the Gate, and blow it to kingdom come. Right?”
She doesn’t mention his destruction. He doesn’t either. “Correct.”
If Mansfield knew, he would be so angry. Angry with Noemi for misusing his greatest creation. Angry with himself for failing to foresee this situation and program Abel accordingly. Mansfield would be angry about Abel’s destruction. He would care. That thought comforts Abel, though logically it should not matter.
Noemi asks, “Do you have to follow my orders even if I’m not around?”
“A mech that obeyed its commander only when observed wouldn’t be much use.”
“That’s a yes.”
“Yes.” Will she always require such simple, literal replies?
But her next words catch Abel off guard. “So you’d keep going with the mission even if I was killed?”
“Unless another human took command of this vessel or of me, yes, I would. However, you shouldn’t be at undue risk during this mission.”
She shakes her head as she turns back to him. “I’m a soldier of Genesis. A rebel. They’d arrest me just for reaching another colony world. If they realize I’m stealing a thermomagnetic device to destroy a Gate? Trust me, they’ll shoot to kill.”
“My programming requires me to protect you,” Abel says.
This doesn’t appear to reassure her as profoundly as it should. “Anything could happen. I gave up my life already, so what becomes of me doesn’t matter. This mission matters. You’re absolutely sure you’d keep going without me?”
Noemi speaks of her own death as a foregone conclusion. Abel wonders what she means by giving up her life, but he’s more struck by the fact that she is as willing to die as she is to destroy him. She isn’t discarding him; she thinks they’ll perish together. Noemi’s plan asks nothing of him that she isn’t asking of herself. Somehow that makes the prospect of destruction easier for him to bear.
Which is a completely irrational reaction. His emotion subroutines truly have become strange during these past thirty years.…
“Yes,” Abel confirms. “I’ll keep going.”
“And this trip we’re going on won’t take that long. A few days, right? Not more than ten or fifteen?”
“Correct.” Though he doesn’t see why they should have to work so quickly, particularly given that she considered waiting to get approval from her superiors. What could be so urgent?
She takes a deep breath. “Then let’s begin.”
Within minutes, Abel has completed all the necessary preliminaries. Noemi keeps her position at ops, leaving him at navigation. So it’s his hand that hits the control to bring the mag engines back online.
A shudder passes through the ship—entirely normal, and yet thrilling. The stars around him are changing. He’s moving. Abel is as close to free as he suspects he’ll ever be again.
Outside, he knows, the silvery teardrop shape of the Daedalus is now trailed by the torchlight blaze of the mag engines. The walls of these engines aren’t made of metal or any other physical material; they are magnetic fields, capable of containing combustion at heat levels that would melt any man-made object. Their invisibility creates the illusion of flame in the vacuum of space.
The ship moves away from the scattered bits of wreckage orbiting the nearby Gate and toward the pale yellow star that serves as Genesis’s sun. The Kismet Gate will be located almost completely opposite from where they were, all the way across this solar system.
Next to him, he notices Noemi gazing at the greenish dot that is Genesis. She thinks she may be leaving her home for the last time. Most humans would find that difficult; some would weep. Noemi simply watches silently as they accelerate, hurtling past the other planets of this system, leaving Genesis behind.
“You should sleep,” he says.
Noemi shakes her head. “Not happening. I haven’t forgotten I’m on an enemy ship with an enemy mech. If you think you can catch me off my guard, think again.”
“This mission will require several days at least. You’re already exhausted. Not only will you be unable to remain awake during our entire journey, you probably won’t remain functional more than another hour or two at best.” Abel glances over at her. “You shouldn’t worry about my disobeying you, or harming you, while you rest.”
“Because you’re so worried about my well-being?” she says, eyebrow arched.
“Of course not.” He smiles congenially. “But as the events of the past hour should have demonstrated… if my programming allowed me to kill you, you’d be dead already.”
After several long seconds of silence, Noemi replies, “If you’re trying to reassure me, you’re not doing a great job.”
“I’m only trying to keep you fully informed.” Abel has to obey Noemi, but he doesn’t have to like her. He doesn’t have to care if she’s frightened or tired. He’s done his duty by informing her of a risk to her health; after this, he can let her run herself ragged.
“Not yet,” she finally says. “I couldn’t sleep yet.”
Without another word, he accelerates, urging the ship faster toward the Kismet Gate. If Noemi Vidal drops dead from exhaustion beside him, so be it.
She doesn’t drop dead at any point during the fourteen hours it takes the Daedalus to cross the Genesis system. But she goes from sitting quietly at ops to blinking hard, to swaying in her seat as if she’s on the verge of falling. At this point, Noemi must have been awake so long as to be near the point of delirium.
But she straightens and focuses again as they approach the Kismet Gate.
It looks just like the Gate leading to Earth, except that this one isn’t battle-scarred or surrounded by debris. The silvery components lock together to form one vast ring. This is the eye of the needle through which Abel will thread the Daedalus.
As he inputs the necessary coordinates, he sees Noemi take a deep breath. When he glances over at her, she asks, “You’re sure the integrity field will hold up for this trip?”
“Almost completely certain.”