JUST AS ABEL DECIDES PROTECTING NOEMI WILL require him to bodily pull her from the pilot’s seat, she slides out, surrendering it to him. Instantly he begins inputting coordinates, aiming for the Cray Gate, the very center.
“We’re about to have company.” Noemi’s already at ops. “Three Kismet security vessels headed our way.”
“Let me double-check our coordinates.”
“You’re going to start doubting yourself now? Or do you want to punch it while we can still get out of here in one piece?”
“Punching it on my mark,” Abel says. “And—now.”
The ship surges forward, so fast it feels as though the ship is flying out from beneath them. Noemi makes a sound that might be fear or fury, and even Abel has to hang on. The newly repaired integrity field whines, already stretching to its limits of endurance. Kismet seems to vanish as the star field around them rushes by, or seems to, as they hurtle toward the Cray Gate.
“You overloaded the engines and accelerated?” Noemi’s hands hover over her controls, like she’s trying to think of some way to stop this. “We’ll fly apart!”
“We’re within safety margins,” Abel says. The extremely small decimal points involved are better left unsaid.
“We’re going so fast we’ll reach the Gate in—”
“Approximately three minutes.” Twenty-three seconds of which have passed.
Noemi doesn’t argue any further, only devotes her attention to the controls, making sure the overload doesn’t destabilize the ship. Not that she’d be able to do much about it—the amount of time between destabilization and destruction would be less than one second. But Abel admires the dedication to duty.
She’s right to be afraid. The risks are considerable and will only increase as they go through the Cray Gate. Under any other circumstances, Abel would reject this move as inadvisable in the extreme.
The Gate swells onto the viewscreen; they’re coming at it so fast that the ring seems to be widening like a sinkhole about to take them down. If he’s miscalculated by the slightest degree, they could sideswipe the Gate’s security systems and be destroyed in an instant—
But of course he hasn’t miscalculated. Abel smiles as the Daedalus slips into the Gate.
Although Abel’s sensory systems can compensate for some of the bizarre input, even he sees the strange angles of the light, feels the odd pull of gravity untethered from space-time. None of it troubles him, particularly because the ship’s smooth operation tells him they’re coming through just fine. Then the Daedalus shudders, released from the Gate, engines powering down to normal levels as he’d set them to do. Their view shifts from eerie silver to a new star field, one neither of them has seen before. The navigational computer automatically focuses on the red-orange dot that is the planet Cray.
“We made it,” Noemi says, blinking as she slowly slumps back into her chair. Humans often state the obvious, as Abel has seen, but they do not like having this pointed out. So he remains silent as he watches Noemi take a few deep breaths, collecting herself. “I can’t believe your programming even let you do something that dangerous.”
“The alternative was your capture or death. My primary directives made our course of action clear.” Abel pauses. “That said, we cannot put the mag engines in overload again for the foreseeable future. Repeated strain of that kind will almost certainly result in our destruction.”
Noemi squares her shoulders, already recovering. “And nobody’s going to be along to follow us for a good long while.”
“At least several hours, probably time enough for us to have reached Cray.” Abel’s proud of that part.
“Good work,” Noemi says. Her praise surprises him, but not as much as what she says next. “I wish we could’ve spent more time in the Kismet system.”
“You didn’t seem to enjoy our time there.” Save, perhaps, for their dance—she did seem to like that.
“That’s not what I meant.” Noemi’s dark hair is still flecked with glittery confetti from the party. “I would’ve liked—well, to say good-bye to Esther.”
She stares at him, obviously daring him to talk about how illogical it would be to say good-bye to a person who’s already dead. Abel knows better. Human grief rituals have their purposes, even if they’re ones he finds hard to understand.
Once Noemi realizes Abel’s not going to challenge her, she peels off her loose gray jacket, leaving on her singlet beneath. Bruises from their storeroom escape have begun to darken on her forearms and knees. Sweat gleams on her skin. “How long before we get to Cray?”
“Approximately eleven hours.”
“Good. Plenty of time to go to sick bay, get these taken care of.”
Abel ought to help her with these ordinary things as well, rest and food and morale—surely that, too, is part of protecting his commander. But another task has to come even before that. “I must come up with a new fake identification code for the ship, and soon. Cray authorities may or may not prioritize finding us, depending on whether Kismet’s forces consider us as potential members of Remedy; if they do, no doubt they will send word to that effect. If not, our unauthorized departure should be the least of their concerns. However, the Queen and Charlie we encountered earlier will pursue us in a spacecraft of their own as soon as one can be procured.”
“They’ll chase you across the galaxy.” Her expression has grown thoughtful. “Mansfield wants you back that badly?”
“So it seems.” The words come out matter-of-factly. Abel is proud of that. Not only has he developed some human emotions, but he has also learned self-control in dealing with them. Only inside does he feel this strange mixture of elation and agony. Someone he has missed has also missed him. They will never meet again; they will miss each other until the end of their days. Knowing that is… sad, but joyful, too. Abel hadn’t realized those emotions could coexist.
I wish I could tell you that, Father. You always loved it when I understood something new about humanity.
I wish I could have learned this some other way.
Noemi continues, “Okay. I’ll go—” She gestures vaguely at herself, at her state of disarray and her bruises. Then she gives him a small smile before trudging out.
Abel watches her go. She doesn’t glance back once; by now, he realizes, she trusts his programming. She knows she won’t be harmed by him.
If only he could say the same about her.
However, the more Abel comes to know Noemi Vidal, the less he resents his impending destruction. He is still pained by the thought of ceasing to exist, by never again learning anything new, and most of all by the knowledge that he will never see Mansfield again. Yet his death seems less like a waste now.