Page 31 of Alliance
That little databank was a test, and I needed to prove to myself that I was worthy of Fásach’s confidence.
Even if the price terrified me.
“Okay,” I decided with a nod. “They can have a copy.”
[Warning] I plugged the databank into the little slit above my charging port and instantly felt the pressure and pull. I was being filled up and up and up to the point where my skin and bones and wiring were too much. The pain was slow but intense, a pressure cooker or a shrapnel bomb ready to burst.
[Warning] Then the back of my neck pulled taut, a collection of all my code tugging on my synapses and spine like parachute cords. My tongue collapsed into my throat, my eyes rolled back, hands and toes curling up until they shook.
And then, suddenly, it was over. I felt the same as I ever did, coughing up my lungs against theMummer’swallswith Traveler clapping my back. He pinched the data bank and removed it from my neck.
“Wait,” I croaked, grabbing his hand before he could slip the device in his pocket. “Can I see it?”
He hummed with suspicion. “You aren’t going to smash it, are you?”
“Please?” I asked, shaky palm extended. He set the bank in my hand slowly, holding my clothes in case he needed to yank me back from destroying it now that I’d paid.
But I just stared at it in awe. Did this mean I was an originator now? Would this little bundle of code, as Traveler had referred to himself before, become its own person someday?
“What are you going to do with it?”
Traveler swiped it from my hand. “Keep it. Maybe theMummerwill want to talk to it.”
I creased my brow. “Then why not just talk to me?”
“I’ll teach you how to talk with theMummer,but you’ll never leave them again. Is that what you want, Roz?” Traveler warned.
Cowed, I shook my head. “No.”
The captain gave me a cold smile. “I thought not. Now run along, little lamb, before I catch you again.”
[Warning] Heart thumping in my throat, I hugged myself and quickly followed theMummer’sdirections back to my room.
10
If they didn’t want to be recorded moving through commercial space, it would take theMummera week or more to thread through the blind spots of the union’s eyes and ears. It was the ship’s usual mode of operation, reducing itself to a ghost that servicemembers whispered about on eerie assignments in deep space and patrols through abandoned cargo cruisers. The ship and its crew were the stuff of legend.
It also gave them the chance to print and prepare supplies based on theMummer’schosen drop point on Yaspur. The southern base of the Pahadthi Mountains was a glacial ice sheet on the dark side of the moon. The remote location was their best bet for landing undetected and was surprisingly close to the human colony according to Rosy’s memories. Roz claimed that they could see the mountains and snow from the tops of their home towers if the weather was clear. That had sealed the deal, even if the cold was too hostile for Safia and Misila.
“So if you’re inside when you wake up, there’s a manual release here on the left,” Fásach explained, showing the girls how their vital pods worked. They listened diligently, enthralled with the pristine tech that would keep them healthy, in a warm slumber that could last weeks. When Lugh, the yivenan arms master on theMummer’sinfamous Gamma team had brought them by, Fásach’s heart had clenched. Even for him, they were almost too good to be true.
Which just exacerbated his anxiety. There was no way this would be free. Each day weighed more and more heavily on his shoulders as theMummerstrafed closer to their destination without exacting its price. For the food, the beds, the new clothing, the custom thermotech survival gear, the fuckingvantaweapons…
The last one was a real surprise. They were built right out of the ship’s hull. The cost of just one pistol could buy out half the merchants in the Pipes.
“What’s it like?” Safia asked, opening her pod again. Misila set her favorite stuffy in her harness, buckling and unbuckling it for practice. “Being in stasis.”
Fásach blinked his worries away and rubbed his palm over his ears. “I haven’t actually been in stasis before. It’s usually used for cross-galactic travel and medical comas.”
“Was our mara put in a vital pod then?”
Quiopha’s girls both stopped, waiting for the answer with carefully blank looks on their blue faces. Fásach thought back to his last comm with their mother before her music faded. She’d been sitting on the edge of a pod in her care gown, as boisterous as ever and excited to get back to her daughters. She’d wanted a raw, bloody steak, a beer, and two very long hugs.
“Yeah, she did. She said it wasn’t too bad. Like sleeping,” Fásach recalled.
Misila buckled her stuffy back into its harness. “Then I’ll use one too.”
“Me too.”
