The Abandoned and Ada spent an enjoyable time together. The Xeno could not only speak her language, but reproduce songs-music included-with all the instruments, from all eras. Ada was rediscovering her own culture, something that, coming from Antioch, had been more or less hushed up.
After moving her head and body, still in her chair, to the sound of a rock ballad from the late 20th century, she received a call on her communicator.
On the comm terminal, the pale, long face of Salman.
- "Salman, my friend, you look like hell!"
- "Yeah, I'm in trouble, but at least the LE can put me in touch with Gorylkin, so it's not all hopeless. I'm on Todolo right now."
- "Don't know it."
- "It's the planet where we met, keep up! The Aleph… uh… I don't even know where to start… okay, here: the HS has demanded from every conquered Xeno planet an amount of organic biomass equivalent to one percent of the individuals on the planet."
- "Why?"
- "Who cares. The fact is, on Todolo, the only real biomass is the local Xenos. Their waste is just rocks or sterile soil."
- "Too bad for that big idiot Aleph, then."
- "You think that stops him? He brought in an old Invictus and ordered me, with a commando, to load it with Xenos. So I made a huge mistake: I said no. All my guys quit my team and I'm stuck alone in an empty embassy with an Ozy and two Ravens, and twelve MARs. But I know what's going to happen-they'll come with an Endymion and drop a rock on my head. Gorylkin, damn it… tell me you've got a plan."
- "You did that for the Xenos, Salman?"
- "I didn't do it for the Xenos, or for you, even though you scare the crap out of me. I did it because I gave my word, and I've only got one. But I feel like I'm going to die here."
Ada leaned back. Finally, someone who keeps their word. Along with the Wau. A precious person. She replied:
- "Hang on, I'm coming. They can turn your commando against you and send rocks your way. They could even send you a whole damn army, and the Aleph himself might show up. I'll be there with you and we'll kill them. All of them."
Salman nodded gravely before cutting the connection.
- "The Abandoned, you wouldn't happen to have a Drift coordinate for the planet… uh…"
- "Where that call of yours came from?"
- "Yeah. I've got a return, but it's via Fang, in other words the far end of the universe."
- "I'll calculate it… give me a little time. Tell me, Ada, are you going to war? Like in your epics?"
- "Yeah, no choice. The HS is my people, but they're doing stupid things, they want to capture Xenos. And these are the nice Xenos, the ones who think you're really smart."
- "Oh, that's really sad. But maybe they have a good reason?"
- "If you only knew, my friend. It's precisely when they have no good reason that humans start doing evil-that's how you recognize them."
- "Maybe I can help you?"
- "How so?"
- "A part of me comes with you. Three's better than two. Do you have some sort of watertight container?"
Ada searched the bar, the cabins, the gym, the library, until she found an opulent bathroom with a bathtub. On the Shareplace, on Calchas, and on Clelia, she had only known static-electricity showers: a current running over the body, pulling the grime toward the wall-but on this ship, people stepped naked into a small open box, the bathtub, to be in the water and wash themselves. Clelia had water in abundance, but Ada had learned on the Shareplace to treat it like the precious liquid it was-the only way to quench thirst, and therefore to survive.
With Alpha she dragged the bathtub into an airlock, let it fill, then let it drain. When she reopened the airlock, a sweetish smell hung in the air. The walls and floor seemed slightly viscous. In the white clawfoot bathtub, a small ten-tentacled octopus raised one in a gesture that looked remarkably like a human thumbs-up.
- "Perfect, my dear!" he said, with the old-fashioned accent of vintage films.
They pushed the bathtub into the main room overlooking the cockpit. When the Abandoned dictated the Drift coordinates, Ada rushed to fire a grapnel at the sun and program a jump.
- "See you in a bit, Abandoned. I'll set this up and then we'll finish talking."
- "But I'm staying with you, Ada. I'm in your ship."
Ada asked Alpha to watch over the bathtub, and as soon as the ship had barely left the planet's liquid, it violently entered Drift, to emerge, a fraction of a second later, in Todolo's upper atmosphere, directly above the embassy city and directly beneath the Invictus-this old Endymion model, smaller and rounder, full of odd angles. Wow, now that was precise Drift calculation!
She grapples onto the Invictus, then works the thrusters to land. On the ground, Salman, FAM in hand, wearing a tactical suit feeding him oxygen, watches her descend. She grabs a respirator from a locker near the airlock and exits the Adventura with Alpha.
Salman gives her a military salute:
- "Gorylkin showing up in under a minute with a millimeter-perfect Drift jump-thought you were just bragging, but you're really good."
- "I've got good friends. And you're one of them. So, now what?"
He looked up. In the black, star-filled sky, an Endymion had just appeared-its name: Phrike, painted black with a huge white skull with empty eyes on each side. Ada wanted to say "do they think they scare us?" but she was a little scared.
- "I know the Phrike," Salman explained. "It carries troops meant to spread fear more than to kill. Very weak psis, flunked out of university, but still able to scream and terrorize. And they have a Chimera Protea."
- "A what?"
- "You don't want to know."
An incoming comm alarm rang in the ship. They entered and sealed the airlock. On-screen, a striking face: if the eyes were biological, the rest of the face was metal.
- "Captain Mosi of the Endymion Phrike. Lieutenant Salman of Todolo's colonial forces, your squad has informed us of your mutiny and your plan to revoke the peace treaty between Todolo and the HS. Under our civil war convention, I am refraining from obliterating you on the spot, and am giving you five minutes to present your unconditional surrender. After that, we will intervene across the entire planet, and believe me, you'll get the appetizer, the main course, and dessert."
Salman said nothing, mouth open, as if stunned, and Ada shoved him aside to yell at the screen:
- "This is Gorylkin, someone a quarter or a tenth your age who's already killed more men than you ever WILL! Forget the five minutes and bring it on right now, we're waiting-but I warn you, asshole, if you touch a single Xeno, I'll go get every Xeno in the whole universe to hunt you and your piece-of-shit Aleph down, and with Xenos there's zero war convention, zero After, and none of your stupid dessert either-if you knew Xenos, you'd know they can do things a thousand times more HORRIBLE than EATING YOU ALIVE!"
She cut the comm with a black glare:
- "Mosi, is it? I'm going to kill him, strangle him with my own hands, and drive knives into his eyes!"
The radar indicators showed a ship descending at full speed.
- "A Tyger," Salman commented. "I'm guessing eight men aboard. They're strong, you know."
Ada launched the Adventura and asked Salman to grapple at very low altitude; they flew among the Xeno termite mounds like in an obstacle-racing sport. The Tyger altered course and pursued them. The Adventura was tilted, nose in the air, but Ada had a steady foot; she reached the airlock and opened it. The atmosphere was thin but a gust swept through. Salman yelled at her not to do anything stupid. They both began to feel an unspeakable anxiety rising.
- "You feel the fear, Ada?" Salman shouted. "Fight it! It's them! They're psis!"
She took her FAM, heart pounding wildly. The Ezrail. She gripped it tight. She aimed at the ship.
- "Stop your nonsense, I'm begging you," Salman yelled, seeing, precisely, her nonsense. "You think a MAR shot will get through armor that can survive atmospheric entry?"
Ada fired and missed-since both the Adventura and her target were moving in short leaps-but her second shot struck the Tyger's hull from below. The pursuing ship seemed frozen, then dropped straight down like a stone, crashing into a crater formed by the impact.
Salman said nothing, and Ada… neither. The Adventura circled, then, with a thruster-powered flight, landed next to the crash site.
The Tyger looked in fairly good shape, but the red splatters on the inside of its observation bay told a bloody story. Salman went out to investigate and came back minutes later with another, larger rifle, and the same model slung over his shoulder.
- "I don't know how, but your shot went through the hull. I think it cut the inertial field of the grapple, and basically, they slammed into the walls. But how'd you do it?"
- "It's Ezrail," Ada said, showing her old chrome-and-wood MAR. "They say it's a Transient rifle."
- "Ah, okay, if you've got a magic weapon… I took this, and one for you, but your rifle's way better. These are rippers, you know them? Opposite of a FAM: scattered shot but still full power at a hundred meters. Perfect for a massacre… or for us, when we're one against a hundred."
Ada and Salman looked up at the Endymion, hanging there. Motionless. Ada remarked that Mosi must be fuming, and Salman told her he was the unemotional type-and that the main course must be on the way.
- "Maybe it's time to negotiate?" he suggested.
He convinced Ada to call the Endymion, but it didn't answer.
- "Maybe he is angry, after all…"
- "Look at this, on the radar."
Something was descending. Too big to be a fusion bomb, too small to be a ship. Salman made the Adventura hop-just in case-but the thing fell from the sky, forming a crater. From the observation bay, it looked like a large, black, bloody egg.
What the hell is that? Ada wondered, with a sinking feeling.