She has been betrayed by what she thought was grace, and her folly scalds her like boiling oil.
The Queens and Charlies swoop in, encased in the metal-framed suits that turn them into warrior and warship simultaneously. It’s as though she’s surrounded by birds of prey, their talons reaching for her from every side. Noemi fires immediately, picking off two of them before her sensors begin to go haywire. She jabs at the controls until she realizes she’s caught in a kind of electromagnetic net, one made up of mini–tractor beams emanating from mechs.
That’s not standard fighter mech procedure. Not their standard weaponry. Have they evolved a new way of fighting, one Genesis will be powerless against?
But that can’t be right, she thinks. If this was an Earth patrol, there would be even more mechs. A Damocles ship would be nearby. If they’re guarding the Gate this closely, where’s the Damocles? And why bother with just a few mechs when they’re going to invade any day now?
Her comms speak in the voice of a Queen, scratchy through the speaker: “You have been reclaimed and will be returned.”
“Returned?” Noemi talks to it more on instinct, out of pure bewilderment. “You mean to Genesis?”
“To your owner,” it says. “You are the property of Burton Mansfield.”
“Property? I’m no one’s property!”
But the mechs don’t listen to her. They are Mansfield’s property and incapable of knowing why humans should be any different. Instead, one of the Queens swoops close, her metal exosuit carving a stark, angular silhouette against the surrounding stars. Clamps lock on to Noemi’s starfighter, jolting her so hard she bites her tongue. To her horror, a thin tube extends from the exosuit, spinning like a drill, to pierce her cockpit.
“No—no no no—” She can’t imagine why mechs would want to kill her by robbing her of air instead of shooting her down, but why doesn’t matter, not with that thing coming closer by the second. Heart pounding, she scans her controls for something, anything that might help her, even though she knows there’s no way.
The tube pierces the cockpit. Shards of transparent aluminum sparkle like snowflakes as they float freely around her. But the drilling doesn’t stop. Instead the tube spins closer and closer, and her horror intensifies as she realizes it’s going to go right through her helmet. Maybe through her skull.
Noemi turns her head, even though it’s useless. She won’t save herself, but at least this way she won’t have to watch the thing drill right between her eyes.
Her helmet shudders with the first impact. Now she can hear the high-pitched sound of it, getting closer millimeter by millimeter. Closing her eyes, Noemi begins to pray. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee—
The tube breaks through the helmet, just shy of her left temple, then stops. She has no time to be relieved before greenish gas fills her helmet, her lungs, and dizziness sweeps everything away into the dark.
6
AT 1842 HOURS, ABEL ALLOWS HIMSELF TO BE PULLED away from the data to meet Harriet and Zayan at Montgolfier. He had understood Virginia when she said the furnishings and place settings at this restaurant were only energy fields, but this factual knowledge did not adequately prepare him for the oddness of the sight.
“There you are!” Harriet waves cheerfully at Abel and Virginia from the corner where she and Zayan are, seemingly, hovering. “Come on, you’ve got to see this.”
“No, they don’t. I wish I hadn’t.” Zayan’s nose wrinkles as he regards his meal, a generous bowl of pho—but since the “bowl” is an invisible energy field, the soup hangs in midair, where its brownish broth looks decidedly less appetizing. (At least, if Abel properly understands the usual causes of the human emotion disgust.) “Floating food is interesting for the first thirty seconds. Then it’s just gross.”
“It’s not anybody else’s fault that you ordered badly.” Harriet sounds almost prim as she gestures at her “plate,” where an ample sandwich levitates. “I say, if you’re bored with a flying sandwich, you’re bored with life.”
Virginia chortles as she takes her invisible seat next to Zayan. “Oh, you think the pho is bad? Just wait until I order the spaghetti.” Zayan’s eyes widen in dismay.
Apparently to take mercy on Zayan’s stomach, Harriet changes the subject once Abel’s seated next to her. “So, did you sell the ‘big and sparkly’ yet?”
“What’s big and sparkly?” Virginia catches Abel’s look and shrugs. “What? I’m easily distracted by shiny objects. It’s a failing.”
Perhaps it would be better to be straightforward about the diamond. Abel gives Virginia a look that hopefully communicates the message We shouldn’t discuss it in depth at this time. To his crew members he simply says, “I sold it before we left Earth.”
Zayan and Harriet share a look of dismay. “Why’d you lie about it?” Zayan says. The word lie sounds wrong to Abel’s ears, but he must acknowledge its justice. “If you don’t want to cut us in equally on the price… you know we never really expected that, right?”
“You’re already the best Vagabond boss there is,” Harriet says. “We don’t take it for granted.”
“You’ll receive equal thirds of the price,” Abel says. “But I wanted to pace out your payments to prevent another submersible incident.”
Zayan hangs his head, sheepish, as Virginia says, “What submersible incident? If you guys got up to hijinks in a submarine, I want to hear every detail.”
“It’s not that,” Harriet says. “The first time we received a big payout after we joined Abel’s crew, Mr. Thakur here got it into his head that he needed to rent a personal submersible to cruise the ghost reefs of the Indian Ocean. Which would’ve been expensive enough, even if he hadn’t promptly driven it straight into a reef and needed a tow to get out.”
“The tow cost more than the sub.” Zayan sighs. “Okay, I got carried away. We’d just been so broke for so long! I wanted to do something
