Vinh’s anger is clear even without its target being in the room. “How dare they inconvenience you, two of the most illustrious passengers on this ship? Especially when your family has been through so much lately.” The side of Gillian’s face twitches; Noemi glimpses it and wonders what it means, but Vinh doesn’t even notice. “We should lodge a protest with the captain immediately. Your names on a petition would carry real weight.”
Hearing Abel’s murder described as Mansfield’s “medical treatment” is too much to take. Noemi takes another few steps back and begins weaving her way through the crowd, trying to get a sense of the room’s dimensions. She notices one tray in a Yoke’s hands: It’s filled with cheeses and breads, and also on the tray is a knife for trimming the cheeses to the guests’ demands.
It’s not much of a knife, but it has a pointed tip. Noemi could pierce skin and flesh with that. Later on this trip, she may need to. She can’t really steal it while dozens of people are looking on, but she makes a note for later: They’re careless. The only weapons they think about are blasters. They won’t be watching the cheese knives.
She keeps working her way around the room. As she goes, she jostles a girl a few years younger than she is—no, someone a few years older, an adult, although this woman’s not quite five feet tall and so thin that she looks more like a little kid. The woman’s champagne spills on Noemi’s jumpsuit. “Oops! So sorry! Let me get that,” she says, gesturing at a Dog to dab at Noemi’s clothes. “I’m Delphine Ondimba. I don’t think we ever met at one of the prelim retreats, did we?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What a beautiful outfit!” Delphine beams. “It sets off your figure wonderfully. I wish I could wear things like that—but when I do, I look even tinier than I am, and people start acting like I should still be playing with dolls.”
“You look great,” Noemi ventures, and she genuinely likes the look of Delphine’s flowing white silk caftan and heavily jeweled earrings. But she feels like she’s playing an elaborate game of dress up. More to the point, she’s not learning anything about this ship’s layout, which means she’s no closer to figuring out her escape. Time to keep moving. To Delphine she says, “I’m sure we’ll run into each other later.”
It’s a mundane brush-off, which is why Noemi’s so surprised when Delphine breaks into peals of laughter. “‘Run into each other’! Yes, I bet we will, at some point in the next fifty years or so.”
Fifty years?
Noemi opens her mouth to ask—then goes silent as the ship shudders beneath her feet. The entire party changes mood in an instant as smiles melt to frowns. All the musician mechs stop on precisely the same beat. “Well, what in the worlds is that?” Delphine says. “Are we taking off already?”
“My last shipment hasn’t arrived!” Furiously Vinh stomps toward a side door, which slides open to reveal a large plasma window that shows the starfield around them. “If they’ve moved the launch even closer, I’m going to demand a full—”
Brilliant green light flares through the window, blinding everyone in the room, and the entire ship rocks so violently that most of the passengers fall to the floor. Noemi manages to stay on her feet, barely. Staggering to the window, she peers into the darkness beyond. Only her military training allows her to pick out the faint glints of metal and slashes of movement that hint at what’s going on outside—a pitched battle between the Osiris’s mechs and a swarm of unknown fighter craft.
The ship shudders again—another blast must’ve landed somewhere else—and then the soft gold illumination in the room switches to blinking red alarm lights. Over the speaker, someone shouts, “All hands to emergency stations! We’re under attack!”
A few people begin screaming. Noemi turns back to the window, realizing that the fight outside involves at least hundreds of combatants—maybe more than a thousand. Whoever came after this ship came in force.
Delphine holds one hand to her chest, as if that’s all that’s keeping her racing heart inside. “Attack? Who would be attacking us?”
It’s Gillian Shearer who answers, her oval face gone an even starker white. “Remedy.”
12
THE JOURNEY TO NEPTUNE COULD BE COMPLETED MUCH more quickly if Abel put the Persephone’s mag engines into overdrive mode. However, that would tax them to the limit, holding him to slower speeds for some days to come. Abel projects that he’ll probably require the ship’s highest level of velocity to escape with Noemi after freeing her.
This means he won’t reach Neptune for hours. He has no solid data nor even any theories as to what he will find there. Therefore he can’t construct any meaningful plans, much less calculate their relative probabilities of success. Abel will spend the hours of the journey with little to do besides worry about Noemi.
He’d always understood himself to have greater capacities for patience and calm than humans. This self-assessment will have to be reconsidered.
As the Persephone clears Saturn’s orbit, he stands in his cabin, which used to be Mansfield’s, and attempts to fix his full focus on the wall. He doesn’t dislike the once-famous painting already hanging there, one of Monet’s Water Lilies. But impressionist techniques aren’t as effective on mechs. Humans look at the swirls of paint and see the translucency of water. Abel sees swirls of paint. Understanding the illusion is not the same as experiencing it.
The Kahlo is propped in one corner. He’d thought to hang that one instead, so the room would reflect his preferences instead of his creator’s, but it’s so small—and it’s not the kind of painting to be peacefully stared at while falling asleep. It demands attention and analysis. It disquiets.
Right now,
