These are rhetorical questions, but when humans ask them, it’s often because they want to hear the answer repeated by another. “They bring top students here to weaken the bonds between family members and to ensure that your strongest loyalty is to Earth rather than to any individual.”
Virginia blinks. “Okay, wow. I knew that, but—I hadn’t put it in those words. But that’s it. That’s it exactly.”
“Your anger at Earth is understandable, but that doesn’t require you to come with me,” Abel points out. “Unless you mean to join Remedy? I should warn you, they’re unlikely to accept a new recruit in the middle of an operation on this scale.” Given the number of ships he saw attacking the Osiris, Abel considers it likely that this is Remedy’s most ambitious strike yet.
“Join Remedy? Are you having some kind of system meltdown?” Virginia mock-punches him on the shoulder, then winces and shakes her hand. “Ow. You’re way more solid than a human.”
“My skeleton contains—”
“Yeah, okay, I know about your skeleton, that was stupid of me, skip it. My whole point is, no, I’m not joining a bunch of terrorists. But that doesn’t mean I want to go back to the way I was before either. Growing up here, you’re always taught to look for new solutions, new ways of doing things. To search for new truth, you know? Instead they’ve been lying to us the whole time. After what I’ve learned, and what I’ve realized about how I grew up, I’m done being lied to. Whatever’s going on out there behind that distortion field—it’s real. It’s true. And it’s something the people in power don’t want us to know about. That means I need to know all about it, right now.” She pauses and catches her breath. “Did that make sense?”
“Yes, it did.” Abel could point out that her reasons for wanting to join him are almost entirely emotional, no matter how understandable those emotions might be. But so are his own reasons. Besides, she’s correct on one strategic point: Having a second person along will improve his odds of a successful resolution. “If you’re sure it won’t raise suspicion—”
“It won’t.” Virginia lights up. “I’m an amazing liar.”
“Don’t admit this to too many people.”
She laughs out loud as she jogs off to prepare, and calls over one shoulder, “You’re developing a sense of humor, you know that?”
It wasn’t a joke; it was a sound tactical suggestion. Nonetheless, Abel smiles.
15
NO SOONER HAS THE OSIRIS APPEARED IN THIS NEW system—whatever and wherever it is—than the comms crackle. “As your new commander, I should introduce myself.” He has an accent Noemi recognizes from Stronghold. “You may address me as Captain Fouda. The final actions of the bridge crew were to inform us that many main shareholders of the Columbian Corporation are on board. Is one of them perhaps brave enough to speak to me?”
Mansfield steers his hoverchair to a small console with a screen, only a few steps from where Noemi stands. He pokes the controls with a bony finger. “This is Burton Mansfield, creator of every mech in existence—many of which are headed up to destroy you even now. What’s happened to our captain?”
“Something you’d better hope doesn’t happen to you.” The screen coalesces into an image: a man in his late fifties, with coloring much like Captain Baz’s, sitting in a high-backed command chair. Thin white scar lines etch one side of his face and run down and around his neck, maybe evidence of a long-ago battle. He and the ragged crew around him all wear simple, functional clothes in shades of beige; Noemi remembers that from some of the Remedy bombers she and Abel saw on Kismet. “The great Mansfield,” Fouda says slowly. “More interested in mechs than in humans, it seems.”
“What’s your business here? Remedy’s always had an argument with Earth,” Mansfield says. “Not with private citizens.”
“It is private citizens who make the choices that render Earth a tyrant instead of a motherland.” Fouda steeples his hands in front of him. “Private citizens who hoard the precious resources that could make life easier for billions throughout the galaxy. But this—this goes beyond any hoarding, any theft, in the history of humankind. You’ve hidden a Gate. You’ve hidden a world.”
Noemi hadn’t had time to think this through, but instantly she sees that no other explanation would’ve made sense. Somewhere in this system, there’s another habitable planet, capable of supporting thousands or millions or even billions of people.
But nobody else knows about this world. Earth’s government shared the information exclusively with its wealthiest, most privileged citizens, allowing nobody else even the possibility of traveling to this system. The desperate Vagabonds and hardworking miners will never be told this place exists. This new chance at life isn’t for everyone. It’s being hoarded selfishly—or it was before Remedy got here. Noemi experiences one moment of solidarity with Remedy, when she feels like they’re on the side of right.
That vanishes when Fouda says, “We’ll keep the members of your crew who can still be of use. Otherwise we have no need to maintain a supply of leeches.”
She sees Delphine trembling with fear, and gets even angrier for her than Noemi is for herself. These people have done something impossibly selfish, but nobody deserves to be murdered in cold blood.
“Our sensors show you in one of the mech chambers,” Fouda says. “Easy enough to vent the oxygen from those rooms, I think.” Wails of terror go up from the passengers, but Noemi just gets furious.
She moves to the console, shouldering Mansfield’s chair to the side so roughly it rocks. “Listen to me. If you think the passengers on this ship
