No point in restricting himself to human speed once he’s off the beach. He accelerates past that within 1.3 seconds and aims directly for the hangar. With one hand he taps the dataread as he runs. “Harriet, Zayan, do you read me?”
“Abel!” Zayan’s voice comes through instantly. “Another couple minutes and we’d have been worried.”
“Worry now,” Abel says. “Also start the engines now. Get ready for takeoff as fast as you can.”
Harriet yells, “We told you not to—”
“Scold me after preparing the ship to fly.” He makes a quick time estimate of his possible capture as he runs beneath an elevated rail into a small, scrubby park. Every moment the sky grows darker as night becomes real. “If I’m not on the ship in ten minutes, leave without me, and the Persephone is yours.”
“Oh, God, Abel, what did you do?” She’s become more terrified than angry.
“Nothing, actually, but the authorities won’t believe that. Go.”
By the time he reaches the hangar 6.1 minutes later, his hair and clothes are almost dry from the sheer speed of his run. Abel doesn’t slow down as he heads toward the doorway to their docking bay, except for once when he sees a crowbar lying unattended near an old Vagabond junker. Stooping to grab it only costs him 1.3 seconds, and besides, if he’s going to run into resistance—
Approaching the door, Abel grabs the jamb and swings around the entrance, slamming the crowbar straight into the head of the waiting Queen, who was of course concealed in the spot on the other side of the wall her programming would’ve targeted as most strategically likely. She falls like the inert machinery she has become, and Abel tosses the crowbar back before covering the final distance to the Persephone. Its silver teardrop shape seems to shine in the dark bay. When the door spirals open for him, he’s finally back home.
“Immediate departure is advisable,” he calls, trusting the comm system to be on. Sure enough, the mag engines instantly fire and his ship takes flight. Whatever signal Gillian sent didn’t trigger a planet-wide alarm, or at least she didn’t know to target the Persephone specifically, because he feels the ship escape planetary gravity without resistance.
When he walks onto the bridge, Harriet calls over her shoulder, “Have you gone completely mad?”
“I’m no more mad than I ever was,” Abel replies.
This wins him a scowl from Harriet. “That’s not as encouraging as you think it is.”
Noemi’s voice echoes in Abel’s mind. You’re really bad at comforting people—
“Doesn’t look like we’ve got company coming,” Zayan announces. “Our path to the Earth Gate to Stronghold checks out as clear.” Gillian must not have fully recognized Abel after all—only saw him as an intruder, someone to check out at the nearest spaceport, not someone to chase down and entrap no matter what.
But she easily could have. In another fraction of a second, she would have. Abel had let his curiosity override his good judgment; in so doing, he endangered not only himself but also his crew. This is unacceptable. He must be more cautious in the future.
“What, are you wet? Did someone try to drown you?” Harriet demands.
“I’m much too good a swimmer to drown.” Abel doesn’t expect this correction to improve her mood; sure enough, her scowl only deepens. “I’m back, Harriet. Isn’t that enough?”
“Of course it is.” She glances back at him, her long braids falling past her shoulder as she does so. Both she and Zayan wear traditional Vagabond garb, loose flowing shirts and pants in vibrant patchwork colors. On the stark black-and-silver bridge of the Persephone, the young couple seem as brilliant as butterflies. “We worry. That’s all.”
Zayan laughs. “Yeah, we’d never find another boss who pays as well as you do.”
A possibility occurs to Abel that had not presented itself before—an inexplicable flaw in his logic. “You could’ve taken off without me. The audio record of my last transmission would’ve allowed you to make a legal claim to the Persephone.”
“We’d never do that to you,” Zayan protests. “C’mon, Abel. Don’t you know that?”
Harriet looks at him again, but this time her eyes are less angry, more troubled. “Have you really never had a friend before, that you could think something like that? Besides Noemi, I mean.”
“No. I haven’t.” Abel isn’t sure he wants this conversation to continue. “I should change my clothes.”
Although he’s aware of his crew members staring at him while he heads off the bridge, neither tries to stop him.
Neither Harriet nor Zayan knows why their captain doesn’t fear drowning. Why he uses a constant series of fake IDs and stays out of range of security mechs as much as possible. They’re loyal enough not to ask. They are, as Harriet just said, not merely employees but friends.
Would they do things differently if they realized Abel wasn’t human? That he was not only a mech but the special project of the revered Burton Mansfield himself?
If they knew that Mansfield wanted Abel back because Abel’s cybernetic body is the only one designed to contain a human mind—Mansfield’s mind, which can save the old man from his impending death—would they trade Abel’s life for Mansfield’s?
Those questions disturb Abel sometimes, but he prefers never to know the answers.
As far as he knows, only one human has ever valued a mech’s life as equal to that of any other person. She’s on the other side of the Genesis Gate—far away from him, forever.
What would Noemi Vidal say about the organic mechs? Abel feels certain her fascination would match his own.
His mood darkens as he imagines the future of this technology: mechs becoming more and more humanlike. Someday, surely, a soul will awaken within one of them—but Mansfield learns from his mistakes. The next
