We will no longer be individuals, Abel thinks, counting himself among these unmade brothers and sisters already. We will no longer be free.
We will be slaves.
3
WHEN NOEMI RETURNED TO GENESIS WITH LITTLE evidence to support her story about traveling through the galaxy, she could’ve wound up in the brig, if not cashiered out of the service. Every young person on the planet capable of serving in the military does so; her status as a dishonored former soldier would’ve made her an outcast—even more than she already was. One person alone saved her from this fate: Darius Akide, Elder of the Council, and once the prized student of Burton Mansfield himself.
Now they meet every few weeks. She’s conspicuous climbing the stairs of the Hall of Elders, a teenage girl in her emerald-green uniform among gray-haired, august people wearing serene white robes. That’s by Akide’s design, since he knows how alone she is otherwise. By summoning her here, he sends a public signal of the Council’s trust in her version of events. He is her primary defender. Noemi’s grateful, or knows she should be.
But knowing a member of the Elder Council has only made her more sharply aware of the Council’s flaws—and how those flaws endanger Genesis itself.
“I suppose it’s not surprising that you’ve never seen any technology like those mysterious star probes.” He sits at his hewn-stone desk, salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a knot. Like most rooms in the great hall, it is illuminated during daytime only by the sunlight flooding through the oval windows carved into the wall. “But can you remember anything from news sources, or perhaps picked up in conversation? We’ve still no idea what the stars were intended to do. Any hint could help our investigation.”
“I wish I could help.” Noemi keeps her tone even. Akide is the closest thing she has to a friend these days, but sometimes she thinks he expects her to have learned everything about the other worlds of the Loop during her whirlwind journey. “But I don’t remember anything like that at all.”
Akide sighs. His next words seem to be spoken as much to himself as to her. “Were they probes? Weapons that malfunctioned? Meant only to scare us? As if we don’t know the threat Earth presents. As if we don’t know how little chance we have.”
“Don’t talk like that.” It hits Noemi that she just said that to an Elder, and her cheeks flush red. “Excuse me. I meant—we have reasons to hope. Potential allies out there on the Loop, for one.”
He pats her arm, a touch meant to be fatherly, but to Noemi it feels patronizing. Maybe she’d respond to it better if she could remember more about her late father, but he’s just a dim memory of smiles and hugs, an even fainter idea of what it felt like to be cherished, valued, seen.
“Lieutenant Vidal,” Akide says. “You’ve grown up on a planet at war. You’ve known from an early age that victory was unlikely, and that your life would very likely be forfeit to the fight. You’ve never shied away from your duty, even from the ultimate sacrifice, but I don’t think you’ve ever come to terms with defeat as the most probable outcome of the Liberty War. I know it’s hard to come to peace with that—but for your own sake, you must try. Otherwise the pain…” He bows his head. “It would be too much to bear.”
Always sacrifice. Always duty. Always resignation. For a planet at war, Noemi sometimes thinks, Genesis seems to have forgotten how to fight.
That evening, she decides to visit the Temple of All Faiths. It’s one of the largest buildings on Genesis, certainly the most revered—a great dome of gray granite mottled with blue, held aloft by enormous columns as thick around as century-old trees. Smaller chambers set off from the central dome are reserved for different services of different religions, whether those involve chanting, dancing, prayer, or the handling of snakes. But Noemi is here for the one practice most faiths of Genesis share: meditation.
She settles herself on one of the large cushions. It’s old, patched here and there, the cloth soft with age. The light filtering through the high arched windows casts beams through the vast space of the temple. Breathing in deeply, Noemi smells incense.
In this place, even her noisy mind might quiet down.
Closing her eyes, Noemi calls to mind Captain Baz’s two questions:
What are you fighting, Noemi Vidal? And what are you fighting for?
She doesn’t expect to get much out of that, really. It’s a starting place, no more. Because of course she knows the answers. She’s fighting Earth, fighting its mechs. And she’s fighting for Genesis.
But suddenly she realizes that’s not the answer—or at least, not the complete answer. She’s also fighting her fellow soldiers, because they don’t trust her any longer. She’s fighting for Akide to listen to her, to see her planet taking more aggressive action to defend itself.
And I’m fighting to carry on without Esther. Without Abel.
I’m fighting to continue on alone.
She’s always known most other people don’t like her much, and she’s never expected them to. Her one real friendship was with Esther Gatson, the foster sister who had no choice about whether or not to let Noemi into her home and her heart—and Esther’s death has become one of the crimes the others blame her for.
Before, at least, Noemi had hoped her solitude might be temporary. That someday, somehow, she’d figure out how to get closer to people, or stop scaring them off—that she’d figure out just what her problem was so that she could solve it. And when she was out in the galaxy, meeting Harriet and Zayan on Kismet, Virginia on Cray, or Ephraim on Stronghold, she seemed to have figured it out. Making friends was easier when she could make a fresh start.
No fresh starts
