“You supposed to be working?” Bastrus’s voice cut through his daydreams.
“I am working.” But Imbra drew himself to a stiff-backed upright position.
“Coulda fooled me.”
Imbra nodded to her station—Bastrus rigged up to comms, her own display running simulations of a different magnitude. “Figured out how to evacuate everyone yet?”
Bastrus offered up a grim smile. “Not gonna happen.”
“Oh, you’re on the Path, too, are you?”
“I dare you to find a Loving Embracer on this ship.” She nodded toward the rest of bridge crew. “We all know the futility of the situation. The general doesn’t hide anything from us. Still, the real test is dignity at the end. Putting on the best possible show of force.”
“Sure, that’s one way, I guess.” Imbra scratched the side of his face. Bastrus’s sidelong glance vaguely resembled amusement.
“Oh, and you’ve got a better idea.”
Imbra shrugged, drumming his hands on the desk. “Just thinking, is all. You know, these AIs in the sims I’m running, they remind me of these twins I used to know. Hurley and Tripp. Loved to win. Always played to win. But if the two ever fought with each other, you knew the outcome from the outset. Tripp always had the upper hand before, so he always won in the end. Just like the AI playing the Allegiance in these sims, against the AI playing our fleets—the Allegiance starts with the upper hand, so it always wins in the end.”
“Exactly my point,” said Bastrus. “Futile exercise, but one we all endure anyway.”
“Except that Tripp never really won against me. Not really. Not when we were young, and not even after I’d been declawed. As a kid, I’d beat him in races over the gulch. As an adult, I took away his satisfaction when he tried to lay into me.”
He glanced over the workstation and noted that Bastrus was paying close attention, even if she didn’t seem the type to humor him with further questions. Not even a How.
“I didn’t play to win, see? Can’t win against someone who won’t accept the stakes.”
Bastrus shook her head. “We’re not surrendering, if that’s what you’re thinking. That’s not an option. Even if we wanted to, Treaty Day’s set for six cycles from now, and already the Allegiance’s next wave is just waiting at the edge of the heliosphere. The game they’re playing, the way they keep toying with us … we’re in this until we win or we die.”
“I’m not suggesting surrender,” said Imbra. “I’m saying—”
But he cut himself off, a deep furrow settling on his brow as more gears turned. The predictability of a clash on Treaty Day, like the predictability of the war itself, cast aspersions on even this brief reprieve from combat, and the rogue EM pulse that first allowed for it. Imbra had simply assumed that AIs registering no AI from a ship in the middle of AI-to-AI combat wouldn’t destroy the errant object anyway, but Paloma hadn’t even been piloting that well. Just enough to nudge his bubble ship right below the Allegiance’s fleet—a fleet that for some reason was advancing toward theirs at a leisurely pace. Had the winning move been, if not anticipated, at the very least permitted by Allegiance from the start?
The thought could not be unthought. Imbra felt a faint chill—the merest echo of a proper fear response—and stood suddenly, gripping his desk at the ensuing wave of nausea.
“Breathe, recruit,” said Bastrus. “I’m not catching you if you pass out.”
“They could’ve torn through us in minutes,” said Imbra. “But they didn’t. They took their time. They waited.”
“They sure did.” Bastrus’s voice was too upbeat. Imbra gave her a hard stare.
“Where’s General Asarus?”
“Still in talks, I’d imagine. But you might try the bay.”
Bastrus wasn’t far off; Imbra found the general in a portside corridor, watching the dull brown glimmer of the sun after flight-crew inspections. Not praying, she’d told him after one shift. Just contemplating how to exist in a universe that operates at such unfathomable magnitudes.
“I have a plan, sir,” he said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
General Asarus turned slowly, her dark eyes hard enough that his own watered.
“Recruit,” she said, “I haven’t liked a bit of this from the start.”
But she waited for him to go on.
General Asarus chose her own team for Imbra’s special assignment, but at Imbra’s request she also granted Paloma passage to the flagship to be part of the final send-off. While preparations continued for Treaty Day, and for the evacuation and defense fleet that would be required shortly after, some two dozen willing crewmates were briefed on their impending missions and given the time they needed to grieve. A believer in Her Loving Embrace would have found solace in the idea that life went on, but a crew predominantly set upon the Path of the Vengeful Sun needed to adjust to their new fate: to live longer, much longer, than any of their doomed colleagues left be hind.
“Time is not on our side,” said General Asarus to her team. “For decades, if not centuries, we’ve been playing the long game on the Allegiance’s terms, and in a few days, it will surely lead to our ruin. We’ve all seen the size of their ships, the indifference of their agents to genuine calls for peace. What else remains for us, then, but to play the long game, too, the only way the Novuni know how?” She went on to wish her team peace, and prayed with them, and sent them to make final arrangements. Only Imbra she told to hang back.
“Have you been in stasis since the surgery?” When Imbra shook his head, Asarus hummed. “I wonder,” she said, “if it will be easier for you. Without all that fear when the body struggles with the stasis fluid, unable to believe what the mind already knows.”
“Only one way to find out,” said Imbra.
The general watched him closely, as if for signs of visible apprehension. Seeing none, she nodded.
