Edge of Dark (18 page)

She smiled. “No.”

Manny's voice called his attention back. “You're doing this at
my
request. For Lym.”

“Send someone else.” He felt trapped. “Someone who likes politics. Someone who wants to go to space.” He drank some of his wine. No one answered him. Nona looked hurt. “Surely a spacer would be better. I have no idea how to fly anything more complex than a skimmer.”

Dead silence.

He felt the request in his gut, like a ball of something he wanted to expel. He even coughed.

More silence. “What good could I possibly do? I've never even been off of Lym.”

Manny spoke to him as if he were speaking to one of his children. “You're a ranger. That means you protect Lym. You know what matters.”

“What about you?” Charlie asked him. “You're far better at negotiations than me. You have more credibility; you're part of the government.”

“Exactly. Which means I need to stay here. You're founding family, and you have a great reputation. I'm appointing you as our formal ambassador to the Next.”

Charlie felt a trap closing.

Manny smiled at him, as if to show he was sympathetic. But nothing indicated any willingness to back down. “And you're the only person from Lym that I happen to know is being offered a ride on a fast ship to the Ring. A free ride.”

Nona had been staying out of the conversation, looking somewhat surprised herself. But now she added, “I'd never been to a planet before I came here.”

Charlie glanced at Satyana, certain that this was her doing. “What do you want in trade for the free ride?”

“Someone to help Nona.”

He glanced at the big woman next to her, who had been entirely silent. “Surely Britta is a better guard than I could be.”

“Maybe. But I need her, and Lym does need an ambassador.”

“I hate politics. I don't have the patience for it.” He truly didn't want to go. He belonged here, amid the trees and the animals and the wildness and the open space. Cricket needed him. He hadn't gone back to find the rakuls, and he still wanted a good video of them.

Nona suggested, “You can bring Cricket.”

“She'd hate it on a spaceship. She needs the wild.”

Satyana nodded approvingly. “But you're a human, and surely you can understand putting your needs aside for the sake of others. Lym needs a voice, a protector.”

Bitch. He held his glass out. “Pour me another drink.” He was going to need it.

PART TWO

THE DEEP AND SPACE

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHRYSTAL

The soulbots led them all into a large galley. Freshly fabbed metal seats and sinks and countertops made the room look like a gleaming product advertisement. A kitchen where no one had ever so much as heated water. The survivors of the High Sweet Home huddled close around a long, rectangular metal table. People held hands, and a couple took turns rubbing each other's shoulders. Chrystal managed to count the survivors. Twenty-seven people, all healthy, all adults.

Stilted conversations started and then stopped.

Chrystal's belly rumbled.

The same two soulbots that had taken them from the warehouse came in with trays of drinking bulbs filled with liquid. It was clear, but ever-so-slightly sparklier than water. It didn't look like anything she had ever tasted.

“Don't drink it,” Yi said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

The first person the soulbot handed a glass to, a woman with long red hair named Juliette, sniffed it. “Smells like vitamin water.”

“It's food for your brain,” the soulbot said. “It will make your chances of survival far better.”

Juliette sipped at it. “Tastes okay.”

Yi the emotionally unflappable raised his voice. “Chance of surviving what?”

The robot's eyes were almost as expressive as human eyes, and Chrystal felt certain there was a struggle of some kind going on inside the machine. However it resolved, the answer sounded true. “Because you have no choice.”

“It's good,” Juliette said. “I feel better.”

Chrystal glanced from Katherine to Jason. They looked panicked, as frightened as she felt. Yi's jaw was clenched in anger. That's what she should be—angry. She was, but the fear inside her swamped everything else and made her hand shake so she almost dropped the bulb. She felt light-headed, almost like she might fall from her metal chair and land on the metal floor in the land of scary robots.

A hand reached down and cupped hers, stilling her shaking. The robot's hand was surprisingly warm. “I'll help you,” she said, lifting her hand and Chrystal's to bring the bulb to Chrystal's mouth. “Don't spill,” the robot said.

Chrystal tried to move the robot's arm away. She might as well have been trying to force a mountain. She drank. It tasted like water with a slight minty tang, and it felt thicker than water.

Katherine drank with no help, and no protest, but with panic lacing her eyes.

Yi dropped his and it rolled across the room.

Jason stood up as if to get Yi's, leaving his drink on the table.

One soulbot put a hand on Jason's shoulder and pinned him back in his seat. She—it—didn't even breathe hard. She simply stood there quietly, until he drank. The other one picked Yi's drink up and forced him to consume it. His eyes were wide and he tried to spit it out but the bot held his head so he had to drink or drown.

By the time Yi had been forced, Chrystal started to feel muzzy-headed. Warmth radiated up from her stomach and hit her chin and rolled up her forehead. A tingly warmth. She felt downright strange. Floating. A disconnected part of her repeated over and over that Yi had been right and she shouldn't have had that drink.

One of the soulbots stood in front of them. “Who's first?”

No one answered.

The robot looked at Yi. A shiver ripped through the warm glow in Chrystal's limbs. She pushed herself up and stood, intending to protest. The floor rocked under her feet; she almost fell. Jason's hand went to her arm and Katherine encircled her in both of her arms. “Not you. Somebody else.”

“We can take all three of you.”

Yi stood up. “Take me, too.”

“Take Yi, too,” Chrystal slurred. “We're a family.”

With some difficulty, the four of them extracted themselves from the seats and the table, although Katherine tripped and had to be helped up. Chrystal found that very funny and giggled.

Before they went through the door, she looked back at the table of victims all lined up on each side of the table. Katherine waved. “We're going to be a robot family together.”

Chrystal hugged her close and kissed her on the cheek, and then they were through the door and it closed behind them.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

NONA

Nona stared at one of the view screens in Satyana's private meeting room near the command center. The steadily shrinking planet mesmerized her. Now she understood why her father had wanted to see a sky so badly. She should have come years ago, and brought Marcelle.

Her fingers were wrapped tight around a cup of warm, chocolate stim. She remembered how good the same ritual had felt in the brisk morning air on Lym the day she decided to try and rescue Chrystal.
That
cup had smelled of spices from Lym, sweet things that flavored the drink so lightly it tasted like magic.

Satyana seemed to read her mind. “Maybe someday you can come back.”

“I hope so.” She sipped at the chocolate, finding it too sweet. “Maybe after I save the world.”

Satyana raised an eyebrow. “I still don't understand why I should let you do this. I know I promised, but that was before we knew the Next might be coming here.”

Nona leaned forward. “I have to. Everyone I met down there,” she gestured toward the receding planet, now a ball of blue swathed in clouds, “Everyone had a mission. A shared one. That wasn't true on the Deep.”

Satyana looked slightly miffed. “We have plenty of shared goals on the Deep.”

“Sorry. The rich get richer, the powerful get more powerful, and the popular more popular. Isn't that how the Deep works? It's hot with politics.”

“And a rescue mission won't be?” Satyana asked. “That's politics above your head!”

Nona tensed. “Maybe someone who isn't as political as you will do better.”

“By the time you get there, the story will have played out.” Satyana's expression softened. “Your friend is almost certainly dead.”

“It's not like this is a warship. It'll be clear we aren't trying to attack anyone. If we know what happened to the High Sweet Home before I get out there, I'll still get information. I'll be safe enough.”

“How do you know?”

“Don't you have spies everywhere? I'll just be one more spy for you.”

“Stay on this side of the Ring,” Satyana snapped.

Nona took a deep, centering breath. “I need to fly
toward
the pirates.”

“The
people
from the Edge! The Next.”

“Whatever you want to call them,” Nona snapped. “Mom built this ship for
me
, surely she intended me to use it. Ruby would have.”

You're not Ruby!
She saw the words in Satyana's eyes.

Even unsaid, they made her cold and angry. Always before, she'd known they were true, felt the gulf between what people expected of her and what she could do.

That was over. “I am capable. I may not be the great revolutionary who saved our family single-handedly, but I am full-up of legends about Ruby. I grew up eating legends about her for fucking breakfast, and hearing songs about her as if they were lullabies and hearing her sing in the kitchen every frigging morning, long after she was dead.” Words spilled out of her one by one. Staccato. “I am full to the brim with Ruby Martin. If the dead can rub off because there's a memory of them in a room, she's stuck all over me.” She stopped, almost panting. She took a sip of stim. “The real thing I learned down there, with my feet in the dirt looking up,
the real thing I learned
was that I need to make my own choices.”

Satyana regarded her with a flat but thoughtful expression.

“What is it to you anyway? You yourself said it's my ship. You have dozens more. Maybe more than that. You have everything. I am taking this thing, this chance, this ship, and I am going to fly after my friend.”

Satyana looked she was going to tell her no, so Nona was surprised when she said, “You have no idea what you're getting into. You're stupidly naive, and so is Charlie the animal man.”

“And you know everything?”

Satyana stopped. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay you can go.”

Nona went still and quiet. Oh my. She looked up at Satyana. “Will you help me?”

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHRYSTAL

Chrystal remembered the sweet taste of the drink, the thickness of it in her throat. She had been certain she was drinking death. And now, at this moment, she felt nothing. No regret, no pain, no hope, nothing. A dull sort of curiosity, at most. Perhaps she
was
dead.

She tried to move her arms, to stretch.

“You can't move yet,” a voice said, startling her. “You aren't connected to anything you can move yet.” It was a silky voice, the kind of voice dreamed up to take her away when she practiced yoga.

She tried to open her eyes.

“You can't do that either. Be patient.”

She wondered what had happened to her, but the disembodied voice didn't tell her.

Something about becoming a robot. Maybe she was really at the end of a yoga workout, in savasana, and she had been dreaming it all.

Maybe she was always a robot and she had been dreaming she was in savasana.

She was awake enough to recognize that last thought was fucked up.

She tried to speak.

“Patience.”

How the hell did the yoga voice know what she was trying to do? She wanted to feel something. She should be cold. She should be groggy. Some part of herself should feel something. Anything. A foot, a leg, a little toe.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.
She tried a deep breath.

“You don't need to breathe. You have everything you need.”

Didn't she have to breathe every second? Or at least a few times a minute? She hadn't taken a breath since she woke up.

“You don't need to breathe. You have everything you need.” The words were going over and over, like a chant. Soft and crisp. “You don't need to breath.”

She started to panic, and then warmth flooded her brain, and fuzziness, and she drifted away, certain she should be panicking but unable to gather the energy to scream.

The yoga voice drew her partway out of a long sleep. “Can you speak to me?”

Chrystal tried.
Hello
. Even to her it sounded tentative.
Hello. Hello. Hello.

Nothing. She couldn't hear herself. Her lips didn't move, her breath didn't flow through her lungs and fill her chest.