The Apocalypse Ocean (16 page)

Bioluminescent yellow emergency lighting strips glowed in the cramped corridors of the
Takara Bune
. Goz pushed a shivering Tiago down through the air with a fingertip. With no acceleration there was no gravity, and Tiago realized he was easily yanked around with the engineer.

They had to change directions constantly. Most of the spaceship was shut down and sealed off due to damage. Getting to their destination was not straightforward.

“What are they arguing about?” he asked.

Goz’s dreadlocks fell back to his shoulders whenever he pushed, but eventually they’d spring back to float around his head as they coasted through the air.

“Piper want to distract them when we come in,” Goz said softly.

They’d ripped Tiago out of the chair and helped him cough up the foam in his lungs, which turned into an acrid gas. A safety feature. And it was apparent that only his chair had failed, somehow. They were supposed to have backup power, Nashara explained. But there was a tiny, pencil-sized hole in his chair. Something had punched through the ship, into the cockpit, through his chair and out the other side.

Tiago had been just inches away from being holed in a battle he had barely even comprehended.

Something of a plan was being hammered into shape by the crew, because they’d thrown him to Goz and Nashara had said “get him strapped in, we’re arming up.”

“With us?” Goz asked.

“Piper has her plan,” Nashara said, anger in her voice. “The boy’s safer with us. She’d just make toothpaste out of him. Go.”

They were abandoning ship.

He coughed more of the vaporized foam out of his mouth as Goz pushed him into an opening airlock. They floated into a cramped sphere. Five chairs with canvas straps hanging in the air were bolted into the bottom.

“Strap you-self in,” Goz said, and busied himself looking over a set of controls in a console beside a seat. Manual controls, Tiago saw. Actual switches and displays.

“Why would Piper make me toothpaste?” Tiago asked. “What does that mean?”

“She want to accelerate too fast to have any bodies up in her,” Goz said irritably. “They go pay the ship too much attention. Let we all sneak in.”

“Sneak in?”

Goz didn’t have time to answer, Nashara and Pepper somersaulted in through the airlock. They both wore functional black vests with what seemed like hundreds of pockets and straps everywhere. They’d even changed into thick pants with the same look.

“Where are the others?” Tiago asked, seeing Pepper shut the airlock with a hand crank.

Pepper shook his head.

Yuki, Gina, and Skeet. Tiago looked over at Goz. There was a heaviness in his movement.

Tiago had spent so long fearing for his own life. Trying to escape Placa del Fuego. Wanting to get out.

Now here he was. He was out. Out in the worst of it.

But then, all of this was coming to Placa del Fuego anyway, right? He was trying to help stop this whole mess from landing right on the island.

The island that, right now, he suddenly missed more than anything.

#

The tiny capsule was shaped in weird, blocky black segments on the outside, Goz told Tiago. That made it hard for them to be spotted. And it was covered in sensors that took readings from one side and passed them through to the other to further mask itself.

Most of a large chunk of the capsule under their feet was an anti-matter power source that powered the outer shell, as well as a tiny, but punchy, engine.

They huddled quietly in the capsule for an hour as the
Takara Bune
stopped coasting and looped back around toward the League ships. The acceleration was smooth, but slowly building, shoving Tiago further and further against the side of the chair, until the capsule dropped free with a loud thunk and shiver.

“Good luck,” Nashara said.

There was no response. Or maybe it wasn’t one Tiago could hear.

“We’ll be able to sneak past them and through the wormhole in this?” Tiago asked after several minutes. “To get home?”

Goz glanced at Pepper, who glanced at Nashara.

Pepper looked back at Tiago. His eyes, Tiago noticed, were milky white and full now. Healing.

“Not going back through in this,” Pepper said. “We’re moving just slightly faster than the
Saguenay
. We’ll catch up to it right before it transits.”

“Catch up?”

“We’re taking the
Saguenay
,” Nashara said. “Best chance to get through and stop them at the same time. They’re not going to destroy that ship, it’s too valuable to them. We get aboard it – we can change the story here.”

Tiago looked around the tiny, windowless capsule and felt ill.

Pepper unzipped a duffel bag full of weapons. He placed each one in the air. An arsenal of long, wicked blades, guns, magazines, and grenades all made a curtain in front of him.

A small pistol wobbled out of the air toward Tiago.

“That,” Pepper said, “is yours.”

“Don’t give the boy no gun,” Goz protested. “He’s too young.”

“Younger men have fought in greater wars,” Pepper said as he slipped guns into holsters on the straps of his vest. “He deserves the chance to protect himself.”

Tiago held the gun in his hand and stared at it.

Pepper leaned through the floating arsenal around him. “Let me show you how to use it quick,” he said. “And be damn careful once you have the safety off. If you have to use it, you better be serious about it. And I don’t want you to shoot one of us, you hear? It’ll be fast and crazy. You, though. You. Stay. Calm. Understand?”

Wide-eyed, Tiago nodded.

He was a pickpocket. An invisible. He’d never
had
to do anything like hurt someone. The whole universe had gone upside down. And then some, he thought, as they hurtled toward the other ships.

Like a ghost, the pod slipped between a raging battle, trusting luck and space to let them ease in. League ships protected the
Saguenay
and the new aggressors fought hard to close with it.

Goz and Nashara waited, waited, waited, and then, at the last minute, fired up the engine and slammed them toward the
Saguenay
. The straps bruised Tiago’s shoulders as they rattled about.

Then struck their destination.

The airlock hissed and spat, eating through the outer hull of the ship. The stench of burnt, organic matter filled the capsule.

Then the black carapace of the
Saguenay
’s hull broke, and Nashara and Pepper yanked themselves through the breach. A split second later the chattering of gunfire filled the acrid air.

Kay vomited into a bag as Avris unstrapped her.

“Where are we?” Kay demanded. “I don’t remember …” She was missing parts of the last hour. She knew they’d found a battle between Xenowealth ships and Thinkerer’s ships. They’d had to fight their way in. Avris had warned her it was going to be violent, but even Kay had been battered beyond her control as the spaceship flew its way in.

But Avris was a pilot. She had trained for this.

“We’re docking with the
Saguenay
,” Avris said, tying up the bag of sick. “Thinkerer lost most of his ships in the battle, but they were able to give us the cover needed to get in.”

To get in.

Kay remembered pieces of the battle. Avris grunting. Their ship spinning and shuddering around as it jumped around in space. She remembered cracks and fizzles, and Thinkerer saying something about “anemic” anti-ship defenses.

Avris helped her out of the acceleration webbing, and Kay stood up weakly.

“How come I’m standing?” she asked. “Shouldn’t I be floating?”

“The
Saguenay’s
accelerating. It’ll feel just like gravity,” Avris explained.

“Where are your weapons? Won’t there be people trying to stop us?” she asked as Thinkerer walked to the airlock without weapons of any sort.

“Of course,” Thinkerer said as the airlock started to swing open. “But that won’t be much of a problem for me.”

“What about us?” Avris asked pointedly.

Thinkerer looked back at them. “I’d prefer you not be armed. And I didn’t have time to get weapons hidden on this ship after it passed inspections at the docks, so there are none aboard.”

The open airlock revealed the outer side of
Saguenay’s
airlock. Thinkerer ran his fingers around the edge, then stopped. With a groan of metal, he shoved them into the near-invisible gap of the locking mechanism.

It broke and Thinkerer forced the airlock open with a screech.

“I’ll return when it’s safe for you to be out,” he said, and shut their airlock with a wave of his hand.

Avris waited a moment, then walked up to it.

“What are you doing?” Kay asked.

“Do you want to be inside a hostile ship docked to the outside of this one if the League gets the upper hand out there and comes in on a strafing run?” she asked.

Kay didn’t have to think about that. “How do we get out?”

“Human manufacturers don’t like putting locks on airlocks. The idea that you might get trapped is a bit heinous. There’s always a manual emergency system somewhere.” Avris cracked open a panel and pulled on a handle.

The airlock door slid open and the two of them slowly pulled on it until they could squeeze through.

There was a man nearby. Or at least, the remains of one. His head was missing, but pieces of skull and brain dripped from the curved, black wall behind him.

“Shit,” Avris said. “Do we hide out here until he comes back, or follow the bodies?”

Kay looked down, then up the corridor. “Follow Thinkerer,” she said. Always get to the center of power.

She thought about the end of those first bewildered weeks on Placa del Fuego. Watching the pain dealers up and down Tower Street. Following them, herself no more than a tattered, skin-burned shadow, until she found a place to hide under the gutters of their safe house.

That close to power, she didn’t have to fight to find a protected space.

That close to power, she observed everything. Found the leaders. Learned at what points she could lean on the human levers.

And then, at the right time, killed them and took her place in the center.

Always go to the center of power, she thought.

They’d taken the cockpit.

Tiago sat down on a chair, his hands shaking as Pepper, half blind, skin ragged and body torn up, dragged the dead bodies of four guards and pushed them against the wall, out of the way.

How he’d been able to duck his way around attackers with only those milky eyes, Tiago didn’t know. He did know that, even with his almost supernatural senses, the man had still taken several shots to the chest and continued killing anything that moved against them in the ship’s interior.

Nashara had disappeared, running faster than Pepper apparently could to move ahead and report back what she saw.

Blood had run in the corridors, and Tiago couldn’t stop thinking about the mangled bodies and screams.

These were his new friends.

These were the people he was helping.

But was this any different than any gang war on the streets of Placa del Fuego? Where the muscle involved knew the risks, and knew what they were there for?

Tiago had watched from the rooftops and seen blood run in the gutters before.

He was just … overwhelmed by it all here. So many dead, he’d realized, following Goz carefully.

So many.

Now Goz and Nashara were both hunched over control panels, breaking them open and setting up to take over the ship. Cables were hastily strung to handheld screens they pulled out of bags.

“Got it,” Goz muttered as something sparked.

The screens, still lying on the floor, lit up. Glyphs and information began to pour across them.

“We’re in,” Nashara said, looking back at Pepper. “We have control of
Saguenay
…”

Pepper held up a finger.

Everyone shut up.

Pepper slowly stepped forward, a pistol up in one hand, and aimed at the cockpit entrance. A bronze-skinned man stepped in to join them, as unworried and calm as a picnicker out on a stroll in a park.

Pepper shot him twice. The bullets dented his forehead, and the man shook his head as if just clearing his thoughts. He raised a hand, unharmed. “Who are you?” he asked.

Nashara stepped away from the screens, moving over to the other side of the cockpit. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I asked first,” the man said, and smiled at them.

Tiago saw that part of his shirt was ripped away. Underneath, the man’s golden ribs gleamed in the strange light.

For a moment, a strange standoff developed. Pepper and Nashara shifting closer, the man smiling at them.

“His name is Thinkerer,” said a very familiar voice from further outside the cockpit. One that sent fear chasing down Tiago’s stomach. “Don’t shoot, I’m unarmed. I’m coming in.”

Tiago stepped behind Goz, just as Kay stepped into the cockpit.

“Well,” said Nashara. “You.”

Kay held her hands up. “There’s just me, a woman named Avris, who helped save my life on Okur, and Thinkerer. The one you shot. You could fight him, Nashara, Pepper, but I would bet it would be a long and ugly fight. And none of us have time for it. There will be more League ships coming for this ship soon.”

“I’m listening,” Pepper said.

“Thinkerer?” Kay said. “Tell them what you told me.”

The man of bronze spoke up now. “I was designed for a mission, sent to destroy the Doaq. And to do that, I need the
Saguenay
. It’s built to work in a wormhole while closing it, so it can survive the dead zone and help me achieve my goals. What are your intentions with this vehicle?”

“Destroy it,” Pepper grunted. “Then we were attacked by what I guess was your fleet? We didn’t quite get to it. Now we’re taking it away from the League. Stop them from using it to hole off wormholes that bleed dead zones. So you want to kill the Doaq. Why?”

“There is another force beyond this cul-de-sac. We call it the Structure,” Thinkerer said. “Far more advanced than you. The Doaq is their agent. The Structure has no need of sciences; it decides what it wants and runs simulations, until those environs evolve a tool that fits their needs. A stolen simulacrum of that was used to evolve my own design, even. But there is very little theory, or individuality, there. The Doaq serves the Structure, acquiring anything precious and unique that will stimulate the direction of research and design across the void.”

Tiago listened. This was hard to follow. But there was one reason he didn’t care for it. This thing was allied with Kay. Even if it was telling the truth, who knew what she had already manipulated it into thinking or doing?

And Nashara and Pepper were just … listening to it.

Hadn’t they learned their lesson already? Hadn’t Pepper just spent weeks at the bottom of a damned ocean because of her? Hadn’t Nashara almost been killed? The Doaq had been unleashed on them all because of Kay!

And they just listened to her?

“But the Doaq is the least of your troubles,” Thinkerer continued, “because the bigger issue you face is: how is the Doaq here? There is a wormhole buried somewhere in Placa del Fuego that leads back to the Structure that it uses. There are others as well. I came through one, but either the Structure or the League has destroyed them. The next worry you have is that the Structure has decided that this area is to be annexed. The demise of individual thought in this area of the wormhole network is imminent.”

“That’s a bit dramatic,” Nashara said.

“Not in the slightest. The Structure is matter and thought. It’s the accretion of wormholes placed tightly together, to bring together trillions and trillions of minds from hundreds of species with massive amounts of real-time bandwidth to share thought, consciousness, and action. Powered by black holes, eating suns, it is both mere parsecs wide and yet pieces of it are separated by many light years. It is the whole wormhole network pulled together as tight as can be. You faced an infant spore of the node before, Pepper. On Chilo. It was called the Swarm. It almost swept through an entire planet before you were able to stop it. That was a cell. A seed. A taste of the Structure. Are you ready to face what the Swarm becomes after thousands of years of evolution?”

Tiago pulled the pistol out of his pocket and quietly flipped the safety off. He had to stop this.

“And it’s coming through Placa del Fuego?” Nashara asked.

“It’s coming,” Thinkerer confirmed.

“Why now?” Nashara asked.

Tiago stepped out from behind Goz and raised the pistol. Pepper had said to aim at the chest, not the head. The best chance for a shot.

So Tiago aimed right for the center of Kay’s chest. “Don’t believe anything she says. Ever. It’s all bullshit.”

She jerked her head and stared right at him. That commanding gaze. Calm. In control. “Now Tiago,” she said. “You don’t want to …”

He pulled the trigger before she could finish saying whatever it was she was going to say to change his mind. Twice.

The first shot missed and hit the wall, burying itself in the black, organic surface.

The second shot hit Kay. Blood sprayed her shirt and she staggered back, shock on her face.