CHAPTER 37
“The city’s in revolt.”
They curved wide around the sprawling ends of Bandi City. The city looked like a spectrograph of space noise, small wavy buildings on the outskirts, raising to dizzyingly tall heights around the middle, and easing back down as it reached toward the ocean on the other side. It had been built on a peninsula, and now spanned over multiple spits of land dug out of the water. Many of the lower buildings had been made out of the shimmering orange-brown dirt of the planet, and in the hazed sunlight it made the city wobble, as though a mirage across heat-soaked land.
In another time, Talinn might have loved it. As it was, her eyes remained fixed on the enormous ships circling over the city. There were three of them, and it had only taken one to wipe out a Charon unit.
How did civilians get something like this?
“There’s an enormous mine on the planet.”
Raw materials do not equal manufacturing brilliance. And that mine is across enemy lines.
“But also run by civilians.” Talinn laced her fingers behind her neck and pressed, stretching out knots that refused to budge. “Maybe they crossed lines, deciding they had more in common with each other than the IDC and UCF.”
That sounds familiar. Bee hummed, audibly signaling she was weighing something. But how would they get the same tech as the defense arrays have? We’re not even allowed it.
“And if Eights aren’t given disruptor tech, why would either Command entrust it to civilians?” She was only repeating Bee’s question, but there was no logical explanation for it.
Do civilians do maintenance on the defense arrays?
“Why in all the worlds would they have access to those?”
Civilians get stupid programs—little letter ai. Task oriented algorithms that run systems and don’t evolve. Or differentiate.
“There are economies of scale on that though, right? There have to be. Something that runs a lift can’t possibly compare to something that can blow up a moon.”
But they have the tech. The basic blocks of it. The defense arrays were meant to be giant yes/no dumb programs, good enough for their task no matter how bonzo they turned out to be. Civilians can figure something like that and still do damage.
She couldn’t argue that. Their jet curved away from the city before they got close enough to ping any alarms. Tiernan couldn’t argue with the amount of information they’d collected, even if he might protest their methods.
“Is it . . . is it possible the city is under guard, and those ships are securing it? That the ships are from somewhere else?”
Some third military arm? Bee made a discordant noise of dismissal. No. The ships are from and for the city. Cece was clear on that, from the report packet I got.
“Put that on the screen?”
It’s more code than readable.
“Sum up for me, then.”
Patrolling IDC tanks and jets near the mine were getting fired on more often. Base Command assumed it was UCF responding to IDC’s increasing numbers in system. Orders went up to increase Eights and unadapted humans. But over the last few weeks reports have made it out. Patrols were slagged, but a splintered AI would survive. And of course they’ve had visual confirmation of these.
The giant ships protecting the city were certainly hard to miss. All this, in just a few weeks?
“It sounds a little like what happened on P-8. But that was definitely IDC, not a civilian group . . . this entire part of the system barely has a million civilians to begin with.”
Unless it’s a third party.
“You said I was being stupid when I suggested that about five seconds ago.”
I did not.
“You made a sound that indicated I was being stupid when I suggested it six seconds ago.”
You’re being sensitive.
“You’re being a shit.” Talinn clicked her teeth closed after snapping, but neither of them apologized. Bee’s hum moved in and out of focus, and Talinn glared unblinking into the broad empty expanse of orange-yellow sky.
If there were a third party. They were halfway back to their landing island before Bee spoke again. Who could it be?
“Technically we’re a third party.”
A fourth party, then.
“Whoever’s corrupting defense arrays?”
Think anyone’s picked anything up about them? Tiernan just not telling us?
Civilian revolts, brand new ships out of nowhere . . . that’s not going well. Like Otie said—more and more glitches in the war. When we get back to everyone, we should see if anyone repurposed a tank instead of old jets. I think matters on Oxillide could really be improved with a concentrated application of turrets.
“The machine god.”
What now?
“Remember, on that first station? The group building up some kind of machine god?”
The door that shocked that empty human. Bee twisted metal, but it wasn’t the right pitch for a laugh. We have all those conversations we recorded, moving through that station. We can see if anyone else mentioned anything about the machine god. Or activists, like Medith called them.
She’d forgotten about the recordings. And she didn’t really think the unadapted humans wanting to become machines had built ships out of nothing and turned defense arrays into Eight-hunting rogue beasts, but it was an avenue they hadn’t tried. A loose end she’d dropped. And it gave both Bee and her something to focus on that wasn’t arguing about what they should be doing or plotting Tiernan’s strangulation, so it was a big enough win for the moment.
Here’s an interesting thing. They’d taxied the jet into their transport, and were waiting on Tiernan before leaving Oxillide behind.
“What’s that?” Talinn half-heartedly spun in the pilot’s chair and longed for her old chair in her old tank in her old life. The cloying nostalgia made her snippy, but Bee was too preoccupied with her new discovery to snipe back.
This human had been behind the door that shocked that young empty, and was telling someone else about how she planned to go back. Bee pulled the half of a conversation they’d captured to the forefront of Talinn’s memories, and Talinn closed her eyes to better focus.
Bee had not captured any visual input, but the memories were associated in Talinn’s brain, so she had a clear picture of the crowd, too many bodies jostling in too small a space, walkways above and below and to the side and over—Talinn opened her eyes instead, and listened as a woman, voice low and hoarse, made several emphatic points.
“They said He’ll talk to me, the next time.”
“No, I have to do that first.”
“Yes of course it’s safe, Cavvie. They don’t want us dead, only—”
“He knows more than any of them. No, of course I can’t . . .”
The snippets faded, either Talinn or the woman moving in a different direction and too many other conversations making too much noise for Bee to separate her out again.
“What snagged your attention?” she asked finally, when Bee waited with expectant excitement but didn’t offer any commentary.
The way she says “He” like it has a capital letter. Didn’t you hear it?
“No . . . ?” Talinn wound the memory back, pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes to keep from picturing the station, and listened through the fragment of conversation. “Maybe?”
Empties don’t talk about other humans like that.
“Neither of us have that much experience with unadapted humans, Bee, that’s a broad assumption.”
Other Bee has had plenty of experience with empties, and I learned more than a little while I shared Otie’s brain with her, thank you for remembering.
“Is that why you’re mad at me?”
I’m not mad at you. Stop being weird. Anyway, she’s talking about someone in a way she wouldn’t talk about another human. About doing something to prove herself. “They don’t want us dead” sounds like how that other woman was talking about the people behind the door.
“Except mostly opposite.”
It’s easy to see similarities when you contrast.
“Now you’re trying to be deep.”
Bee huffed, but it had a measure of shearing metal to it, and Talinn sagged against her chair, releasing some small measure of tension. “‘He’ knows more than any of them about . . . what, do you think? Putting one-shot programs into human brains?” She frowned and stared at the screen without processing what was on it. “Or, first, who do you think ‘He’ is? The leader of the group?”
The machine god.
“You think the machine god is real?”
I think they think the machine god is real.
“Fair point.” Talinn toggled the ship’s display to another view of the empty island around them, then glanced at the inactive comms. Nothing from Tiernan. She swallowed against a tightness in her throat. “So you think they think the machine god, as a real being, knows more than any of them about . . . machines?”
AIs, maybe.
“Ohhh, like whoever’s been tilting at defense arrays and building secret ships for revolution.”
Don’t be jealous because we don’t have secret ships for our revolution. Bee paused, then set off a cascade of metallic screams. Wait, now I’m jealous we don’t have secret ships for our revolution. Maybe we should throw in with the machine god.
“I mean, as far as a possible third—right, fourth-party option, it’s worth checking out. You think they have a secret electricity room in this system?”
I haven’t been able to skim much out of the comms on this planet, even with the codes. I have another in to IDC thanks to the other Charons, but they’ve been pretty quiet since we took down the ship and they lost a full unit. Bee’s voice dropped over the last words, and Talinn knew it was to keep from mentioning Mercy. What could she have done differently, to keep any Medith alive? Should she reach out to the base, see if there were familiar Eights she could pull to her side, like Otie did with her? It was too late for yet another Medith, but maybe . . .
She wrenched her thoughts away from that direction too, and groaned far louder than she needed to.
“I doubt the machine god’s unsuccessfully machined people are wandering around planet-side yelling about their plans, so comms wouldn’t tell us much.” She stood up and paced away from the ship’s controls, leaving behind the temptation to send another message.
You’re saying we’re not missing anything?
“Maybe Tiernan will know. He’s spent more time out and about than we have.” Despite the truth of it, the admission burned. “I hope he’s out recruiting Eights off this shit planet.”
All the planets are shit. Bee hummed, and Talinn relaxed further. And if he’s recruiting, it would just be another one of them, so . . .
Talinn took a few moments to stretch, reaching her hands to the ground and letting the longer muscles in her back slowly let go. She realized too late Bee had offered her an opening to return to their teasing banter, and squeezed her hands open and closed.
Talinn.
She twisted back toward the screen, which still displayed nothing of interest, and leaned into a lunge. Bee held the silence until she finally asked, “What?”
Are you all right?
“Not particularly.”
Is it because this is a lot like P-8, sitting around waiting on nothing?
“Sure.”
And also because for all we thought we were miserable then, we were actually pretty happy and now it’s actually miserable?
“What did I say about getting deep on me?” Talinn didn’t bother to force a lightness into her tone—Bee would see where her brain lit up, and know it for false. She switched legs for her stretch and braced herself for Bee’s snarky response.
Instead, in a voice so soft she almost missed it, Bee replied, Yeah. Me too.
As though she’d answered the question truthfully instead of with a weak dodge. She used to be better at answering questions, and maybe at asking them. The big orienting question: What were they going to do?
And the answer: she had no idea.