Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 26


“We’ve got to go back out there.” Talinn stretched out on the delightfully comfortable bed she’d been given, then shifted to hang her head off the side of it. It gave her a better angle on Caytil, who sat on the floor with her back against the bed, her legs and arms crossed.

Sammer, sprawled at the two-person table against the wall across the small room, spun the chair around to dramatically gape at her. “Why under any sky in the galaxy would we do that?”

“I don’t believe the civilian governments are going to be any better on their own than UCF. Or IDC.” She flung her arm above her and flicked a finger out for each point. “They’re either in league with the Command decisions, or dependent on them. Pulling Command out from under—over?—everyone will just be . . .”

“Chaos.” Caytil tipped her head back, eyes closed. She didn’t sound particularly upset by the concept.

“And going back out there will . . .” Sammer trailed off, eyebrows up and hand extended, waiting for the answer.

“Get a better sense of what’s out there? We only know what UCF let us know, and now what these people are telling us. Versions of us doesn’t mean us, and we can’t just . . . trust them.”

“Like we trusted UCF. For our whole lives.” His flat voice made the nerves in her shoulder twitch, but Talinn refused to shift and show it bothered her.

“We didn’t trust UCF. We . . . did what we were told. Assumed the world was what they said it was.”

“Talinn, my darling, my favorite little friend—that’s trust.” Sammer turned to Caytil, silently asking for backup, but she remained unmoving.

“That’s complacency. They let us blow things up. And I like blowing things up.” She dropped her arm and groaned. “Bee’s ready to let the galaxy burn. But we can’t just keep being point-and-shoot weapons anymore.”

“I like point-and-shoot weapons,” Caytil murmured, though she didn’t open her eyes. “Especially when they’re tanks.”

I always did like Caytil.

“The whole galaxy isn’t going to—”

“Don’t, Sammer.” Talinn sat up, twisting to hang her legs off the bed and dropping her elbows behind her to lean in the other direction. “I can run the probabilities as well as you can. It’s as likely everything comes to crashing ruin as it finds a way forward without UCF and IDC holding some sort of line.”

“Ziti’s against.” Caytil moved, but only to pull her legs up and wrap her arms around them. She took up surprisingly little space in the room. “We’re sure change is worse than the current state.”

“For who?” Sammer spun in the chair again, but ensured his scowl pointed toward Talinn for most of his pivot. “Civilians? Command? Not people like us.”

“Were you unhappy, Sammer? Really? Before P-8, when we were doing what we were trained to do, were you bothered by your life, or did you like it?” Talinn didn’t know which side she was arguing—Bee’s wholehearted forward charge, or Ziggy’s urge to let it be.

“Medith died, Talinn.” It hit her in the gut, as she was sure he intended it to, but that only shifted her grief further into anger.

“People are going to die if we do this. People are going to die if we don’t. People have always died, Sammer.”

“Thank you for that life lesson.” He rolled his eyes, stilling the chair to be sure she saw it, and she flopped back on the bed to more visibly ignore him. “Glad to know that’s what you’ll say when I die for nothing, to make UCF money. People have always died. At least Sammer went out firing for the good old United Colo—”

“Stuff it, shitheel.” She sighed, hoped Caytil would say something, anything, about why she and Ziti were against. When the silence held, she forced herself upright again and pushed back to the wall, resolving to be less twitchy.

“And what does going out there again help? Seriously.” A level of tension eased from Sammer’s shoulders—they’d pushed each other enough, and were getting back to the heart of the matter. “You want to see what life is like for the empties? Decide if it’ll be net neutral if we take out Command?”

“I want to use my own eyes and see more of what’s going on. I listened to Other Talinn and Medith died. There’s not a way I’m forgetting that, Sammer. But here’s the thing—we don’t know if that was IDC’s fault, or these people’s.” Talinn threw her arms wide, encompassing the whole of the asteroid installation they’d been tucked into. A voice, Medith had said, and that was little enough to go on.

As best as Bee could tell, their conversations weren’t being listened to or recorded, but Talinn no longer cared if the other clones heard her or not.

“They still haven’t told us everything about those codes they inserted into our AIs.” Caytil shifted slightly, enough to keep both Talinn and Sammer in her peripheral.

“They still haven’t told us everything, full stop.” Talinn scooted her leg forward to touch Caytil’s shoulder, and the other woman patted Talinn’s foot briefly.

“So let’s ask—”

“Yes. Ask Jeena.”

“Talinn—” Sammer’s shoulders tightened again, moving fractionally toward his ears.

“She’s as involved as the rest of us, Sammer. You trying to keep her out of things isn’t protecting her.”

“I’m not trying to—”

“You’ve been twisty and weird since we got here—”

“I haven’t—”

“It’s the other him.” Caytil put her palm to her jawline and pushed until her neck audibly cracked. “It’s not since we got here. It’s since you went in a room and talked to the other Sammer. What happened?”

Sammer crumpled, and Talinn had surged to the end of the bed, reaching for him, before she finished processing his motion. “I killed Medith,” he said, so softly everyone else froze, to be sure the words were real.

“No, of course you—”

“The message—the one I thought you sent, but was Other Talinn. The packet she hid and sent, it was meant for me and Lei. It was a piece of the other Sammer’s L8, a fraction of code. But Cece got it, because I passed it to them. I thought it was a message—I thought you were being clever, slipping in something under Command’s view.”

That’s for sure what I got? A piece of the other Bee? Some of it doesn’t feel . . . 

“That’s not the same as you killing Medith, Sammer, don’t be an idiot.”

“That’s what the . . . other Sammer, he said it wasn’t my fault, it was both of ours, and he should have . . . we should have . . .”

“All right. First.” Talinn stood, leaned over, and tapped Sammer firmly on his downtrodden head. “Stop being a complete shitface because you’re feeling guilty over something you didn’t actually do, not truly, certainly not on purpose. Waste of time, and you know better than a tech at load-in that Medith would agree and kick you until you stopped whining.”

“Second?” Caytil prompted, which was tacit agreement of the first point, a fact Sammer caught because he lifted his head.

“Second, Medith said there was ‘a voice.’ Cece would have recognized Lei, so something else might be going on, and we don’t know enough to call it sorted.”

“Is there a third?” Caytil turned her head to raise her eyebrows at Talinn, then pivoted back toward Sammer, nodding firmly.

“Third, I’m sick of calling them ‘other’ us-es. Otie and Osis.”

Sammer lifted his head fully at that, mouth moving as he sounded it out. “Other Talinn, OT . . . you’re AI naming them.”

“Better than they deserve, probably.” Talinn straightened and folded her hands behind her back.

“When we meet other Caytil, we can flip it. Call her Coe.”

“Caytil comma other. Done.” Talinn paced the three times possible in each direction, then snapped to attention facing them both. “Fourth, let’s go to Jeena and dig into these extra pieces the older clones have been passing us. Because fifth, whether we’re raiding Command or going out into the galaxy again, we’re not going blind.”

Is there a sixth?

“There is not a sixth,” Talinn said aloud to Bee and the human ears in her room.

Just for us then: sixth, the next time we find a Medith—other than the one that drugged us—we take out whoever we need to, to keep her alive.

And that was so good, Talinn reversed course and announced the sixth to everyone.


They spent so long in the lab with Jeena, they had to stop when she got unsteady.

“Oh. Food. Food would probably be helpful for you.” Sammer steadied her, then left his hand on her elbow, and Jeena made a noise both laugh and scoff.

“You’re supposed to eat regularly too, you know. Eights are still people.”

“Says you and zero other techs in the history of history.” Talinn’s laugh, however, had a bit more humor in it. “And you know as well as any of us we can go a lot longer without new calories. Our bodies are good at cannibalizing what they already have.”

“That’s bad though. You see how that’s bad?” Jeena shook her head and leaned against Sammer. “Anyway, I’m fine. Food would be helpful, but it’s mostly that I’ve slept maybe a handful of hours since we’ve gotten here—”

“Five,” Sammer interjected, his glower indicating he was not trying to be helpful.

“And—”

“Out of the forty-eight hours we’ve been here.”

“And,” she said loudly, talking over him. “I’ve done worse. So. Food. And back to work.”

The installation was not large, two layers of a wheel, each broken into four spokes—it held about fifty people, with the capacity for roughly double that. Other Talinn—Otie—made noises that indicated they had a few other spaces like it carved out in various far corners of the systems, but she was not forthright about their numbers. It was one of the few things Talinn could understand her not wanting to share, though a sense of the scale of the operation would have been nice.

She did wonder if this burrowed living space in a large asteroid was something they’d built or scavenged. The layer of the wheel closest to the surface of the asteroid was featureless across all sections, which included cargo loading (cargo occasionally meaning unconscious Eights), medlabs, recovery rooms, and gear of various sorts, from tools to vacuum suits to weapons they hadn’t been able to play with at all. Given access to the second layer wasn’t particularly well hidden, she’d wondered aloud why the first floor was so sleek and devoid of personalization, but no one had seen fit to answer her.

The deeper layer held living quarters, several rec areas and the kitchen, the giant room with every bit of information known to man—as far as Talinn could tell, as they had not been let back in it unattended—and a cluster of labs Jeena had partially taken over. Apparently with all the cloning and cycles and repetition, Jeena was the first tech they’d managed to run off with. Talinn figured Sammer should get some points for that.

It took only a few minutes to walk from their part of the spoke to the kitchen, and they spoke little on the way. When the door into the kitchen vanished into the ground, the air flooded with a smell so strong and so savory Talinn had to swallow back immediate saliva several times before speaking.

“Are you . . . cooking?” she asked Otie, and the woman craned her neck back to look at them.

“Bee’s better at it than I am, turns out. Keeps me from burning or under seasoning or over cooking. Not sure how, given she has zero taste buds, but yes, it’s a skill we picked up over the cycles.”

It’s a science.

“It’s basically science,” Otie continued, waving for them to sit at one of the three long tables in the room. “And most planets and stations have room to pay for a transient cook. Amazing the things you learn over food.”

That feels like a warning. But you’re going to eat with her anyway.

“Yes. To both.” Talinn sat at the closest table, facing Otie’s back and sliding down the bench to leave room for whoever sat next to her. Jeena floated toward Otie until Sammer touched her elbow again, then she folded into a bench seat with a sigh.

“Solving all the galaxy’s problems?” Otie continued when no one spoke, her focus ostensibly on the several pots in front of her.

“Realized our tech hasn’t eaten in a day or so.” Sammer paced around the table, back toward the older clone cooking, and leaned against the gleaming metal counter next to the heating element. “Did you know we were coming?”

“I need to eat too, Sam.” She stirred something, moved something from a flat pot to a round one, then added, “And yes, I figured you’d be by soon.”

“Talinn wants to go back out into civilian space before committing to a course of action.” He said it conversationally, all casual, but Talinn glared at him all the same.

“I thought she might.”

“And you have an opinion on that?”

“I have access to all the ships. Opinion isn’t a strong enough word.”

“A decision, then?” Talinn asked, unable to let their calm exchange go on without her, despite Caytil’s elbow in her ribs.

“We abandoned a meeting spot like this, not half a cycle ago, when the front moved suddenly over the planet we’d burrowed into. The front had no business moving there—planet had a tiny settlement and no resources to speak of to help either side.”

“We’d go out unconscious, the way we came in. Or I would, I don’t know if anyone else wants to go.” Talinn leaned her elbows on the table, forced her mind off the incredibly tempting smell wafting from the cooking implements, and frowned for good measure.

“The more we move, the more likely it is we’ll be found. And tracked. We can’t afford it, not to soothe your feelings.”

“You say that, but if you need my Bee, you need me. My feelings play a pretty big part in that.” Despite her efforts, she heard a pitch in her words too close to a whine. Talinn blamed the intoxicating scents, but she knew it was the frustration of arguing with, essentially, herself.

“We’re not sure if we need you. It’s one of the plans we’re considering, layering another Bee with mine, another Lei with Sammer’s, another Ziti with—”

“Oh no, we’re out.” Caytil shrugged. “Neither Ziti nor I have any interest in burning down the world’s order.”

Otie made an inquisitive sound, but she didn’t turn around, nor did her shoulders so much as twitch. Talinn studied her—the line of her back, the ease of her motions. Had Otie expected that? Was there another Caytil somewhere they hadn’t met yet, also holding out on Otie’s grand design?

“If the plan falls apart because we decide against it, or you decide to go down some other path, what then? We live out our days in this circle? You drug us again a little more finally?” The delicious promise of the cooking food soured in the back of her throat at that thought, and she swallowed against it.

“I don’t know.”

“You . . . don’t know. You.”

“I’m no more in the habit of repeating myself than you are, Newt.”

It clicked before she opened her mouth to ask, but Bee twisted metal in a laugh and savored it. Newt! New Talinn, New T. I’m not going to lie to you, I like that way better than Otie. She’s clever, old you.

Talinn half-heartedly shushed Bee and dropped her head into her hands.

“It’s not just extra bits of Bee,” Jeena said into the dragging silence, and even Otie turned around to stare at her. “The discrepancies. In Bee’s programming.”

We’re doing this now?

Talinn had the same question, but before she could ask it Otie snapped a hand up. “Sammer, get the bowls, that case over there. Caytil, spoons are in the third drawer down, second set of cabinets to your side there. Newt, get me the ladle hanging there.” She pointed with her elbow, and Talinn discovered she knew what a ladle was.

She considered ignoring the order, but she needed to eat. If the other Eights were going to kill them, it probably wouldn’t be now, without anything decided. So be it. Talinn shoved back from the table as everyone but Jeena moved, and in a few minutes they were all back at the table with bowls of noodles. The liquid steamed, chunks of proteins and vegetables floated, and Talinn would have poured it all down her throat if a burned mouth weren’t such a pain.

She decided arguing could wait until she finally tasted the concoction they’d heard so much about, so she focused on getting noodles wrapped around the utensil, then cooling them to a non-mouth-burning degree, then putting them in her face.

Then forgot, for a blissful moment, the needs of the galaxy and the whims of Command, because so many tastes rolled through her mouth she could have used Bee to analyze them.

Huh. That’s fun.

Talinn pictured the parts of her brain that must be lighting up to Bee’s awareness, and she smiled as she slurped a second bite. The texture should have been disconcerting—springy, a little chewy, wriggly, maybe edging toward slimy but in a delicious way—but instead it was part of the enjoyment.

“What I’m hearing.” Caytil fanned her mouth and took another bite before continuing. “Is that you can learn to do this, Talinn. And then we can eat noodles every day.”

“Every day until the end of the world.” Sammer snapped his mouth shut after delivering the words, as if regretting ruining the moment, but it was too late.

Talinn continued to eat, the taste still warm and earthy and pure comfort, but some measure of her enjoyment faded.

“Otie,” she said, and the other woman’s forehead wrinkled, the lines deeper than Talinn’s own, before she burst into laughter.

“Otie? You have to admit, Newt’s better.”

Talinn ignored both that and Bee’s smug “told you so” in the background. “Otie,” she said again, repeating herself on purpose. “We’ve got to talk about both—the discrepancies in coding, and what you expect from us.”

Otie made a noise in the back of her throat, more inquisitive than dismissive, and Talinn swallowed another mouthful of noodles before continuing.

“You don’t have it all planned out. Maybe you don’t have all the answers. But you have us—and you wanted us for a reason. Let us help plot out the approach. Or reason through the issues. Both. We have to do something.” She stirred the liquid in her bowl, watching small pieces surface and vanish into the clouded broth.

Otie twisted noodles around her spoon, but didn’t lift them toward her mouth. “It’ll be a pile of bugs and glitches to coordinate.”

“Sounds like it’ll be a pile of bugs and glitches to coordinate regardless.” Caytil drummed her fingers on the table, then shook her shoulders and sat up straight. “Your Sammer told ours it’s their fault Mercy splintered.”

The bite Otie had taken nearly reemerged, but the older woman didn’t splutter. “He said that.”

“What are you putting in these message packets?”

“Nothing that would cause a breakdown in code like that. I’ll talk to Sammer. As for you, little Sammer—nothing you did caused what happened to Mercy. Nothing. The packets are little bits of code coating information, which you unpacked. That’s it.”

Sammer shifted in his seat, but he met her gaze straight on. “And what about our going out and about in the system?”

“It’s not a terrible idea.” Otie’s lips curled, the beginnings of a smile, then her face went abruptly serious. “There may be work to do first. Medith mentioned to you that we’re not sure what’s going on in this system?”

“If jump points are where something is taking notice of us, you’re thinking it’s less risky to ship us out locally.” Caytil chewed thoughtfully, which was not something Talinn had seen before. The food they’d eaten for cycles had been better to swallow quickly, not ruminate over. She hadn’t realized eating could be enjoyable.

“We can talk it over with the others. Of the group that came in with you, I imagine at least Konti and Heka will be interested.”

Talinn shoved an enormous ball of noodles in her mouth to cover for the fact she hadn’t thought of Konti and Heka—or Xenni and Arnod—for a full day. She’d rarely spent much time with jet pairings, and that last assignment . . . 

“Yeah, we probably should talk to everyone.” Even Sammer shifted guiltily, which made Talinn feel a little better.

That and the noodles.


Back | Next
Framed