Noemi’s duty allows her to defend a fellow fighter who’s in extreme risk. So she banks left and accelerates so hard the force shoves her back in her seat. The blazing firefight around her darkens until her view of space is again clear. The Genesis Gate looms, surrounded by armed platforms. Any ship that approaches without Earth-signature codes gets destroyed. Even from across the galaxy, Earth keeps Genesis in its laser sights.
As she speeds toward Esther’s location, Noemi looks less at her sensor screen. The view from the cockpit shows her enough. Esther’s scout ship zips around the mech, using energy bursts from the sensors to muddle the mech’s workings, but that doesn’t accomplish much. So far the mech is dodging the bursts expertly. Apparently it’s headed toward one of the larger pieces of debris—no, not debris, an abandoned spaceship, some kind of civilian craft. Noemi’s never seen anything like this ship: teardrop-shaped, roughly the volume of a good-size three-story building, and with a mirrored surface that has dulled only slightly over the years. It must have been all but invisible to the naked eye until recently.
Is the mech going to bring that ship back to Earth? The ship was abandoned, obviously, but it doesn’t look seriously damaged from here.
If Earth wants it, then Noemi intends to keep them from getting it. She imagines destroying the mech and recapturing this teardrop ship for the Genesis fleet. Maybe it could be outfitted with weapons, turned into a warship. God knows they need another.
Then again, this mech is a Queen or a Charlie. She and Esther will be in for one hell of a fight.
Bring it on, she thinks.
Noemi cuts her speed as she gets closer. Esther and the mech are almost within weapons range—
—then the mech turns, shifting its aim. It stretches its exoskeleton arms and clasps Esther’s recon ship like a flytrap plant snapping shut around a bug. The way they’re positioned, the mech must be right above Esther, the two of them looking into each other’s eyes.
Weapons! But Noemi can’t shoot the mech from here without blasting Esther, too. In ordinary combat, she’d fire anyway. Any pilot captured like that is dead already, and at least she could destroy the mech.…
—but this is Esther, please not her, please—
The mech releases one arm, draws it back in a startlingly human movement, and punches straight through the hull of Esther’s fighter.
Noemi’s scream deafens her in her own helmet. It doesn’t matter; she doesn’t need to hear—she needs to save Esther.
Ten minutes. Our exosuits give us air for ten minutes. Go, go, go, go—
The mech releases Esther, swivels toward the abandoned ship, then stops, finally picking up Noemi on its scanners. She fires before it can even aim.
In a flash of light, the mech explodes into so much tinsel. Noemi zooms through what’s left of it on her way to Esther, metal splinters clicking against her cockpit shell.
Can we get back to the troop ship in time? No, not with the battle still raging. Okay, then. This abandoned ship. I can restore life support, maybe; if not, it’ll probably have oxygen I can use to re-up Esther’s reserves. First-aid supplies. Maybe even a sick bay. Please, God, let it have a sick bay.
She feels as if she’s praying to nothing. To no one. But even if God doesn’t speak to her, surely he’ll listen for Esther’s sake.
Noemi’s visor fogs slightly. She has to hold back her tears, though, or else they’ll float through the helmet and blind her at the worst moment. So she bites the inside of her cheek as she swoops down toward the devastated scout ship. “Esther? Can you read me?”
No reply. By now Noemi is out of communications range for the other Genesis fighters. If Captain Baz even realizes they’re missing, she won’t hear Noemi’s broadcasts, won’t know to send help. Maybe they’ve both been written off as dead already.
“We’re going to make it,” Noemi promises Esther, and herself, as she edges her fighter closer. Now she can see how badly the scout ship’s been mutilated—metal shredded into shards—but Esther’s helmet seems to be intact. Is she moving? Yes. Noemi thinks she is. She’s alive. She’s going to make it. All I have to do is get us to that ship.
One switch throws a towline into space, and the magnetic clamp catches Esther’s hull. Quickly Noemi scans the mirrored vessel in front of them. There—a docking-bay door.
Powered by magnetic sensors, the plates of the circular door fan open automatically. Noemi’s so grateful she could weep.
It’s always seemed to her that her prayers are never answered, that nobody up there has ever heard her pleas. But God must be listening after all.
4
THE GENESIS FIGHTER BLASTS THE QUEEN MODEL, demolishing it, and Abel feels hope shatter within him—an almost physical sensation. It’s as if his inner framework had collapsed.
I must perform a full self-diagnostic at my first opportunity.
Abel floats in the dark chamber of the pod bay, just one more piece of equipment suspended in the cold dark. Without gravity. Without purpose. How long will it take his internal batteries to wear out? They were made to last approximately two and a half centuries… but he is using very little energy, which means they might go on for twice as long. More. It could be more than half a millennium before Abel finally breaks down into mere scrap metal.
He can’t fear his own death. His programming doesn’t allow it.
But Abel can fear hundreds of years of solitude—never discovering what became of Burton Mansfield—never again having any use.
Can a mech go insane? Abel might find out.
At that moment, however, he sees one of the Genesis fighters tether the other and power forward. Are they—is it possible—
Yes. They want to board the Daedalus.
These are enemy troops. They are Genesis warriors. As such, they are an immediate threat to the safety of Burton Mansfield.
(Who might not be aboard any longer. Who could have died years ago. But Abel acknowledges these probabilities while still prioritizing the elimination of any risk to Mansfield’s life—any risk, no matter how remote—above everything else.)
The Genesis ship is headed for the main docking bay. Abel reviews the ship’s layout, and the Daedalus’s schematics flash before him as though projected on a screen. He has reviewed them often, these past thirty years; Abel has reviewed every piece of information he’s ever been exposed to in an effort to keep himself from succumbing to sheer boredom. But the plans are more vivid now, the lines on the blueprints burning as brightly as fire in his mind.