Aspirant Training Center, New Prometheus

Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge

4454.2.7 Interstellar

The two sides remained at an impasse, both preparing, neither making any aggressive moves. Lira had been displaced from her office in colony admin, but refused to formally concede her “office” as administrator, which at least gave her access to facility reports. Ivan made up for their loss of the security feeds by sending out aspirant patrols, always in pairs, like dome security back in Prime Dome. Syn probably could have wrestled control back, but she was busy fending off an increasing amount of external incursions. Mick was about business Janus had sent him on, and Janus got in some training time with Lee while one of the loyalists, a single father who didn’t feel safe in his hab, watched Xander.

It was good to train with Lee. Ivan had them doing circuit training of small arms drills, sparring, and damage control simulations for the model of submarine Janus would be using. They didn’t fight, other than as specified for the exercises, and Janus found that the two of them naturally fell into a rhythm that had taken him weeks to find with Koni Atl-Verazlan back on Krandermore.

“What?” Lee asked.

“What, what?” Janus asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You’re looking at me funny,” she said.

Janus glanced away. He’d been having pointless thoughts of what it might have been like for the three of them—him, Lee, and Fury, not Xander—to take a trip out on the ice. Too late for that, he realized. Maybe it would have fixed things, smoothed over the rough patches in their relationship. “Come on. We’ve got enough time for one more circuit before we have to head to the front gate.”

Lee nodded, raising her hands and dropping into a half crouch.

Mick walked into the training room and caught Janus’s eye.

“Is it done?” Janus asked.

Mick nodded.

“What’s done?” Lee asked.

“Just a job I asked Mick to do,” Janus said. “Let’s call it a day. I want to check in with Syn before the compartmentalists get here.”

“No way,” Lee said, putting her hands on her hips. “You’re good at hiding things, Janus, but Mickel looks like he knows he’s done or about to do a stupid thing. Spill.”

Janus pressed his lips together, but before he could come up with a reason not to tell her, Mick said, “We’re going to kidnap Callie and lock her in one of the storage rooms until the first meeting is over.”

Lee looked from Mick to Janus and said, “Are you insane?”

Janus scratched his nose. “It sounds a lot worse when he says it out loud.”

“You two are not doing that.”

Mick looked at Janus and gave him an exaggerated shrug.

“Okay, hear me out,” Janus said.

Lee crossed her arms.

“You know I’m sensitive about family. We could all pretend that I’m going to evolve and move past this, and having Callie out there isn’t going to completely sabotage my ability to make sound decisions, but that’s not likely to happen.”

“So you want to kidnap your sister?” Lee said flatly.

“Again,” Janus said, “It sounds so much worse when you say it out loud.

“It’s not like we didn’t think it through,” Mick said. “The other side won’t mind. Bennini’s going to set her up.”

“The town drunk agreed with you, and you thought that made it a good idea?” Lee asked.

Mick looked at Janus and said, “You’re right. Sounds much worse when she says it.”

Lira walked into the room, looked at Lee, and said, “You pinged me?”

“Snitch!” Mick said, although being Mick, he did it with a smile.

Lira sighed. “What did the boys do?”

“It’s not what they did, it’s what they were about to do,” Lee said. Then she explained, and Lira’s brows got closer together the more Lee talked.

Lira looked at Janus and Mick and said, “Janus, you’re an idiot, but Mick, I blame you.”

“Why do I get blamed? It was his idea!”

Lee looked at Lira. “I’m actually interested in hearing this one, mate.”

Lira rolled her eyes. “Janus goes crazy anytime his family is involved. Only thing worse is systemic inequality. He can’t help it. But you, Mickel Mercy Traceson. You know better. You just liked the idea that you were going to make a rebel leader disappear right in the middle of her followers.”

“It was going to be so impressive,” Mick said wistfully. “I even had a catchphrase planned, like, ‘Sorry, mate, but it’s time to disappear.’” Mick made a whooshing sound and mimed choking someone out.

“I’m starting to see this may have been a mistake,” Janus admitted. “So, what do we do?”

***

Janus and Lira stood in the security zone between the colony’s main entrance and the outer blast door. They could see across the passageway to the next colony, where the compartmentalist delegation was preparing itself.

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Janus had made his own preparations, as many as he could. They’d activated and tested all the colony’s redundancies and security systems. They’d cut New Prometheus off from the Cult noosphere. He’d expected the population to resent them for it, but they’d actually been supportive. It made Janus realize something he hadn’t thought of, or maybe he’d just forgotten it from his own days as a refugee.

The people of New Prometheus hadn’t turned against him. It wasn’t about him. They were just scared. Most of them had spent the last year cooped up in the colony, shut off from the world outside, and unsuited to survive on the surface if the colony failed. Janus had been so focused on the broad strokes of traveling to Cult settlements and his personal problems with Lee that he’d forgotten what it felt like to be exiled and powerless.

“Are you all right, Janus?” Lira asked.

“Fine,” he said. Lira had enough to carry without him dumping his failures on her. “Are you as surprised as I am that Nikandros isn’t here?”

“Think he knows something we don’t?”

“I know he does,” Janus said. Nikandros thrived on leverage and hidden knowledge. Janus also knew, from talking to Ryler, that the exceptionalist architect never missed an opportunity to gloat over the compartmentalists’ fall, although he probably did it to sway the Consensus rather than out of pride. “This is going to go badly, isn’t it?”

“I wish it wouldn’t,” Lira said. “Peace with the compartmentalists would solve a lot of our problems.”

“And none of theirs,” Janus said. “Why would they?”

Lira bit her lower lip. After a few seconds of silence, she said, “When was the last time you thought about Irkalla?”

“Every day,” Janus said.

Lira looked at him. “I’m not talking about our past, there. I think of Pasha and my father all the time, and I’m glad they weren’t involved in the rebellion so they could stay where they belong, but how often do you think of how Prime Dome is doing and whether they’ve solved the issues between Sector Six and the Hub?”

“Not often,” Janus admitted, crossing his arms.

Lira nodded. “Until New Prometheus, I don’t think any of the compartmentalists really thought about us as people. We were a mental exercise, a philosophical debate. I think it might be possible for them to change.”

“Or they could lash out, like the purgationists,” Janus countered.

Lira didn’t answer, and Janus knew she was of two minds about this. On the one hand, she was a trained trader and diplomat who expected people to act in their own interests, not be willfully destructive. On the other, her experiences in Krandermore had shaken that belief. Sometimes, that base aggression—which in humans actually started in the forebrain, like other higher functions—was hard to overcome.

The gate on the other side of the passageway started to rise.

Janus commed Mick and Syn, who were watching from the security station. “It’s starting.”

“We’ve got eyes on,” Mick said.

The inner door to New Prometheus lifted smoothly, and a moment later, Callie and her Prometheans walked out. They were dressed in soft clothes instead of coveralls, like Hub dwellers back on Irkalla who never had to face the void. Callie’s contact with the compartmentalists—and apparent boyfriend—came with her, holding her hand.

“Janus,” Wilbegarth said, looking wise and magnanimous with his hands tucked into his sleeves. “I hope, when this is over, we can find a place for you in the colony that recognizes the immense sacrifices you and Lira have made for your people.”

“Thanks,” Janus said. “I hope you trip and fall into the borehole so you have enough time to think about what you’ve done before you hit the water.”

Wilbegarth flinched.

“It wasn’t personal,” Dufresne said nervously.

Lira sneered at him.

Bennini said nothing, but his black eye and swollen left cheek said volumes.

“You hang that mouse on him,” Janus asked Callie.

“Invarian temper,” Callie said. “I’m mad at you, too, Janus. And Mick. You’re both idiots.”

“So we’ve been told,” Janus said, glancing at Lira.

Callie’s boyfriend stayed by her side and quietly neutral, neither hiding nor trying to introduce or ingratiate himself. Janus sucked on his teeth. It almost made him like the guy.

“You going to mess this up?” Callie asked.

“Not if I don’t have to,” Janus said.

He was surprised to find he meant that. Like Lira said, peace with the compartmentalists would solve a lot of their problems. Callie’s boyfriend was a moderate, only voting with the compartmentalists 59% of the time. He also voted egalitarian 13% of the time and voted with the matriarchate on 9% of decisions involving them. It’s a little self-hating, but Callie seems to like it, Janus thought.

He took a deep breath. If the talks worked out and the biggest thing he had to wrap his head around was his sister dating someone, that would be a great problem to have.

“They’re starting to make their way across,” Wilbegarth told Callie. “Will you be okay?”

Callie nodded. “Janus and I will be fine.”

“Eventually,” Janus agreed, and Callie looked at him in surprise and a little concealed hurt.

What did you expect, little sister? he thought, steadily returning her gaze until she looked away. She’d wanted to be treated like an adult. She could have lasting consequences, like the rest of them.

The three Prometheans walked across the bridge toward the compartmentalist party. Dufresne gave them one last hesitant look before Wilbegarth grabbed him by the upper arm.

Out of the four conspirators, Dufresne was the one Janus felt the most sympathy for. He must have known he was out of his depth. Had he gone ahead out of bravery or because he’d been too weak to admit he was afraid?

“What are the comps pushing in front of them?” Mick asked.

Janus looked, using his retinal implant for partial magnification—a feature he’d had installed to help on his many trips across the ice. The other side had some sort of box loaded on a grav trolley. “What’s in the box?” he asked, addressing Callie’s boyfriend for the first time.

“Supplies,” the young man said in a surprisingly light voice. “Callie told me you were short on synth oil.”

“We got some,” Janus said absently. He didn’t like surprises, even if the compartmentalists did come bearing gifts. “Syn, can you get me a scan of it?”

“It’ll spook them,” the Betan-turned-Gracian hacker said.

“I don’t care,” Janus said.

Fight or no fight, his sister was beside him, and his child, partner, and uncle were behind him in the colony. He wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

“Janus, what are you doing?” Callie asked coolly.

As Lira had instructed her not to a hundred times, Syn had gotten very good at hacking into the Cult’s autonomous vehicles, including the security variants with a full suite of scanners and interdiction systems. The two delegations were only ten meters apart when the armed security drone dropped down into the borehole, hovering right next to the glass, the roar of its turbines shaking the passage.

“Janus!” Callie said, punching his shoulder.

Janus ignored her. He had the worst feeling about that box. Syn swept the passageway with the scanner and shared the results with all of them.

Callie’s boyfriend frowned.

“What is it?” Janus asked him, his voice tense. The Prometheans were normal humans, of course, and the compartmentalists had some small level of cybernetization.

“The one on the left,” he said, pointing at the compartmentalist delegation. “I don’t recognize him.”

The box was impervious to the security drone’s scanner.

“Mick!” Janus snapped.

“On it, boss!” Mick said.

The blast door slammed shut in front of them, stranding the Prometheans out in the passageway. Janus’s ears popped as the colony was sealed off, and even the sound of the security drone was cut off.

“I swear, Janus,” Callie said. “If you’re trying to scare the compartmentalist delegation off…”

“No,” her boyfriend said. “Something’s wrong.”

“They’re withdrawing,” Syn said, and Janus saw she was right. The three compartmentalists were pulling back to the other colony, taking their grav trolley and container with them. Wilbegarth was waving his arms, calling after them, while Dufresne had run back to New Prometheus and was pounding on the other side of the blast door.

Janus commed Syn on a private channel. “Can you put a round into the box without hitting anyone?”

“Yes… Is that a good idea?”

“Just do it,” Janus said. He couldn’t let them get away. If there was nothing in the box, well, he’d have overreacted and spilled a little synth oil. But he remembered Red Donnika concealing a plasma accelerator that had been in her arm, and while the comps looked like normal cyborgs, there was no time and no telling what their intentions were or had been.

“Firing,” Syn said.

Janus didn’t expect to hear anything, but he was wrong. The security drone feed was cut off, there was a dull but loud thud, and the ground shook, and metal groaned like the Reef was coming apart.