Ragamuffin

Chapter Forty-Four

This was Ragamuffin home territory: a dim brown dwarf that gave off no life-giving light, a rocky world that the upstream and downstream wormhole orbited, and lots of random dirt and rock for ships to hide in past that.

A desolate area.

Etsudo had caught up to the Shengfen Hao and three more heavy ships as they moved through toward the Ragamuffins.

He’d scattered drones hundreds of miles out in all directions when he’d transited in. Enough scattered drones could put together a detailed image of whatever he wanted. Any one of them wouldn’t have the ability to see the details he wanted, but the whole network could process the light hitting their optics to make a superarray.

The four Hongguo ships chased two smaller Ragamuffin ships, but had stared dumping speed as they’d come through the wormhole. The two wormholes orbited the rocky world in geosynchronous orbit, and now so did Etsudo and the Hongguo. A massive cloud of chaff and mines hung around the wormhole they’d just come through, enclosing it in a massive protective sphere.

The Ragamuffins were well defended against an attack, and Deng had barely stopped the Shengfen Hao from plowing into the mess.

Hongguo drones spread out from all the trapped ships, seeking to gain data about the situation.

Deng hailed him. “What are you doing here? We are not expecting you.”

“I wish nothing more than to assist.” Deng would have trouble believing it. But what could he do about it for right now? Etsudo would get away with it for a while, Deng would hardly have the time to care all that much or shoot him out of the sky unless he posed a threat.

“You have drones out?” Deng asked.

“Of course.”

“Check the downstream wormhole, we don’t have drones to spare. We’re getting radiation readings from it. As if it were open.”

Etsudo started turning his drones that way, opening up other tools to probe at the wormhole trailing almost a thousand miles behind them in orbit.

He waited as the scattered drones stitched together their impressions, losing a few to mines in brief, fiery explosions.

“Deng? There is something you should see.” Etsudo passed along the images as they came. A very large cylinder of rock, like a scaled-down habitat, slowly moved away from the downstream wormhole. “The downstream wormhole is not only reopened, something really big came through from New Anegada.”

Deng looked as if he’d been slapped. “We know roughly how many ships the Ragamuffins have. More ships are moving to flood the area. But this could change things. We’ll need more ships, and need to get some drones down that thing. Hold.”

Etsudo looked back out at the scene, closing his eyes to the cramped cockpit and the faces of the gamma crew staring back at him.

Behind the Takara Bune the Wuxing Hao and Datang Hao transited slowly into orbit with them.

“Our orders are changed.”

“And?” Etsudo asked.

Jiang Deng rubbed his neck. “We’ll first move to destroy that object. The Satrap recognized the design and function of that vehicle, it indicates it has the ability to reopen wormholes. Once destroyed, the Gulong will come to shut down the upstream wormhole. We will seal the Ragamuffins off.”

“I don’t have weapons, but my drones are clear of the mines and chaff, I can provide a good plot through.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Deng said. And in Etsudo’s lamina he could see representations of the three small ships like his moving out. The Chen Yuan, Pao Ming, and Fei Ying. He remembered meeting the captain of the Pao Ming once. A short, stodgy man who kept his hair long. Impractical on a ship.

The three ships fired their engines and dropped their orbit. They hit the first shield of mines.

“Are there people aboard?” Etsudo asked. “It’s suicide.” And then the thought struck him that he might be asked to follow them, and he wished he hadn’t said anything.

“Everything is in a good state.” Deng coughed. “It is for the greater stability, the Satrapy agrees.”

Agreed or not, Etsudo stared as the burning hulks of the ships cleared a major hole downward and at an angle backward through the shield.

And even for Deng, the man was behaving strangely.

“Is everything okay, Deng?” Etsudo asked.

Deng didn’t reply. “The Wuxing Hao and I are moving against that vehicle. You will follow and coordinate drone reconnaissance as we go.”

And maybe be commanded to ram something.

The Hongguo had now become a military arm for the Satrapy, entirely, and this was nothing but a war, Etsudo thought.

“Imagine a world where any interdicted system could come back into the Benevolent Satrapy,” Deng said. “Earth terrorists and Chimson fighters would all pour into our worlds and ignite a war to end all wars throughout the forty-eight worlds. It would be our end. We would be wiped out in response.”

Etsudo rubbed his forehead as the Shengfen Hao moved its orbit lower and through the gap in the shield. As it slowed, the downstream wormhole would catch up to it. The Wuxing Hao followed, and Etsudo swept away visions of lamina to look at his crew.

Bahul and Brandon cocked their heads as the Takara Bune’s engines fired. They were patched into the navigation lamina, which gave them a crude simulation of the outside world. Enough to have seen the three-ship suicide run.

“We’re following them down and out to the downstream wormhole, it’s open again, and we’re destroying whatever came through.”

“We have no weapons,” Fabiyan said.

“I know that,” Etsudo snapped. “But you saw the other three, didn’t you?”

“They can’t ask us to kill ourselves to protect those ships,” Bahul said.

“They haven’t,” Etsudo said. “Yet.” They all paused to listen to the pattering of chaff and other debris against the Takara Bune’s hull.

“The Ragamuffins will attack us,” Brandon said. “It’s us or them.”

Maybe. Hongguo called themselves the guardians of humanity. And the Ragamuffins on the run had kept trying to insinuate that the Satrapy had begun a pogrom against humans.

And what if it was true?

“Brandon, Michiko?” Etsudo opened his eyes. “Go to zeta and alpha crew, help them rig up their rooms as alternate cockpits. We’re going to be on alert, no shifts.”

“What are you doing?” Brandon asked.

“I am following orders,” Etsudo said. Brandon’s conditioning was weakening here. His desire to serve the Hongguo without question would begin to buckle as Etsudo looked more and more like a free agent.

There was no time to fix that.

And he was still keeping Nashara’s secret to himself, not warning Deng about it. He had a gut feeling that if he revealed his small treason, he would be ordered aboard one of the ships. There his mind would be stripped free of its moorings and he would be remade into a subservient soldier.

Much as he suspected Jiang Deng’s mind had been altered somehow by the Satraps. And all the other Jiang serving in the Hongguo.

Chapter Forty-Five

Nashara watched the three Hongguo ships burst through the bottom of the Ragamuffin security cloud and tumble out with a cloud of debris.

“Do you think there were people aboard those?” Cascabel asked, appearing only to Nashara.

She suspected so.

Cascabel nodded. “I tried to hail them, to see if I could get into their ships and spread. You?”

“Destroyed before I could do anything.” The desire to multiply out into fresh, virgin lamina made Nashara shudder. A sad waste.

“A waste,” Cascabel whispered. “The other three ships, one of them is the Takara Bune. I’m trying for them.”

Nashara knew. “He followed us here. Something doesn’t add up with him.”

“I know. I have this odd feeling. But I trust him.” Cascabel shrugged and faded away from inside the cockpit.

The Xamayca Pride had dropped down and managed to get into a geosynchronous orbit several hundred miles above them. Holding the high ground and ready to power out of orbit and run for it if needed.

Nashara had pulled the Toucan Too through the shield and lay in front of and just above it, and both the Starfunk Ayatollah and Chistopher Malik’s Magadog had followed a similar path. Neither could get back to the trailing wormhole anytime soon, only the Xamayca Pride could.

These ships were heavily armed Ragamuffins, weaponry bolted on from the days when New Anegada and Chimson faced constant alien threat. The Ragamuffins had retreated far into the unexplored areas of this wormhole stop, but all the old ships were still here.

No doubt all the higgler ships such as the Queen Mohmbasa had been bringing in the necessities, stuff they needed to survive all these hundreds of years holed up out here.

She’d forced them out of hiding.

“Kaalid, here.” Monifa appeared to them all in the cockpit. “Got this damn time lag: everyone out there and all of we down here.”

Ijjy twisted. “See those two big Hongguo ship?”

“Yeah, I can’t take them with just the Pride, seen? Ain’t go risk just my ship against them Hongguo. I can’t talk to whatever coming through, the Hongguo jamming the area already.”

Nashara cocked her head. “And if they’re from New Anegada? We’re leaving our friends standing alone in the middle of an attack.”

“Cudjo and Duppy Conqueror coming down to back all of we up.” There was a pause as Monifa tapped more people into the discussion. “Don Andery, Ras Malik, you there?”

“Magadog here.” Christopher Malik appeared.

“Starfunk Ayatollah.” Andery frowned. “Why I seeing you double, Nashara?”

Nashara looked over at Cascabel, who’d joined the conversation. “Don’t worry about that just yet.”

Cascabel disappeared, but Nashara could feel her nearby, listening in.

“The Hongguo jamming me out something bad,” Monifa said. “I can’t talk to whatever just came through that hole back to New Anegada.” She said the name fast enough that it sounded more like Nanagada to Nashara.

“But if we can talk to them, we have five ships to them three. It worth moving toward it?” Andery asked.

“If we raise them, yes,” Monifa said. “I don’t have no reply from the Dread Council, but I running this show and I say I want know for sure these people friendly before we rush in. That thing don’t look like any ship I ever seen.”

“I can stop the jamming, with a little help,” Nashara said. “I need a string of communications drones, or buoys, whatever you have. The highest bandwidth you have.”

“What you go do?” Christopher Malik asked.

Nashara paused for a moment. She was so used to keeping this deep within her. But this was why she’d been sent, and what she should be doing.

Cascabel appeared beside her with a smile. “You’re not seeing double,” she said. And Nashara explained what they were seeing.

“She ain’t telling no lie,” Ijjy said softly from behind her when she finished, and the captains of the other ships stared.

“Do I get drones?”

“Dropping them down now,” Monifa said.

Nashara waved her hand. Now she stood on the hull of the Toucan Too with Cascabel and watched a shimmering line leap up toward the direction of the Xamayca Pride.

“Pretty nice visuals,” Cascabel said with a smile, and clapped her hands. For a moment they both hung beside a large silver ball, then another, and a third, jumping along the chain of high bandwidth laser to the final destination.

It was a workable model for what they were doing, a metaphor Cascabel had whipped up as the process began. It was, Nashara thought, helpful. Or else the process would have been mysterious, scary, somewhat uncontrolled.

The final buoy played laser light across the hulls of the ships.

“I can’t get into this Shengfen Hao at all,” Cascabel muttered.

They flicked over to the other ship, Wuxing Hao. Nashara smiled, and shivered. She began to split down the middle, a ghostly image of herself moving down the laser light toward the moving ship.

And then it firmed up. “They don’t know it yet,” the newest Nashara said, “but I’m in.”

“And?” Cascabel and Nashara asked.

“Call me Piper.”

“Piper?”

“It works with the damn theme. What now?”

Cascabel shivered, shook, and split into two. The second one smiled. “Got the Takara Bune. Two out of three, not bad.”

“Snag all the drones and let’s talk,” Piper said. “Takara Bune, what’s your handle?”

“Please don’t ever call me by the ship’s name, it feels crass, don’t you think?” the newest iteration of herself said.

“We’re making this shit up as we go along,” Nashara said, getting impatient with herself.

“Cayenne, call me Cayenne. Etsudo’s ship seems to have the most drones, I’m getting it.”

A moment later they had it. Everything but the Shengfen Hao.

Now Nashara could focus on the strange new craft. She found its signal a few seconds later.

A man’s face appeared looping a message. A familiar face.

“It’s Pepper,” Nashara said, shocked. Cascabel, Piper, and Cayenne repeated the same thing with her.

Cascabel passed it on, and a window to Monifa appeared in the air between them. “It’s Raga, they’re Raga on that.”

Monifa looked at the four copies. “You spreading?”

“Get down there,” Nashara snapped.

“Of course.” Monifa shook herself.

Nashara checked another window in her lamina to see the Xamayca Pride dropping down in orbit, several missiles already streaking their way toward the downstream wormhole.

“Piper, Cayenne, see what you can do about the Shengfen Hao.”

Far above them all, the Cudjo and Duppy Conqueror struggled to drop down fast enough. Pepper, the very founder of the Ragamuffins, was aboard that alien ship. It was no surprise, Nashara thought, that Raga made all possible haste to save him.

“Tell her to watch out for the Wuxing Hao and Takara Bune now,” Nashara warned them.

“On it.”

“Give them hell.” Nashara smiled. She felt unleashed. And it was a good feeling.

Chapter Forty-Six

Etsudo felt it: the ghostlike presence of something else flitting throughout his ship’s lamina. Something had smashed through their security and several of Etsudo’s purposefully flimsy firewalls.

And then all the lamina fell away in shards, leaving Etsudo strapped in, blinking, and staring around at the gunmetal gray of the cockpit.

His world, usually carefully laid out to the patterns of feng shui, now looked like the inside of an industrial spaceship.

“Hello, Nashara,” he said.

Bahul blinked and looked around, probably also confused about his lack of lamina.

“Etsudo? You figured out what I was very quickly. And you are no simple trader, you are Hongguo, aren’t you?” Nashara appeared before him in the cockpit. Both Bahul and Fabiyan stared. Etsudo had not warned them in the least, they’d just been stuck wondering why he’d spent so much time in his quarters with so little sleep.

“Yes, I am Hongguo,” Etsudo said. Nashara’s projection wore military-gray slacks and had her hair shaved down the sides in streaks. She looked annoyed. “I was part of an arm that sought to control human activities through less violent methods.”

“Looks like that’s all falling apart,” Nashara said.

“You’re an emulated mind. This is remarkable,” Etsudo said, changing the subject.

“And very illegal,” Bahul said.

“Look, I know this is all new and interesting, but I’m taking over your ship,” Nashara said. “Any attempts to mess with me and I turn you all into toothpaste. See where I’m coming from?”

“All the experiments we’ve seen, all the patents I’ve helped purchase and freeze, with all these the experiments in taking the human mind and digitizing it fail spectacularly. We are more than just brains locked away in mechanical bodies.” Etsudo waved at the ship. “We are influenced by our environment, our reactions, our physicalities.”

“Lamina,” Nashara said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Lamina. If you can emulate a human body within lamina, it can pretend it is still a physical organism in the physical environment the lamina sits overtop and maps to. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fuzzy here, but just real enough I’m happy.”

“Okay, Nashara.” Etsudo bowed his head. “What now?”

“Well.” The lamina Nashara closed her eyes. “We’re going to bump your craft a little bit closer to this big, big thing that apparently reopens wormholes. We have some friends on it that would like us not to bomb them. I’d also like to go home, Etsudo. It’s been a long time since I’ve been home, when you bastards cut it off.”

Etsudo nodded. “I apologize.”

“The Shengfen Hao is attacking the alien craft my friends are aboard. The thing is spewing atmosphere, breaches all over the place. The hull looks like the far side of a moon, cratered everywhere. How long do you think they can keep that up?”

“What are you hoping to get from all this?” he asked.

“At first? Just wanted to get back to Chimson.” Nashara sat down in an empty chair between him and Bahul as if it were real. “Now, the Satrapy is attempting to rub our race out, and I wonder if reopening Chimson is a good idea. I might be endangering them.”

“The Satrapy is not trying to commit genocide,” Etsudo said.

“Really?” Nashara tilted her head at him. “You that sure, Etsudo? Because there’s starting to be quite a bit of evidence stacked against you. Lots of dead ships and dead habitats lying around lately.”

“They have engaged in illegal activities.”

Nashara leaned close. “Some of them. But all of them? There’s a girl aboard the ship I flew in here that says her habitat’s Satrap said it was over for the species, we’re being exterminated.”

Etsudo licked his lips. “That’s a child speaking.”

“Maybe. But then again, the Raga are being exterminated, and they’re just a motley bunch of creaky old ships. They’re harmless.”

“Well-armed creaky old ships.”

“But not engaged in vastly advanced technological research, my friend. They’re only crime is arming themselves for defense. Why doesn’t the Satrapy like that?”

“You can’t arm yourself and say you are harmless at the same time,” Etsudo said.

“When it comes to genocide, the unarmed are always at a disadvantage,”Nashara said. “I’ll fight here and now rather than suffer a peaceful death later.”

“You’re a hostile individual.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “You know, I liked you Etsudo. Now… not so much. Sit tight, I’ll be doing my best not to harm any of you.”

“Nashara, please try to move the ship.” Etsudo vibrated with excitement.

Nashara frowned. “Oh, shit.” She was trapped in what felt like a bubble. A tiny artificial lamina deep in the ship. She’d been too fast, too cocky, too confident in her unique new form.

“You rage on as if it were a simple thing, Nashara. But who will pay for the fuel for my spaceship? Who will maintain it? If we toss out the Satrapy, it all collapses. For all your rhetoric, you can’t just get rid of them. There is an entire civilization that revolves around them, and they around us.” The Satrapy cracked antimatter in its habitats to support the entire ecosytem of ships and travel, at levels humans could not gain access to.

“The Satrapy has a monopoly on the technology. Give us time and we’ll produce,” Nashara said. “We managed on Chimson after you shut us out.”

And even if it was true, the Satrapy was surely not going to destroy the Hongguo? No, this was targeted at anti-Satrapic elements. Dangerous humans. Angry humans. Troublesome humans.

The Hongguo and the habitats who worked with the Satrapy would continue on, as always…

He had won. He had a copy of her. Once he had a copy, he could work with it, maybe even to the point of getting it to help him against any other copies out there.

Backup lamina now surged into being.

“How the hell?” Nashara, audio only, sounded annoyed even through the fuzz of extremely low bandwidth connections. “Nothing but audio. You sealed me off.”

Etsudo cut his crew out of the loop and subvocalized his reponse through the lamina at her so only she could hear. “It’s illegal technology, yes. A gift from my father,” Etsudo said. “A device that allows me to upload minds into a controlled environment, simulate and rewrite their activity, and write the changes back.”

“Why does this seem familiar?” Nashara mused.

“You’re dangerous, but now I know how to protect myself. I do abhor needless violence, but I can’t have Deng rewrite my mind because he suspects I’m a traitor.”

“Etsudo, I’m getting a déjà vu feeling about this.” Then suddenly Nashara groaned. “You got into my head with this thing when I came aboard to interview, didn’t you? What did you do?”

“Just a memory wipe. And a little trust. You needed a little trust. Because I’m going to need your help, need you here as crew.” Another dangerous criminal to add to his motley collection.

Bahul and Fabiyan had remained silent for it all, just watching him.

“What now?”

Etsudo shut her off. Jiang Deng was screaming for his attention. When he tapped into the lamina, Deng appeared, his face cut and bruised, the screen filled with smoke.

“Get clear of the area,” Jiang Deng said. Three men in plain gray uniforms stood behind him. “The Wuxing Hao mutinied or is under outside control, they’re firing on us. We’re moving on to attack the craft.”

“I know about the takeovers,” Etsudo said. “We managed to resist. Deng, you can’t take this all on with one ship.”

Deng stepped forward quickly and raised an arm toward Etsudo. “Help me, please.”

The three men all stepped forward together at the same time and pulled Deng away. Deng screamed as he disappeared, then fell silent with a loud smack.

All three of the new feng turned to Etsudo and spoke together. “You are ordered to attack with us.”

Etsudo checked the Shengfen Hao’s flight path. “You’re crashing the Shengfen Hao into the craft?”

“You’re going to pay for this,” Nashara’s voice broke in. “This environment you have me trapped in better be nailed the fuck down, because if it isn’t, I’m going to worm through your security and rip your mind apart.”

“I’m serious and honest.” Etsudo looked outside as they dropped closer. The Shengfen Hao flashed through the inky dark, missiles hitting its hull. “I’m not a monster like that.”

“Etsudo…”

The Shengfen Hao hit the side of the alien craft and Etsudo flinched. His few remaining drones showed ripples spread out, along with a gout of flame and debris vomiting into space. All along the ragged gash white ribs held the rocky exterior on. The thing looked more grown than built, as if were some giant animal coaxed to grow into the form of a habitat-like spaceship.

Deng had gone to his death doing his duty. Would it be Etsudo’s soon? Deng had not gone to his death willingly.

“She’s broadcasting in Morse code with the ship’s lights!” Fabiyan said. They cut her off, stored her, frozen, for later investigation.

Etsudo sighed. “She probably warned them, didn’t she?” He’d had a good plan. Creating an anti-Nashara to negate any threat Nashara posed to the lamina of the forty-eight worlds.

“Here they come,” Bahul muttered.

Yes. And now the question was, could Etsudo outrun them back to the upstream wormhole?

It took fifteen minutes to determine that the Ragamuffin ship coming after them was gaining. Slowly, very slowly. But gaining.

“This the Magadog,” he was told. “Stand down to be boarded or get destroy. You choose.”

If he could get back to the wormhole, through the Ragamuffin security screen of chaff and mines, then he would have safety.

Hongguo ships were broadcasting their IDs as they streamed out and readied themselves. Support had started to arrive, and not a moment too soon, Etsudo thought.

The more chaos, the more ships, the more likely he could dodge attention, keep his head low, and slip back out toward the rest of the worlds.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Pepper stood in front of the clear curtain of goop as John helped Jerome slow Xippilli’s bleeding. A waste. A waste. And Pepper could tell John was having troubling wrapping his mind around it.

“That last impact?” John asked. “That whole ship. How bad was it?” The control room, buried safely deep in the heart of the Teotl’s nest ship, had vibrated and shaken for a full minute.

Metztli, still keeping well clear of the humans, said, “We lost many eggs, but not enough to damage our bloodlines. The nest is trying to repair itself, but our power source is failing. It is over. We need evacuation before the nest dies and kills us with it.” Metztli waved at the curtain and it showed chaos. Ripped ship, a massive gaping hole. Thankfully the Shengfen Hao had not hit straight on, or the nest would have broken in half.

But it was still a mortal blow.

“They rammed us with a whole ship. Who are these people?” John asked.

Pepper sighed. He should have been excited that some of the original founding members of the Black Starliner Corporation still lived, still guided the Ragamuffins out there. He should have been standing with John talking to old friends, old faces, trying to figure out what to do next.

This transit should have been good, damnit.

Pepper looked back at the dying Xippilli.

Malik, one of the ringleaders of the whole BSC project, grayed out ’fro and all, looked back at him.

“Mr. goddamn Andery,” Pepper said.

“Don Andery now, moving up. Pepper? You for real? I hardly believing my own eye here.”

“Damn straight. It’s good to see you.” So many years, distant memories.

Some disturbing ones. Malik and Pepper had fought the Teotl in the first war fiercely.

Malik turned offscreen, then back to Pepper. His skin turned a shade browner as the bio-goop he was projected from rippled. “Wish I could say similar, but you return complicate things, man.”

As if Pepper didn’t have a few things he was juggling himself. “Who’s attacking us? We need your protection.”

“The Hongguo. They turning weird, man. Weird. But that ship that hit you were the last for now.”

Pepper had no idea what the Hongguo were. But three hundred years meant a lot had changed. And now wasn’t the time to catch up. Not yet.

Another dim boom rippled through. Metztli whimpered. “Another breach…”

There wouldn’t be much left of the Teotl nest ship soon, Pepper realized. It was literally falling apart.

“Listen, Pepper, you evacuate in a suit, or pod, and we go pick you up, hear?” Malik said. “Just keep signaling.”

Pepper leaned closer to the sheet. “Malik, we have to protect this craft.”

“What you talking about?”

“This is advanced Teotl technology we have total access to own here.” Pepper turned to Metztli. “We have to tell them what this ship can do to wormholes if you want their help.”

Metztli held up a tentacle. “Wait.” It closed its eyes. “Okay, it will be allowed.”

Pepper face forward. “Malik, we can close and reopen wormholes with it, if you capture it. Malik, I don’t know what numbers you have for an attack, but get every ship you can over here.”

“Pepper…” Malik looked down. “Three century I ain’t seen you. You asking me to walk into the heart of a Teotl megaship like this?”

“Yes.” Pepper stared at him.

Malik shook his head. “You the big man. I go trust you on this. But only because it’s you, you hear? And Monifa of the Pride go skin me.”

“Get the ships over here,” Pepper said. “Get the captains over here for a grounation and board us. There is a docking bay at the center of the forward axis we came in at.” It was zero g, and they weren’t accelerating.

“Anything else?”

“Bring me guns,” Pepper said. “Lots of guns.”

Malik spread his hands in an “of course” gesture.

“And watch out for the Azteca, they’re probably going to be somewhat jumpy,” Pepper said.

“Azteca?” Malik asked. “What the hell you talking about?”

“We’ll explain when you get aboard,” Pepper said.

Metztli watched the curtain of goop fade to translucence. “I live to see the end of my race.”

“No.” Pepper looked at the alien “I called a grounation. Our captains will be there, or at least near enough to talk and to discuss what happens next. We need your help with your technology, and you’ll have a chance to speak your piece to them all. Take good advantage of it, but realize most of these ship captains will be somewhat antagonistic. Your cousins waged war on them, and there are many who will remember it.”

“Thank you,” Metztli said.

There was no favor being done. Pepper intended to own the Teotl craft now. The Teotl had nothing but their technology to stand on for bargaining.

“So now we should make our way out to the docking bays, meet the captains there,” Pepper said.

“We need to get Xippilli on a stretcher of some sort,” John said. “If we can get him aboard one of the ships, we can probably still save him.”

Ah, Jerome, Pepper thought, letting himself shake his head. A man, and yet still not quite in control of the mess in his own head.

He couldn’t stop thinking of Jerome as the young kid he’d first met at carnival and rescued from the Azteca so long ago.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Jerome helped Pepper strap Xippilli onto a length of sturdy, weblike material that stiffened into a stretcher. Metztli had one of the dangerous spiked-skin Teotl deliver it, and with a smile Pepper kept his rifle trained on the Teotl until it left.

“Metztli.” Pepper held up the button in his hand. “Your head if you play with me on this trip to the docking bays.”

“No tricks. Our lives are in your hands.”

Xippilli groaned as John and Jerome lifted him up, and Pepper walked ahead behind Metztli and his snaillike chair.

The odd procession left the control room for the corridors, taking tunnels known to be secure and airtight.

It took the better part of a slow hour to get to the elevators leading to the bays. They all piled in, and Jerome relaxed.

In the tunnels he’d been waiting for an attack. By Azteca under Teotl control, or by one of the dangerous Teotl.

Now it was just Metztli, still collared.

And the dying man. Jerome knelt and checked the cloth tied down across Xippilli’s stomach.

What a horrible thing.

His stomach flip-flopped as he felt himself grow lighter. Jerome looked around the elevator, windowless and claustrophobic. “I feel funny,” he said.

“We’re getting to the center of the nest,” Metztli explained. “Closer to the center, the spin doesn’t create gravity. We float.”

“Ah.”

And as Metztli predicted, Jerome found himself bouncing off the floor and feeling dizzy.

Globules of blood broke free from Xippilli’s bandages and floated in the air between them all.

“They actually go be able to help him?” Jerome asked again. “Maybe,” John said. “Maybe.”

Metztli ripped his collar off so quicky Jerome didn’t realize what had happened. Pepper spun and kicked off the roof, dodging Metztli’s attempt to place the collar around Pepper’s neck.

“Damn it.” John pulled a pistol free from its holster, but in the close quarters Metztli had him beat, a free tentacle snapping out to grab the gun.

Jerome shrank back, pulling Xippilli’s stretcher with him and trying not to bounce off the wall toward them as he did so.

Metztli filled the whole center of the elevator, tentacles writhing as Pepper tried to overpower it. “If you keep struggling, the gold tips contain neurotoxins deadly to humans, and I will use them,” Metztli hissed. “Now that I finally have freedom, I can act to better serve my kind. Do not forget our desperation today.”

Everyone froze. Metztli’s gold-tipped tentacles hovered a hair’s breadth away from all their necks.

“I always wondered why tentacles,” Pepper said.

“Zero-gravity self-defense is more practical in this physical form,” Metztli said.

“More to you than I suspected.” Pepper looked somewhat bemused.

“Different forms for different purposes,” Metztli whispered. “I need you all under my control, to bargain with. Your leaders might choose to save you and leave us for dead. I cannot watch my kind die. Your life seems valuable to these humans we’ve encountered.”

“That’s fair. I understand you.” Pepper kept his hands out. The two stared at each other. Jerome tensed. This would be it.

The elevator shuddered to a stop.

“Get out,” Metztli ordered. Jerome looked back and forth at the two, then started to try to move the stretcher out. Metztli twisted its torso and looked at Jerome. “No, leave him.”

Jerome turned back. “We can’t. He dying.”

“He’s useless and a waste of resources. We don’t need it to control the Azteca, leave the body.”

“No.” Jerome wrapped his arms around the stretcher. He’d shot the man. That was a beef between humans. The aliens would not be doing any killing, they did not rule everyone as they thought.

Metztli snapped a tentacle in Xippilli’s direction and Jerome flinched.

“Oh, shit,” John said.

Jerome looked down. A small puncture in Xippilli’s neck released a tiny pinprick of blood into the air.

“No, no.” Jerome twisted around and stared at Metztli. “I don’t understand.”

“Jerome.” Pepper shook his head. “Don’t.”

Jerome had thought he’d started to understand the Teotl somewhat. Understand what horror they’d faced fleeing through the wormhole. Sympathized.

But now Jerome felt anger bubble. He shoved the stretcher forward at Metztli, bracing his feet on the doorjambs. Creatures. Foul, disgusting creatures. Manipulative killers.

“There has to be a cure,” Jerome shouted, as Metztli wrapped its tentacles around Xippilli and rotated in the air, throwing Xippilli and the stretcher against the wall and flying into Jerome while dragging Pepper along in the air like a puppet.

The impact knocked the air out of Jerome.

Metztli wrapped a tentacle around Jerome’s neck while holding onto the doorjamb with another tentacle for leverage.

“Jerome, do not do anything,” John said.

Jerome hung in the air with Pepper, breathing hard. They always looked out for him. His dad and Pepper. Even risking their lives for his mistakes.

Now Pepper was a hostage and at risk, and if the creature could kill Xippilli as casually as it had, it might well kill John for being not as valuable as Pepper.

It was time for Jerome to create an opportunity. Time to right things.

He screamed and twisted, snatching the collar out of the air and opening it. He managed to get around the raised tentacle and pushed the collar hard against Metztli’s face. It cut deep into the Teotl’s flesh and left eye, but as Metztli thrashed, the collar sliced into Jerome’s hand. His thumb floated free with a burst of blood.

Jerome felt a quick, stabbing prick on the side of his neck.

Pepper hit the Teotl in the head, a crunching punch that Jerome could almost feel.

Fire ran down his chest and into his stomach. His eyes blurred from the immediate rush of pain.

“I’m sorry,” Jerome told his dad. “I’m really sorry.”

Metztli hung in the air, knocked out or hopefully dead, tentacles limp, as John grabbed Jerome.

Jerome tried to say something else, but already his jaw had locked, and he could only see his father’s face as John leaned in.

John squeezed Jerome’s hand as he convulsed, looking around in confusion. Tears welled up and drifted free of John’s eyes.

“Pepper, kill that piece of shit.” John looked over to his side. “Kill that thing now.”

Jerome wanted to apologize, to hope they’d be okay.

And maybe it would be. People coming out of the wormholes had incredible skills. They might yet save both him and Xippilli, and Jerome would fall asleep and wake up somewhere nice and clean, well rested, fixed, several days from now.

Yes, that would be nice, he thought.

Very nice.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Pepper watched Jerome’s last spasm and bit his tongue until he tasted salty blood.

John looked at him, tears still leaking.

“Not yet,” Pepper said, hating himself. “We need Metztli.”

“Why? What the hell do we need that thing for?”

Being the calm one, eyes on the prize, really stank right now. “Because we need this ship, John.”

“Fuck them.”

“John…” Pepper didn’t have words. He moved over, grabbed John’s head, and touched his forehead to his old friend’s. “We bring… the body… with us. We take care of things, like we always do. Right?”

John nodded slightly.

“Okay. We take care of things first.”

John looked up. “I hate that calm you have.”

Pepper tilted his head. “Okay. But just get your son, let’s move on. There is time for grief later.”

John pulled away with a sob and grabbed Jerome’s body, which Pepper looked away from.

Grief.

There’d be a reckoning later. A full reckoning. Pepper pulled the Teotl closely.

These aliens, with their focus on adaptive personal engineering and sublimation of self to the greater good, were effective and dangerous. Ultimate survivors. They communicated and made you think of them as human. Words.

But they weren’t human.

No.

Or at least, not human enough to realize that John and Pepper would not easily put this behind them.

Deep, slow breaths.

Then he yanked the collar out of the unconscious Teotl’s face and pocketed that. Jerome had shown quick thinking, there. He’d done good. Stayed on his feet. Pepper admired that in a person. Jerome had been a young man with a mess for a past, but had pulled through and been dumped into a bizarre situation.

They should have left him on the planet, but even then, the chance was high Jerome would have been hunted down by some Azteca and sacrificed.

Pepper looked down at the Teotl.

When the time was right, being half-blind would be the least of this particular creature’s troubles. That he vowed. That he would not forget, this moment, these feelings.

Chapter Fifty

Nashara used drones and ships to create a detailed update to the world around them as she approached the crippled craft hanging a third of the way between the two wormholes.

“That one Hongguo ship is still just sitting still outside the upstream wormhole,” Cascabel said.

“The Datang Hao.” Nashara looked down at the scale model of their environment. The tiny tube hung nestled deep in the Ragamuffin shield. “Something important’s on it.”

“Something that could force a large, military ship like the Shengfen Hao to…” Cascabel waved and a ghostlike image of the gutted destruction appeared in the lamina before them. A long trail of debris hung out behind the alien craft, spewing out from large gashes in the hull. “Like it did the people aboard that habitat.”

The image faded away. “There must be a Satrap there.”

Piper joined them. Each version of herself was taking to wearing different clothes. And hairstyles as well: Cascabel had dreadlocks. Piper had kept a close-cropped military fade. “Most of my occupants are sealed within the bay docks, they’re trying to negotiate with me now, rather than try to shut the Wuxing Hao down.”

Nashara hadn’t thought about that. Piper had been firing on the Shengfen Hao and also trying to fight the Hongguo from within.

“I’m worried about Cayenne on the Takara Bune,” Piper said. They all were, but Piper had accelerated the Wuxing Hao up above them to try to catch up to the upstream wormhole since the engagement.

The acceleration had also served to pin her crew down until they’d agreed to cease their attempts to shut the lamina down and kill Piper in the process. Tidy.

Hell hath no fury like a Nashara, Nashara thought.

“The warning didn’t say anything much,” Piper said. “We’re not sure if she’s fighting with the crew, or dead, or captured. If captured, I’d hate to think of what is happening. I like Etsudo, but something about this is making me feel really uncomfortable.”

“I agree.” Cascabel nodded. “But Magadog is moving to help out with the Duppy Conqueror close behind, and we can use either ship’s communications as a relay point to help Cayenne once they do their work. Joining in, that’s a waste of a powerful ship.”

Piper considered that for a second. There was one last thing left that Nashara wanted to try. Would her twinned self want to do it as well? “Then I want to try for the upstream wormhole. There are going to be a lot of Hongguo coming through, maybe more Satraps. If we get cut off, or destroyed, my being on the other side may help send warning to other humans. The girl did say this was a genocide, not just Raga-cide.”

Nashara nodded. She’d come to the same conclusion. The word had to get out before Hongguo poured out of the wormhole. “Get everyone off your ship.”

“I’m working on it,” Piper said.

The Wuxing Hao began to speed up, moving into higher, faster orbit to overtake the upstream wormhole. An almost suicidal run, but if anyone could do it, she could.

Cascabel and Nashara turned back to each other as the Toucan Too slowly tapped the massive curve of hull before them.

Nashara popped her request for a mobile device with a high bandwidth communications array and lamina projection out to the Ragamuffins.

They replied that they would be able to set something up for her particular needs.

A large tender, the Cornell West, had made several stops at the large Ragamuffin ships patrolling the wormhole. There had been just a few terse messages back and forth with the ancient Ragamuffins aboard the alien craft. The cylindrical bulks of the Starfunk Ayatollah and Xamayca Pride already jutted from the docking bays.

A grounation would be held aboard the alien craft. And there would be enough Ragamuffin troops to solve any problems that might arise.

Nashara followed the Cornell West in and docked. She watched the outer cameras as muscular organic clams rose out of the walls to hold the ship in place.

Then waited for the bay to seal itself and pressurize.

Several Raga waited outside for her. They towed with them a large, silver, oblong sphere on oversize wheels for gravity and acceleration situations, tiny jets on the side for weightless areas.

They had large guns. Recoilless.

Nashara smiled and dumped a piece of lamina into the mobile unit. Several dishes and a whip antenna rose up as she began to test it. It puffed jets of air to move forward.

“Thank you,” she said. Her physical body didn’t have the raw signal power and bandwidth between the ship and itself once too far from the Toucan Too. With the mobile unit she could bridge that gap and use her body outside.

Without the mobile unit, her body would stop. Without careful adjustments, her heart rate would flutter wildly, until it died. And Nashara would remain in the ship, wondering what had happened.

“It’s good,” Nashara said. “I’m ready.” At the center of the alien craft they all hung in the air. The two Ragamuffins turned and pushed their way off down a long shaft, and Nashara followed them. They moved along the center for several hundred yards, until finally they stopped. A massive plug or rock rolled aside, and Nashara stepped into a room of captains and strangers.

She recognized Don Andery floating above the table and shook his hand. Monifa Kaalid nodded. A handful of what looked like other highly placed Raga had come in with the Cornell West. Enough to make any decisions at this grounation stand for the all the Raga involved in this.

Twenty mongoose-men from Ragamuffin ships hung in a circle around the room, guarding exits and looking wary.

She moved in front of the other man she recognized. The gray eyes and the dreads. Yes. Nashara held out a hand. This was Pepper. It was like an electric shock, shaking his hand.

“And you are?”

“Nashara. Nashara Capsicum.” She shook his hand, watching the frown at her name. “It’s good to meet you finally, Grandpa.”

In the pin-drop silence that followed, Nashara smiled and moved on, looking down at a man who crouched next to a body of a young man, maybe just over twenty.

A loss and a shame.

And next to him one of the alien Teotl floated. It had a slashed trunklike face and was missing a tentacle. “What’s with this one?”

“He speaks for the Teotl,” Pepper said. The grounation began to form a ball of people, all facing each other in the air. He moved closer to her, long dreadlocks floating above the collar of a cumbersome trench coat. “Are you really my granddaughter? Wouldn’t I have to have had a daughter to have had a granddaughter?”

“I’m a second removed clone of you.” Nashara twisted to look at him.

“Female though. When the Raga lost you behind the wormhole to New Anegada, they created several clones of you.”

“Why?”

“You have something of a reputation,” she told Pepper. “But mostly it was for your DNA. My superiors cloned me and several brothers and sisters. We were fitted with technology dangerous to the Satrapy and sent to get back to New Anegada and give it to you all for your use. Our DNA profile would be something the Raga here would know about and know that were truly what we claimed to be.”

“The Satrapy?” Pepper seemed hung up on that. “The Gahe and Nesaru used that term to describe their alliance, but you all seem to use it differently now.”

“You went and hid deep in the wormholes, well out of contact to create New Anegada. We know there was little communication, just a small bit of trade. The Satrapy hid deep behind the Gahe and Nesaru; even now it still tries to hide behind the Hongguo. But they were there. We are all just their puppets, except for Earth, New Anegada, and Chimson.”

“Three hundred years.” Pepper shrugged.

Nashara grabbed his arm. “Exactly. Look, the main reason I’m here now is because the Teotl know how to reopen wormholes. I want to go back home, to Chimson, and I’ll do whatever I can to help if that’s something we think can be done. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been back to my home.”

“I can understand that.” Pepper still stared at her with a bemused expression.

She turned to face the mass of people. It was time to start this thing. “I have a couple questions. For one, does this thing really reopen wormholes, and two, what do we do next?”

“Good questions,” Pepper said. “Ask the Teotl about the first.”

The alien twisted slowly. “Yes,” it whispered. “But we need more power sources, more antimatter fuel, in order to achieve such results. It is a very expensive process, and we will not share it with you unless we have some guarantees about our safety first. Particularly since this nest is about to fall apart.”

“Teotl,” snorted an older, yellow-skinned captain who’d come in on the Cornell West. “We had fight you long enough back in the day, and now we got you. You go take what we give you, and it go be fair.”

“Seen,” a pair of Ragamuffins over in the corner said. “

Do not trust the Teotl,” the man against the wall with the dead body growled. “Be very careful of their promises.”

And so the grounation began as the Ragamuffin leaders deliberated what to do next.

Cascabel appeared, but only to Nashara. “Nashara, Piper wanted me to pass something on to you.”

Nashara paused and peered into a new model of the area around the upstream wormhole. The Datang Hao had started to retreat back through the wormhole.

But other Hongguo ships were coming through.

The grounation would have to hurry up. The clock was ticking.

Chapter Fifty-One

Pepper watched the grounation struggle toward a consensus.

“It insane,” Ras Malik snapped. “After all the Teotl gone and done here, and they want protection?” Pepper was content to feel for people’s positions. He racked his memory for faces, trying to remember the opinions and beliefs and experiences.

“We go need they technology,” Don Andery pointed out.

“We take it,” Ras Malik said.

They wanted to move the Ragamuffins into Nanagada. They wanted control of the Teotl technology. They weren’t interested in helping the Teotl. But much of the Ragamuffin home base in this system relied on mines drilled into asteroids, a single cobbled-together habitat, and docks for the ships. Those couldn’t be moved to Nanagada, and there was no guarantee that the Hongguo would shut down the upstream wormhole only. If they pushed the Ragamuffins back and shut down the downstream wormhole, everyone would be split again.

Pepper pointed out that still left them at risk. The New Anegada downstream wormhole had Teotl’s former masters on the other side, masters that sounded awfully like the mind-controlling Satraps Nashara had described in an aside.

Pepper looked up as a far-off explosion echoed down through the ship.

“We die while you argue.” Metztli shook a plain tentacle in frustration. Pepper had taken all the tips off. The Teotl insisted on being a part of the grounation, speaking for its people.

It wasn’t out of nobility. Pepper suspected that Metztli was in bad shape and hanging on by a thread, and that Metztli was the only specialized type left that could speak for the whole nest. The others had probably died in the impact. Pepper felt an even deeper hint of desperation from the alien.

And the creature was right. Pepper looked over at John, quiet and huddled near the wall, still grieving.

“Well, we can’t stand against all them Hongguo that coming down to that upstream wormhole,” Dread Caine said. He’d arrived on the Cornell West, and his soft voice drew attention to him as effectively as raising his voice could. “So fighting to stay here ain’t go work. I agree, we evacuate and let them push we back into New Anegada, and we take these Teotl on all the ship. With them technology, we might hold New Anegada against whatever go come through or maybe reopen this wormhole again.”

Pepper twitched. He wasn’t going to be trapped again for centuries more.

“Hey.” One of the Raga pulled a machine gun up and flicked the safety.

Pepper pushed over, and in the doorway floated one of the Azteca warriors, next to a Teotl like Metztli, tentacles wrapped around the doorjamb.

A bipedal Teotl floated behind them.

“There are one hundred and fifty-seven Azteca with us, five of us,” the new Teotl said.

“As I said,” Metztli announced from behind Pepper. “We want assurances.”

The Raga could take them. Recoilless rifles and more experience in zero gravity than the Azteca. Modern mongoose-men versus Azteca with rifles here in orbit.

But the Teotl might even that out. It would be bloody, Pepper decided.

Another dim explosion.

The alien craft was going to rip itself apart as they argued. Safeties clicked off all throughout the room.

Chapter Fifty-Two

The Azteca had stormed in and surrounded the conference room. The new Teotl shouted demands for written contracts and promises. The aliens’ world was falling apart, and so had John’s.

He’d been staying out of it, waiting to leave it all with his son’s body. Ready to run and let Pepper do his thing, be in his element.

For Pepper, John would wait to kill Metztli. He owed him that much.

The woman, Nashara, stiffened. “Incoming! Everyone,” she shouted, her voice amplified and booming from the mobile unit next to her. “Everyone grab something!”

The world exploded in debris around John. Thundering filled his whole world that screamed up and down his range of hearing until something popped and went silent. Hot white light filled the doorway and then faded away.

He drifted, watching silent screams until a large piece of rock smacked him in the head and he spun away from the wall, bleeding.

Nashara grabbed him using a mechanical claw on the mobile unit. It puffed its way through air to her dragging him with it.

“You okay?” Her lips didn’t move. “Your eardrums are blown.”

“I’m okay.” John looked around, dazed. “How am I hearing you?”

“I’m talking to you through the lamina.”

“Lamina?”John mouthed. “You mean data overlays?”

“Yes. I’m drilling straight in. I’ll let you listen in through the mobile unit if you want.”

He looked at her, impressed.

“Air’s getting low.” Nashara left him and grabbed Metztli from the middle of the air. “Can you fix the leaks?”

“Fix? Fix? The nest is falling apart,” the Teotl screamed.

Jerome’s body had floated free, eyes staring out at nothing. John gritted his teeth and turned. “Who the hell did this?”

Nashara looked over the mobile unit at him, face pulled into a grimace. Blood hung in the air in globules, leaking from scratches as people were flung into walls. “We’ve got Hongguo ships coming out of the upstream wormhole, looks like one of them snuck a missile or two through at us.”

John looked at the captains. “None of your ships caught that?”

“It won’t happen again,” one of them said. “We see how they jam it.”

John looked at Nashara, some of the things she’d been explaining to the grounation coming back through the haze. “And you saw it because you’re in the lamina, spreading out through other ships, wherever you can grab processing power, right?”

“I’ve taken over a Hongguo ship, the Wuxing Hao. That version of me picked up on the trick and passed back a warning.”

They had a ship of the enemy’s. “What are you doing with that ship?”

“Trying to run the Hongguo blockade. Warn the rest of humanity.” Nashara shrugged. “They deserve a chance to fight back as well.”

Fight back. Nashara looked frustrated sitting around waiting. They’d been talking about running for Nanagada. Cutting losses. Even Pepper had joined in, looking resigned to the idea but annoyed.

John looked around at bleeding Ragamuffins, still facing off against the Azteca despite the disruption.

Fuck running.

“Metztli tells us this ‘nest’ is unsalvageable.” John faced the alien. “You can try and force us around with the Azteca here and we rip each other apart and you become extinct. Or you can work with us and live.”

“You lie to us, you betray us,” Metztli said. “How can we trust you?”

“It cuts both ways,” Pepper said, before John could snap something else out. “You have to start somewhere. Besides, you and I both know you won’t make it out alive if you fire the first shot, and I’m pretty sure I will walk out of here alive no matter what choice you make.”

Metztli seemed to droop in the air. It waved a tentacle, and the other Teotl barked something out in Nahautl. The Azteca pointed their rifles away, many of them looking relieved.

“These Hongguo are coming through, but how are they going to close the wormhole?” John asked.

“A machine, the Gulong,” Nashara told him.

“So we’ve lost the Teotl machine, we’re threatened by the Hongguo, we need to take the offensive and capture the Gulong and hold it to keep the Hongguo away. Then we can negotiate. Until then we’re going to be showing them our backs as we try to organize a fighting retreat? That is how people die, they’ll hunt us down and scatter us. No. I’m not interested in that. How many of these ships do they have?”

“Just the one.”

Pepper moved over to John and put a hand on his shoulder. “We go for the Hongguo? We hold that wormhole and that ship while Raga evacuate to Nanagada, and if we lose that position, we fall back to this wormhole.”

“We take control of this,” John said, looking at all the faces.

“A vote, now,” said one of the captains. “We go lose people trying to board the Gulong, but if we can hold it…” Nods spread around the gathering of captains.

The grounation was done.

A vote was called, and Pepper shook John in midair as the captains weighed in. John grabbed his forearm and held on tight to it. “I’m okay, Pepper.”

“We’ll get… the body in a pod.” Pepper looked to his side at it, then back to John. “Then we take control of this situation. And when it’s done, then we’ll grieve properly.”

Nashara joined the impromptu huddle. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said to John.

“Thank you,” John muttered.

Nashara looked out at the gathering. “It may not come to a physical boarding. I may be able to infiltrate the Gulong. If it has lamina, I would like to take that ship.”

“Less casualties, and we have it as a weapon, I like that,” John said.

The vote finished, captains were sending messages back to their ships to prepare them to hold Azteca warriors and Teotl, and for others to start preparing plans for the attack.

Already simulations would be tested out, heads put together.

“John, Pepper.” Nashara grabbed both their arms. “You may want to stay on one of the larger ships, but you are welcome aboard the Toucan Too. We’re not armed, but we’re quick.”

John nodded. “Away from the Teotl and off here, yes, I’ll come. Pepper?”

“I think I’ll split us up and get on the Duppy Conqueror. Old friends there, I know the layout. That ship’s going to take on a bunch of the Teotl, and I want to keep an eye on them.”

“That makes sense.” John let go of Pepper’s forearm. “Be safe.”

“We’ll see each other again soon enough.” Pepper smiled.

“Soon.”

“Let’s move,” Nashara said. “Air levels are falling and I want to be out and ready to move, we’ve turned into sitting ducks all docked here.”

John floated away with Nashara.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Someone rapped on the hull of the Toucan Too. Kara looked around, wondering what to do. Nashara had left without saying anything; Ijjy lay sedated, eyes drooping.

The banging intensified.

Cascabel appeared in front of Kara. “Nashara didn’t tell you what was going on, did she?”

“No.” Kara was getting her head around the Cascabel/Nashara divide.

“There are friends at the air lock, they want to pick up you, your brother, and Ijjy and take them to get medical help.”

“But what about the attacks?”

“The Xamayca Pride is going to act as a flagship, it won’t directly join the fighting. From there they will also be able to transfer you out by tender to the other Ragamuffin hiding places in the system. It will be the safest place for you. There’s no room for you in the ship that’s going back right now, but there will be on a second trip, and you can join Ijjy and Jared there.”

Ijjy looked up. “I ain’t going. Let the girl go.”

“Ijjy, you are no shape to stay on. She’ll be fine here until the Cornell West returns for the second run, or we can drop her off ourselves when Nashara comes back from the grounation.”

Kara nodded. “Ijjy, please, get yourself looked at.” She could wait easily enough.

“You sure?” Ijjy looked at her.

“Very sure.” She really, really wanted to go with Jared. But Ijjy had risked his life for her and been hurt as a result. She could not let him stay here.

“Okay then.” Cascabel walked over to Ijjy. Since everything was weightless, it was odd to watch her stepping along the cockpit as if it had gravity. It just made the fact the Cascabel was a simulation hit home. “I’m going let the Raga in, okay?”

Kara nodded again, pleased to be included. Distant machinery whined, and the sound of boots clanked through the ship.

“Hello?” A heavily muscled man with silver eyes leaned into the cockpit. “I’m Dr. Aiken.”

“Hi.” Kara released her grip on the chair and floated over to Ijjy. “This is Ijjy, and my brother, Jared, is in another room. They both need to go with you.”

“Okay.” Two more men hung behind him, and a pair of women.

Ijjy coasted out toward them, and one of the men split off, towing Ijjy out toward the air lock.

The women both carried large machine guns, and they stared at Kara with silvered eyes that reflected and flashed light back at her.

Kara led them down to the room. “Is it safe to take him out of the pod?”

“No.” Dr. Aiken drifted over, looking at the pod. “Too dangerous.”

He nodded his head, and they moved to release the pod.

“Its battery life should keep everything going until we get back aboard the Xamayca. Fluids are low, almost out, but we can compensate.”

Once they’d pulled it free, they held the pod between them, quickly shepherding it out toward the lock. Kara followed closely and at the lock put her hand on the surface, looking down at Jared.

She’d be back with him soon.

It would be okay, she silently promised him.

She snagged the edge of the air lock and stopped drifting with the group.

“We’ll take good care of him,” the doctor said, turning to face her as one of the Ragamuffins fired compressed air from a waistpack to speed them onward. They seemed in a hurry.

The air lock sealed shut, and Cascabel stood upside down on the roof behind Kara, startling Kara as she turned.

“We need to get back to the cockpit and strapped in.”

“What’s going on?”

“Incoming missiles.” Cascabel saw the look on Kara’s face. “Jared will be fine. The missiles will head for us, the West will be clear and headed for the Xamayca long before they are a problem.”

Relief. Kara followed Cascabel back.

“How long do we have?”

“Minutes now. And the Cornell West is clear and accelerating.” Cascabel cocked her head. “Okay, Monifa says we won’t get any direct hits near docking, they’re chaffing the area pretty hard to draw the missiles away.”

Distant shivers and thuds made their way through the Toucan Too’s hull. “That was still bad, though,” Kara said. “If we can feel it.”

Cascabel moved to touch Kara’s shoulder, then pulled her hand back as her fingertips slipped through, instead of resting on, Kara. “We’re evacuating it all. And the captains here are calling for us to start attacking back.”

The thuds continued.

“That was close,” Kara said.

“Yeah.”

“Nashara—wait, I’m sorry, Cascabel—be honest. Are you worried?”

“Flying through the remains of this thing when it falls apart will be messy. The attack will be messy. But I think it’s our best chance.”

Another near strike loosened some debris that softly struck the left side of the Toucan Too.

But Cascabel said she wasn’t worried. And Kara was going to do her best not to as well.

Chapter Fifty-Four

The Wuxing Hao, which Etsudo suspected of being taken over by Nashara, had passed well beneath them on a tighter, lower orbit. It didn’t seem concerned with him at all.

He then watched it climb into a higher orbit, letting the upstream wormhole and its cloud of chaff and drones and Hongguo ships catch up to it. Now it was ducking and weaving its way toward the wormhole, explosions blossoming around it.

The Ragamuffin ship behind the Wuxing Hao, however, was concerned with him. The Magadog fired its first missile spread now that it had gotten within range. Once again, it called for Etsudo to slow down for it or be destroyed.

Etsudo drummed his fingers, checking simulations in the lamina, and realizing the cold truth. “I think I may have put us in a bad spot,” he said.

His crew didn’t say anything back. Bahul, Fabiyan, Michiko, and Brandon all looked at him as if not quite hearing what he was saying.

Etsudo continued, “I’m going to stop accelerating and let you all get out in pods. Fire your emergency beacons. I’ll continue running. I know some of you might wait to light up your beacons until Ragamuffins rescue you, I understand that. I know Hongguo might try, but remember, most likely they’ll wipe your minds. Just keep that thought before you light up.”

He cut thrust and watched the missiles gain.

Bahul floated over and shook his hand. “Be safe, Captain. Be safe.” Then he kicked off with Michiko and Fabiyan, who did not even look back.

Etsudo remained strapped in and shut his eyes. He watched the deadly points of light that represented a certain death get closer.

The Takara Bune shook as the pods left and streaked away.

Brandon came back and strapped in.

“You’re staying?” Etsudo looked over, disappointed. Of all his crew, he did not need Brandon aboard.

“You think it so easy to betray the Hongguo.” Brandon settled in. “You tried to get rid of those who would keep an eye of what you are about to do.”

“Three minutes to impact,” Etsudo said.

Brandon leaned his head back against the rest, which molded itself around his head. “You’re going to hand her the ship?”

“Who else will call the Ragamuffins off?”

“And will you be able to regain control?” Brandon asked.

“No, she’s too good.” In a way it was a relief. Soon Brandon would know his secret, and Nashara would be able to spread it all over. “Bit-based SOS with our ship’s lights, that was something else.”

“Do you think they’ll kill us?”

“I don’t know.” Etsudo looked at Brandon. He didn’t have time to try to get him off the ship. Whatever happened next, happened. Brandon was bucking the changes Etsudo had made and would soon cause trouble.

He’d have to deal with that when it happened. “Nashara, in two and a half minutes missiles from your Ragamuffins will hit us. They’re chasing us. We are in your hands, Nashara.”

And Etsudo handed his ship over to her.

The ship jinked as Nashara took control. The acceleration shoved Etsudo to the brink of blackout, but then it stopped.

“First of all, call me Cayenne, not Nashara. It’ll just be easier,” she said, her voice echoing through the entire ship.

“Cayenne? Like the pepper?” Etsudo asked.

“Exactly. Okay. What other surprises do you have, Etsudo?”

“I’m out.”

Nashara, no, Cayenne, appeared in front of him. “I doubt it, but let’s put that aside for a moment.”

“I apologize,” Etsudo said. And meant it.

He couldn’t see anything anymore, she had taken over all lamina, but inside he had counted the seconds to impact.

Time was up.

Nothing happened. Etsudo let out a long breath, glad to be alive.

“If you move,” Cayenne said, “I’ll accelerate so fast the blood will drain out of your head, and then I’ll spin this ship until you literally fall apart.”

“I expected no less,” Etsudo said softly.

“Just so that we’re on the same page.”

Etsudo nodded. “I understand.”

“I’m talking to the Raga. They’re a bit jumpy and we have to keep our distance. But your timing is perfect, Etsudo. We’re gearing up to attack the Hongguo. Apparently we want the Gulong.” Cayenne grinned in front of them. It was clear she approved.

Brandon and Etsudo looked at each other. Brandon’s lip curled. He did not like this, his strong loyalties were unbreakable, but at least he kept quiet.

Cayenne flickered for a moment, looking, Etsudo thought, slightly distraught. “Oh, shit, Piper… ,” Cayenne said to herself, then flickered away, leaving the two men alone in the cockpit with nothing to look at but each other.

This was even more dangerous than Etsudo had suspected. Without the Gulong, the Hongguo were almost toothless. If they lost the Gulong, what would the Satrapy think?

And if they want far enough, and the news spread all throughout the Satrapy, what would become of the Satraps?

As others sensed weakness, order might be destroyed. Old injustices still rankled many, even among the Gahe and Nesaru living under the Satrapy.

It would mean worlds-wide chaos.

And maybe, Etsudo thought, freedom from the Satraps. A delicious and treasonous thought. Could the Ragamuffins actually pull that off?

Chapter Fifty-Five

Pepper had acquired one of the nice recoilless machine guns the Ragamuffins carried. It was snub-nosed and easy to hang off a strap.

“This some ill stuff,” Don Andery said. Several Azteca and Raga moved large, fibrous husks of cocoons through into the Cornell West. “Teotl on board Raga ships.”

Metztli hung over the bay doors, directing.

Pepper nodded at the procession of unformed Teotl waiting to be hatched. “We split them up, different ships. Reduces concentrated strength.”

“So they have we all infiltrate now. We all vulnerable.”

“You’re moving them to ships waiting out on the periphery,” Pepper said. “The higgler ships.”

“Dangerous. They still dangerous. What happen that you so soft on them?”

Pepper didn’t bother replying to that. Soft. Right.

If Andery and his crew didn’t see the potential to squeeze useful technology out of the Teotl, Pepper wasn’t interested in baby-stepping Andery through it.

Just rehashing arguments anyway. As a founder of the Black Starliner Corporation, Pepper still had considerable power within a grounation. Besides, they’d all voted. It was time to get on with it.

“The Azteca go through first,” Pepper said. “They’re the more unreliable part of the equation.” Warriors with a barely Copernican knowledge of the world fighting in zero g, who knew what went through their minds. Dragged from the ground to orbit and from ship to ship.

He was surprised how calmly they were taking it. Each Azteca had pinned a sick bag to his hip. The one thing they couldn’t adjust to with a quick snap was space sickness.

“Attacking the Gulong.” Don Andery stared off at the polished rock walls.

“At the least”—Pepper smiled—“we’ll be remembered.” He’d been hemmed in again. Destroying or capturing the Gulong might give him a way back out.

“We go be remember as bobo idiot them, not hero,” Andery said. “The point of battle ain’t to die for no glorious cause, but make you enemy to die for theirs. Some old friend had tell me that once.”

Pepper folded his arms. “Old friend, you had hours to make a case in the grounation. It isn’t my fault your imagination isn’t up to the task of coming up with anything better.”

Metztli, for all his wounds, moved from pillar to pillar and helped move Teotl eggs. Pepper noted every twitch and move of the Teotl. Every tentacle flip, filed away in the back of his head.

“Fuck you. No reason to be hackling me.”

“Get a pod, or shuttle, and try and run for it somewhere, Don Andery. Just leave Starfunk Ayatollah for us to fight with.”

“I ain’t no yellow-belly,” Andery protested.

“You’re the one causing botheration about all this.”

“Ain’t no botheration,” Andery groused. “Just talking.”

“I’m done talking,” Pepper said.

Metztli left to go deeper into the nest for more eggs.

“You want to come aboard the Ayatollah for the attack?”

“Getting aboard Duppy Conqueror,” Pepper said. He moved closer to Andery. “Someone said Earth cut off, before it happen to us, we had heard rumors. The last ships the company sent came back empty.”

Andery shook his head. “Was part of the Emancipation agreement. Freedom, but Earth was cut off, yeah.”

“I see.” That was like a sucker punch. Pepper blinked and looked around.

“Look. I got to go bunks, me rest now.” Andery drifted away.

A good idea, catching a nap now while things still were spinning up for the assault.

And Earth was once more beyond his reach. Pepper looked down at his dirty boots and swore.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Nashara helped John add his son to the other bodies headed out with Teotl cocoons to the other ships.

He stood there until the dock alarms sounded.

“Come on,” Nashara pulled him back through the chaos of the docks using the mobile unit, to the Toucan Too. Teotl cocoons festooned the floor, with the fifteen warrior Teotl still alive guarding several of the larger units.

Inside the Toucan Too, John collapsed, hanging limp in the air as Nashara guided him to one of the rooms.

John then grabbed the lip of the cockpit entrance. “Hello.”

Kara, her feet hooked around a strap and floating in the air, twisted to face them. “Hello.”

John moved in and held out his hand. “I’m John.”

Shit, Nashara thought. She’d forgotten about the kid.

“I’m Kara.” Kara solemly shook John’s hand.

John turned around. “She needs to get off the ship before we go after the Gulong.”

“I know, yeah.” Nashara entered the cockpit, squeezing past him. John smelled of sweat and moss, oddly.

Not a great combination.

She was back in the cockpit, her world. The mobile unit used grapples to secure itself inside the air lock, ready to accompany her on any outside trips.

John drifted away into one of the rooms. “I need to go rest a bit, before all this starts.”

Cascabel appeared. “I’ll start hunting down a seat for Kara.”

“I don’t want to go.” Kara tilted her head and stared at the both of them.

“You’re just a kid.”

“I’ve seen more than many adults.” Kara folded her arms.

“Look—”

“You have talked to me about the horrors of revenge. But if the Satrapy is going to kill us all, or take our minds, what can I think of myself if I did nothing? Could it be worse than Agathonosis?”

Nashara sighed, and so did Cascabel. They glanced at each other. It could be worse. She could certainly imagine worse herself.

“I’m sympathetic,” Nashara said.

“But it’s just not something we can allow,” Cascabel finished.

“Do you think you are my parents?” Kara snapped. “No one here can tell me what to do.”

“Okay.” And Nashara saw a message pop up in her lamina. Cayenne was back.

Nashara could, of course, physically force Kara out onto one of the outgoing Ragamuffin shuttles.

Screw it. Cayenne was back and needed her, Nashara had more important things to care about.

“Okay,” Nashara said. “Stay. It’ll be dangerous. You’ll help with wounded. We’ll have Azteca and Raga aboard, and medical pods for the wounded. You’re able to interface with lamina, so you’ll be able to talk to the pods and authorize whatever medical treatment they want to give. Now I need a moment for an important conference.”

Maybe seeing the chewed-up bodies that would come from all this would temper Kara’s thirst for vengeance.

Nashara waved Kara out of the cockpit, and Cayenne and Cascabel appeared.

“Cayenne, what the hell happened on the Takara Bune?”

“Etsudo isn’t all he seems,” Cayenne muttered, then caught them up.

Nashara rocked back, as did Cascabel. “He what?”

“Altered our minds.”

Cascabel looked at Nashara. “I don’t feel it, I don’t feel different, do you?”

Would they even know?

“Think about it,” Cayenne said. “If this happened on Astragalai, would we even have stopped to consider whether his live was worth saving?”

“I would have flushed him out into the vacuum the moment I had the ship back then; right now, I’m not so outraged,” Cascabel said, and Nashara nodded.

“I know,” Cayenne said. “And I can’t. That’s a problem.”

“Shit,” Cascabel and Nashara said. “Can we still function?”

“I’m ready to face Hongguo. But we have to be careful with Etsudo, you know?”

Fair enough. That was done. There was Piper to deal with. She was getting the shit kicked out of her, the Wuxing Hao suffering enough damage it didn’t look as if it would even get through the wormhole in one piece.

Cayenne was the closest, and she was able to get a tight beam through to Piper, who showed up in their midst looking wan.

“I know I’m virtual to you guys, a spin-off, but to me this is damn real. The ship is falling apart, and I’m losing processing power with it. I’m dying. For real. I’m not going to make it.”

None of them knew what to say. Nashara reached a hand out.

Piper smiled. “Look, I’m going to try and get through one of the communications buoys, but it’s a far shot, and I don’t think I can. They’re shut down, and I can’t crack them.”

Nashara, Cascabel, and Cayenne watched her fade out, all flinching as the connection died.

“We’re gearing up for the attack on the Hongguo,” Cascabel whispered. “I’ll catch you up later, Cayenne.”

And they all turned away from each other.

Nashara knocked on the bulkhead before rolling the door open. John blinked back at her as she drifted in.

The door shut.

“What’s going on with the girl?”

“The girl wants to stay.” Nashara kept drifting until she snagged a footloop under one of the bunk bed’s rims. “I can’t change her mind unless I drag her out myself.”

John cleared his throat. “She’s what, early teens? Good luck with that. Who is she?”

“Girl we found aboard a habitat, one of the last survivors. The Satrap had taken over, used them all as extensions of its mind.”

“Plucky.”

“Very.”

“Reminds you of yourself, no doubt.” John rubbed his eyes. He grabbed her hand and looked at her directly, pleading. “You are risking her life keeping her here.”

Nashara looked down and pulled her hand away.

“Maybe. A little.” Nashara rubbed her palms together. “I’m going to let her stay.”

“If she means anything to you, you’ll regret that.”

“She is right, you know. I’m not her mother.” Nor did she want to be. “And she’s seen a lot. I think she should be allowed to make her choice.”

John deflated. “I’m too tired to fight about something like this.”

Nashara grabbed his collar and pulled him closer, oddly nervous.

He jerked back. “I’ve been through too much.”

“I’m not trying to sleep with you.” She let go. He’d just loaded his dead son into the cargo hold of the ship. “But do I make you uncomfortable, being Pepper’s clone?”

She was keyed up, overfocused and overconfused.

“I just need to sleep right now.”

“I’ve been running, and running for years, alone. And I just watched myself die, I think,” Nashara said. “And I want to be next to a human being right now. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he whispered, and unsnapped enough for her to crawl in next to him.

They awkwardly lay there, until Nashara turned around and put one arm around his stomach.

He fell asleep within several minutes, and Nashara just lay there. She wasn’t a monster, or a robot, just an very oddly configured human. This was what humans sought, and she still had it in her.

She could see what John couldn’t: Cascabel right there in the lamina with her, unable to touch John but trying.

Azteca and Raga fighters came aboard, and Cascabel left to guide them into the ship and show them where to stow their equipment.

It only seemed like seconds later that Cascabel woke her up. “We think it’s started, Hongguo communications traffic just leapt off the scale and they’re moving.”

Nashara carefully pulled herself away. “And?”

“Everyone is evacuated here, it’s time to punch out and do this.”

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Etsudo looked up, surprised as Cayenne allowed a limited amount of access to the ship’s lamina.

“We’re not allowed in, we’re going to hover in the periphery. Any movement and we’ll be reclassified as enemy combatants,” Cayenne told them. She sounded annoyed. “We get the privelege of watching this battle from a distance. Which means you two will be getting into a pod and leaving here, I can’t take the risk of you trying to trap me again. And believe me, I’m being nice, I should have vented the air locks on you.”

Leave and go where? Etsudo wondered. “You sound eager to get into the fray,” he said.

“Piper just died.” Cayenne looked around. “She took the Wuxing Hao, now it’s just debris.”

“One ship against the Hongguo, what were you thinking?” Etsudo asked.

“Trying to run the blockade,” Cayenne said with a sad smile. “Trying to warn the humans out in the forty-eight worlds that the Satrapy was heading to exterminate us all.”

Etsudo looked at her. “That’s a big assumption.”

“They’re destroying the only armed human force they know of, they’ve completely taken over the Hongguo for their own needs. Look out there Etsudo, this isn’t a normal Hongguo operation.”

She was right. And in the lamina Etsudo watched the battle develop slowly.

Hongguo drones poured out through the security shield around the wormhole and madly accelerated out, hundreds of them destroyed as they smacked into new layers of chaff or mines the Ragamuffins had added to the shield.

Ragamuffin drones and mines whirled after their Hongguo counterparts. That dance went on for almost an hour.

Next up came a series of explosions beyond the upstream wormhole: a ring of low-yield nuclear bombs, blossoming flowers of fluorescing colors that expanded out in irregular balls of destruction and generating massive electromagnetic pulses. Communications and feeds dropped resolution, fuzzing out and consumed in static for several minutes before recovering. The next round a little farther out. The Hongguo were clearing the area.

A long, silver needle poked through the wormhole, crackling with massive bursts of static electricity that raced up and down the spire.

“The Gulong.”

Small, flattened Hongguo fighters squeezed in past the needle of the Hongguo machine.

“To the races,” Cayenne said.

Ragamuffin ships moved, seven or eight of them, engines adjusting their orbits to fall down toward the upstream wormhole from their higher orbits.

Another nuclear explosion blossomed in front of one of the Ragamuffin ships.

“They got the Magadog…” Cayenne was talking about the Ragamuffin ship that had overtaken the Takara Bune. The husk of the ship continued to drop toward the upstream wormhole, internal explosions ripping through it and bursting through its skin, debris raining off to form a cloud around it.

Another nuclear hit. Pieces scattered out into different trajectories.

Whatever happened, Etsudo was going to remain aboard his ship, and Cayenne was the ship now. He couldn’t take it back.

“Cayenne.” Etsudo licked his lips nervously. “I want to make a deal. If I can help you, can I remain aboard? Permanently?”

“I’m listening.” And so was Brandon. He cocked his head and looked at Etsudo intently.

“You need to communicate out, and I can give you that. I can get you access to the communications buoys if you can get a drone through to the other side of the upstream wormhole.”

Cayenne moved closer. “The communications buoys, really?”

“Yes.” Etsudo nodded. “I can get you into them.”

“No, you can’t,” Brandon said.

Etsudo looked over. Brandon had a gun out. “You are a traitor, Etsudo.”

“I know,” Etsudo said. “But to whom? Humanity, or the Hongguo?”

“The Hongguo serves humanity,” Brandon said, and Etsudo gritted his teeth. He didn’t believe that anymore, not really. Not after seeing Agathonosis ripped apart just to move a Satrap.

“You’re the losing side,” Brandon said to Cayenne. “And I don’t think, Etsudo, that you are truly my fried. You both antagonize the Satrapy, demonstrate their worse suspicions about humankind: that we’re unable to control ourselves, unable to coexist with them. This woman and her allies have caused a great deal of trouble because they’re unable to work with something to better things, you feel obliged to completely oppose, even if it means complete destruction.

“You’ve not only made things worse for yourselves, but the greater part of the race as well.”

“We’re already lesser citizens, Brandon,” Cayenne said. “Arguing how much lesser we’re going to become, that’s hardly an attractive way of arguing for your masters.”

Brandon took a slow breath. “The Hongguo alone have kept humanity from being destroyed by the Satrapy for almost two centuries now.”

“The Hongguo alone have kept humanity in their place for two centuries.” Cayenne drifted in front of Brandon, who was still firmly strapped in so that she couldn’t dislodge him by using the ship’s acceleration. She usually walked as if there were gravity: this was new. Etsudo carefully flipped his straps off, but left them lying against him so that Brandon didn’t notice. “You should have seen Chimson grow after we were cut off. We did great things.”

And Etsudo believed her.

She floated between the two of them now. Etsudo launched himself at Brandon, passing through her. Brandon blinked for that critical second, and Etsudo smacked into his arm. The Takara Bune fired its engines at the same instant.

Etsudo grabbed hold of the gun and held on to it for all he was worth.

“Shoot it, shoot it,” Cayenne yelled, floating over both of them. “Empty the chamber.” Etsudo pulled the trigger and kept it down. A deafening stream of bullets struck the cockpit wall.

The moment Brandon wrapped his arms around Etsudo’s neck and choked him, he knew this had been a stupid idea. Brandon was feng, Etsudo could not beat him physically.

Already Brandon began to break free as Etsudo gagged.

But the accelerating continued and the gun was empty. Etsudo felt three, four, seven times his weight pressing down on Brandon’s arm.

“Give it up,” Etsudo hissed.

Brandon did not reply, but sank his teeth into Etsudo’s neck. Etsudo strained to pull free and rolled off Brandon, clutching the gun. The engines cut off the moment he fell. He struck another acceleration chair and still felt bones break. He groaned.

“Snap in,” Cayenne murmered into his ear as Brandon burst free of his straps.

It hurt like hell, but Etsudo had never strapped in this quick. Brandon froze and had enough time to get one single strap back on before Cayenne smiled.

Etsudo had never pushed his ship as hard as Cayenne did for that second. The strap snapped, and Brandon fell farther than Etsudo had to a cockpit wall with a loud smack.

Then Cayenne decelerated, and Brandon flew across the cockpit to the other wall. And then she accelerated again, and blood splattered against the metal. He didn’t scream, but Etsudo did. Cayenne kept doing it until Brandon hung limp, and quite dead, in the middle of the cockpit.

“Let’s get those codes, Etsudo. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Etsudo painfully twisted to look at the ghostlike form. He wasn’t sure which was scarier: Cayenne or the Hongguo ships out there.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Nashara ignored her cockpit. She sat in a model of the space between the two wormholes watching as the attack on the Hongguo proceeded. The five Ragamuffin ships dodged their way through their own security cloud and the Hongguo with only the Gulong in their sights. The Hongguo were running silent. It meant Nashara couldn’t get into their lamina, but it also meant they were having trouble coordinating their defense.

The Datang Hao’s Satrap was a formidable enemy.

But within the next twenty minutes they’d transit and strike the Gulong, and then the real mess would begin.

Cayenne appeared. “I’ve got codes,” she hissed.

“Codes?”

“The buoys. The Hongguo buoys.”

Cascabel appeared, and all three of them nodded. “We send the message out.”

“I’m on it,” Cascabel said. The model shifted. Nashara and Cayenne watched Cascabel bounce information from the Toucan Too out through a chain of drones through to the Duppy Conqueror, which had just transited.

They could see visuals that Cascabel sent back to them of the Ragamuffin ship as it approached the Gulong. But Nashara didn’t pay attention, she focused on the schematics as Cascabel cast her search out using the link through the Duppy Conqueror to boost the signal.

“Got it,” Cascabel hissed.

And it lit up, a straight connection out, and with Hongguo overrides it was fast.

Cascabel shivered, blurred, and began to fade. “I’ve found lamina,” she said.

And Nashara pulled back. Cascabel had been sucked clean out of the Toucan Too. Several minutes passed. “Cascabel?”

“I’m okay,” a grainy Cascabel reported. “I’m spreading, multiplying. Happier hunting grounds here, and I’ve found something you’d like.”

A laggy connection, timed out and slow due to the sheer distances involved, came in. A small video window.

“Nashara,” Danielle of the Daystar said with a sly smile. She had to be just four or five transits upstream.

“You followed us?”

“You’re the kind of person to keep tabs on. You know what I think about you. My superiors ordered me to follow you in. And then it looks like almost every Hongguo ship ever started moving in this direction. We’re intrigued. We’ve never seen movement like this. It presents an opportunity. All through the League of Human Affairs we’re opening our communications buoys, arguing about what to do next. Take advantage of this moment to launch our revolution, or just stay very close to watch and learn.”

Danielle would be all about opportunity.

“The Satrapy is on the move to wipe us all out,” Cascabel said. “The war has begun here. If they finish with us, they’ll start on all humanity next. It’s a now-or-never sort of thing.”

The connection fuzzed out as an electromagnetic pulse washed over the drones Nashara was using to keep the link open. Danielle appeared again, her arms folded over her belly. “Tell you what, forty-two hours my force of five ships can get to you.”

Nashara nodded. But there was going to be a catch.

Danielle continued, “Shortly after that, more will come. I’m going to make the first strike, and the rest of the League can come with me or not. It’s beginning now. If you have the Gulong, we will fight with you. With the Gulong the League could fight back, we could turn the tables.”

There it was.

With a smile Danielle leaned forward. “It’ll be good to see you in person again, Nashara.”

And then the connection winked out as several drones were slagged.

Nashara opened the eyes of her body and looked around the cockpit. “John, get the Ragamuffins and Azteca in the cockpit. We’re going in at the Gulong.”

Every little bit was going to help, and if the League was coming, she had a gut instinct they needed to have control of the Gulong.

Danielle would see that as another opportunity.

League help offered a solid chance at overwhelming the Hongguo. This was looking more and more likely, as long as they managed to hold on to the Gulong for forty-two hours.

“We’re going in?” John asked.

“There might be some help on its way, and we need to keep the Hongguo from using the Gulong until then. I haven’t been able to hack into that ship, and I’m thinking, as well, if we can get in there in person, maybe I can take over its lamina for us.”

Nashara began adjusting the ship’s course, getting ready to join the fray.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

John swallowed as something clanged off the side of the ship and alarms indicated air pressure loss.

The cockpit remained secure.

Fifteen Azteca Jaguar scouts sat against the cockpit’s inner wall. They carried their rifles and their clubs with metal studs hanging from their hips, still in full finery with feathers and cotton armor dirty and sweaty. Mongoose-men with machine guns sat on the other side.

Between those two parties sat two Teotl, bipedal with catlike faces and clear cartilage-like skin gleaming in the cockpit emergency lighting.

“They’re randomly detonating nukes all over the fucking place,” Nashara said. “Okay, here we are, hold on.”

The cockpit whirred, acceleration pressed down from behind, then the side, then on top. Then it really rammed down on them, to the point that the Azteca screamed in fear as they slid around the walls.

Done. It lifted off his chest, his stomach feeling as if it were lifting up into his throat. Someone threw up.

Weightless now, except for a few jerks as Nashara thrust them closer.

A series of explosions, but not on them, and then the sound of scraping and shrieking of metal on metal, the sound of the Toucan Too’s engine thundering as it shoved them into something solid.

They were pushing the Toucan Too’s nose through the hull of the Gulong, into a large hole created by one of the Ragamuffin ships with a missile, somewhere around the two-mile mark from the Gulong’s tip. They were a bit late to the party, about twenty minutes behind the other Ragamuffin ships. But they were there.

“Seal it up!” Nashara shouted throughout the whole ship.

The Raga would be heading out, first run, and setting off hull-breach grenades full of emergency sealant.

John unstrapped and the cockpit door rolled open. The Teotl and Azteca followed him out along the corridor, dropping into the bay.

A Ragamuffin hung by the air lock, opening it. His silver eyes flashed back at them. “We ready?”

They nodded. He slapped the control, and the air lock rolled open.

John kicked out. Sealant dripped in long, goopy strings from the jagged tear in the outer hull wall, and he brushed it leaving the Toucan Too.

The Gulong was five miles long but incredibly narrow. It was also divided up by bulkheads with actual manual locks on them. Keys were required to open them. Wheels to spin the doors open.

“Explosives,” John yelled.

Men moved over to the door and slapped five-inch disk along the door’s rim.

“Fire in the hole.” They scattered.

The door blew off. Small-arms fire started as Hongguo feng on the other side began defending their length of the ship.

Azteca warriors leapt through the breach as John moved away from the line of fire.

“Nashara, can you infect the lamina of this ship?” John asked. It would stop the fighting if she had control. At the least she could give directions.

“I can’t find shit.” She sounded annoyed. “As far as I can tell, there is no lamina. You’re going to have to take the Gulong by force.”

By force meant clubs and rifles versus machine guns. John bit his lip and slapped a signal repeater up on the lip of the rim so that he could keep in contact with the Toucan Too, then followed the Ragamuffins and the two Teotl over the lip into the mess.

They didn’t know where the control center was, but presumably it was near the center of the ship. That meant a mile of bulkheads to fight through.

Other Ragamuffin ships in other sections of the Gulong were working their way toward the center as well.

It would be a long mile, John thought, peering through the smoke and chaos in the tight corridor.

Chapter Sixty

Pepper threw a screaming feng back through a ripped hole in the bulkhead. He grabbed a dead one, pulling it around in front of his body as return fire ripped into it.

The Gulong rumbled.

“What was that?” Pepper shouted.

“The Toucan Too, other side of the ship,” one of the mongoose-men shouted from behind him.

The last hundred feet behind Pepper was obscured with misty blood, pooled globules of viscera and awkwardly broken bodies hanging in the air. He’d moved ahead too quickly.

The mongoose-men floated up to him. “The Cudjo destroy,” one of them reported. “Hongguo get through and hit it. Duppy Conqueror the only ship still in one piece out there.” Another tossed a grenade through the open hole. Hongguo feng shouted and scattered.

The explosion scattered shrapnel back through, and the mongoose-men all curled up, holding small shields in front of them. Pepper felt the body in front of him jerk and thud.

“But you still have the backpack nuke?” Pepper asked.

“Several hundred feet back in a crate.”

Pepper nodded. “Keep it back a bit, but I’d rather you get cut off from behind than lose that nuke.”

He looked back into the hole and threw the body through and followed it to take the next section of corridor.

One by fucking one, each hundred-foot section, until they would make the control center. Pepper did what he did best and kept on moving, the mongoose-men struggling to keep up.

It was going to take five hours to reach the center if it kept taking five minutes to take each section. Pepper wanted to be there in two. Two was a blitzkrieg the Hongguo would have trouble recovering from. Pepper could keep up this pace for two.

More than that and he’d drop from exhaustion. More than that and they wouldn’t have the time to take control and force the Hongguo back. They would get bogged down in the corridors fighting for the last minutes of their lives.

Chapter Sixty-One

Three hours of hand-to-hand corridor fighting later, John and his two Teotl, three Azteca, and two mongoose-men blew the last bulkhead out. No return fire.

The eight of them ducked around the corner and out into a grand cavity deep in the center of the ship filled with hundreds of strangely quiet people who were shackled to desks on all the walls.

“Each of you take a door,” John ordered. He tapped his earpiece. “Nashara, send the mobile unit, you stay in the ship.”

She came back, slightly fuzzy. “I need more repeaters, they made it almost impossible to get a link in. I still can’t detect any lamina in this ship, they’re hiding it well.”

John whistled at one of the Teotl. “You head back, bring her machine with you, and lay down more repeaters.”

Now that he had a moment, John looked closer at the tired, vacant-looking people. Their heads had been shaved and they wore paper overalls.

None of them had even blinked. But someone at the far end of the chamber moaned, and the noise spread, until it filled the entire room.

The drone grew, modulating up and down. Then fingers all reached for beads on strings built into the desks in front of them. Clattering spread around the room, and the people moaned, noise spreading in patterns throughout the rows. And then the beads would clatter again.

Their eyes were constantly vacant. John shuddered.

“John, this is why I can’t find any lamina,” Nashara said. “This is how they run the ship. They’re human calculators.”

“You say the Satraps can control minds. The Teotl told me they were like parasites that attached to intelligent races. This… makes sense if you think about how a creature like that would think. Data overlays, or um, lamina, would be too unreliable, too hackable. This is a bulletproof way to protect an asset.”

“Yes, but they also can control the ship somehow. Look for desks with controls. Something has to control the minds.”

He wanted to keep the doors guarded, so John kicked out to the center of the room, spinning slowly and trying to find something like that.

There. A cluster of desks, like an eye in the orb of all the desks. An oval around a central seat.

John hit the other side of the room, then kicked off for it.

He landed in their midst and grabbed a desk. All men at these desks. All vacant-eyed.

Maybe.

They all pulled out guns. John licked his lips. “I wouldn’t…”

But they hadn’t even noticed him. They each turned their guns to the side to the person next to them to make a complete circle and then pulled the triggers.

The entire oval of controllers hung limp and dead, their brains blown out into the air.

John couldn’t even find a response. He just stared.

In their center, a man in a blue uniform already lay dead, a shot through the bottom of his jaw up into his head.

John tapped his earpiece. “They just all killed themselves, Nashara.” Too shaken even to be horrified, he just kicked away.

One of the doors blew in. Pepper and a horde of mongoose-men poured in.

“Pepper!” John shouted.

Pepper kicked off to join him. The man dripped blood in a trail behind him, and it dislodged from him as he hit the floor and grabbed a desk.

“What the hell is this?” Pepper looked around.

“A human guidance computer.”

“No, I mean, this is the second one we encountered.” Pepper pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face off. “We have two-thirds the ship. The last third toward the front of the ship, the Hongguo still have that. Right before Magadog went out, they said there were Hongguo ships docking on the end to pour reinforcements through.”

“That’s true,” Nashara’s voice said. The silver ovoid of her mobile unit puffed through, then paused next to them.

“Can you control the Gulong?” Pepper asked.

“Give me time, yes,” Nashara said. “I think I could. If we figure out where the manual controls are and substitue some our people, with me giving directions and running simulations here in the lamina. It’s feasible. But it’ll take time to figure out.”

“Time we may not have,” Pepper said. “We have no Ragamuffin ships left near the Gulong. It’s just us on foot inside this ship and the Toucan Too. If we can’t get the Gulong moving, then we have to ask more Ragamuffin ships to come down to this orbit and fight.” Right now those Ragamuffin ships were watching a careful evacuation of Ragamuffin tenders and higgler ships out the downstream wormhole toward Nanagada.

“We need thirty-nine hours,” Nashara said. “There are human ships coming to our aid. And most of the Ragamuffin ships should be done evacuating to New Anegada and can adjust this way.”

“Thirty-nine hours?” Pepper waved one of the mongoose-men over, and he pulled a crate the size of a casket with him. “Maybe. It’ll be dicey.”

John helped a pair of mongoose-men crowbar the crate open. He peered inside at a missile with radioactive symbols painted on the tip. Someone had jury-rigged a control box on its top.

Pepper pointed at Nashara’s mobile unit. “Is there visual on that?”

“Yes.” A lens irised open.

“Let’s broadcast a little something to the Hongguo.”

“They are keeping shut down or I would have been able to take their ships,” Nashara pointed out.

“Yeah, but I bet you they’re doing some passive listening.” Pepper tapped on the screen of the control box and pressed a bloody thumb on it.

The screen brightened, and Pepper tapped some more to bring a timer up on it. He set it to ten minutes, triggered the countdown, and faced the camera.

“Hongguo leaders. Hi, I’m Pepper, and I’m currently talking for the Ragamuffins. Behind me is a small nuclear device of several megatons. It’s on a timer. Maybe your feng will push back into here, but I promise you, if they do”—Pepper made a popping sound with his mouth—“we will destroy the Gulong. If attempts to break up towards our section of the Gulong do not cease, we will destroy the Gulong.”

Pepper made a cutting motion with his hand. Then he turned around and stopped the countdown.

“And how long do you think that will hold them back?” John asked.

“I think that that should get us at least ten hours, don’t you?” Pepper said.

“The Hongguo on the ship are stepping down,” Nashara reported. “It’s a cease-fire for now.”

“Breathing room.” Pepper smiled.

“But the Hongguo ships have us surrounded,” Nashara said.

“And you can’t infect them?” Pepper asked.

“They’ve figured something is infecting ships using high-bandwidth communications. They’ll listen to voice, but they’re isolating and firewalling it, I’m not getting through. It’s all about time, now. And, Pepper, Cayenne from the Takara Bune says there’s a second chamber of human computers.”

Pepper nodded. “I saw it coming in. They’re all dead, someone shut the air off to them before we got there.”

They all stood a second, quiet.

“And the cavalry you’ve called in?” John spoke up. “Who are these people?”

“The League of Human Affairs, an assortment of freedom fighters, or terrorists, depends on how you look at them,” Nashara said through the speakers of the ovoid.

“They just want to help us out of the goodness of their hearts?” Pepper asked with a grin.

“They want the Gulong,” Nashara said. “They’ll join the fray if we still have the Gulong.”

“Well, then we better hold it until they get here,” Pepper said.

Chapter Sixty-Two

John strapped himself into the room and scrubbed his face clean with a wet-cloth, ready to collapse and sleep, but knowing he couldn’t afford to. Thirty hours to go. The Hongguo had remained quiet, a tense détente, presumably listening on a few radio channels. Their ships clustered around the Gulong near the upstream wormhole. A few Raga ships had tried attacks, breaching the security cloud to get to the Gulong, and paid in hull damage and lives for the attempt.

“They’re moving.” Nashara appeared by his side. John jumped and shoved his hand through her, hitting the bulkhead and splitting his knuckles.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to take the time to walk my body down there.”

“Who’s moving?” John rubbed his knuckles over the wetcloth, leaving a streak of blood.

“Five Hongguo ships are trying for the downstream wormhole, three of them stopped by flack and mines; the other two are being chased. They’re headed for New Anegada, John.”

A smart move. Take something they valued and they were going to do the same. Two spaceships could do a lot of damage with missiles and nukes to Nanagada.

“We got to help them.” John spun around and grabbed the door. “How fast can we get the ship ready?”

“We can’t run that Hongguo gauntlet, John. You know that, you’re a pilot.”

“We have to do something. They’re going to hammer the planet,” John replied, but with less authority.

“They can only do so much damage, just two ships.”

“Damnit, these aren’t odds, these are people down there!”

“John, there’s nothing, I mean nothing, for them that you or I can do. The best thing is to hold the Gulong.”

John pushed his head against the mirror. “Thirty hours.”

“Thirty hours,” Nashara said. “It’ll take the Hongguo ten to fifteen to reach New Anegada at their speeds. The Ragamuffin ships there might be able to get to them. They won’t have much time above the planet. They’re using this to force us to talk.”

“I know,” John said. “I know.”

It didn’t make it easier, imagining Hongguo ships appearing far over Nanagada.

Thirty hours.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Kara sat in front of the three medical pods, watching the men inside lie asleep. The readouts all glowed green, and when she queried them, although she didn’t understand the medical terms quickly enough, they reassured her that all was well.

So many others had died. She was almost getting used to it, as if it were part of life to see tortured bodies, from Agathonosis to this ship. A long trail of bodies.

Outside, however, someone was punching the wall and shouting in anger. She kicked out and found John, their newest passenger, huddled up against a wall.

“Are you okay?” She put a hand on his shoulder and he flinched.

“Been better.” He smiled at her. “A lot of people are going to die down on New Anegada.”

“A lot of people have died already,” Kara said. “I don’t think it’s going to stop anytime soon.”

He cocked his head and looked at her. “That’s truly dark.”

“It’s what I’ve seen.”

“I’m sorry. No child should see death and war.” He cleared his throat.

“These people, they only have one machine like this, right?” Kara asked.

“Yes.”

“So they’re trying to trade with you. This machine for your planet.”

“I know.” John sighed. “But that doesn’t make it any easier, because they’re going to do something to show they’re serious.”

“We must hope it is a small demonstration,” Kara said.

“Yes, but we must also prepare for the worst.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, we aren’t dealing with humans,” John said. “This thing, the Satrap, commands the Hongguo moving to Nanagada.”

Kara nodded. “You’re right. The Satrap doesn’t think like you or me, it’s something else. And destroying a planet might be something it thinks would cow us. Or maybe divide our forces.”

John jerked back and stared at her. “How do you know that?”

“I’ve faced them before,” Kara said. “It’s pretty hopeless, but I’ve made it this far and I don’t want to give up just yet.” Jared was safe out there, being looked at.

“People live under these things, out there now?”

“Our histories say they used to only live among the Gahe and Nesaru,” Kara said. “And I think now that they came out among the forty-eight worlds and built habitats for themselves and some humans to live in so they could study us. Study how to control or destroy us.”

John shook his head. “I’m getting tired of aliens pushing us around.”

“Well, we’re pushing back. That’s hard work.”

And the man suddenly laughed. “Yes, it is. Thank you.”

Kara watched him coast his way down the corridor.

Chapter Sixty-Four

Pepper almost shot Metztli as the Teotl burst through one of the broken bulkheads, tentacles akimbo as it flew through the air. Pepper reholstered his gun.

Two mongoose-men floated near the sealant goop around the breach in the Gulong’s hull, trying to see if they needed to add more to stop air loss.

“The chamber is under attack,” Metztli said.

“More Hongguo?” Pepper asked. “Nashara, I don’t like surprises, can you see anything?”

“They found a damn blind spot, I’m moving drones to look. Hold on.” There was an annoyed sigh.

“The Hongguo landed a ship on the hull, they cut their way through. My warriors are holding them,” Metztli said. “I don’t know how long they can last.”

“The Hongguo in the first third of the ship are moving again as well,” Nashara reported. “They’re fighting their way toward us.”

Damnit. Nineteen hours to go. Pepper moved toward the Toucan Too. “Come on, kid,” he yelled at Kara, who’d been out of the ship, inspecting the tip for any damage and patching it.

She started fingertipping her way up the hull toward the air lock.

Three suited bodies, Hongguo feng, burst through the sealant. They fired. The two mongoose-men taken by surprise died. Their guns spun off, clanking down the Toucan Too’s hull.

Pepper bounced into the air lock, pulling his guns free and leaping back out.

Metztli flew past him and struck the nearest feng, ripping an arm free with a tentacle. Pepper shot the other point-blank, but not before getting hit in the shoulder and thigh.

He swore several times.

The third feng flew down along the hull toward Kara before either Metztli or Pepper had time to hit him.

She’d sprung free of the hull, grabbing one of the Raga machine guns, just as the feng smacked into her and swung around, trying to use her body as a shield, or her as a hostage.

The girl jammed the point of the gun under her armpit and pulled the trigger with her thumb.

She kept firing long after the feng died, leaving a long stream of blood as he flew on and hit the deck, bounced, and spun away.

Nashara’s voice bellowed out from the ship, “There are more of them coming up the hull towards us, they’re using nonreflective cool suits, hard to spot.”

Pepper looked at the girl. Her hands were shaking. He coasted out and grabbed her.

“You’re hurt,” she said, looking at his shoulder.

“I know. You?”

“I think I’m okay.” Her voice wavered.

Pepper pulled her with him into the lock. Nashara appeared and looked over Kara. “The chamber is close to being overrun. I’m losing repeaters all throughout the Gulong. If we stay much longer, we’ll be overrun too.”

“And you don’t know how to control the Gulong?” Pepper asked.

“Not yet,” Nashara snapped. “It isn’t happening.”

“Then we hang on as long as we can. We have no other choice.” Pepper leaned back in. “Someone get this girl a gun.”

John flew in with a machine gun in hand. “Let’s get Kara into a room,” he said. “She does not need to be out there.”

“We need every hand,” Pepper said. “Every. Hand. We have nineteen hours left.”

“We’re not making nineteen hours,” John said.

“Speak for yourself,” Pepper spat, and kicked off down the corridor looking for more weapons. He’d give the Hongguo nineteen hours. It would be nineteen hours they’d never forget.

Chapter Sixty-Five

Cayenne appeared in Nashara’s vision. “I see a lot of movement around the Gulong, what’s going on?” The feed hissed and sputtered, pushing through Hongguo jamming and hopping several drones to reach her.

“We’re not going to make it down here,” Nashara said.

“That bad?”

“That bad.” The moment of silence stretched, neither sure what to say.

Then Nashara shook her head. “She lied.”

“What?”

Nashara showed Cayenne the cloud of flack approaching the Gulong that Cayenne couldn’t see from her side of the wormhole. “The League has arrived. Danielle was giving herself a margin.”

The first wave of drone nukes shot through, hitting the Hongguo ships and splitting them apart. Then the smart chaff, thousands of cylinders flung through to burst out and confuse the scene.

Nashara smiled as Danielle hailed her. “You lied,” Nashara said.

“We lost lives getting here this quick,” Danielle said. She looked grim, serious. “For the cause.”

The five League ships used their nuclear drones to quick effect, using surprise to roll over the Hongguo at first.

“We can escort you to safety,” Danielle said. “You’re going to have start moving.”

Nashara shook her head. “We’re dead in the water. We can’t move.”

Danielle swore. Nashara watched as the seven remaining Hongguo ships reformed into a starlike pattern.

Cayenne appeared. “Is that a pattern?”

The starlike group of ships swirled out and fired a concentrated burst of missiles at the League ships. Danielle scattered, focused on dodging them, and the Hongguo had the offensive.

Nashara was already on it, burrowing the space around the Gulong for transmissions coordinating the Hongguo attack. “Got it.”

Danielle appeared, grunting against the massive acceleration. “Where are your other ships? Five against seven isn’t going to be pretty.”

Raw lamina yielded to Nashara. She shivered and split, three times, and then she was in three of the ships. The star pattern fell apart. Three new copies of herself appeared with three smiles. “Keep going,” they said.

And Nashara laughed as she followed the source back toward the Datang Hao, where the Satrap was risking high-bandwidth communications to control the Hongguo ships.

A window in the lamina appeared before a great wall of defenses, and Cayenne saw her enemy for the first time. A balding, saturnine woman; a heavy child; a dour-faced man. “Who are you?” they asked, all their mouths moving in unison.

Behnd the trio a tank of pink liquid stirred. The dark shadow in it, that was the actual Satrap. That would be the creature Nashara and her sisters would dump into the vacuum and watch boil its insides out.

“I’m Nashara.”

“I’m Cayenne.”

And then they both shattered the window and began to rip into the wall of defenses the Satrap had. Firewalls, yes, but it had opened them up to control its small fleet. It would die for the mistake.

The three ships she’d taken turned on the other four. There was no time for names, just fast destruction. And the League ships unloaded more nuclear drones into the ball of fighting.

Nashara winced as two of the ships hosting copies of her mind split open and died, and then the third hailed Nashara.

“Call me Ada,” she said quickly. “Get Danielle off my ass, and then we need to help Cayenne get the Satrap.”

“Fellow freedom seekers,” Danielle’s broadcast rippled out from the Daystar, “who are rising up against our vicious alien masters, news of your valiant struggle has spread throughout all human communities thanks to our newly launched communications network. You have friends, true human friends. We believe in your cause, and we are here to help.”

“Don’t pay attention to the propoganda, let’s move,” Nashara said. She followed Ada across a string of buoys, and then Cayenne stopped them.

“I got it,” Cayenne shouted, and showed them a representation of a giant wall with a tunnel bored through it. Nashara could see on her navigation windows that the Datang Hao had changed course and now wobbled toward the wormhole’s edges. “I got in and boosted it, locked the controls.”

The Satrap’s trio appeared, mouths in perfect sync for the Satrap. “You are not so different from me.”

“You are nothing more than a parasite,” Nashara said.

Danielle continued, “The League of Human Affairs lends our hands to yours. Our warships stand ready. Human destiny is at hand. We can lift off the chains of our oppressors and strike them down and take our rightful place among the stars. Even now we are rising up against Satraps on worlds all throughout the Satrapy.”

The Datang Hao struck the wormhole at an angle, breaking itself open against the incredible tidal stresses. One-half continued past the wormhole leaking debris. The other half transited, appearing within sight of the Toucan Too.

“We are proud,” Danielle said, “that you have chosen to rise with us.”

Ada looked over at Danielle’s obviously prerecorded message. “They’re going to take the Gulong from us, aren’t they?”

“Yes. But I imagine,” Nashara said, “that Pepper, John, and the Ragamuffins won’t hand over New Anegada.”

Chapter Sixty-Six

Pepper sat in the chamber with Raga mongoose-men and a handful of Azteca with the large crate that had once housed the nuke in front of him.

A day ago he’d been getting ready to fight for his life and was not sure he’d make nineteen hours.

The doors clunked open and men in deep blue armor walked in. Mirrored visors on protective helmets looked around.

They had red fists as an emblem over their chests.

One of the suits of armor puffed over, and the mirrored helmet slid open. A Slavic woman with short hair tapped her chest with three fingers in front of Pepper.

“On behalf of the League of Human Affairs I salute you,” she said. “Your incredible work has inspired many to throw off their shackles and rise up against their oppressors.”

Pepper stared at her. John had left with Nashara and the Toucan Too to return to Nanagada. He wanted to see what damage had been done, and what would be needed down on the surface.

She looked slightly discomfited by Pepper’s stare, but continued, “We are proud to offer you a medallion commemorating this historic event.”

Many high-ranking Ragamuffins had died, along with their ships. The remaining Ragamuffins that could fight clustered around the wormhole, checking traffic and stopping any but Ragamuffin ships from going to Nanagada. That irked the League.

But not enough for them to try to cross into Nanagada. Pepper had told Danielle in a brief meeting that New Anegada, or Nanagada, whichever one preferred, was Ragamuffin. It would not be joining the League of Human Affairs.

Though they would work with them. The League’s uprising had just begun, there was a long war for human independence in front of them.

Pepper took the medallion and pocketed it. “I need a ride to Nanagada.”

“There is a ship docked here for you, a Takara Bune.”

“Thank you.” Pepper grabbed the crate and moved.

“What’s in the crate?” the woman asked.

“None of your business.” Pepper floated out of the cavern with one last look around.

“Sir?”

Pepper wearily turned. The woman clenched her fist and held it up. “Humans first!”

Pepper licked his lips. Then held up a fist. “Sure.”

The human calculators had sat throughout the entire thing, staring at the abaci in front of them and waiting for their next instructions.

The Ragamuffins had won this battle, but somehow the League had come in and taken the clear victory away. It felt like a loss, Pepper felt, to hand this all over and walk down the corridor.

He didn’t like that at all.

Several League soldiers bundled him and the crate up in a vacuumproof baggie and tossed him out across a line to the Takara Bune.

Inside the lock, Pepper ripped his way out to find a small man waiting for him.

“I’m Etsudo.”

Pepper shook his hand. “Thank you for the ride.”

Etsudo cocked his head and looked at the strap of the medallion floating out of Pepper’s pocket. “You got a medal too?”

“Yes.” Pepper took it out. He clenched it in his fist and squeezed until it folded in half, then he tossed it into the grating. Let it blow out the next time the air lock opened to the vacuum.

“We’re tossing the line now and heading for New Anegada,” Etsudo said, and the ship rumbled as it accelerated.

Pepper touched down to the floor. Nashara appeared, projecting herself in front of them both. “Grandpa!”

“You seem to be everywhere these days.” Pepper walked up the ship’s center core.

He decided to skip going to the cockpit as he found the small galley. He rooted around the freezer locker and grabbed a dish. He pulled the top off and watched it heat as he squeezed into a seat.

Pepper wiggled his hands and pointed at the locked drawers. “Fork?”

“Yeah.” Etsudo fished one out.

“The League is asking everyone to rise against the Satrapy. With the Gulong they can close down wormholes to strong Satrapic areas. Already aliens are being deported from some heavily human habitats for those areas. They’re calling it ‘firewalling.’ They want to create a human government, and human worlds.” Pepper looked down at the potatoes and gravy and wrinkled his nose. “What do you think the problem with that is?”

Etsudo leaned forward. “We can shut these artificial borders, but even at sublight speeds, sooner or later, we will deal with other species, and creatures stronger and more powerful than ourselves. If we don’t have models for dealing with this that don’t involve all-or-nothing antagonism, we will, not now, but one day, become extinct as a species.”

“Exactly.” Pepper stabbed the air with his fork. “Exactly.”

He looked around the Takara Bune.

Nice ship.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Nine days had passed since Jerome’s death.

John stood in the garden, the Wicked High Mountains just peeking over the trees, the distant boom of seawater hitting the rocks by the road regular and almost reassuring.

He looked back at the sea of faces. Friends of Jerome’s, such as Daseki and Swagga, shook his hand and walked on. Friends of the family came from all over Brungstun, the small town, dressed in their best.

Nashara stood beside him, with the dinged-up mobile unit using wheels to follow her up to the graveyard.

The priestess, dressed in her robes and colorful earrings, handed John the jar that she had declared held Jerome’s spirit.

Everyone followed John down the road, to the point where it crossed with the path leading down to the beach, and John threw the jar in the crossroads where it broke.

The crowd sighed.

Kara stood there after the crowd dispersed, looking tired. The first day on the surface she’d stumbled around a lot, staring up at the sky, falling to the ground as she adjusted to the perspective of standing on the surface of an entire world. They’d given her drugs for mild bouts of agoraphobia that left her huddled inside rooms at times. “Why did you throw the jar?”

“Here they believe his soul was in it,” John said. “When we smashed it by the crossroads, we released his spirit to the land of the dead, where it belongs. It’s old Vodun, strong in these parts of Nanagada.”

“And you believe this?” Kara cocked her head.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe.” John smiled. “It’s a ritual. It’s… somewhat therapeutic. It’s important to many that came here today.”

“John?” Kara’s voice trembled. “Jared still isn’t here yet.”

John looked at her. “He’s on his way.”

“If he’s dead, I’d like for you to tell me. Don’t treat me like a child. I’m not a child.” She looked straight at him, like a small soldier.

Nashara walked over just as John reached out and put a hand on Kara’s shoulder. “I swear he’s alive, Kara. We’re going to go see him as soon as he arrives.” He looked up at the sky. “The League is doing a good job. They’ve stopped the fighting out here, and Jared will be able to come to you soon.”

She stepped back. “Okay.”

But she didn’t look convinced. She turned and walked back up the road toward John’s Brungstun house.

He hadn’t been there in years, but had cleaned it out and given Nashara and Kara rooms.

“She doesn’t believe you,” Nashara said. “She assumes the worst.”

“She’s seen the worst,” John said. “When are you going to be leaving?”

“I’m loving being here, for now. I’d like to stay a little while and relax, unpack everything, you know?”

“The room is there for you as long as you want it.”

This time Nashara grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, things are going to be okay.”

John smiled. “I keep telling myself that.”

And soon enough, he might even start believing it. He turned to go walk back up to his house, leaving Nashara near the shards of glass.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Planets were beautiful, Nashara decided. She spent every day of the next week luxuriating in just trundling around with the mobile unit: walking off into the bush, smelling the mango scent on the wind from John’s backyard trees, and even going down into town to the market despite the stares she got.

And after a week, John started coming out of his shell.

And several days after that, he found her on one of the piers watching the boats bob at anchor in the harbor.

“You ever been sailing?” he asked.

“No.”

So John helped her into small boat that shook alarmingly and creaked. Water sloshed around the bottom.

The wind was brisk, but it didn’t seem to bother John when the whole boat tilted over as they sailed out. Nashara swore and grabbed the mobile unit, in case they got dunked, but he laughed and let one of the ropes out, and the boat leaned back to normal.

They sailed far out past several reefs, to a private sandy beach, where John shouted in surprise as Nashara let herself fall backward and hit the cold, turquoise-clear water.

The Toucan Too was parked several miles away, near a massive clearing outside this small town that perched on the rocks near a natural harbor. Her brain sat inside it, she knew that. It broadcast itself through the mobile unit, and her sensations were sent back to the ship’s lamina by her body, with its Chimson-manufactured implants. It was all an illusion.

And yet, unless she actually chose to sever it, it felt real enough to hold her breath and fall away from the mirrorlike surface of the water until her back hit the sand.

Yes, this felt good, she thought. Felt right.

She was going to stay on Nanagada. Stop moving.

This was home.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Someone shook Kara awake. A large man, with a top hat, and dreadlocks, and a coat that seemed to swirl on its own.

She blinked. “Pepper?”

“Come on,” he said. “I have someone for you to meet.”

Kara followed him out of the medieval-feeling stone house, but before she got to the front door, Pepper grabbed her shoulder. “Do you like it here?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“John, and Nashara, they’re going to let you stay. Do you want to stay?”

She looked around. “I just want to find out whether Jared is alive. I don’t have anywhere else to stay, so it’s a stupid question.”

“Okay.”

Pepper opened the door, and Jared stood there with his stupid, dirty Raggedy Andy doll.

She almost knocked him over with her hug. “Thank you, Pepper, thank you. Are you okay, Jared?”

Her brother nodded. “I was scared you were gone too.”

“I know. Me too.”

“Where’s John?” Pepper asked her. “I need to talk to him.”

Chapter Seventy

Pepper stood on the pier, waiting as they pulled in. His coat flapped in the wind.

“The Lucita,” he said, nodding at John’s boat.

“Where were you for his funeral?” John asked.

“Not here. And that’s all we’ll say about that.” Pepper leaned over and helped Nashara push the mobile unit out, then gave her a hand.

He lifted her up completely, then deposited her gently on the pier.

John tied the boat up, then jumped up himself. “I hoped you’d be there.” They’d seen so much together, and Jerome had looked up to Pepper like an uncle.

Pepper ignored it. He walked ahead. “I have something for you, John. A present.”

He led them to a small warehouse at the edge of town. Rows of doors ran along the palm-tree shade.

“Stay outside, Nashara.” With a boot he nudged the door open and walked in.

John followed him into the murk as the door closed behind them. Pepper clicked on a gaslight in the corner of the room.

A large crate sat on a bed of straw in the corner.

Pepper grabbed a corner and ripped it off with his bare hands and a grunt, then grabbed the top and tore it off, tossing it aside.

The crate fell apart, revealing the Teotl Metztli, sitting in its own filth and blinking at them. It mewled and scuffled back, pushing itself until it was up against the corner of the wall.

A fetid, rotten smell hit John.

Pepper slapped a gun in John’s hand. “I told you there would be a reckoning later. You insinuated just now that I didn’t care for Jerome, but don’t you ever make that mistake.” He gripped his hands over John’s on the gun and squeezed. “I forget nothing. This is my gift.”

John squeezed back, fighting back tears again. “You loved him too?”

Pepper brushed the arm away and looked away. “Wouldn’t go that warm and mushy, John.”

“You felt something.”

“I protected him. I protected him for you when I first met him. Kept an eye on him later. And here I failed. I don’t like to fail. We should have left him in the bush outside Capitol City.”

“I know.” But then there he might have died too, attacked by Azteca, or by an accident, or by something else. There were no guarantees.

“Then there it is. That’s done. You have this, and I’ve done this for you.”

John shook his head, not sure what to say.

“There’s something else.” Pepper pressed something into John’s other palm. A broken vial.

John looked up. “Pepper. That’s genocide.”

“Maybe.” There was an expression on Pepper’s face. Anger? Or hurt. “You and I disagree about the League. So I’ll give you a question with that piece of glass. Do we choose to try and live with these aliens, or any aliens? Do we learn to adapt and grow with them, because more powerful creatures will come to us one day? Or do we go it alone, fighting to the brink and never pulling back? The Ragamuffin ships are creating a cordon near Chilo that they’re not allowing the League to pass through, because the League wants all the Teotl and their technology as well as whatever remains of the nest. They already have the Gulong, Raga won’t be giving them anything more. But that’s a big issue we need to solve.”

“Pepper… the vial.” John was more worried about that.

“Some of them will figure it out and quarantine themselves from other Teotl. It’ll just be a lonely existence for them.”

“I can’t…”

“Anyway.” Pepper walked to the door. “I did what I did. If you feel merciful, let the Teotl all know what I released, it’ll take a few weeks to make its way across the various ships and population centers, and if you tell them now, they can prevent the spread and live. But you can think about that later. First…”

He tossed a hacksaw and set of pliers on the ground in front of John.

“Good-bye.”

They shook hands firmly, then Pepper shut the door on John.

In the corner of the room Metztli shivered, looking with its one good eye at John.

“I saved your lives,” it mewled again.

“Yes.” John nodded. “But you didn’t save his, did you?”

He squatted in front of the alien, gun in his left hand.

Chapter Seventy-One

Pepper walked out and smiled at Nashara. She cocked her head.

“You look comfortable here,” Pepper said with a smile.

“I don’t think so,” Nashara said. “But, yes, I’m staying.”

“I should be unnerved that my cloned self wants to sell its feminist militant side out and try and have babies.”

“Fuck you. I have no womb.” She considered sucker punching him, but it was Pepper. It would have as much effect on him as it would on her. “I’m not settling down. This is just going to be my home. John is going to be my friend. This place needs protecting, it needs people like me and you. You know that.”

“Yes, but you should tell him you like him.”

“He’ll find out soon enough.”

“He’s broken goods, he might take some gentle hints.” Pepper folded his arms and regarded her.

“I know.”

“You’re going to settle down, help with the kids, hang out around town?” He smirked. “Cook dinners?”

“Not my style, Grandpops. There are governments to reform, military strength to create if we don’t want the League running us over. And then, I want the Teotl to help us figure out how to get Chimson back into the fold. My real home.”

Her stance was just as aggressive.

Pepper nodded, he’d just been pushing her a bit. “There are wolves out there, like the League. Even humans can be dangerous to humanity, right? The League is near xenophobic, we can’t have that built in, the backlash will be too great. I’m planning on heading out with a couple of your virtual selves and Etsudo to scout out what is really going on among the forty-eight planets. See, these people, they need protection from the wolves. They need domesticated wolves, like you and me, right, Granddaughter?”

“Sheepdogs.”

Pepper nodded and smiled. “Sheepdogs, exactly.”

“What are you off to do then?” Nashara asked.

“Going to join Takara Bune, you, and Etsudo. I want the Gulong back, or at least the technology, just in case the Teotl here are… unable to rebuild the technology they had in their nest. And… a few other things I need to check up on way out there. I think we’ll be a good team. We’ll curb the League as best we can.”

“I’m good people,” Nashara said with a smile. “I won’t let you down.”

“I know.” The crack of a pistol shot jerked Nashara into the air.

She spun back toward the door, but Pepper grabbed her arm.

“He’s okay. It’s just sheepdog shit, you don’t want to know,” he said. “Just, do me a favor? Don’t ask about it.”

“Okay.” Nashara stared at the door, and John slowly walked through.

She grabbed his arm as he wobbled a bit. He was crying. Pepper grabbed her before she could go over and rested his forehead against hers. “Treat him well,” he said. “I’ll clean this up. Take him home.”

“Okay.” Nashara pulled away and walked over to John. “Come on, John, let’s go.”

She helped him along the road. After several minutes he pulled himself together.

“Thanks.”

“It’s no problem.”

He stopped walking. “I need you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I need you to use your connection to contact all the ships that have Teotl aboard them. There’s something we need to warn them about.”

He looked back down the road, and Nashara followed his gaze.

But Pepper was already gone.