31

Foxtrot Uniform Two

“Isn't this a waste of time?”

The steel plates of an unfamiliar hull loom in front of me, starkly lit right ahead of me by a headlamp, but completely dark beyond that circle of illumination, only visible as a dark shadow blocking the field of stars.

Miranda's arm reaches out into my field of view, aims the nozzle, and adds another judicious spray of white vacuum-fix paint. Looks like someone's holding up a doll behind a handheld camera. My head is full of the sound of her breathing, loud inside the vacuum hood.

“Do you have anything better to do?” she asks. “Everything's buttoned down and ready to go; you said so yourself. So, until Leela is ready, I may as well have my fun.”

She adds a little more paint, and steps back to survey her work. From this close, it still just looks like a massive swath of white, and not much else.

“No one's going to see it, you know,” I tell her, without any real hope of making an impression.

“They might,” she says, more hopeful than convinced, “They'll be pointing a lot of telescopes in this direction once that drive lights up. Regardless, I'll know it's there.”

“They're really not gonna see it, Miranda. You never struck me as someone who goes for gestures like this… or for jokes.”

Her tone comes back light, teasing, strangely amused. “Well, I guess you don't know me as well as you think you do. Now can you get on the telescope and see how it looks?”

I trigger my neural lace, cut out of her video feed, look across the gap to where the marauder's craft hangs in the void, bisected in my field of view by the tether. Next to all the white paint, I can even make out the glow of Miranda's headlamp, the shadow of her suit against the hull.

“You need to smooth out the base of the thumb,” I say, sending her a screenshot.

“Hmm…. no, I don't think so. It's supposed to be angled like that. You can test with your own hand if you like. Or I'll show you when I get back.”

“Complete with the relevant gesture, I'm sure. You finally ready to pack up and get out of there, then? They could be here at—”

“Any moment, yes, yes, I know. I'm going. Don't have a bottle of champagne with me, so I guess this is as official as it gets.”

With that, she unlocks her magboots and the tether begins to reel her in, drawing her backwards towards the White Cat. As the hull recedes away from her, I finally get a good, clear, Miranda's-eye view of what she has spent the last hour painting, the outsized logo, covering almost half the side of the hull of what used to be the ship “Tuf Voyaging“—the white shape of giant fist with a prominently extended middle finger. And the neatly lettered name under it, in simple, straight line block text.

FUCK YOU 2

It's as good a name as any, I suppose.

When Miranda walks back into the medbay, she's out of her vacsuit, dressed in slacks and a lacy green bra. She's carrying some sort of oversized shirt, and taking her time putting it on, too. It's sure a hell of a turnaround from “I don't like being looked at,” but I suppose the modesty barrier is completely gone, so I just admire the view and wait for her to tell me what's on her mind.

“Leela's ready,” she says. “Wanna celebrate?”

She's holding up… a bottle? Must have had the shirt draped over it. But what…?

“I did find some champagne after all. Well, something alcoholic, anyway. Not really sure what. The label's in Vietnamese, or Thai, or something.”

“Tibetan, actually. That's definitely not champagne, and if you want to drink it, you're even braver than I thought.”

“Oh?” she lilts, “Braver? Or crazier?”

She shoots me a quizzical look as she rolls the shirt down over her perfectly flat tummy, one eyebrow arched.

“C'mon, have a drink with me,” she coaxes, “we worked hard on this.”

“You mean you worked. You did all the heavy lifting. I just sat in this bed and told you what to do. Hmmm. On second thought, that's a totally natural state of affairs, and we should totally continue that.”

She grins. “Slave-driver,” she says. She's gotten the screw-cap off the bottle, takes a swig, and passes it to me. Or tries to.

Instead, her cheeks bulge out and those big purple eyes snap wide open as she struggles not to spray liquor all over the room. I can't help but laugh.

“I warned you.”

“Wht is ths stmpth?”

She swallows, hard, and shudders as it goes down. “You drink this?” she sputters.

“No, I don't. That's the point. I bought it to bribe someone I never got around to giving it to. It's made from fermented rice. Well, mostly rice.”

“It's horrible!”

“I know. That's why I don't drink it.”

“Are you two done messing around? At least for now?”

Leela's avatar, standing between Miranda and my bed, is wearing some sort of ballgown, off the shoulder, studded with tiny, sparkling crystals, the color of the sea in winter. And a tiara.

She sees my puzzled expression.

“It's my coming-out party,” she says. “Why shouldn't I look nice?”

“You're weird.”

“I'm unique,” she replies. “We all ready for this? Or do we want to wait until the last minute?”

“No sense in that,” I say. “You might as well go now. The sooner you get going, the more of a head start you'll have. Not that you need much, but it'll keep you safer, especially if they start shooting. We're all ready over here.”

“Okay,” she says, closing her virtual eyes just a second. I'm beginning to understand just how sophisticated a device Leela truly is… with that one little facial rendering change, she somehow manages to convey the enormity of the multitude of tasks she's doing elsewhere.

“Stand by for cable release… three, two, one… fire in the hole.”

We can't hear the blast, through the vacuum of space, as the “necklace” of mining explosive Miranda planted around the cable goes off. There's a sound like someone's plucked the solar system's biggest violin string, and then we're floating.

I call up maps, external camera displays, and the lidar map screen, and share them with Miranda. The two us watch together as the shell of the Fuck You 2 recedes in our view, both ships flung apart by the release of the cable.

“I'll give it a minute or two before I light up the drive. Just to make sure I don't irradiate you guys if there's a shielding breach somewhere. The diagnostics say no, but ya can't be too cautious.”

“Is everything okay over there?” Miranda asks, drifting over to adjust the hospital bed beneath me back to something resembling level. “Are you comfortable with this?”

“Comfortable? It's three and a half degrees above absolute zero out here, and I'm in hard vacuum, bolted to the inside of a breached storage unit. Yes, of course I'm comfortable,” Leela says with a smile. “I can do this all day, every day, any day.”

“I didn't mean physically. You're going to be alone out there.”

I'm busy spinning up the ship. I wouldn't mind staying in zero gravity, but Miranda's already given me the lecture on how wounds need at least some gravity to drain properly and heal. She's probably not lying about it just to avoid needing space-sickness meds.

Probably.

“C'mon, mom. Ease down. I'll be fine,” says Leela. “I have a nice repurposed security robot to drive around and do any more repairs I need. And I have the whole internet to talk to. Time lag doesn't bother me… I can just slow myself down.”

“You can?” I ask.

“Yeah, I figured it out a while back. Anyway, so long as I have an internet connection, it doesn't really matter where I physically am. I can be anywhere.”

She pauses, smiles, and gives a little chuckle.

“I can be everywhere,” she says, and suddenly she is, miniature figures, still in ballgowns, everywhere in the room, sitting on pieces of medical equipment and furniture, walking on the walls and ceilings, talking to each other in a murmur of voices, dancing in a showy twirl of skirts, juggling what looks to be swords and flaming torches, playing a ghostly violin.

“Okay, ten points for style,” I say. “Very creative. Minus a couple million for creepy, but ten points for style.” I sink back to sit on the bed as “down” gradually defines itself again.

It hurts to stand, even in this whisper of gravity, and sitting isn't much better, but I've been lying down for almost twenty-four hours now. I'll sit until the doctor notices and starts nagging me.

“Heh. I'm a box of silicon metalloids and fullerene pretending to be a little girl. I figure I'm already halfway to creepy from that alone,” says one of the Leela-figures.

“Anyway, I'll try to draw most of the heat off you, make sure everyone knows I'm the one carrying the Snark,” says the one next to her.

Another one rides past me through the air on what looks like a miniature pink unicorn, adding “I'll stay projected with you here for as long as I can, but the tightbeam will lose bandwidth the farther away my physical case gets.”

“So appreciate my pretty dress while you can,” all the avatars say, simultaneously, and they spin and tumble, whirl around each other in a vortex in the center of the room, fade into blue shadows, spin faster, merge, run together, into a new shape…

… and emerge as the single, full-size figure, of Leela, twirling in her blue dress, its thousands upon thousands of tiny crystals flashing.

“Did you like it?” she asks. “I spent almost five minutes working the basic program out. Was kinda looking for an excuse to use it.”

“Uh, yeah, nice, but—”

“Slightly creepy, I know, I know.”

“Really creative,” says Miranda, “You're doing things we haven't really seen from AI before. I think you are—”

“Awesome? Brilliant? Incredible? Seriously, though, uh… mom. You did good. I'm okay with it all now. I'm actually glad, now, that I'm the box and not the girl. So, thanks. For everything.”

Miranda coughs, clears her throat. “Uh, you're… welcome,” she says, her voice sounding a bit husky. “You will come back and let us study you, right? When this is all over? If you can?”

“She's not your lab rat, Miranda.”

“No, Marcus, it's okay. I'll be happy to take tests and answer questions. Just no dissecting, stet? Anyway, I've reached what should be a safe distance, so I'm firing the drive up.”

And then she does.

I almost miss it.

There's barely a few seconds for me to click into the virtual reality interface before Leela fires up the drive and goes. But I'm just fast enough to see her, to see the ripped and twisted nose of the Fuck You 2, against a field of cold and distant stars, before the image washes out in the light from the torch, and the makeshift and damaged craft blazes up and outwards, balanced on a pillar of fire.

No human could survive in there, in that evacuated shell, with no atmosphere or heat or radiation shielding.

Good thing no human is there, then, in the cold darkness. Just the Snark, where Miranda strapped and bolted it to the interior of the shredded hull. And a single Ares Elite model 5000N Personal Protection Drone, refitted with two fine manipulator claws and some fresh programming.

And Leela.

Leela, who doesn't need to breathe.

Leela, who doesn't need temperature or pressure control.

Leela, who carries her own thick shell of radiation shielding just inside a rounded case stamped with the logo of Barsoom Technical, Incorporated.

Leela, carrying the seed of our dreams. Carrying the torch. Carrying the fire we stole from heaven. They'll never catch her. Not the swarm, the ad hoc fleet of mercenaries and opportunists chasing us. Not Starlight. Not Barsoom Technical, if they want her back. No one. Ever.

Starlight fusion drives, Tomb Builder fusion drives, effector fusion drives—they burn bright, and hot, and powerful. So powerful that the speed limit for all of human civilization is the human. The ability of sinews and blood vessels and delicate neural tissue to withstand the acceleration.

The strain.

And Leela isn't human. No blood. No flesh. No moving parts. Just silicon, germanium, and steel. Lots and lots of steel.

She can run that drive at a pace that would flatten us. Flatten our pursuers. Flatten anyone. Run it as fast as it will go, shake the dust of us obsolete organics off her heels, out into the void over the plane of the ecliptic, high and clean and untouchable and free forever.

She can run anywhere, and hide anywhere, and find any internet relay node with a tightbeam com laser. Which means that she can be anywhere.

That she can be everywhere.

That she can carry my dreams, and Miranda's, and keep them free. Can pass them anywhere. Can pass the precious knowledge on again, pass the fire, to everyone, to all of humanity.

Because maybe when it's just you, and you can't crawl anymore, you're stuck. But if you're fighting for something bigger than yourself, you might fail, but the mission doesn't have to.

When you can't even crawl anymore, you pass the torch.

You take that thing you believe in, and you give it to someone else to carry. So it doesn't have to fail with you. And somehow, from the depths of our grubby little souls, the rich spoiled sociopath, and the blame-shifting thief and murderer, managed to find some shred of something to believe in. Something that wasn't just about us.

Even if we're not good people.

And Leela is carrying that dream for us now. Leela, who never asked for any of this. Leela, who never did anything wrong. Who isn't, unlike us, a bad person. Who helped us and asked for nothing in return.

We don't deserve her. Thank fuck we don't get what we actually deserve.

I flick out of the interface, back into the quiet, white-lit hum of the medbay. Miranda's still blank-eyed, staring at nothing, watching the feed. In a way, it's like being alone. For just a moment.

“I'm clear,” says a little voice, a ghost of a voice, in my ear. “But I'll have to drop off soon. I'm almost a hundred kilometers away. I'll wait awhile before hitting full throttle, and let them chase me, lead them away from you. Although I don't think anybody will be interested in you anyway, once I make sure they all know I've got the ball.”

It's just her voice. Her avatar is gone, and I didn't see it go. The distance between us is spreading rapidly, and I don't like to think about that.

“Okay, kiddo… but… try to play it safe, okay?” I mumble, barely moving my lips, “I don't want you getting—”

“Shhh. I'll be fine, daddy.”

Leela's called me that, before, sarcastically. To complain of me being overprotective of someone who, after all, not only isn't a little girl, but never was. But she doesn't sound sarcastic now. I stifle the urge to talk, to ramble advice at her, about everything from flying to where to hide to how to make repairs with the robot if she needs to.

Because that's not really what I want to say.

Miranda's eyes are darting around, and she's muttering to herself, too low to hear… I guess Leela's having two conversations at once. So maybe she won't overhear. I guess I can say what I really want to.

“I'd hug you if I could.”

“I know,” whispers Leela. “Someday, I'll just have to invent the technology.”

Miranda's eye's snap into focus.

“Now you just worry about resting and getting better, so you can patch that drive up and get home,” Leela says, loud and clear. “And you, I want you to take good care of him, you understand? I'll try to send someone back for you if you can't make repairs, but it'll be a while. So you make sure you —”

“Of course,” says Miranda, a bit stiffly somehow, “He's my patient.”

“Patient?” Leela asks with a sniff. “That is not what we talked about. You're not going to—”

“Okay, okay!” says Miranda, exasperated, and I'm not following anymore. She's not going to do what? What did Leela say to her?

“Just give me a little time, okay?” Miranda continues. “I'm not… used to this.”

“Okay, then, that's my cue to exit. I expect to hear from you two the microsecond you get back, stet?” Leela chides. “Now I'm going to hang up and give you two some privacy… Miranda.”

I don't know precisely what she means by that last remark, but I cannot ask her. Because the link indicator in my neural display is dead, and Leela has gone.

I'm back in the VR view, hanging in the void, watching the bright star of the drive recede, cycling through the news broadcasts that I haven't had time for since… well, before.

“—disappearance of Miranda Foxgrove, heir to—”

“—reports of weapons fire exchanged between spacecraft near the Sedna Exclusion Zone—”

“—evidence that conflict may have been triggered by the discovery of additional artifacts related to the Tomb Builder civilization—”

“—fears of a second Artifact War—”

“—United Nations Secretary of Extraterrestrial Affairs issued a statement accusing—”

“—Starlight Coalition common stock down seven percent in heavy trading—”

Looks like the worlds are watching. Wonder what they'll make of Leela and her internet infodumps. Should be a feeding frenzy.

My thoughts are interrupted when I feel her hand. It's just a gentle warm pressure on my back, low on the floating ribs, like someone might place it on my shoulder, if that someone were taller.

I flick back to reality, back to the medbay, back to Miranda looking at me with big, concerned eyes.

“Lie back down,” she says, softly. “You need to rest and heal. Doctor's orders.”

“Heh. Pushy doctor. I might have to fire her and get another one.”

“Out of the massive selection available around here? C'mon, let's get you to bed.”

I move with her gentle prodding. She's probably right.

She helps me back down in the bunk, but given her size compared to mine, it's more of a symbolic gesture than any real assistance. I really don't feel in need of any. Just in pain and very, very, tired. She's putting a syringe of something into the intravenous line, I notice, as I'm settling in, pulling up the sheets.

“Just a few more painkillers,” she says, following my gaze. “We'll have to watch that later. This stuff can be pretty habit-forming. You'll need to avoid taking any opiates for a long while. But right now I absolutely need you to rest up. Healing is hard work, on the cellular level.”

“That only matters if we get out of this. We're still headed for interstellar space at a pretty fast clip until I fix that drive.”

“Okay, but we have time. I checked the nav plotter, and it looks like every one of them is either chasing Leela, or giving up and headed for wherever else they're going. So you get a full week of bed rest and care, before you do anything else. And even when you get up, I do all the heavy lifting, understand?”

“Still bein' pushy.”

“And you're still stubborn as a rock. You carried us all through hell back there. You were amazing. But we're on the other side, now. It's time to rest and let me take care of you, okay?”

Strange how we got here. But she's smiling, and gently running the fingertips of one hand through my hair, stroking my scalp with her nails, which feels… amazing.

Maybe it's the drugs again. I'm starting to feel… detached. Floaty.

“You need anything else?” she asks.

Do I? The pain has already receded some, and I feel… good. But maybe that's just because we've won? Moved the goalposts and redefined victory, perhaps, but… won.

“Marcus?”

“I think I'm good. I'll prob'ly sleep some when the drugs kick in all the way.”

“Okay.” And looks reflective, almost sad, for moment. “I guess I better say this now, then, before you do.”

“Say what?”

She takes a deep breath in, like she's preparing for something.

“Marcus… I'm sorry.”

“For…?”

“For everything. For dragging you into this. For how I dragged you into this. For trying to blackmail you, and… everything. For how awful I was to you at first. I was just so… no. Not going to say that. No excuses. I was horrible to you, and it doesn't matter why. I'm sorry.”

She said this already. But I think she wants something more, now. Some sort of response. I don't know what. She's looking at me with those big liquid eyes, head cocked to one side, biting her lip a bit, looking guilty and nervous and adorable. She's doing that on purpose… I know she is. I think she is.

Maybe?

I guess before I would have been angry about that, about her reflexive tendency to manipulate everyone she talks to, but… it's just that, isn't it? Reflexive. Not malicious. It's just her way.

“Okay,” I say, cautiously, “I hear you, but I think I'd actually like to hear the 'why' part.”

“It's not an excuse. I don't want to make a bunch of excuses while I'm trying to say sorry.”

“How about just for the sake of my curiosity?” I say, looking at her pointedly. Waiting.

“Okay, well, I was… I was terrified of you!”

She pauses.

“What? Stop looking at me like that! Have you seen yourself? In the mirror? You look like you were grown in a lab by someone who thought pitbulls were too approachable! I was asking myself what the hell I was doing from the moment you walked through the door!”

I can't help but crack a smile. “Really? Is that why the first thing you did was lecture me, and start prodding me in the ribs?”

“Well… I wasn't going to let on. I hear,” she says, smiling back, “that animals can smell fear.”

I growl a bit, and snap my teeth in the direction of her hand.

“Hey,” she giggles, “no eating until the drugs wear off.”

“But Grog hungry! Seriously, though, if that's what you being afraid smells like, then you need to quit doctoring and take up poker. You looked as calm as if you were ordering lunch. I never saw you scared until…”

I stop.

“Until the airlock?” she asks.

Ouch. She had to remind me, didn't she?

“Oh, will you please stop making that guilty face?” she says. “I'm okay now, remember? Or do I need to take your hands and put them on my neck again?”

It's halfway between a joke and a threat. I'm not sure why, but a sort of tingle runs up my spine. Electric.

“Is that gonna become a thing? Just because I thought you deserved a little payback doesn't mean…”

Whoa. Room's starting to waver back and forth, just a bit. How much of that stuff did she give me?

“… doesn't mean that I don't feel bad about it. You're like a third my size.”

“And I came along and picked a fight with you. I'm sorry. I was just so scared. I'd never done anything like this. I'd just lived with my family, and gone to school, and then my internship, then straight into the family business. I'd—”

“Never been on your own? Yeah. And then you jumped straight into planning a heist, strong-arming me, and flying all the way across the worlds to get shot at. I'm surprised you had the guts to try it.”

“It was desperation, really,” she says. “This whole thing just… fell into my lap. And I couldn't tell anyone! But I had to do something. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life thinking 'that could have been me.'”

“So you just came up with this harebrained scheme and went for it. “

“Yeah.” She reaches down to take my hand where it's lying on the sheets, but she only gets around my middle and index fingers. “I know, I know, I should have asked.” she says.

She squeezes my fingers, gently. Maybe it's the drugs, or the way that, given what we've just been through, nothing else matters much, but somehow it doesn't seem at all unnatural. I try to stop my brain from having ideas about what that means. And fail.

“You were right,” she says. “I should have taken the risk. Maybe if we'd worked together from the beginning, we could have pulled it off.”

I grin. “Hey, don't sell yourself short, Pixie. We kinda did. Hell, we pulled the prize right out from under their noses. I mean, you didn't get your big payoff, but that's still gotta count for something, right?”

I try to look at her, read her face, but my eyelids keep fluttering. I'm really wanting to just drift off to sleep, but I also want to finish this conversation. Clear the air. It's long overdue.

“Yes, I suppose so. But still, we spent so much time and effort fighting each other… I mean, yes, I know, it was completely and utterly my fault, but still…”

“Well, we're still in this mess together. So you patch me up, I patch the drive up, and we get back to civilization, kayno? I think we can be friends after that.”

I drag my eyelids open just a bit, to see what she says, but when I do, it's not what I expect. She's wearing a faint, troubled frown. Damn it. We always seem to wrong-foot each other. I can't imagine what could possibly bother her about such an innocuous sentence.

“Hey. Something bugging you? You look —”

She shakes her head a bit, as if to clear it. “No, no, I'm fine, it's nothing. You get some sleep, okay? Your eyelids keep falling shut.”

“M'kay.”

I hear, more than see, her turn to go. Then her footsteps stop.

“No,” she says, “hold on.”

I drag my eyes open. She's turned in the doorway.

“Wha?”

“It's not… nothing. Leela… she said—well, she said some things. Read me the riot act, if you can believe it.”

She hesitates, twisting her fingers together. I can only imagine how she'd react to being lectured by her creation, her… daughter… but I'm too tired to see the humor. I wish she'd get to the point. Or just tell me later.

“Hmmm?”

“She was right. So many of our problems could have been avoided with a five minute adult conversation. So, yes, there's something…well, we need to talk.”

“M'kay… 'zit important? Kinda fadin' here…” I'm not watching her face anymore. My eyes won't open.

Her voice is soft, and seems to come from very far away now, behind a cloud of opiates, of exhaustion, of stress finally lifted from my shoulders. “Okay, you rest first then. It's important, but it's not urgent. We can talk about it later,” she says, “when I have your full attention. And I'm going to want your full attention.”

Curiosity fights a war with sleep in my head… and loses. I'll find out soon enough. Hopefully it's not another one of her trademark crazy moments.

“M'kay, g'night.”

I don't even hear her go.