The gun was deployed. Its lens pivoted, lining up on the projected path of the tumbling debris. The reef blazed in Urban’s awareness. Power surged to the gun. Once, twice, three times. Urban felt the force of it like a parallel universe punching through and twisting strands of space-time, destabilizing the internal structure of the ship.
*By the Unknown God, Clemantine swore.
The moment passed. The cells went quiet, waiting, watching.
*I had no idea it’d be like that, she said. *It felt like… a chaos of tidal forces ripping open the ship.
*I hate it, Urban admitted.
*Sooth. I hope we never have to use it again.
She stayed on the high bridge with him, waiting to see if the philosopher cells had hit their targets. Eventually, still riding the senses of the ship, Urban picked out three glowing vapor clouds.
*There! he said. *It’s done.
Chapter
12
Urban felt the future of his expedition to the Hallowed Vasties at risk. Not because he couldn’t replace two lost outriders. He’d done that before. He would do it again, in time. But because he would now have to reveal all the facts of Dragon’s history far sooner than he’d planned—and that could end the expedition.
They were just a few years out from Deception Well and although it would take many more years to reverse momentum and return, they were still close enough to make it a real option. Once Clemantine learned what was to come she might demand to go back, and if she insisted, he would have to comply. No way would he ever force her to stay with him.
He messaged everyone, while their ghosts were still active: *We need to talk about our future—and I don’t want to do this as ghosts in the library. Let’s all meet in the forest room, in one hour.
He hoped the warmth, the reality, the subtle chemical interaction of living people would work to his benefit—and he wanted no interruptions from the Apparatchiks.
Questions came back to him.
His only answer was to repeat: *One hour.
He woke his avatar from cold sleep, rising to consciousness amid the swaying ribbons of wall-weed in his chamber. Blinked his eyes and felt his gut knot in anxiety. Guilt was there too, though he tried to reject it. He hadn’t lied, exactly.
Well, he had.
A lie of omission because he knew Clemantine never would have agreed to come if he’d told her the full truth.
He dressed and went early to the forest room. Evening was falling, casting a rosy glow through the pergola. Lanterns drifting within the perimeter nooks gleamed with soft light. White moths fluttered around them, casting erratic shadows.
He chose a nook, hooked his foot into a stirrup, and turned to face the entrance. He did not have to wait long.
After just a few minutes, Clemantine floated in. She saw him, and kicked off the wall, gliding the short distance to join him, holding out her hand. He took it, and they hugged. He breathed in the sweet, rich scent of her. “I love you,” he whispered.
She drew back, suspicion igniting in her eyes. “You’re really in trouble, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he agreed ruefully, offering no resistance as she pulled away.
Vytet came in next, looking distracted, as if his mind was engaged elsewhere—until he joined them in the nook. Then his attention lit on Urban. “Is it an issue of resources?” he asked.
“Let’s discuss it altogether,” Urban said tersely though he suspected it was being discussed in an exchange of messages not addressed to him.
Vytet’s eyes narrowed. He traded a glance with Clemantine. Then they both turned toward the entrance just as Kona glided in.
“All right,” Kona said as he joined them. “This must be about the outriders.” He hooked a bare foot under a stirrup, and Urban found himself the subject of a stern, all-too-familiar gaze that sent him back through time, twelve hundred years, to when he was a kid in pursuit of adventure and ever short on good judgment.
“You’re going to have a hard time replacing the lost outriders. Is that correct?” Kona asked.
“Yes,” Urban agreed. “That’s right.” Feeling off balance, his planned speech already blown. “If it was just a question of mass alone, Dragon would be able to easily re-grow the lost ships—”
“But some necessary elements are in short supply,” Kona finished for him. “You don’t have them in sufficient quantity.”
Despite his growing ire, Urban was impressed. He’d thought Vytet would work it out, or Clemantine, but the old man had gotten there first. “That’s right,” he agreed. “That’s the issue.”
“You didn’t plan for this?” Kona asked.
“Oh, I did. I just didn’t think it’d become an issue this early.”
“Say it, then,” Clemantine urged him, her voice low and dangerous.
“I have to postpone completion of the gee deck. We can finish the engineering phase, but work on the interior has to wait—along with the resurrection of the ship’s company.”
“You’re not serious,” she said.
“I am. I’m sorry.”
“We owe our people a life, Urban. You can’t keep them archived forever.”
“I don’t want to keep them archived forever! That is not my intention. But I need time to recover from this loss.”
Kona said, “You must have had the elements set aside to finish the deck.”
“Yes,” Urban agreed. “And I still have them. I could finish the deck. But that would leave nothing. No reserves. No way to grow another outrider. And I’m already down to four. If I lose another—”
“You’re saying our people have to wait,” Clemantine interrupted, “while you devote resources to re-growing your fleet?”
“No. I don’t have the resources to re-grow both outriders. I’d have to cannibalize the gee deck to do it, and while the Engineer thinks we could do that, there’s risk involved, a possibility of destabilizing the boundaries, and even if that didn’t happen, we’d run a similar risk starting all over again later—”
Clemantine cut him off. “We are not cannibalizing the gee deck.”
“I agree,” he said, gripping a wall loop to stabilize himself. “That is not going to happen.”
“Do we even need to replace the outriders?” Kona asked. “Can we go with just the four ships we have left? Even three might be enough.”
To Urban’s surprise, Clemantine answered this. “The Scholar believes we’re vulnerable to a stealth Chenzeme attack without all six outriders monitoring the Near Vicinity.”
“It’s true,” Urban said. “The Pilot will tell you the same thing. And you’ve seen now how easily the outriders can be destroyed. We’re a long way from the Hallowed Vasties. There’s a real chance we’ll lose another before we get there.”
Vytet said, “I don’t think anyone is arguing against the advantage of a full fleet. If six is the ideal number, six is the number we should aim for. The question is, how do you intend to replace them? We are deep in the void. There is nothing out here but us. Must we divert to a planetary system?”
“It will take decades to set up a mining operation,” Kona said, his forehead wrinkled in thought as if he was already planning key steps in the operation.
“That’s not what we’re going to do,” Urban said. He drew a deep breath, then plunged ahead. “Dragon is a predator. It hunts other ships to consume them, to use their mass, to harvest the rare elements they carry. That’s how its sustained. That’s how it grows. That’s how I’ve been able to grow the fleet of outriders.”