“You talkin’ about the internal guidance-control circuits or the semiexternal quantum processors that route fire-control signals? You shot a fuckin’ hole through one a’ them, a while back. I hadda steal half a dozen computers off campus, just t’ cobble together somethin’ t’ bypass it. And it still don’t work right, I bet. And what you done to his tracks outta be outlawed. The worst of it, though, was the rotational collar on his rear Hellbore. Did’ja know you cracked the mother? He can’t use it for nuthin’, not without a new collar, or he’ll rip that whole damn turret to shreds, first time he fires it.”
Kafari’s jaw had come adrift, mercifully hidden behind her battle helmet. “You do know a thing or two, don’t you?”
“Mister,” he said, narrowing his eyes as he stared at the featureless visor she wore, “you got no idea how hard I worked my ass off, the last four years, tryin’ to learn enough to keep the Big Guy runnin’. Them assholes in charge of the schools never taught me jack shit. I hadda learn how to learn, before I could learn how t’ fix what was wrong.”
“That,” Kafari muttered, “doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“I’ll bet it don’t.” A sudden fierce grin appeared and the golden color of his nano-tatt flared orange around the edges. “You got a pretty low opinion of me, don’t you? And you’re right. I ain’t nothin’ or nobody, but what I got — what I had, before this,” he waved a hand at the camp, “I hadda work hard for, and I got to like knowin’ how to do things, for my own self.” His face went hard, then, with the cold, dangerous look of the street tough she’d taken him as, at first glance. “And I got a real big itch to pay back the hospitality they been dishin’ out to folks. What I know about the Bolo’s small peanuts, compared to what else I know that you could use. Like the folks I know, who know folks, if you catch my drift? I got a pretty good idea who hit Madison, today.”
“You know about that?” Kafari asked sharply.
The mechanic went motionless, looked for several seconds like a sculpture hacked out of mahogany with a chain saw. The look in his eyes sent chills down Kafari’s spine. “Oh, yeah,” he said softly. “The guards was nice enough to share it with us. Right before they dug that goddamned pit and started shovin’ people into it.”
The boy with him had a haunted look, with memory burning in eyes that had probably been young, a few short days ago. “What do you want from me?” Kafari asked.
A muscle jumped in the mechanic’s jaw. “A chance to even the damn score.”
“Fair enough.”
He looked surprised. “You ain’t gonna argue?”
“I don’t have time to waste, arguing over something that gives us both what we want. You say you have a good idea who detonated that bomb. They’ve thrown my timetables all to hell, but a potential ally is priceless. Particularly if we can push matters before they repair the Bolo.”
“I ain’t gonna fix him, that’s for damn sure. I like the Big Guy, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t wanna look up into them gun barrels knowin’ he’s got a good reason to shoot me. Time was, I was too stupid t’ be scared of him. That ain’t so, any more.”
“I’m told,” Kafari said softly, “that even his commander was afraid of him.” She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the look in Simon’s eyes, that night, remembering the sound of his voice. Her husband loved Sonny. But only a fool didn’t feel at least some fear, when standing in the presence of that much flintsteel and death, with a mind of its own and unhuman thoughts sizzling through unhuman circuitry.
Simon was right. A sword with a mind of its own was a damned dangerous companion.
The mechanic muttered, “Somehow that don’t surprise me at all.” He held out a hand. “I’m Phil, by the way. Phil Fabrizio.”
Kafari shook his hand. “Commodore Oroton.”
He grinned. “A distinct pleasure, that’s what it is, a genuine, distinct pleasure. So how’s about you tell me what you need from me and we’ll get this show on the road?”
“All right, Mr. Fabrizio. Tell me about these friends of yours…”
III
Yalena felt strange, being on the Star of Mali, again. She had somehow expected the freighter to look different, to have gone through the same radical change she, herself, had made over the past four years. It seemed faintly obscene to find the exact same metal walls painted in the exact same shades recommended by long-haul jump psychologists — warm reds and golds in the mess hall, cool and soothing pastel blues and greens in the passenger and crew cabins — and the exact same shipboard schedules and routines. It was a surprise, since she, herself, had changed so dramatically.
Captain Aditi, who invited Yalena, her father, and both cousins to sit at the captain’s table for dinner, commented on it halfway through the meal.
“You’ve grown up, child. I was worried about you, after that last voyage you made with us, and that’s no lie. It’s good to see you’ve bounced back and decided to do something positive with all that hurt.”
Yalena set her fork down and swallowed a mouthful of salad before answering. “Thank you for thinking kindly of me at all, ma’am,” she said in a low voice. “I know what kind of person I was, then. I’ve worked very hard to be someone better than that.”
Captain Aditi exchanged glances with Yalena’s cousin Stefano, then said, “It shows, Miss Yalena. And that’s the best any of us can do, in this life. Try hard to be better than the person we were yesterday.”
It was, Yalena realized, a blueprint for the way to live, a simple yet powerful way that was foreign to everything she had known during the first decade and a half of her life. Vittori Santorini might have the power to blind people to reality, telling them what they wanted to hear, but he needed an army of thugs, a whole regiment of propagandists, a disarmed and helpless populace, and a cadre of political fanatics to stay in control. He didn’t understand power — real power — at all. The kind of power that came from within, unshakable and rooted in the most essential truth a human could learn: that caring about the welfare of others was the definition of humanity. Without the belief that others mattered, that their lives were of value, that their safety and happiness were important enough to defend, society ceased to be civilized — and those in charge of it ceased to be fully human.
That was the power that had put one hundred seventy-three people onto a freighter, on their way to fight for the liberation of a whole world and the people in it. And that was the power that had transformed a spoiled, selfish, unfit-for-polite-company toad into a soldier. Or, at least, the beginning of being a soldier. She had a lot to learn and miles to travel on the road to experience, before she could truly give herself that title. But she had made a start and with every passing hour, the Star of Mali carried her closer to the fields where she would try to redeem herself.
There was more than enough to do, getting ready for that moment. On the second day of their interstellar transit, the whole company met in the ship’s mess, where passengers and crew took their meals in shifts because of the sheer number of people crammed into the freighter’s limited passenger space. Her father called the meeting to hammer out details of their battle plan, which had been roughed out on Vishnu. With a hundred seventy soldiers and students, plus the official repair team, there wasn’t even sitting room left on the floor.
“We’ll need two teams,” he said, speaking with brisk authority, revealing a facet of his character that she’d never really seen, before. “One team goes in with the repair crew to fix my Bolo.” His sudden, evil grin startled Yalena, it was so unexpected and so seemingly out of place, given the subject at hand. Then, as the group caught the double entendre and started to chuckle, his purpose made abrupt sense. The brutal tension gripping the jam-packed room relaxed its grip, allowing everyone to focus on the battle plans, rather than the emotions that had brought them all together, in the first place.