Honor Among Thieves Page 16

  Over the years, people have attempted basic explanations. The Leviathan seek companions for their travels; they are sentient and feel loneliness. But the truth is never so simple.

  Per compelling data compiled by leading scientist Hermann L. Schulz [null citation], they have a pattern. They seek out civilizations on the verge of annihilation and offer aid. Those who accept flourish. The ones who do not often perish. However, there is no proof to substantiate fringe claims that the Leviathan herald or precipitate extinction-level events.

  Based on my evaluation of Dr. Schulz’s work, I offer the following thesis regarding human and Leviathan interdependence. Consider the existence of the wax worm. It lives within a bee colony, tunneling, which protects the larva, while it eats wax, pollen, honey, and excrement. This keeps the colony clean while the bees hide the worms from predators. This is an example of a beneficial parasite.

  We are the wax worms. They are the colony.

  Further exploration into the Daedalean mystery as to why the Leviathan truly seek human allies reveals an interesting secret. In the course of my research, I discovered the memoirs of Moriah Krull, an early Honors selection. Most of her story has been suppressed, but I acquired a copy from the underweb, and what I learned . . . brace yourselves.

  Humanity is not the first. Other sentient life forms have traveled with the Leviathan. But what became of them? How did we replace them? And why?

  To find out, order my book, True Symbionts: The Real Reason Leviathan Seek Us Out.

  [purchase information redacted, TRUTHSEEKER mod warning: DO NOT USE THIS FORUM FOR SELF-PROMOTION]

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Breaking Molds

  I DIDN’T SLEEP. I was still up, staring out at the rotating Earth below, when Beatriz came out to join me. She looked wrecked, so I made coffee the way she liked it, Brazilian style, and she drank it curled on the couch next to me.

  I’d expected some big send-off, fanfare, something like that. Instead, Nadim just said, “We’re leaving.”

  And then, the Earth slowly turned out of sight, behind us. Bea whispered, “Nadim? Can you make the viewport larger please? I’d—I’d like to watch until it’s gone.”

  He made the entire wall transparent. Beatriz sucked in a breath, then let it slowly out and nodded. Her eyes found and fixed on the Earth, and the only sign of her distress was the paleness of her knuckles as she gripped her coffee cup.

  “Breathe,” I told her quietly. She sent me a quicksilver smile and nodded. There were tears in her eyes, but they never fell. She blinked them away.

  We sat silently in the lounge with the entire wall turned window, the entire ceiling transparent, as much a part of the stars as we could be while still having chairs and oxygen.

  It was mesmerizing. Not just the spectacle of passing worlds, but the school of Leviathan who traveled with us. In view, we had at least twenty, both young ones like Nadim and Elders who resembled Typhon, the silvery shimmer of them picking up and shedding color like the scales of fish as they swam the emptiness.

  We glided past Saturn. It was the farthest we’d been before, and we kept going. Light was fainter here, and the Leviathan were fading except in shimmers; I might have imagined it, but it seemed they were growing darker to match the weak ambient light from our sun. Stars burned hard, but they were far away, and as we passed the outer limits of our system—our home—I could only make out the other Leviathan when they blocked other lights.

  At this diaspora, I thought of all the live ships that wouldn’t return to the Sol system, or if they did, it wouldn’t be during my lifetime. The Journey meant being willing to follow your Leviathan into the unknown, away from your home forever. Talk about a tough call. Nadim didn’t speak, but I felt this was something special, this moment of parting . . . and then, a sound hummed through the floor. A low, throbbing rhythmic pulse that I felt in my chest, like boosted bass at a party.

  “What was that?” Bea asked. Still not quite past her nerves, I could hear that.

  “It’s a song,” Nadim said. “I suppose you’d call it a good-bye. Those going out on their Journey sing it to us.”

  I didn’t have any idea how sound could travel through space—that was supposed to be impossible, wasn’t it? But maybe it wasn’t sound, it was resonance. Resonance the Leviathan were attuned to hear, and we couldn’t under normal circumstances. It vibrated through Nadim’s body.

  The pulse amplified and I gripped the arms of my chair tighter. I shut my eyes, and I felt what Nadim did: proud, defiant, sad, relieved. Such a profound and complicated mixture of emotions.

  Through my connection with Nadim, I also felt Typhon, at a far remove, like calling into a canyon. Not his emotions, but a kind of empty pressure, like the frozen bubble of a massive explosion. Terrifying and dark. No singing from him. No sound at all.

  Then he was gone. Marko and Chao-Xing with him.

  Nadim dimmed the transparency of the windows and ceiling gradually, rather than cutting us off at once—that was an adjustment I appreciated. It made it less traumatic for me, and especially Bea. We still sat for a moment, just breathing, and then she reached over and grabbed my hand.

  “So,” she said. “We’re doing this.”

  “Damn right. Nadim, what’s our first Tour stop?”

  “We are on course for a planet that we refer to as Firstworld.”

  “Firstworld. You mean, where you’re from?” Beatriz asked him.

  “We are from a galaxy so far from here that it would takes years in human time to reach it,” Nadim said. “This is the first world where Leviathan gathered and made contact. Once, long ago, there was a civilization.”

  Beatriz raised a brow. “You mean . . . there are people?”

  “No. The indigenous race is gone. But it is a beautiful place. One day another intelligent species will rise, but it’s fallow now. We visit often, to observe the changes and record them.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “When sentient life evolves, we must withdraw, continue observation from a distance, and strike that planet from the Tour. It would be wrong to offer aid before they reach a certain technological level.”

  “Is it dangerous?” That was Bea, of course. I’d never have thought to even ask. Everything was dangerous; that was my default position.

  “There are some lower predatory life-forms,” Nadim said. “But they avoid the ruins, which is where you will take readings and gather samples. It should be quite safe.”

  “Hey,” I said, as if it was a logical segue. “So, do you have weapons for us?”

  “There is a weapons locker. I will open it for you. You should take sidearms down with you. But please, damage nothing. Take nothing but the designated samples. This is a revered site for us.”

  “Sacred.” Beatriz nodded. “We understand. We won’t disturb anything.”

  I could hear Derry’s response to that, whispering in my ear. Yeah, right. If I see gold, I’m lifting it. Screw sacred. I’d have agreed with him, before. I’d thought freedom meant breaking the rules, stomping on other people’s ideas of what shouldn’t be done. Hearing Beatriz say sacred made me think maybe freedom didn’t mean wrecking shit. It meant not doing it too. After all, no cops out here. No rules. Just respect.

  “How long until we get there?” I asked.

  I could’ve checked our course on the console, but it was easier to ask. I liked hanging out in the hub, where most of the human-friendly tech was installed. The equipment and screens, the chairs, all of it reminded me of what humans had imagined a ship’s bridge would look like in old science fiction vids.

  “Not long,” he said. “Now that I can move at real speed.” Meaning, of course, that flying around Earth’s solar system had been like being trapped in a tiny room. I could feel the energy coursing through him now.

  “What’s it like down there? Hot? Cold? What about—”

  “I’ve put climate data on your H2s, as well as historical information, and visual records that will help you un
derstand the context of what you’re examining. We have a record of what it looked like when the Biiyan were still here.”

  Bea eagerly grabbed the H2 and began scrolling. “What happened to them?”

  Nadim chose not to answer that. I picked up my own H2 and searched for a hint. Nothing.

  Whatever ended these Biiyan, I thought, it seemed like Nadim didn’t want to discuss it. That was . . . unsettling. “Nadim? Did the Leviathan kill them?”

  “No!” That was the sharpest tone I’d ever heard him use, and the pulse of emotion that accompanied it was very clear. Outrage. Disappointment that I’d even think of it. “Of course we didn’t.”

  “Then why won’t you say what did?”

  “Because—” He was quiet for a moment, and I felt him struggling against his own better judgment. I’d done that a time or two or thousand. But, like I always did, he surrendered. “Because they were wiped out in a war of their own making, one we couldn’t stop. We tried to convince them not to enter into it, but . . . they didn’t listen. And we lost them. It’s a difficult thing for us. A failure.”

  I mumbled, “Sorry,” and let it go. Then, as if it was an afterthought (it wasn’t): “Just for clarification . . . what kind of weapons in the weapons locker?”

  Nadim sighed. “Fine, Zara. I’ll give you the code.”

  He rattled off a series of letters and numbers, so fast that he probably thought I wouldn’t catch them. But I hit record on my H2 the second he said code. There was a smug amusement in his tone when he added, “Did you get that?”

  “Damn right.” I was grinning when I hit play.

  Holding the unit overhead like a trophy, I swaggered to the armory and played the file. The lock disengaged with a satisfying hiss, and I dug in, pulling out various weapons. Some were standard ballistic guns, others looked more bizarre, and the rest I couldn’t figure out at all, despite turning them over in my hands, inspecting them from all angles.

  “You have no idea what that is,” he observed.

  “Seriously, how is this a weapon?” “This” was a perfect black cube with no switch I could detect, no pressure plates, no barrel. It looked like plastic, but felt heavier and more durable to the touch. I’d never encountered anything like it, but the sinister heft in my palm sent a wicked chill through me.

  “You don’t know?” His tone was grave. “Then put that back. You should only use it if we’re threatened by something worse than death.”

  Eyes wide, I set the object back in the locker. “Seriously?”

  Nadim laughed. His delight ran down my spine in liquid trills. “That’s just a weight. Sometimes you need ballast on low-gravity worlds to keep your other gear from floating away.”

  “I see how you are,” I said. “Messing with the new girl.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  Truthfully? I did.

  My first view of Firstworld came at 3:17 a.m. Iceland time, though out here, there was probably no point in keeping track by that standard anymore. Nadim called me portside and in teasing increments opened the viewscreen. The relatively monochromatic hues of our local planets hadn’t prepared me for the vibrant colors that swirled together on this planet like a sand painting. Violet, brown, deep green, and cerulean, all discernible from this distance, so it must be incredible on the ground.

  “It’s beautiful,” I breathed.

  “You’ll need to wear scrubbers, as the atmosphere is mildly toxic to humans. And the vegetation grows on ultraviolet rays, hence the difference in coloration.”

  “Can we lose the lecture mode?” Teasing Nadim already came natural, but I was too enthralled to soak up all the information. I just wanted to gear up and get down there.

  “Proceed to the docking bay,” Nadim said. “I’m in stable orbit.”

  Bea met me there, vibrating with equal measures of nerves and excitement. She was already dressed, and she handed me the mission suit, much thinner and more formfitting than the old days. The fabric reminded me of a dolphin’s skin, hard to describe, but I’d touched one at an aquarium over ten years ago. The suit’s color was dark blue, nearly cobalt, but when I touched it, my fingers reacted with the surface, resulting in a kind of starfish ray effect. Startled, I almost dropped it.

  She laughed. “Isn’t it fascinating? It seems to be biosensitive, though I’m not sure if it’s the heat or electromagnetic stimuli.”

  “Both,” Nadim answered. “It can also blend with its surroundings, detect radiation, and the mask will purify the air so you can breathe it.”

  “Does it go over our clothes?”

  “It’s a skinsuit.” That answer came from Bea.

  Giving her a thumbs-up, because obviously she’d memorized all the manuals on our reading list that I’d ignored in favor of time in the combat sim, I stripped without a second of hesitation. No lie, it felt a little creepy as I pulled what amounted to a second skin over mine; it seemed to melt around me, for lack of a better description, until it fit to perfection. No denying that it felt like walking around naked, though, and that was both weird and strangely wonderful.

  “It’s nonconductive and offers a good amount of protection,” Nadim added.

  “Is it bulletproof? Laser resistant? What about—”

  “Zara.” Clearly he was ready to move on.

  “Fine, I’m putting on my mask.”

  It adapted to my curls, shaping to my head naturally. I expected some vision impairment or a sense of claustrophobia, but I could see perfectly, just . . . not with my eyes. It was like there were tiny cameras all over, beaming information to my brain. Freaking disorienting, but after a few turns, I got the hang of insect vision. Gloves, check.

  Fortunately, I got ass-kicking boots with weights in the heels instead of stilettos. Once I put those on we were good to go, and Bea had raced through her mission prep and was now bouncing beside the shuttle. I grabbed our gear bag, as we’d also be taking various readings on the surface in addition to visiting Nadim’s so-called sites. Doing the Leviathan’s scientific measurements for their records.

  We were going to see alien ruins. If I’d said that six months ago, squatting over a meal of street food in a ruined building in the Zone . . . Well. I’d have either been laughed out of the neighborhood or checked into Benny’s for a psych eval.

  “This might be a dumb question. . . .”

  “There are no dumb questions, Zara,” Nadim said.

  “Really? That’s not what my fifth-grade teacher said.”

  The pause told me he wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Whatever it is, ask.”

  “Are you going with us?”

  “I can’t enter the atmosphere. Gravity would crush me, culminating in lethal impact. That’s why we have shuttles, Zara.”

  “Shit. No. I mean . . . I want you to see what we’re seeing.” It wouldn’t be the same to try and describe things to him on comms. Besides, I also wanted his company, but I couldn’t just say so.

  Bea beckoned to me, eyes shining. “Hurry up!”

  I held up one finger, telling her to wait. Nadim still hadn’t responded, which made me think this was a weird request. All the other Honors really did treat him like a thing, huh? It was impossible for me to wrap my head around that because he was so much of a person that I had a hard time focusing on anybody else if I had even a glimmer of his attention.

  “That is an unusual request. We can communicate through the shuttle comm. But . . .”

  “You know what I’m asking. There’s no way to jury-rig something so you can, ah, come down with us? See what we see?”

  After a little more hesitation, he said, “You can attach a remote unit to your skinsuit.”

  Bea came over to investigate the holdup, and she helped me with the installation. “This . . . and . . . here we go.”

  Half an hour later, presto—Nadim-mobile.

  He was weirdly quiet, and I didn’t know why. Bea powered up the Hopper—what I called the frog-like short-flight craft reserved for planetary excurs
ions. Human tech for the interior, Leviathan biotech for the exterior. She’d done better than me in navigation and piloting, and there was always the auto-nav if she got in trouble. Theoretically, we should be fine. Still, a frisson of fear-excitement (fearcitement?) jolted over me.

  “Good to go?”

  Once she checked all the instruments and we strapped in, she got us in motion, not perfection but smooth enough for her first flight. Nadim opened the hatch; then we were away, swooping out of him and yet still with him. That was the best part.

  Finally, he spoke. “I’ve never seen myself before. Not like this.”

  “What?”

  “The attachment to your skinsuit . . . I can see myself with your eyes.” He expressed a strange mix of delight and horror. I made sure to linger as we flew past. He should get a good look from head to tail.

  “Nobody ever did this for you?” I’d suspected.

  “No. Both you and Beatriz talk to me more than other Honors. The rest were content to complete their checklists, they never really thought of including me. They never thought to be so . . . interactive. This is unsettling. I’m here . . . and there also.”

  “If it feels too weird or distracting . . .” I started.

  “It’s just new. I know you will disengage if I ask.”

  That much trust did funny things to my stomach. So I just nodded and held on as Bea figured out how to compensate for gravitational pull, lift and thrust, X and Y axes. With some help from the auto-nav, she nailed entry and pulled up just a little rough, so my lunch rolled around but didn’t come up.

  “Great job, Bea. You okay?”

  “A little shaky. That was a lot of pressure. The only reason I didn’t panic was because I knew we had a fail-safe.”

  She set the Hopper down in a field of golden grass. Okay, maybe that was the wrong word since this was tall and frond-y, but it was the closest equivalent I had. The thrusters burned a circle, and I imagined natives venturing out to marvel at the pattern once we took off. Wait, no, Nadim said there’s nobody here, not anymore.

  There should be fanfare for a moment like this, flags to plant, but Bea just opened the doors and we popped out. Despite the mask, the filtered air still carried the acrid tang of whatever was making it toxic. I snagged the gear bag and got out my scanner, which told me the exact components of the gas. Methane, hydrogen, right. I could have probably brought along logs that gave statistics on the ranges that were normal for Firstworld. I’d transcribe readings when we got back.