Terminal Point Part 5

Everett frowned. "We're full up on three of the shuttles already, and one of the shuttles needs to carry the terraforming machines."

"Lucas needs to check if those are still in working order. It's been a few hundred years since they were taken apart and stored."

"Tell him to hurry it up then. We need to know in order to calculate volume and weight."

Jason shrugged and teleported away, carrying Everett's concerns with him. Lucas didn't even look up from the datapad in his hands as Jason finished reporting. "Everything will fit. If we need to make s.p.a.ce for the weight, we'll leave people behind."

Jason stared at him. "You said we couldn't risk leaving any evidence of our pa.s.sage."

"No one will think to look for bodies in the water. Get back to transporting these things to the shuttles. Matron has a stack ready for you in the second vault."

Jason left. He knew better than to argue with the man who still had an iron grip on their lives.

It took hours of nonstop cataloguing, transferring, and pure grunt work to get the job done. Seeds were infinitesimal in weight, but with the amount they were transporting, it quickly added up. Toward the end, they ripped open boxes, taking just one or two packets of the remaining seeds, or just one vial of DNA, one stored embryo. For the more important items-such as algae and countless tree seeds and grains-the amounts were never reduced.

Only when the last cargo door closed and everyone was settled in for the flight did Lucas strap himself into the navigator's seat in Alpha shuttle. Matron was piloting again, and Threnody was laid out between them, unconscious and liable to remain that way for hours. The flight deck was set at a higher temperature to accommodate her.

Matron yawned through the preflight procedure. After the fifth yawn, she picked up a hypospray nearby and pressed it against her throat, dosing herself with a shot of adrenaline. A minute or so later, Lucas could feel the engines start up through the soles of his boots.

"Didn't think we'd make it this far," Matron said as she settled her hands on the stick and activated the vertical takeoff and landing.

"Get us in the air," Lucas said.

Matron did as she was told in silence, launching the shuttle and feeling the weight of the cargo in the jerk of the stick. They had a heavy load in the shuttle's belly, one more precious than anything her scavengers had ever discovered in the broken, abandoned cities of America. For all the credit that the government issued, for all the elite perks that one could have by gaining entrance into the Registry, clean DNA wasn't worth anything compared to what nine shuttles ferried out of Spitsbergen one late-August morning.

Behind them, its doors shut but not locked, the Svalbard Global Seed and Gene Bank was just as silent, just as cold as it had been for centuries.

They flew north, climbing over the Arctic Ocean, heading for the Pacific. The midnight sun guided their way, a constant bright circle beyond the clouds.

PART TWO.

Cognizance.

SESSION DATE: 2128.03.18.

LOCATION: Inst.i.tute of Psionics Research.

CLEARANCE ID: Dr. Amy Bennett.

SUBJECT: 2581.

FILE NUMBER: 251.

The doctor watches Aisling play with a deck of cards. The child's small hands spread the plain, white rectangles across the table in a shapeless mess. She picks cards at random and lays them before her in a line.

"You never ask how I do it," Aisling says as she pushes the cards together. "Why?"

"Would you tell us if we did?" the doctor replies.

The girl tucks a piece of dark hair behind one small ear, studying the cards. "No."

"That's why, Aisling."

"But you're a doctor. Doctors should ask questions."

"We do."

"Not the right ones." Aisling smiles as she flips over a card, revealing a crimson red square on its face and nothing else. "Pick a card, any card. I can tell you the future."

"Would it be the right one?" The doctor leans forward to catch the child's gaze with her own. "Would you help us survive?"

Aisling flips more cards over, one at a time, until a line of shapes and symbols lie before her. She picks a card seemingly at random, holding it up beside her bleached-out violet eyes, the color of the shape a deep, dark blue. "My brother has eyes like this."

"Where is Matthew, Aisling?"

Aisling scoots the card as far across the table as her small arm will stretch. "You can't have him."

SIX.

AUGUST 2379.

THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS.

Beneath the Peace Palace lay a city of underground tunnels and bunkers. Its protective warrens once housed thousands of people during the Border Wars and still held their descendants today. The most well-guarded bunkers were reserved for those who served on the World Court. The business of ruling, however, was always conducted aboveground.

Sharra Gervais was blond-haired, blue-eyed, and gorgeous, human down to her very registered DNA. She was Erik's wife, his perfect piece of femininity; a woman who spent the majority of her time raising a daughter that he rarely saw or interacted with unless for a public event. The world press adored those family moments; Sharra hated the lie she was living. But she knew her role and played it well, portraying the good wife the world expected her to be. She sat in the area reserved for the families of those serving on the World Court, hands clasped in her lap, looking at her husband as he stood before the cameras of the world press.

He still wore his robes of office, the black synthfabric soaking up the glare from the cameras. Beneath the robe, Sharra knew he wore a perfectly tailored business suit in charcoal gray and pinstripes, the crisp whiteness of his hidden shirt a match for her dress. She smoothed her hands over the synthfabric resting against her thighs. White was such an expensive color to keep clean.

"I admire your husband's resolve when it comes to the safety of society," Fatima Omar said softly. The much younger woman sitting to Sharra's left wore a far less fashionable outfit, one that covered nearly every centimeter of her body. The long skirt and blouse were modestly cut, her hijab a demure black with little adornment save for a tiny amount of embroidery along the edges. Her husband, Mohammad, was a justice who stood in solid support of Erik.

"Yes," Sharra said absently, her attention focused on the spectacle before her. The reporters took up much of the area inside the renovated pressroom, with its small stage and guarded section for families and dignitaries who didn't merit a place before the microphones of the world press.

"-cannot condone what happened in Buffalo," Erik said. "The families of those who lost their lives during the cowardly attacks by rogue psions will be compensated, as is the law. The Strykers Syndicate is reviewing how they organize and initiate their missions. This will not happen again. Punishment has been administered to those responsible for the break in the chain of command."

Killing dogs makes people happy, Sharra thought, feeling the corner of her mouth tick minutely upward. But it doesn't solve the problem, Erik.

Politics wasn't her place, so she kept her opinion to herself as she always did. Sharra understood society's fear of psions better than most, but she also knew that psions were a cog that couldn't easily be replaced. The Strykers Syndicate kept rogue psions in check, but they also kept Sharra in couture fashion, clean food and water. Selling soldiers to the highest bidder under strict contractual terms had made those who sat on the World Court very, very wealthy over the years. Slavery was profitable, even if certain people considered it immoral. Sharra wasn't religious in the least, though she made a good show of bowing her head in prayer every Sunday.

"The Strykers Syndicate is well under our control. There is no need to fear government psions when science has produced ways to keep them in check," Erik said, gesturing faintly toward his head and the bioware net everyone knew was wrapped around his brain. "Society has nothing to fear from them."

Of course not. Sharra had to bite down on her bottom lip to keep from grimacing. Oh, Erik, you are such a fool.

She loved him, or thought she did. More and more as the years pa.s.sed, she began to believe it was the idea of love that she adored, not the man she had married when she was young and incapable of seeing the loneliness that came with marrying a man of his social standing. They both kept secrets, and the one true thing they shared now was their daughter. Dinner needed to be scheduled in advance. Sleep was preferable to s.e.x.

She regretted. It was an odd feeling.

Before her, the reporters were beginning to ask questions, and Sharra realized she had missed much of Erik's calculated apology in favor of her own thoughts. She already knew the gist of it. Being the wife of the most powerful human in the world had its perks.

Sharra gave a good show for the news when it was all over, standing beside her husband and smiling proudly at him. Only when they were in the back hallways of the Peace Palace, where the judges separated into their fractious little groups and went their separate ways, did Sharra speak.

"How is killing the OIC of the Strykers Syndicate conducive to everything we've worked for?" Sharra said, her voice a low hiss as they walked back to Erik's office. Behind them trailed a quad for security, the four soldiers keeping an eye on their charges.

Erik shot her a steely look. "Ciari Treiva isn't dead."

"She might as well be after what you put her through."

"Is that compa.s.sion for a dog I hear coming out of your mouth?"

"Hardly" was her clipped response. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."

Sharra bit back the rest of her argument until they were within the confines of his office and the jamming sequence for privacy was activated. She tossed her small purse on his desk in a fit of pique.

"What have I said when it comes to speaking in public of things you know nothing about?" Erik asked in a cold voice as he went behind his desk.

"For our daughter's sake, I'll pretend you didn't just say that," Sharra snapped as she headed for his bar.

"Starting early today, I see."

Sharra uncorked a bottle of merlot and poured herself a gla.s.s of the expensive drink until the red liquid reached the thin crystal rim. "Not early enough."

"Don't get drunk. I don't want you to make a mess of your clothes."

Sharra took a long swallow of her wine before she toasted him with bitterness on her tongue. "You know me so well, husband."

"I know your vices," Erik said as he unsealed his robes. Draping the clothing over the back of his leather chair, Erik sat down and studied his wife. "I mean it, Sharra. The world press is camped out everywhere right now and the last thing I need to deal with is you falling down drunk."

"I would think you'd be more worried about the problem with the missing psions than how I can embarra.s.s you."

"I don't need your att.i.tude right now."

She shrugged elegantly, every centimeter the supposedly perfect woman he had married. She'd come to her alcoholism late, needing something to drown out the pain and regret she lived with. "I can't decide if it's stress that's making you act so heavy-handed or merely the lack of sleep. Since you haven't slept in our bed in over a week, I'll a.s.sume it's the latter."

"I'm not cheating on you."

"I know you're not." Sharra took another sip of her wine, choking it down along with the laughter that threatened to pa.s.s her lips. "You're too busy setting up the launch and burning out our enslaved protectors to find someone else to f.u.c.k."

"I am doing this for our daughter. I am doing this for you. For us."

If he were a better man, if she were a less cynical woman, she might have believed him. Except Sharra knew otherwise, knew secrets of his business a.s.sociates that he had no concept of. She sc.r.a.ped her teeth over the edge of the gla.s.s and drank down more wine, one arm crossed over her chest. "Honestly, Erik. For a judge, you're a terrible liar."

The flash of anger in his eyes told her she'd hit a nerve. Like any man, Erik took pride in his work and his ability to wield power. She watched him get to his feet and approach her, a hard expression on his face. Sharra held on to her winegla.s.s, a flimsy barrier between them.

"I'm not the one who refuses to believe I have a problem," he said, voice low and flat as he stared at his wife over her gla.s.s.

Sharra licked a wet film off her teeth and smiled at him, mouth tinted red. "I am aware of my faults."

In the entire time they were married, he had never hit her. But some days, Sharra thought abuse would be preferable to this war of words.

"I don't have time to pander to your pathetic needs," Erik said, the tension between them almost painful. "Drink your wine, drink the whole d.a.m.n bottle, but you don't leave my office until you're sober. Kindly shut your mouth and stay out of my way while I prepare for my next meeting."

"So it's the good, silent wife you want," Sharra murmured, licking her lips. "Darling, why didn't you say so?"

Her mockery made his temper rise higher, but Erik had already spent too much emotion this morning debriefing a woman he considered beneath him to expend any more on his wife. Sharra pressed a finger to his mouth, watching as he jerked back, as if he couldn't stand her touch. Her own mouth twisted into a thin, brittle smile.

"For our daughter's sake, I won't make a fool of you," Sharra promised.

Lillian was the one good thing she'd ever done with her life, and Erik was a decent father to the five-year-old child that she loved. The same could not be said for how he felt about his wife. Their private lives went much like this of late, fighting with every ounce of spite they had over everything.

Erik took Sharra at her word and retreated to his desk. She remained by the wet bar and steadily drank her way through the bottle of wine. She opened up a second one right before Erik left, smiling at the disgust in his eyes.

Sharra set the wine bottle aside after she was certain he wouldn't return and went to his desk. She grabbed her purse, pulling out an unmarked data chip as she sat down. Erik's terminal was wide-open for use, trust between them something carved deep into his mind, beyond the capacity of his bioware net to detect. Psionic interference perpetuated by the Sercas had worked wonders on his mind all those years ago. She still hated the results, though there were days she loved them. Loved him.

Their anniversary was coming up, the beginning of December. Erik had promised her the stars this year.

"I would rather have nothing," Sharra said softly, thinking of her daughter and what they would suffer through after the launch. The inevitability of a contract with Nathan she could not rationally escape.

She jacked in the data chip and uploaded the program meticulously created to bypa.s.s the World Court's security. Sharra knew her place. It wasn't by her husband's side.

She got up to pour herself another gla.s.s of wine.

SEVEN.