The Stars Like Gods Read online

  38

  * * *

  NIKA’S FLAT

  Nika did a quick inspection of the living room and nodded to herself. It truly was designed for entertaining, which meant she didn’t need to do much rearranging or staging. As long as there was food and drink, a crowd could inhabit the space comfortably for many hours.

  Perrin had arrived a few minutes earlier bearing bags upon bags of food. She’d entrusted Ava and Maggie with bringing drinks, which Nika wasn’t certain had been the best idea. Ava was likely to show up with barrels of rectified ethanol and zero wine. But she was happy to give Maggie things to do—things that didn’t involve shooting attackers inside collapsing buildings—to ease her back into the world of the living, and Ava seemed eager to help with it as well.

  Hopefully, all her guests wouldn’t end up with alcohol poisoning.

  She’d checked on Maris before returning home and had found Spencer tending to the woman’s recovery quite well. He’d never struck her as the tender type, so it had been a bit of a shock to see. Part of her suspected Maris of playing the delicate flower and Spencer of falling for it; on the other hand, she needed to remember that while the Pavilion attack resembled an average day at the office for her, the same wasn’t true for people like Maris.

  The doorbell rang, and she accessed the hallway cam before answering it. Given what Satair had almost pulled off at the Pavilion, they didn’t dare discount the possibility of renewed attacks on the Advisors.

  Parc fidgeted in the hallway. She laughed to herself and opened the door. “You’re early. You might as well have stayed here this afternoon.”

  “But then I would have missed an amazing grilled cheese sandwich at the deli on Caraden.” He strode in, went to the kitchen, and grabbed a handful of nuts from the bowl Perrin had set on the counter less than ten seconds earlier. “I wanted to talk to you about something before everyone arrived.”

  Perrin glanced over her shoulder from inside the pantry. “Talk to me?”

  “Nah. I mean, you can chime in if you have an opinion, and I bet you will. So, Nika.”

  She leaned against the wall. “I’m listening.”

  He strode around the living room popping peanuts into his mouth between sentences. “These melds—though I prefer the term gestalts—we’re creating? They need a name. Calling them ‘hive minds,’ which I’ve already heard several people doing, is both lame and flagrantly inaccurate, because nobody’s losing any individuality here. You know this. ‘Group minds’ is more accurate, but easily as lame.”

  Nika shrugged. “I don’t disagree. Collective consciousness nodes?”

  “You have no imagination, woman. Besides, they’re not so much collectives as coalescences—ooh! Coalescences of cerebral activity. We can call them COBRAS.”

  She stared at him deadpan. “We’re not calling them COBRAS.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ugh, fine. Let’s see….”

  “Noesis? Or noetics?”

  “It’s taken.” A wicked smirk grew on his features, and he crossed his arms triumphantly across his chest. “I’ve got it: CERAFFIN. That’s the plural. CERAFF in the singular, just to be clear.”

  Perrin giggled from the kitchen, where she was stacking trays of food in the refrigeration unit.

  Nika arched an unimpressed eyebrow, but said nothing, waiting for him to make his case.

  “It’s a totally legitimate acronym. It stands for Cerebral Affinity. Little groupings of thought affinities, see?”

  “That are angelic in nature.”

  “Well, I’ll leave that for others to judge.”

  She sighed so dramatically, Maris would be proud. “I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?”

  “Nope. You Advisors can give them a different name if you want, but we’re all using ceraffin—no caps, I think. It’s going to stick.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yep. I’m never wrong about these things.”

  Sadly, he rarely was…and she supposed he did deserve to name them, since they were his creation. “Time will tell. Since you’re here, make yourself useful. Take those bowls on the dining table, fill them with chips and put the bowls on all the living room tables.”

  “Absolutely. In one minute.” The glee faded from his tone, and his voice dropped to a murmur, possibly so Perrin couldn’t hear him. “He’s dead, by the way.”

  She frowned in concern. “Who’s dead?”

  “My other self. At the Rasu stronghold. After I left here this afternoon, I reached out for the kyoseil strings leading to him—it’s something I’ve been doing every so often—and they were gone. Which means he’s gone. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Parc, I am so, so sorry.”

  “No, don’t be! It sucked where he was, believe me. I’m glad, deeply glad, it’s over for him. Maybe he can find some peace now.”

  She studied him briefly, then took his hands in hers. “You didn’t erase any of the memories you accessed through him, did you?”

  One side of his mouth curled up in a sad little half-smile…then he waved her off and jogged toward the dining table. “Perrin, talk to me about these chips!”

  Perrin motioned toward one of the bags she’d deposited on the kitchen counter, and Parc grabbed it and started dumping the contents into bowls.

  Once he began distributing them around the living room, Nika went into the kitchen to see how she could help.

  Perrin came up beside her. “He really is okay now, isn’t he?”

  She hesitated. But if he’d been carrying around those horrible memories all this time, he must have found his own measure of peace with them. “I think so, especially since now he has a new toy to show off. It doesn’t mean there aren’t scars lurking beneath the veneer, though, or that they’ll heal anytime soon.”

  “What he’s doing? It isn’t just a new toy, Nika. The ceraffin are going to change things.”

  She groaned. “It’s been two minutes, and he already has you calling them that.”

  “It’s a good name. And something that’s going to change the world needs a good name.”

  Something that’s going to change the world. The notion still made her deeply uncomfortable, but mostly she hoped there was a world left to change.

  Nika Kirumase had surely never thrown a party this big in her flat. The crowd filled the expansive living room and spilled over into the kitchen and dining area and out onto the balcony. Granted, it was for now less a party and more a meeting, but she suspected this wouldn’t last for long.

  She’d moved one of the couches flush against the windows, and once Perrin and Joaquim were situated, she sat down between them.

  From this vantage, they looked out on virtually the entire active membership of NOIR, including everyone who’d suffered body loss in the events of the last few months. Maggie sat on the floor next to Ava, who whispered likely devious plans in her sister’s ear while Carson tried to eavesdrop behind them. Parc and Ryan were making a deliberate effort to engage Cair in conversation by the kitchen counter, though she didn’t want to hazard a guess at how well it was going.

  “Are we ready?”

  Perrin passed a bowl of chips across her to Joaquim. “I think so. If you are?”

  Nika reached out and patted Perrin’s hand, then did the same to Joaquim’s hand, whether he liked it or not. “We’re ready.”

  She picked up her wine glass, extended her wrist blade and tapped the broad side of the blade against it. “Attention, everyone. Pipe down for a minute, will you? Only for a minute, I promise—then we’ll open the secret closet holding the real alcohol that Ava sneaked in.”

  The blade retracted, and she sipped on her wine while the last conversations faded. “Thank you all for coming. You’ve succeeded in making this palatial spread I lucked into feel small and cramped, which is quite a feat. It’s been a wild couple of months. Often exciting, sometimes heartbreaking. We lost some of you for a while there, and we
are so glad to have you back with us tonight.”

  Perrin jumped in before Nika could continue. “I want to say that I am proud beyond measure of each and every one of you. Proud of how you’ve handled terrible crises and suffering, how you’ve stepped up to help others even when you’ve lost so much. You’ve risen to the challenge again and again, and it’s not just us who are grateful. It’s the entire godsdamn Dominion.”

  Someone hooted from the kitchen, and a few seconds of celebratory exchanges broke the formality of their speechifying. Nika nudged Joaquim in his side. A few days ago, she’d worried he wouldn’t be here for any more NOIR gatherings. But now he was, and it made everything about this moment better.

  He took the cue and stood to wander toward the kitchen while he chimed in. “What I keep coming back to is this: we succeeded in our mission. The Guides are imprisoned for their crimes against the people. The oppressive laws and unfair sentences they imposed on the innocent are being rolled back and people freed.” He grabbed a fresh beer from the cooler, opened it, and tipped it toward Nika. “And while none of this would have happened without the damn fine work of everyone here, we also owe everything to Nika…and owe at least a tiny bit to her new colleagues.”

  She burst out laughing. “Thank you, Joaquim. I’ll make it a point to pass on your appreciation. Yes, as I assume everyone knows by now, I’ve agreed to again serve as an Advisor, because I want to make sure we get it right this time. We’re working to build a government that is more open, more adaptive and more free than the Dominion has ever seen.

  “I know some people may ask, ‘what’s the point?’ Yes, we face a grave threat to our lives—to our continued existence—from the Rasu. But we’ve taken control of our own destiny, dammit, and by doing so I truly believe we can meet and defeat this threat. I believe we can do anything.”

  She sniffled, hurriedly wiping away a tear from her cheek. Dammit, these people did not need to see her cry. She was their leader. Their beacon. Their strength.

  Perrin wrapped her arms around Nika in a melodramatic hug—and then the tears were a joke and everyone laughed, and it was okay. Still, her eyes stung as she began again. “Because of the work you’ve been doing, no one is calling NOIR terrorists any longer. Instead, they’re calling us protectors.

  “NOIR now means the people who are helping to rebuild all that crumbled under the Guides. You don’t need to live separate and cut off from the rest of society any longer. You’re an integral part of it, and it needs you. From now on, we’re all in this together.”

  Dominic stood up near the back of the room. “Hey, Nika, we’re all going to need tissues at this rate, because this is starting to sound like a goodbye.”

  “No.” She shook her head with a smile. “This is not a goodbye—this is not the end. Perrin, Joaquim and I will always be here for every one of you, and I hope you’ll always be there for each other. You’re changing the world, and hopefully very soon you’ll get to live in peace in it.

  “And thanks to Parc, we’ve discovered we’re even more connected to one another than we ever realized. I should add that he’s agreed to host a NOIR-only ceraff in his brain, so if you’re brave enough to venture into that house of horrors—”

  “Hey!”

  Perrin rolled her eyes. “Oh, hush! You know she speaks the truth.”

  “That’s beside the point.” Parc made a show of sagging in defeat. “Fine. I’ll do a little spring cleaning.”

  “Everyone thanks you in advance. As I was saying, if you’re brave enough to venture into Parc’s spring-cleaned brain, you’ll find you’re among friends.”

  She drew in a deep breath. “Serving as your leader has been the greatest honor of my many lives. And with this, I call an end to official operations of the bad-ass, freedom-loving, people-rescuing, life-saving organization known as NOIR.”

  39

  * * *

  MIRAI ONE PAVILION

  Nika walked amidst the projection of the Rasu stronghold—the city-sized platforms, the star-sized Dyson lattice and the bustling traffic of ships that buzzed around and through her physical presence here.

  While she, Dashiel, Adlai and Joaquim had fought off a bloody coup attempt by Satair, Lance Palmer had taken a flight of cloaked military vessels deep into the heart of the enemy’s lair and returned with a far more detailed analysis of the stronghold than she and Dashiel had managed during their brief visit. The man had taken a tremendous risk—every foray into the home of their enemy was a tremendous risk—to get actionable, military-quality data. Now they merely needed to fulfill the ‘actionable’ mandate.

  She ignored the chills the tableau evoked to concentrate on its content. “The Dyson lattice looks as though it’s constructed of Rasu, exactly like everything else.”

  Lance nodded. “That was our conclusion as well.”

  Dashiel frowned as he, too, wandered through the projection. “This means the entire Dyson lattice is alive. What a horrible, thankless existence.”

  “Now we know why Jerry didn’t go back home. Why it wants to be free.”

  Dashiel’s expression contorted; he continued to be skeptical about ascribing nuanced desires to the alien. “I suppose. So, Palmer, can we blow them up?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “Fair enough. Jerry has graciously lent us a tiny piece of itself to run tests on. The initial findings alone will take us months if not years to analyze fully, but in the default state it arrived in, we can characterize it as a ductile, paramagnetic metal similar to vanadium or niobium. When we start studying the atomic structure itself, however, that structure becomes variable. We don’t know whether this is a form of wave function collapse, which would imply the Rasu exhibit quantum mechanical characteristics at a macro level, or if it’s evidence they don’t possess a default—”

  “Ridani, focus. Can we blow them up?”

  Nika covered her mouth to silence the chuckle that bubbled up. Since she’d known Dashiel this time around, they’d spent ninety percent of their time either running for their lives or shooting at things trying to kill them. This was the first time she’d seen him display such pure enthusiasm over scientific minutia, over metals and atoms. It was delightful, yet also a wistful reminder that his life had not begun the day he’d met her, not even the first time. Before he’d become a titan of industry, he’d been a scientist-turned-engineer. An inventor.

  After they survived this crisis, she’d ask him to tell her about that time in his life.

  “Sorry. With sufficient force correctly targeted, yes, but only briefly. Their atoms use strong but dynamic—yes, this is relevant—covalent bonding, which means high-energy blasts will be required to, say, punch a hole in Jerry. The energy required to punch a hole in one of these platforms?”

  He reached out and let his hand hover around a projection of one of the thousands of platforms. “We’ve never built a weapon capable of delivering that amount of energy. We can, but then we’d need to build a ship large enough to wield it. Alternatively, we can try to build a collection of linked explosive charges strong enough to get the job done, though getting them all into place without being detected will be a formidable challenge.

  “But even if we manage to blow up some of their ships or platforms, it doesn’t solve our problem. We just end up creating a bunch of smaller Rasu, and like Jerry did on the planet, before long they’ll make their way back together and re-form into big Rasu. We can theoretically, maybe, win a firefight on a given day, but our enemy will simply show up again the next day, ready and able to fight the same battle all over again.”

  Lance exhaled harshly and stared at the projection with piercing intensity, as if he were trying to intimidate it into giving up its secrets. “What will it take to genuinely destroy them? To dissolve them so thoroughly that they can never re-form?”

  “To break all these platforms and structures and ships apart at a subatomic level?” Dashiel spread his arms wide and sighed. “Wild guess? A hundr
ed thousand nuclear bombs, all detonated at point-blank range. And even that might not be enough. It could require a million bombs, or a hundred million….” His voice trailed off as his head tilted, his eyes narrowing at the procession of platforms passing in front of him.

  After a few seconds, he started muttering half-formed phrases to himself. “Yes, but how…no, it wouldn’t…oh, but if one were to somehow….” He drew back and considered the larger projection, beyond the orbiting platforms. “It would require….” His gaze unfocused.

  She couldn’t stand it any longer. “Dashiel, do you have an idea?”

  His lips slowly curled up, blossoming into a devious smile when he turned to her. “Several. Give me four hours.” Then he spun and hurried out of the room.

  Lance stared at the closing door. “What does he mean? Where is he going?”

  Nika shrugged. “I don’t know, but I suggest we give him his four hours.”

  EBISU

  “Dashiel Ridani to see Simon Granger.” He placed his fingertips on the scanner, this time absent any accompanying low-grade fear or tension.

  “Identity confirmed. You are cleared to proceed. Take the lift to the twelfth floor.”

  He did so with something approaching a spring in his step. He’d learned a great deal from being on the run with Nika, and the experience had brought its share of unique pleasures, but it felt good to be wearing his own skin again—privileges, baggage and all.

  The Briscanti Materials CEO sat at his desk working, but he stood and came over as soon as Dashiel entered, hand extended. “Dashiel, it’s good to see you.”

  “Simon.” He shook the offered hand. Yes, it definitely felt good to be wearing his own skin again. “Thanks for fitting me in on such short notice.”

  “Certainly. I’ve been following developments as much as I can.” The man motioned him over to the conference table. “You’ve got quite a lot going on. How can I help?”