“What do you want?” Julia snapped.
“Surrender, Beowulf, you’re badly hurt. My systems can see you limping about, but we both know you won’t hold out much longer. You must’ve wounded on board. Turn back. Surrender. We’ll give medical attention to all our prisoners.”
Julia needs a hospital, Clarke thought. Maybe if we turn back, the SA can save her in time.
Even Julia, with all her courage, seemed to falter. Her eyes met with Clarke’s, searching for something he doubted he could give her.
They could save their lives, but lose Dione, and Isabella Reiner. Daneel Hirsen would spend the following months waiting for an extraction that would never arrive.
Perhaps it was for the best. History was full of revolutions that could’ve been, but failed at the last second, due to a small, but critical failure, at some crucial point. No one remembered those failed revolutions. The ones people remembered were those where blood flowed out of Earth’s ports and drowned thousands.
Maybe, by accepting defeat, they’d spare the Edge death and destruction unlike anything it had ever seen before.
They only had to accept the SA’s terms and turn back.
Isabella and Hirsen would be captured, and they’d disappear inside Tal-Kader’s dungeons forever. The SA would remain in Tal-Kader’s grasp, and they’d gladly sell the Edge away in exchange for Earth’s hyperdrive technology. The Edge would become a servant once more, a slave hooked up to a machine that extracted its oryza-flavored blood until there was nothing else to consume.
Reiner’s dream would die, like it should have, a long time ago.
A burning hatred took hold of Clarke.
He had allowed Tal-Kader to destroy enough dreams for a lifetime.
No more. Not as long as this ship can fly.
Whatever Julia was looking for in his eyes, suddenly she’d found it. “Gunboat, go fuck yourself, and fuck your employers,” she said.
Clarke cut the connection.
“Punch it, Clarke!”
His hand was already on the controls before he’d realized what he was doing. The Beowulf’s hull rumbled as its weakened structure tried to remain whole. Clarke could almost feel the heat exploding out of the ship, the oryza accelerating them at a fraction of the speed of light.
The force that threw him into his seat threatened to leave him unconscious. He fought it. He needed to be awake to activate the Alcubierre Drive. Just a couple more hours.
Julia died well before that. Clarke only realized it after the energy-density ring was already up and he was free to check on her. She hadn’t said a word, not uttered a single complaint.
That’s the problem with people with causes. Sometimes they die and leave you to carry the torch.
17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DELAGARZA
Dealing with Edith Sharpe turned out to be harder than Delagarza expected. It wasn’t because she was hard to find—it only took him a couple days to download her entire schedule for the month. It was the way he couldn’t convince himself to do it.
Day and night cycles passed one after the other, making no difference to Delagarza, who had control over his tiny capsule’s LEDs. He spent the hours looking at holos of Sharpe, pouring over her scant public appearances, studying every tiny detail about her body language.
Am I really going to turn this woman over to the enforcers? He thought, once, while watching an old recording of her manning an understaffed soup kitchen. The question gave him a headache.
His entire life, Delagarza had spent looking after himself. That’s how he had survived for so long. Even before Dione.
If he didn’t trade Sharpe for his freedom, he’d leave himself at the mercy of Major Strauze and Krieger. The decision was clear. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to make the call. The list of unanswered calls and messages, mostly from Charleton and Cooke, grew with every passing day he remained in hiding. That became his daily routine. Smoking a cigarette by the hotel’s tiny synthetic garden, drinking shitty coffee, looking at Sharpe’s file, ignoring his friends’ calls, another cigarette…
His dreams got worse as time went by, and harder to remember. The headaches grew in intensity, and an oppressive sense took permanent hold at the back of his mind. He was trapped, but he couldn’t leave the safety of his capsule. He was sure they were waiting for him outside.
I’m going insane, he told himself. Perhaps the smart play would be to schedule a meeting with a psychiatrist and get himself committed.
It took him a minute to find a psychiatrist’s number. His hand hovered above it, like a man with a gun over his head trying to convince himself to pull the trigger.
He added a command to the holo and made the call.
“Hello?” answered a woman’s voice. A receptionist. “This is San Jeronimo Clinic, how can we help you?”
“Evening,” said Delagarza. “I’m looking for Dr. Edith Sharpe. The name’s Samuel Delagarza. Can I schedule a meeting with her? It’s kinda important.”
“Could you elaborate, please?”
I need to decide if her life is worth risking my own.
“I’m a journalist. I’d like to interview her.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Delagarza, Dr. Sharpe’s schedule is swamped. Unless you’re an investor, I’m afraid we can’t fit you in this month. Is next month okay to you?”
Delagarza cut the connection. Of course Sharpe was swamped, the woman basically ran the clinic herself.
He pulled her day-to-day schedule and studied it.
The next day, he had checked out of his capsule, after taking a much-needed shower and a shave. He had a cigarette in his lips and a fresh battery pack in his reg-suit. He even got himself a haircut.
It was like going on a date, only the other person had no idea. The creepy kind of date, then.
Dr. Edith Sharpe liked to treat herself to a meal in a fast food stall a block away from her clinic every couple weeks. Delagarza found her there, her back to him, sitting in a stool in front of the stall. The smell of spicy Pakistani food reached Delagarza and made his mouth water.
He sat next to Sharpe.
“Any recommendations?” he asked her casually. “It’s my first time.”
She blinked, once, before realizing he was talking to her. Then, she flashed him a polite smile and said:
“You won’t want anything too spicy, then. Try the Lahori beef karahi. Rajpar’s tandoori naan is fresh today.”
I have no idea what any of that is. “I’ll have one of those,” Delagarza told Rajpar.
Sharpe nodded and went back to her own food.
What am I doing? Delagarza thought. He had no idea what he’d hoped to achieve. Was he really trying to convince himself he should get this woman killed?
It had been easy to toy with the idea inside his capsule when she was but a bunch of ones and zeroes. Seeing her face to face…it had been a mistake.
I can still go away, call Krieger, negotiate a deal.
Rajpar served him a bowl of meat and sauce mixed with herbs. Delagarza’s brain interpreted it as a kind of meaty salad. It tasted much better than it looked.
Sharpe finished her meal, sent Rajpar a couple credits, and got up to leave. Delagarza paid a random amount of credits for his food and rushed to catch up with her.
“Wait!” he called, approaching her from behind. “I need to talk to you.”
Sharpe half turned and tried hard to hide the annoyance from her face. “Oh. Look, I’m flattered, but I don’t have the time to…”
“It’s not like that,” he said. “Dr. Sharpe, I’m here to warn you. The people you’re hiding from are on your tail again. They’ll find you soon.”