Depending on the distance, it could take hours to reach them.
Maybe O-223 changed its mind in the meantime…
Keep it together, Clarke told himself.
They waited for two hours until the answer arrived:
“Confirmed. Hang in there, Beowulf. The scout ship can’t tow you, but we’re coming to extract you. Can you hold on for one more day?”
“Yes, we can,” Navathe said.
Even Pascari seemed relieved. They had come very close to giving up on hope.
“I could kill for a shower under gravity,” he said.
Any shower would do, Clarke thought.
After another couple hours, they received a second message:
“Hang in there, Beowulf. Welcome to the Independence fleet.”
19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DELAGARZA
The waking world was a miasma of constant pain and confusion. His bloodstream carried painkillers at pretty much every hour of the day. As a result, Delagarza took refuge in dreams.
He sat at the edge of a stone fountain in the middle of a hotel with Japanese architecture, bathed in soft golden light. Red and black fishes swam under the fountain and through canals under the floor panels. He had no idea what they were named. Hell, he hadn’t been in this hotel in his life.
Judging from the blue sky outside, he was dreaming of Earth.
“I was here once, for a job,” a man said behind him. Delagarza turned around to meet himself face to face. “Before the Commodore and his dreadnought strolled through Asherah.”
Daneel Hirsen’s wore a dark, executive suit, like those in Earth’s movies. His haircut was short and modern. His tan added a dark gold tint to his skin. Any onlooker would’ve thought the man was a native, not a tourist from one of the Edge’s colonies.
“You,” Delagarza said. He didn’t like the man in front of him. Something about his eyes was different. The same color, but the difference between those grays was like the difference between sharpened and blunt steel.
The gray of Daneel Hirsen could’ve cut air by frowning at it.
“Is this what I saw in every nightmare I couldn’t remember?”
Hirsen shook his head. “Those were subconscious adjustment sessions. They are, by their very nature, not pleasant.”
“You were toying with my mind?”
“I toyed with my mind. To make sure everything ran smoothly. You weren’t supposed to remember them, at all, but as time went on…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. The meaning was clear. The longer the personality split went on, the more his brain overworked.
“You could’ve told me,” Delagarza said. “I almost died back then.”
Hirsen sat next to him by the fountain and gazed at the fish. “They’re called Koi. I heard you wonder about it. Yes, Samuel, I could’ve told you, but that would’ve defeated the purpose of developing a split personality with fake memories. It’d be a lot of wasted effort for nothing.”
“That didn’t stop you after Krieger shot me.”
“I had to. You were freaking out and blocking me away from slowing my heartbeat.”
The way Hirsen talked about Delagarza’s heart made him get up and punch the agent in the face. It was like hitting the wind. His hand passed right through. Hirsen didn’t even acknowledge the attempt.
“What was the purpose of that?” Delagarza asked. His rage quickly transformed into tiredness. He wanted to sleep without dreaming, but the medications wouldn’t allow that.
Hirsen gave him a look that Delagarza couldn’t decipher. It irked him. He wasn’t used to people who were able to hide themselves to him like that.
“Don’t know, Samuel? C’mon, I gave you all the tools you need to figure it out by yourself.”
Delagarza thought of trying to hit him again. Instead, he said:
“The loyalty test?”
“Those nanobots are part of it,” Hirsen said. “The other is Strauze himself. Remember how you disliked him since the beginning?”
“Another prim and proper asshole, yeah.” Now that he thought about it, Strauze and Hirsen had a lot in common. Hirsen lacked the shark-like smile, but the same impression of danger barely contained under the surface was still there. Delagarza only had to look harder.
“He’s the Tal-Kader version of the Newgen agent model,” Hirsen said. “Cheaper to train, physically stronger, less versed in ancient mental disciplines. Minor genetic enhancements—”
“Genetic enhancements? You’ve got to be kidding me, are you saying Tal-Kader is following Newgen’s footsteps? Wait—you’re saying I’m genetically enhanced?”
Delagarza looked around, like he expected an enforcer squad to break into his mental landscape to execute him on the spot. Genetic enhancement and smart AI, the two capital crimes that not even corporations dared defy.
Well, most of them. Newgen’s experimentations had remained secret for the better part of the Edge’s period as an independent entity. Right after Tal-Kader had replaced the elected SA government, Newgen’s experiments had been leaked.
The purge that followed was immediate and total, and still the stuff of legends today.
“How long do you think I’ve been thirty five? Ah, don’t answer that. Yes, Samuel, Tal-Kader has been performing experiments of their own for quite some time now. Who’s going to stop them? The enforcers are theirs, as is the Defense Fleet.”
Delagarza passed a hand over his forehead. It was burning.
Outside, in the real world, Jamilia Charleton stood over him while a black-market doctor operated on him. What’s on the menu for today, doc? Last time, they had replaced part of his stomach and his lower intestine.
“So, Tal-Kader gets away with it?” Delagarza asked Hirsen.
“Oh no,” said Hirsen. He grinned, briefly. “That they don’t. Why do you think I’m here, on Dione?”
“To save Isabella Reiner.”
“That’s only a part of it. See, Tal-Kader is seeding the Edge with people like Strauze. They are loyal, cheap, easy to control. Their enhancements lets them sniff Newgen’s agents better than anyone else, and it shows. They’re not as good, but they have resources we don’t, and they’ve hunted us down for years. I think I’m among the last survivors.”
“So you fooled him with the…quail meditation?”
Hirsen nodded. “I bought you a fake background from a man not unlike your ATS friend. I gave you a subconscious impulse to remain in contact with allied resistance groups like Kayoko’s. I made sure you were close to Isabella and jumped on the chance when the enforcers tried to recruit you. The plan was to lead them into a wild goose chase, not get shot three times in the stomach. Still, it worked. They think they killed her, and we’re alive. When the EIF arrives to extract me, I’ll be ready.”
“Is that right?” A chill traveled down Delagarza’s spine. He remembered the nightmare he had the night he got the enforcer’s offer. How he had changed his opinion all of a sudden. At the time, he’d thought he understood his reasons. Now, seeing Hirsen calmly refer to his other self as a piece of software, that certainty vanished.
Delagarza was a man who suddenly realized he wasn’t the master of his own fate.
“You’re going to all this trouble…for what? To avenge a corporation that killed thousands to advance their genetic experiments?”
“No. I don’t care about Newgen at all. Let me ask you something, Samuel. What do you want? More than anything else in the world.”
Delagarza thought about it. It wasn’t as hard a question as he expected. He remembered dining greasy food with Nick Cooke while his apprentice told him all about his homeland. Jamilia Charleton grinding her warm skin against his, her ragged breathing next to his hear. The sensation of triumph after cracking a particularly challenging piece of ‘ware.