(“It’s a battleship, Krina. Of course it’s got a beacon laser! How else would you send an army of occupation?”
(“What’s she going to do with it when she gets here?”
(“What makes you think I know? It’s still more than fourteen light-hours away—all we know is she’s heading toward the inner solar system and will get there in a couple of weeks. She’s your mother: You tell me what you’d do if you were her . . .”
(And so I planned and recorded this message. Which the Branch Office Five Zero would transmit first in the direction of the supposed starship—I could still barely believe in it, despite the thermal telescope’s heat flare of hundreds of gigawatts of energy radiating into vacuum, the telltale spectrum of fusion reactors blue-shifted by the onrushing speed of the vehicle—and then, more than a day later, in the direction of Taj Beacon, so that a response from Sondra at either location would reach us at roughly the same time. The message was unencrypted: Doubtless it would go viral, adding its volume to the gossip channels . . .)
“Mother, I’d like to express my deepest regrets that our relationship has come to this low point. If I could wind it back and undo this unfortunate argument, I would do so in a moment. But I don’t suppose anything I can say at this point will result in our reconciliation. You may take this message to be my formal resignation from the family firm—I don’t suppose I’ll be going home after this. But we still have unfinished business to discuss.”
(I’d argued this case with Rudi. “She’s capable of extreme violence,” I pointed out. “If she’s on Taj Beacon, she could very well attempt to destroy the entire habitat just to keep word from leaking out. The only way to stop her is to ensure there’s no chance of her hushing things up—and to give her a target to shoot at that isn’t surrounded by innocent bystanders.”)
I continued with my script: “So I’d like to propose an old-fashioned face-to-face meeting. We can rendezvous in deep space. Or, if you’re still aboard Taj Beacon, I can come to you. The main point is that we should meet somewhere with a beacon transmitter, because one of us will be leaving Dojima System immediately afterward.” I waved a hand. “Cut—version for the deep-space object. Mother, I know about your starship. It’s a rather astounding gambit! And I know about the beacon transceiver it’s carrying—which is, of course, why you’re seeing this message. What I propose is this: You rendezvous with me in deep space. I’ve left my soul chip behind, in the hands of a reliable escrow service. If they don’t receive a certain message from me, from out-system—I’m not going to tell you where—within fifty years, they will resurrect me from backup, and I will feel compelled to share my secrets with the universe at large. But if they receive the right message, countersigned by Hector SystemBank to prove it has been sent from out-system, they’ll delete my backup. So you need only point your beacon laser at the destination of my choice, and I can be out of your hair for good.”
(The purpose of this version of the message was simple: to convince Sondra, if she was indeed aboard the battleship, that I was desperate enough that I would willingly trust her equipment to help me escape. It would be the height of naive stupidity for me to do so—suicidal, even—but I was counting on Sondra’s low opinion of her offspring to snare her into a deep-space rendezvous with the Five Zero. Which, doubtless, she would discount as a threat.)
I waved my hand again. “Cut—version for Taj Beacon. Mother, I know you’re occupying Taj Beacon, and I know you’re probably planning something drastic and terminal for me when I arrive there. That would be stupid. So I’ve left my soul chip behind, in the hands of a reliable escrow service. If they don’t receive a certain message from me, from out-system—I’m not going to tell you where, yet—within fifty years, they will resurrect me from backup, and I will feel compelled to share my secrets with the universe at large. But if they receive the message, countersigned by Hector SystemBank to prove it has been sent from out-system, they’ll delete my backup. I intend to proceed to Taj Beacon, and once there, I will go direct to the departure terminal and transmit myself elsewhere. I have retained bodyguards to ensure my security during serialization and upload. You are welcome to send your own people to confirm I speak to no one during the process. Keep your hands to yourself, and I will be out of your hair for good.”
(And the purpose of that version was similar: to gull Sondra into thinking I was cutting and running, via Taj Beacon. The same calculation applied. As Rudi put it, “You can’t seriously expect to do that and survive!” At which point I confess I smirked, and said, “Of course not! All that matters is that Sondra thinks I’m stupid enough to try it.”)
“And cut.” I waved my hands, then turned to look at Rudi. “Do you think it’ll work?” I asked, a trifle anxiously.
“I sincerely hope so.” He spread his arms and slowly sculled up toward the ceiling of the office. “Either way, you have given her a juicy target. Us.”
“That was the idea, wasn’t it? Because if she knew what you had in the propulsion department, she’d already have cut her losses and run away. To stalk us another year.”
“Yes.” He grabbed hold of one of the tree branches that held the ceiling in place and pulled his face close to it. “I would be happy to wager you that she’s on the battleship.”
“I’m not taking that bet.” I thought back to my oldest memories, and Sondra’s punitive approach to child rearing. “Authoritarians have an instinctive attraction to the tools of force.” A thought struck me. “How is our herd of bombs doing? Are we in danger of outrunning them?”
“That’s a good question.” Rudi grinned, baring sharp teeth. “I’m sure Marigold would be happy to enlighten us. Why don’t we go to the war room and ask?”
“Jean!”
“Yes, my captain?”
“The transmission from the traitor. Are we tracking the source?”
“Yes, Captain. Let me put it on the main plot.” Nightmare fingers clattered across a twilit display in the red gloom of the warship’s combat center. “Observe: The origin is this vehicle, which appears to be on a six-milligee high-energy continuous acceleration trajectory outbound from Shin-Tethys. If it continues as projected and makes a midpoint turnover here, it will arrive in the vicinity of Taj Beacon in ninety-eight standard days. Or it could make a flyby considerably sooner, but there is no clear reason for it to do so . . . in any case, the vehicle is squawking the identification code of Branch Office Five Zero of a financial institution known as the Crimson Permanent Assurance Cooperative of—”
“Enough.” Giant dark eyes embedded in a rigidly armored face surveyed the retina wall. “What are these?”
“There appears to have been an altercation in orbit around Shin-Tethys. The, ah, traitor appears to have attracted the ire of various parties, who are engaged in a pursuit. This one is a mendicant chapel of the Mother Church, and as you can see, it can barely muster four milligees: It is falling behind. This cluster of sixteen is more troubling: they exhibit low-observability characteristics and are engaging in crude jamming, and they are averaging five point five milligees—bursting to twenty milligees, then coasting while they dissipate waste heat. Intel isn’t certain what they are but speculate that they’re uncrewed long-range pursuit missiles, in which case the traitor will be unable to decelerate and rendezvous with Taj Beacon until they run out of reaction mass. A stern chase is a long chase, ha-ha. Ha.” Sondra fell silent for a minute, pondering. “I see a cornered fugitive who thinks she can blackmail me . . . hah. Jean! A question for the navigation team. Assuming we change course and acceleration in the next few hours, can we in principle make a zero-speed rendezvous with this Branch Office vehicle?”