Andalib was not supposed to be here.
“Will Cory be joining us?” I asked her. They’d been together since Carina, and they were both on deck.
“Please,” she said. “Speak not that shithead’s name in my presence.”
Ohhhkay.
Ghora pulled the hatch closed. From behind, the sound of last-ditch shielding grinding into place.
Six hundred corsecs to go. Ten minutes. We watched tactical readouts on the wall, glanced occasionally at the Chimp-eye in the ceiling. We exchanged meaningful looks.
Andalib was looking strangely at the ancient being in our midst. She didn’t seem to recognize Lian Wei, although we’d all met during training. A long time ago, though. And people aged at different rates depending on who thawed, how often. Maybe it wouldn’t be an issue. Maybe Andalib assumed Lian was from another tribe, chalked her presence up to Chimp’s cultural-exchange program.
I hoped like hell she wouldn’t try introducing herself.
“Ignition in five hundred corsecs.”
The Chimp, counting down to its own annihilation.
Lian’s eyes glittered in sunken sockets. Ghora shifted his weight, fists clenched at his sides. Yukiko and Jahaziel stared at the deck, all pretense of gaming abandoned.
Poor innocent Andalib chewed her lip. I wondered how she’d react when we took back control in her name. I wondered if she would be relieved, or frightened, or grateful for her liberation.
I wondered if she’d forgive us. If all of them would.
“Ignition in four hundred corsecs.”
The Chimp had one hundred seconds to live. One hundred seconds until that time-traveling graser fired prematurely, punched through a copse of clandestinely weakened grazing mirrors and baked our oppressor like a moth in magma. One hundred seconds—plus maybe a millisecond or two—until our carefully groomed successor assumed the throne, and handed us the keys to our own destiny.
Fifty corsecs, now.
Sixty-six million years.
“Ignition in three hundred corsecs.”
Lian frowned. Green icons across the board. No misfires reported.
What the hell?
The Chimp should have died ten seconds ago.
We said nothing aloud, spoke volumes with our eyes: Did you time it wrong? / The timing was perfect / Then why hasn’t— / I don’t know, something’s—
Andalib looked at us. “What?”
“Ignition is proceeding on schedule,” the Chimp said. “Lian’s bypass has been disabled.”
Nobody said anything for a long moment.
“Bypass?” said Andalib.
“I see you, Lian,” the Chimp said. “I know your face.”
Andalib frowned. “Didn’t Lian—what—?”
Lian closed her eyes. “Shut the fuck up. We were doing this for you.”
“Doing what?”
But Lian’s eyes were open again, and they blazed. She stepped forward, brazen, nothing to lose. “That right, Chimp? You know things?” She pulled a hand torch from the folds of her tunic, pointed it at the ceiling pickup. “You know this?”
She fired. The lens slagged with a sizzle of electricity and a shimmer of heat.
Andalib was on her feet. “What the hell? Are—”
“This is bullshit.” Lian shook her head, disgusted, furious. “I’ve seen the code, I studied the decision trees until my eyeballs bled. It does not bother with faces while your inlays are online, and I never—”
“So what?” Kaden spread hir hands. “The plan’s fucked. Chimp saw it coming somehow. You think shooting out one lousy camera is going to—”
“What plan!” Andi cried.
“Chimp did not see it coming.” Lian shook her head; her eyes glistened. “We were careful, we were so fucking careful. And it’s a moron, it’s just not smart enough to—”
“Smarter than we are, apparently.”
“So how do you explain—”
“Maybe there was noise in the transponder signal—”
“Oh Christ we are so fucked what is he gonna do to us—”
“It had help.” Lian glared around the bomb shelter. “Someone sold us out.”
The Chimp’s Pet. Where else would they look?
“Listen,” I said.
Eriophora is awash in sounds discernible only by their absence, sounds so omnipresent that they don’t even register until they fade. We all heard the silence. We all heard what was missing.
“Jesus,” Jahaziel said. “He’s turned off the air.”
Seven of us. Forty-five cubic meters, twenty-one percent oxygen. A meter of lead and depleted uranium blocking the exit.
Five hours before we suffocated. Maybe.
“What have you done?” Andi whispered. “What are you doing?”
“Chimp,” said someone else. “This isn’t necessary.”
A disembodied voice. An intercom voice.
“There’s been enough brute force. On all sides. We can resolve this peacefully.”
It took a moment to recognize that voice.
“The party is armed,” Chimp pointed out. “They could do significant damage if left conscious.”
“And if you knock them out now, they’ll be that much less inclined to see things your way the next time they return to consciousness. Unless you plan on killing them outright.”
That voice didn’t belong to anyone who was supposed to be on deck right now.
“And you’re not planning on doing that, because you must know these aren’t the only people who have issues with your management style. You kill these people and you’ll be dealing with blowback on every waking build for the next billion years.”
I knew it, though.
“Let me talk to them, Chimp. Face to face. They won’t hurt me.”
Oh, I knew it all right.
“Okay,” said the Chimp.
The stone rolled from the tomb. The hatch swung open. The bot that floated through had accessories I’d never seen on a bot before, and one I had. It took up station just inside the entrance, panned its laser back and forth across our trapped asses as if keeping a beat.
Viktor Heinwald brought up the rear.
“You fucker,” Lian said. “You Judas. You miserable traitorous piece of shit.”
“I just saved your lives,” Viktor said gently.
“You only changed the way it kills us.”
The bot hovered off Judas’ shoulder like a guardian angel, its soft tick tick ticking barely discernible above the breathing of meat and reawakened ventilators.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s over. Let’s just sit it out and go to bed.”
“Fuck that,” Ghora snarled. “We’re deprecated the moment we hit the crypt.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” the Chimp said. “I don’t demand perfection. I don’t even desire it; your initiative and unpredictability are essential elements of the mission. All I ask is that you learn from your mistakes. Ignition in one hundred corsecs.”
Lian ignored it. “Why did you do it, Vik? What could that goddamn machine possibly offer to make you sell us out after all this? Shorter shifts? Better VR?”
“Blue dwarfs,” I realized. “Heat Death.”
Viktor said nothing.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I shook my head, astonished I hadn’t seen it all along. “Did it sweeten the deal for you, Vikky? Maybe promised to extend your downs, optimize your ups, stretch you out far as you could go—all the way to the end of time? Did you believe that miserable fucker?”