“And that I always am. What can I do for you this morning?”
She used her flat-spread hands to push herself to her feet and began to pace before she began to speak, her heart rate, skin conductivity, breathing, and a dozen other signs revealing chronic stress. “I wanted to talk to you about our trainees. I presume you've been following my communications with the prime minister with regard to the incoming cadets.”
“Captain. Would I eavesdrop?”
“Yes,” she said. She finished a lap and wheeled. Because of the geometry of the Montreal's habitation wheel, her circuit of the cramped cabin required acute and obtuse angles rather than the more traditional ninety-degree variety. “And you'd lie about it, too. What do you think of them?”
“The cadets?”
“Don't think I don't know you haven't been hovering paternalistically over the lot of them since they went in for nanosurgery. They're all going to make it this time, I hear. No Carver Mallory in this group.”
“Yes,” Richard said, mocking. “Only one sense-deprived quadriplegic so far, out of eighteen subjects. Such excellent odds for all those young people the commonwealth means to modify and train as starship pilots. And don't think I've forgiven you that Genie still has to undergo the full treatment. I know where the request to have her inducted came from.”
“All of the current cadets are injured Impact survivors,” Wainwright said, lacing her fingers behind her back and pausing in front of a holoscreen that showed a spacesuited inspection crew crawling over the Montreal's hull. “They're all volunteers. And they'd already had the therapeutic level of nanosurgeon infection. Like Miss Castaign. Charlie — Dr. Forster—”
“Everybody calls him Charlie.”
She snorted, sounding honestly amused. “You think I still harbor adversarial feelings for you, Dick?”
“I wouldn't care to speculate.” Dryly enough that she glanced up at his disembodied voice again, and looked down, shaking her head. Richard continued, “What about Charlie?”
“He thinks it may be safer to handle the implants in two stages, actually. That if the body has already learned to adapt to the Benefactor tech, it takes the wetwiring process better.”
“It's a heck of an insult to the system. And a handful of cadets isn't a really useful sample.” He paused, watching as Wainwright unbraided her fingers and sighed. “And you didn't really want to argue with an AI about the morals of turning teenagers into cybernetic soldiers, did you?”
“No,” she said. She turned around and leaned against one of the few unscreened bits of wall, a lumpy protruding bulkhead that covered a main strut. “You know that repair you hacked together after the logic bomb went off last year?”
“Intimately. I still don't trust it.”
“And you've set up a nanonetwork to replace it.”
“Yes.”
“I want hard lines, too. A whole fresh structure. On the off chance something happens to the worldwire.”
“You want me to disassemble the Montreal's nervous system? I'll have to take it offline to do that.”
“Will it impair the ship's functionality?”
“No,” he said. “We'll still have the nanonetwork. It'll only impair redundancy.”
“For how long?”
“Six weeks. Maybe as little as a month.”
She folded her arms. “I'll live with it.”
“You're thinking about the Huang Di.” The Chinese logic bomb had come uncomfortably close to destroying the Montreal, and they'd managed to purge the Huang Di's core before Canada claimed her as salvage. A pity: Richard would have liked to get his hands on that data. The Chinese control of the nanonetworks — and their programming skill — was still superior to the Canadians'.
“I'm also thinking about arranging things so the Montreal's pilots can fly the ship through the worldwire,” she said. “Rather than having to be physically wired into the chair on the bridge.”
“Captain.” He made a sound that would have been clearing his throat if he were human. “Weren't we just having a discussion about how you still harbor adversarial feelings for me?”
“You may have.” Her mouth worked, approximating a smile.
“The original purpose of the hardline interface for the pilots was to prevent the AI from seizing control of the ship.”
“I know.” She turned her back on the room as if she could turn her back on Richard, as well. She took three slow breaths before she finished calmly, “But someday you may need to.”
A long pause. “Captain,” he said, when her pulse had dropped to something like its normal range. “I am honored by your trust.”
She laughed, a short harsh bark, and touched the frame on the nearest holodisplay, smudging it with her fingertips. “Trust? If you want to call it that.”
1030 hours
Saturday September 29, 2063
HMCSS Montreal
Earth orbit
I pause just inside the hatchway to the captain's tasteful blue and gray ready room. “Casey. I had a feeling I'd be seeing you before too long. How did it go with Castaign?”
“It went,” I say, and she leaves it alone.
Wainwright sits in a floor-mounted chair behind a desk bolted to the wall. Holomonitors framed to look like windows cover the bulkheads, showing all directions. The most arresting view is aft, the long silvery dragonfly length of the Montreal stretching from the habitation wheel back to the asymmetrical bulge of her reactor and drive assembly, her solar sails nearly furled against her hull, only a hint of gauzy webbing showing.
That image sits right where Wainwright's gaze would naturally fall, should she lift it from her desk, its spindly fragility a reminder of just how precarious our situation is. Miles and vertical miles away from home.
I've got to hand the captain that much. She never for a second forgets the safety of her crew. And I've never known a good CO who wasn't a hard-ass, too. It's just one of those things.
It's also just that it's a pain in the ass when the hard-ass gets in the way of something I want to do, instead of annoying the other guy.
Wainwright clears her throat, and I realize I've let a good three seconds go by in total silence. It isn't like me.
Doesn't matter. I know how to do this. I take a deep breath and let the words fall out of my mouth like they're somebody else's. “Xie Min-xue, Captain. The Chinese pilot who helped—”
“I know who he is, Casey. What's the brief version?”
“Ma'am, it occurs to me that he could be part of the solution to our pilot shortage.”
“I'd thought of that.”
“But.”
“But it could look like a payoff. His reward for betraying the PanChinese government. If he testifies.” Her fingers fret nervous circles on the interface plate on her desk. “You've heard the hearing date's been set.”
“After nine months of stalling and legal wrangling? I had not heard.” Richard. Don't trust me all of a sudden?
He's right there, of course. “I keep your secrets, too, Jen.”
The fact that he has a point doesn't make me like it any better. “Wait,” I say, catching on. “You said hearing.”
“Yes,” she answers. “We're not getting a trial. The UN is planning a discovery procedure, open questions from the floor, rather than a World Court proceeding.”
Change is good, right? Right. I thought so, too. “When's our big day?”
“Thanksgiving.”
“October? So soon—” I catch myself, settle my feet more firmly on the carpeted floor, and lace my hands behind my back, feeling hardness of steel between the fingers of my meat hand, softness of flesh between the fingers of metal. My shoulders roll back of their own accord, as if to ease a pain that hasn't troubled me in a year. Who ever would have guessed it would be so hard to let go of, even after it was gone?