Part 2 (1/2)

She was already sailing across the cluttered Heaven. Bened.i.c.k kicked off, gliding in pursuit, hesitant to use his att.i.tude jets for a boost until necessary. He reached the far wall a few meters behind her, copying her elegant swing into the corridor. The thump of her boots against the decking rang sharply. On foot, he could catch her.

He pulled up abreast and between breaths panted, ”Why are we running?”

”I lost the feed from Arianrhod's tank.” Her words were crisp between controlled breaths. A little sound greeted each stride, too small to be called a grunt. A sound of pain. He winced silently, gritting his own teeth as if he could help her bear it.

But she didn't need his help.

And she was right. He reached into the network, feeling for the location of Arianrhod's coffin, and found only empty s.p.a.ce. He didn't have a Chief Engineer's connection with the world, but he could pull up a remote. He asked, between controlled breaths, ”Did the mote fail? No, it's the whole sector. What happened?”

A shake of her head inside the helm sent curls escaping around the open faceplate. ”I killed her,” she said. ”I overrode life support on the tank.”

Her stride lengthened, but he paced her easily. He could condemn her decision, confront her on it. Suspect that it was based in the l.u.s.t for revenge she accused him of. But that would be pointless and unfair and unlike Caitlin. No one could cling to a grudge like Caitlin Conn, but that did not abrogate her knighthood, and Bened.i.c.k had never questioned her integrity.

It was that integrity that had made her so outraged with his choices, with what she saw as selling out. She had forgiven him his role as their sister's killer, perhaps because he had performed the task at Cynric's request. But the liaison and alliance with Arianrhod, that she found unconscionable, though he had thought he had his reasons at the time.

He had to admit that experience seemed to be bearing her opinions out. And he understood the root of her ethics. As far as he knew, in all her life the only person Caitlin Conn had ever betrayed was their father. If you could be said to have betrayed someone who never deserved loyalty or duty in the first place. Whatever the family betrayals, they had started with Alasdair Conn.

”Conserving resources,” he said. She glanced sideways at him, eyebrows rising. Did she think he'd changed so drastically? Or did she think she'd never known him?

”You should have stayed to see it through,” he qualified. Never leave the helpless victim to expire in a death trap. Make sure.

”Somebody,” she answered, as they came up to the chamber housing the acceleration pods, ”sent me a message. And I left a guard. The resurrected you sent me.” Her sideways glance said, If you considered him trustworthy enough to bear your message, I considered him trustworthy enough to stand over a deathbed. She slowed, one arm canted out from the elbow to indicate a stop, then reached to her hip and unclipped her sidearm. She sighted along it before raising the weapon to high ready.

Bened.i.c.k echoed her gesture. He swung across the door and flattened himself against the bulkhead on the opposite side. Whatever difficulties the last fifteen years had brought to their relations.h.i.+p, in this they were still machined smooth.

Caitlin spun into the chamber and Bened.i.c.k covered her. He entered the room low, with a quick snap to the side, disguising his silhouette against the wall. There was too much cover in here, too much visual and auditory clutter-the cables, the pods, the sound and smell of dripping fluid and torn flesh from the ruptured ones. Bened.i.c.k widened his awareness, tuned his senses to-perhaps-the scuff of a bare foot on decking. The armor covered his skin, but it was richly endowed with sensors. He might sense the displacement of air. If Arianrhod were still here, she was still naked. He had sealed her into the tank after her capture himself, and he had not left her gear in the netting. He might be able to smell warm, wet skin.

It was no mysterious power, but rather a developed awareness to everything his own senses, the symbiont, and the armor could tell him. There was the fine edge of training, which was about developing trustworthy perceptions, learning to rely on them, and acting on them without thought or hesitation. The body knows the knife is coming, as surely as a fly senses a falling blow and drops into flight to elude it.

For now, Bened.i.c.k's body told him there was no knife. But though he trusted it, he also believed in caution.

Right-handed, he tapped the ceramic on his thigh. Caitlin glanced at him. He sealed his faceplate, and she mimicked him.

Bened.i.c.k gestured left. She nodded and went, slipping between pods, using their bulk to break her silhouette and disguise the motion. Bened.i.c.k followed on a staggered angle, inching along the rows as silently as possible in his clicking ceramic suit.

Together, they moved toward Arianrhod's tank, keeping as much cover between them and it as possible. At thirty meters, Caitlin drew up, beckoning him closer. She caught his eye through twinned faceplates; neither of them needed to ask if the other was ready.

The count was all internal. She stepped out. He waited at the ready for her signal. ”Wounded,” she said, and he snapped around the corner to cover her as she moved forward.

The resurrected he'd sent with the message lay on the floor, an azure puddle cradling his head. He'd sustained a savage blow. From here, Bened.i.c.k could not see if there were other wounds. Anything the resurrected might have sustained would be unlikely to kill an Exalt, since Bened.i.c.k could tell there had not been any dismembering injuries.

”He's alive.” Caitlin dropped a knee beside him. Bened.i.c.k kept her in his peripheral vision, but his job now was not to watch her. It was to watch for anyone who might threaten her. She glanced up. ”The tank's unsealed.”

”She's gone?”

”Poof.” Caitlin stood. ”s.h.i.+t.” She turned, scanning the chamber as if she might see something.

”Whoever came to collect her has a three-minute start.” But Bened.i.c.k did not holster his weapon. The tank farm was large, and whoever had managed to shut off the motes on Arianrhod's pod had also managed to move through the chamber unmonitored, which suggested a high level of access to the world's systems. He didn't need to say so. Caitlin would know this, and know also that the ability to do so suggested some instability in-or compromise of-the newly reconstructed angel. Arianrhod and her rescuer could still be close.

”If I leave now-”

Bened.i.c.k did not look at Caitlin, but she looked at him. She shook her head. ”We have to warn Tristen. And you shouldn't go without supplies.”

Because three minutes was a long time, and the chase could stretch on. And whoever had come for Arianrhod would be well provided.

”There are stretchers in the locker,” Bened.i.c.k said. ”Let's see if any more of the sleepers are ready to awaken, and then we'll call the bridge and evac the casualty.”

She stopped him. ”Ben. I need to know I can trust you on this.”

If it were a melodrama, he would have unsealed his faceplate to look her in the eyes. But she was Caitlin Conn; he did not delude himself. If she chose, she could read his breathing, pulse rate, skin conductivity through the sensors built into his armor. In return, his symbiont could control those things, but it was at its essence an arms race.

”Because Arianrhod was the mother of my youngest child?” He hit the word was a little harder than the others. Rien was dead, and he had barely known her. The knowing was his own fault; the death ...

He would hang that gladly on Arianrhod. And on Ariane, her elder daughter, who was also his half sister-and Caitlin's. Relations in the Conn family were nothing if not convoluted.

Caitlin stared through a transparent mask. Bened.i.c.k turned to search a nearby locker for a collapsible stretcher. He pulled the hand-sized oval from a rack that had once held ten, oriented it properly, and triggered it. The webbed hammock unfolded, supported at each corner by an artificial gravity neutralizer. He guided it to the floor beside the unconscious resurrected and moved to the man's head. Without being asked, Caitlin stepped to his feet and crouched down.

Their eyes met and they lifted, stepped sideways, and s.h.i.+fted the man onto the stretcher. Caitlin triggered the neutralizers and the stretcher rose softly into the air.

Bened.i.c.k said, ”We have a daughter, too.”

Perceval, now Captain, who had been the one to finally manage the death of Ariane. Caitlin had already started to turn away. The sensors on her armor meant she would not need to look back to see him, but she did anyway, a lingering glance over her shoulder. It was a human moment. ”I thought sentiment was beneath you.”

He touched the mobility control on the stretcher. The red-gold hemisphere flushed green and it started forward. It would glide smoothly in whatever direction he indicated, as long as his hand remained on the control.

”Our daughter is still alive,” he said.

If she had an answer, she kept it to herself.

”Prince Tristen,” the angel said, ”there are complications.”

Tristen lifted his head from his arms. He must have slumped across the controls, claimed by healing sleep. He could feel the dents in his cheek and forehead left by details on the panel, and a crease marked by a metal edge.

The angel's avatar stood before the patched bulkhead. Its appearance had changed. Now light refracted from silver hair as if through the facets of a diamond. It folded hands before its breast as if in supplication.

”We can dispense with the prince stuff,” Tristen said. He pressed hard on his eyes, rubbing grit from the corners. His beard p.r.i.c.kled with unwashed sweat. ”Where's the breach?”

He regretted the idiom as soon as he uttered it-there was no telling how literal-minded a young artificial intelligence might be-but the angel seemed to take it in stride. And without offense.

It said, ”Progress in restoring structural integrity is adequate. However, proprioceptive data is still erratic. I have deployed motes to collect electromagnetic-spectrum telemetry about the integrity of the world, and if they are not destroyed by debris, we should have a schematic soon, at least-”

There was a pause, as if it waited for new data before it continued. ”I have a message from the Chief Engineer, Prince Tristen. She wishes to warn you that Arianrhod has escaped, and asks that you return her call in haste. Also, an additional difficulty has presented itself. It appears the damage to the world and attendant loss of life has been extreme enough to trigger certain fail-safes.”

Did angels hesitate uncomfortably, or was that a concession to human frailty? A moment for him to organize his thoughts and prepare himself? Or perhaps a moment in which the angel could explore his response? Tristen didn't know. ”How bad is it?”

”Indeterminate,” the angel said. ”Bad is a value judgment. It is an evolving situation that may become problematic.”

”Specify.”

”The Jacob's Ladder's base program contains a number of fail-safe routines, which are triggered in a case where the world sustains certain catastrophic damage. One such was the splintering of the ur-angel Israfel.”