Chapter Eighteen: Escape From Earth

Another space battle on the way to The Belt.

Escape to The Belt!

When the crushing force of Acerbic’s acceleration away from Earth orbit finally relented, Loucas looked up from the Star-Bridge, groggily casting his gaze towards the starry forward horizon first, then back behind. There the orb of Earth still loomed, though now rather smaller than before, still eclipsing the Sun and only slowly dwindling.

He sighed, glad to be able to breathe normally again. Days of wandering around Acerbic, mostly ignored by the robots, had given Loucas plenty of time to think about he and his sister's impossible new life. The thought of going to Mimr’s Pub without his sister bothered him, and as she had spent every waking hour on the Star-Bridge training, Loucas had chosen to spend his time trying to learn what he could about their new world. And for the most part, he had utterly failed. What information was made accessible by Franz was minor technical data about the raider’s systems.

Loucas twisted, body still feeling squashed, to look at Yarielis. Her eyes were open, and only her rapid breathing served as a reminder that she had been experiencing the same physical forces as him. Whatever was happening to her during the integration process, it seemed to have had the odd effect of allowing her to tolerate more physical unpleasantness than he could stand. Like having her body pummeled by the force of accelerating at nearly ten times the force of Earth's gravity for the better part of an hour.

“Boy, wow,” Loucas heard the voice of the robot Bob say, “you guys are really getting the hang this! Usually humans don't wake up this fast after enduring that much force for so long. I’m so glad that Olga really knows her business!”

Loucas blinked several times, shocked to see the robot Bob, or, given that the Star-Bridge was effectively a form of virtual reality, an avatar of Bob, trot jauntily around Olga for several seconds. He thought the odd robot looked like a dog eager to greet its people after a long day, but was more hung up on the fact it still existed at all.

“Bob,” Loucas shook his head, “good to see you. But I thought you, well, uh, exploded.”

“I know!” Bob exclaimed, feet tapping out a happy little dance. “I did! It was kind of fun! I've wanted to try exploding for years. But usually I get caught and disarmed before the big event and discover it was just another exercise. This is the first time I actually got to try sneaking past security to hit a target, and amazed it really worked. Thank you for all your help, I feel so... fulfilled!”

Loucas paused, very unsure how to respond. “Well, if you don't mind me asking, how did you survive? I still think I only barely did.”

“Oh, I have no secrets” replied Bob. “It was easy! I just uploaded the essential bits of my memory to Station Rome's local intranet in a compressed file stream. The sysadmins would normally have caught on to the bandwidth use in seconds, but they were understandably distracted by all the chaos, so I slipped through and made my way to the interplanetary net, then latched onto some of the signals being broadcast to Acerbic as she passed by. Thanks for catching me, by the way!”

“You can do that whenever you want?” Yari asked, cocking her head to one side. “Can others. like Olga and Franz. do the same thing?”

“Certainly, if there's enough bandwidth and accessible memory in the local area, and they don’t mind the risk of compression loss. But I was built to do those kinds of deliveries, so my architecture is simpler. I can even delete bits of myself, memories mostly, to reduce my size. I'm actually set up to function as a distributed intelligence in a pinch, with parts working independently until they get synchronized when there's an opportunity. So it is very hard to kill me permanently. It also leaves me not very smart, Franz and Olga always tell me, because that means my basic systems have to be a bit… extra basic.”

Bob tapped his feet and rotated to turn towards Olga. At least, Loucas thought that was where he turned. Bob's front and back weren't actually that easy to differentiate.

“Unfortunately for Franz and Olga,” Bob continued, “They require so much active memory to retain their basic functionality that they are effectively tied to their physical structure unless we are close enough to a friendly base to effect a full emergency download. So if this blockade the Terrestrials are assembling to destroy us works, they are just as done for as you two.”

“How do you know there's a blockade?” Loucas asked, scouring the sky ahead and seeing nothing. “I don't see anything in front of us at all.”

“Well, yes, that's kind of the point, don't you know?” Bob replied. “When I was disembodied I took a peek at the few military intranets I could sneak into. They are quite upset about what we did to their occupation headquarters on Station Rome. They have therefore dispatched a major portion of the regular military stationed in and around Earth to find and destroy us.”

“Wonderful!” Loucas groaned. “So this entire maneuver was a total bust. Fantastic.”

“They have also,” Bob said as if this were no big deal, “done a fine job of predicting all possible escape trajectories out of the Earth-Luna defense zone, so most of those ships are now converging on our position. There are at least two hunter groups behind us, and three more converging on our trajectory from either side. There are also two carrier groups operating somewhere in front of us. That's unusual because there are only eight of those in the whole Solar System. They must have scrambled the reserves from Luna.”

“That sounds… extremely bad.” Loucas said, heart sinking.

Bob tapped each foot once. “It is! Bad and a little exciting. It is sure to be quite the spectacle! Fortunately, at least two of the hunter groups won't be able to catch up with us thanks to our present speed. Less fortunately, the two that will get in range each contains a cruiser and two destroyers with sufficient combined firepower to destroy us, if they can hit us. Very unfortunately, the carrier groups ahead have more than enough firepower to completely vaporize us too. There's two carriers, six destroyers, and a dreadnought in each.”

“And I take it we can’t win that fight?” Loucas muttered.

“Acerbic might be able to take on a single cruiser or a pair of destroyers on a good day. Maybe even a full hunter group on a really really good day. But never an alerted dreadnought operating with escorts. So we're in quite a fix!”

“Dreadnoughts, carriers, cruisers, destroyers,” Loucas grumbled, “what, is space an ocean or something? Why all the navy terminology?”

“Well spotted, Loucas!” Bob’s feet cheerfully tapped again. “I knew I liked you for a good reason. It is true that the old Earth navies ended up passing their heritage and traditions onto their space-based successors. Naval vessels are sized according to their role, and bigger ships tend to have bigger crews and more firepower. They are also similar to space-faring vessels in that they are operated by crews reliant on technology to survive a hostile environment long enough to do battle in that hostile environment.”

“As you can see, it was perfectly natural to adopt water-ship terminology and organizational schemes in space. So, like on Earth, destroyers are smaller ships that usually operate in pairs to screen bigger vessels or conduct anti-pirate patrols, cruisers are bigger and faster warships designed to work alone for months on end, and carriers are even bigger yet, able to stay away from base for a full year, hosting manned and unmanned fighter-sized craft. And then of course there are the dreadnoughts, appropriately named because they fear nothing for a good reason: they're very, very big.”

“And I have just spotted one because of its size,” Franz cut in suddenly, appearing on the Star-Bridge next to Olga, who had until now been silently and intently staring into the distance as if lost in thought. “It is moving to converge with our trajectory far more quickly than anticipated! Olga, get the Jager flights ready! This is a grave turn for us. We're unlikely to survive a dreadnought's bombardment for long, but at least we may be able to live long enough to be killed by it rather than one of those petty cruisers or destroyers that will appear soon!”

“Forget what he said,” Olga wheeled around to look at Yari. “We can make it through this! It won’t be easy, but there is still hope! We have a few minutes until the dreadnought reaches maximum range. Destroyers won't be able to get close enough to punch through our shields before we’ve rushed by, so we don't have to worry too much about them. The cruisers, on the other hand, can take us down if they can get a clear shot and keep their particle beams fixed on our shields for more than a few seconds.”

“What do we do, then?” Loucas cried, looking around in fear. “It sure sounds hopeless to me!”

“We don't let them hit us!” Olga smiled, eyes glittering fiercely. “Two cruisers, three Jager flights. We can do this!”

Yari nodded suddenly, then let out a snarl of frustration so vicious that Loucas almost jumped out of his skin. “But I can't see them anywhere!” Yari seethed, scouring the stars with narrowed eyes. “What angle are they going to attack from?”

Olga sighed, turning her head to look from one edge of the horizon to another. “That's the real problem, isn't it? We're dealing with warships here. They're built specifically to avoid being seen until it is too late. Bob's analogy to Earth naval warfare works well for another reason. By the twenty-first century, submarines were the lords of the sea, not surface vessels. Staying hidden until it is too late for your opponent to defend themselves has always been the fundamental trick of war, whether your battle is on land, the sea, or in the air. Same is true in space.”

“Out there, in that damnable twinkling blackness, they're coasting with engines powered down and weapons on standby. They will avoid emitting any electromagnetic signals we might use to pin down their location right up until they fire an energy beam at us. Nothing for it, I’m afraid. Unless we get lucky and can spot them by the distortions in the occluded or deflected light coming from the stars behind them, we won't know where our attackers are until they shoot. Unless they make a mistake.”

“I wouldn't count on mistakes,” Franz warned. “Our attempts at deception were insufficient. They did too good a job at predicting our trajectory despite our maneuver around Earth. These aren't the usual mercenaries and social rejects they send to staff the Toff forces occupying the habitats. We're dealing with military professionals of the Terrestrial Governing Authority Navy. I do not like our odds.”

Olga laughed. “Franz, like the old saying goes, don't tell me the odds. You of all machines should know that I love a good fight. It's in my programming, and I thought it was in yours, too!”

“I'm sure that enjoyment of battle will do us a tremendous amount of good once the beams come crashing down on our shields, Olga. I don't mind fighting. but I do greatly dislike exploding. Or will, if ever I am forced to try it, and unlike Bob, I do not wish to!”

“You fly your the ship, Franz,” Olga rolled her eyes, “and Yari and I will direct the Jagers from here. I’ve already shifted perspective to ensure we feel like we’re on top of Acerbic, not attached to the midsection. You provide the thrust to get us to the Belt in one piece, and we'll give you top cover. We'll come through alive, you'll see!”

“Couldn't we use Acerbic as a decoy,” Loucas suggested, “and escape together on the smaller ship? Assuming there's enough memory space or whatever you need and we can pack some supplies in here for Yari and me. Wouldn’t that give us better odds?”

Olga shook her head. “I wish! But no. We can't keep enough air and water on the Jagdkontrol for you to survive the many months it would take us to get to the Belt using our little engines. And even if we try to separate just to offer our enemies a more complex targeting problem before joining up again later, there's too strong of a chance that we will stray too far from Acerbic's path. If we leave a narrow envelope around Acerbic, we’ll lose each other.

“Plus, we lose the protection of Acerbic’s shields, which are far stronger than mine. Our best plan is to work from here and hope for the best. At least their own ships face the same problem: we are moving very fast and still accelerating, so they have no hope of catching up to us once we race by. Too bad there is a dratted dreadnought right in our path, otherwise, I know we'd blow through with relative ease thanks to Yari. But I still believe we can escape! And it never hurts to have a little faith.”

Loucas thought it was incredibly strange for a machine to be talking about faith, but he had no time to worry about it right then. He saw Yari move her hands, and the three flights of triangular drones raced up from the deck and arranged themselves into a tight formation, taking up protective positions not far from the edge of the horizon, at their nine, three, and twelve o'clock directions.

“Loucas,” Yari said while concentrating on them. “I'll keep them close enough to us that they won't get lost, and try to block any incoming attacks as fast as I can. Tell me if you see anything. Just like last time, I have to try to keep the Jagers in the general area of where the bad guys’ beams will come at us. They do a lot on their own, I just have to guide them to where they are supposed to be. As long as they can deflect the majority of the beam energy away from the shields, we'll be OK.”

Loucas took a deep breath, then walked over to his sister and placed his hand on her shoulder. She pulled away for a brief moment, wiggled her hand in a strange way, and then relaxed slightly, leaning gently against him.

“I know,” she said hesitantly, “that it is weird for me to be deciding things like that all of a sudden. I know that you want to protect me, but right now I get to be the one who protects you, OK? I'm getting better and better at controlling the little Jagers. I've practiced as much as I can the past few days, and Olga has been wonderful with training me. Trust that I can do this! Just, help spot for me, because sometimes I can get too focused. The sooner we break up an attack, the less chance it hits us hard enough to punch through our shields. That’s the only thing that matters right now.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but no words came. All his life he'd felt like a twin to his adopted sister. He had been a child when their parents brought her home, and Loucas couldn't remember a time when she wasn't there alongside him, he her big brother and she his little sister. Even when he went to university in Vancouver, she went with him.

Taking care of her, in a world that seemed bound and determined to make life difficult for autistic people, was second nature to him. But here, for the first time in their shared life, she had to be the one to take care of him, and this made the entire incredible situation even more difficult to bear. The robots had chosen to integrate her into the Jagdkontrol, not Loucas. Even his knowledge of physics was useless here, over a century out of date.

Loucas hadn't had much cause in his life to think about it before, but he realized then how much he absolutely hated feeling useless. It was infuriating, especially because, in a way, he was living a physicist's wildest dream. Jumping more than a century into what the Norse gods, or whatever they actually were, called his Thread of reality’s twin, he had a unique chance to learn the truth of so many things. Yet here he was, trapped with his sister and completely powerless. Black hole highways, death beams and space navies. That was his new world, and science fiction buff though he might be, Loucas found he was not ready for this tragic future.

The crew of the Jadgkontrol, human and machine, fell silent for a long while. Each stared out into the stars, waiting for some sign, digitally processed as it might be, of what was out there, where their unseen assailants were waiting in ambush. Loucas thought then that he understood what it must have been like to be a sailor on a cargo ship during Earth's world wars, spending weeks on end subject to the loneliness of the open ocean, always wondering if this nightfall would be the one that ended in a sudden explosion and the rush of bitter cold seawater cascading through ruptured hull.

Loucas noticed a vague flicker, almost like the twinkling of a star through fog, at the edge of his vision. He turned his head, peering between the stars to discern the source of the disturbance, but saw nothing more. He looked at the others, but they didn't show any indication of having noticed it.

Two minutes later, he saw it again, in a completely different part of the horizon, this time the light was more clear and lasted several breaths longer. Then once again it was suddenly gone. Loucas thought it seemed suspicious. Stars generally shouldn't twinkle outside an atmosphere, and he had the distinct sense that the Star-Bridge would filter out a predictable effect like background interference. So what could he be seeing?

Loucas had no time to wonder, because an intense blue white streak lashed across the night sky to crash violently against Acerbic’s shields. Light of a thousand different shades and hues arced around the shuddering vessel as the particle beam tried to punch through the ship's protective shields and shatter the structure beneath.

With a sweeping gesture Yari pulled one of the Jager flights towards the beam, and once close the Jagers rearranged themselves in an instant. Together they created an angled wall that deflected the beam away from Acerbic and out into space.

“There's another one!” Olga shouted. “ten o'clock high! I'll take over this flight, Yari, good save!”

“Got it!” Yari shouted in reply, gesturing as if releasing these Jagers from her control and grabbing another flight before sending it up to block the inbound shot. Loucas wished he could see what she saw, then spotted the odd twinkle again, now just a bit to the right of their direction of travel.

“Yar, I think there's something at our two o'clock.” Loucas pointed as she switched flights again.

She jerked her head, quickly peering to where he pointed as the nearest Jager flight drifted in the direction of her glance. At the same instant Loucas saw the blue-white flash, Yari spotted it too and jerked hard, pulling the drifting Jager flight completely into that part of the sky. The obsidian wall assembled in time for another burst of light to smash into them, the small portions of the particle beam that slipped between the Jagers dancing across the Acerbic's shields, generating color cascades at the many scattered points of impact.

“Thanks Loucas!” Yari cried, handing this flight off to Olga. “I don't know how you knew, but…”

Loucas spotted another flicker, this time just above the horizon at their nine o'clock. He started to point, but wasn't able to get Yari's attention before yet another vicious blue-white beam burst into existence, narrowly missing the Acerbic.

“Designating hunter groups A, B, and C now,” Franz said, and bright red outlines appeared at several points in the sky. “Blast, we were wrong, and there's a third cruiser out there! Be advised, Olga, they're all now in lethal range!”

“Affirmative!” Olga shouted, she and Yari each holding off a beam. Once hers faded, Yari turned her attention to the part of the sky where the third beam had fired from, and just in time, too. Another shot, slashing in very well aimed, ran right into the screen of Jagers before impacting Acerbic’s engine block at its aft end.

Then all the beams ceased striking as suddenly as they had begun.

“Alert!” Franz called out. “Picking up transmissions between the groups. There's now a fourth cruiser gunning for us, but where it is, I don't know. The carrier group has dispersed, attacks can come from any point in the sky now!”

As if hearing him, half a dozen beams all smaller than the three that had been assailing them lanced into the shields. Loucas cried out and pointed, drawing Yari's attention, but Olga shouted him down.

“Don't worry about those!” Olga shook her wild mane furiously, gritting her teeth. “They're from the destroyers, intended to distract us. Not big enough to hurt us at this range, just drain some of our shield power off.”

“I wish I knew how the things worked,” Loucas grimaced. “I didn’t know we could just ignore attacks.”

“It's a threshold thing, Loucas.” said Bob, his voice disturbingly calm. “Shields are like skin. A breach comes when too much penetration energy strikes too small an area. That causes superficial fusion reactions, which lets the beam punch through the disrupted shield matrix and impact the hull. Which itself typically causes a catastrophic set of fusion reactions, then failure of the ship's physical structure, and kaboom!”

“I didn’t need a play by play, robot!” Loucas cried, exasperated.

“Don’t worry!” Olga smiled. “Acerbic is a raider, and there’s more to her than meets the eye. Franz rebuilds the exterior before every mission to mimic whatever ship type we're pretending to be, and that hides the fact that we're actually, deep down, a mid-sized warship capable of shrugging off attacks from smaller vessels and surprising larger ones. Destroyers have to be at point-blank range to have any chance of breaking through.”

The strange twinkling came again, this time almost directly in their path. Loucas pointed and shouted. “Yari, straight ahead, just above the horizon! Look!”

Olga ignored him, but Yari listened, and flung the nearest Jager flight towards the forward horizon. An instant later the twinkle turned into a flash, and another intense beam of light was safely dispersed by the Jagers.

As if angry that this attack hadn’t caught their target unawares, immediately after two other beams from hunter group cruisers flashed to life. Their strikes were coordinated with those of half a dozen or so smaller beams firing from the accompanying destroyers, presenting Yari with a dramatically more confusing pattern of attacks than before.

Loucas held his breath, watching the duel without being able to do anything more to help. Three Jager flights were now holding off repeated shots from three different cruisers, each firing again and again to try and slop past their prey's defense. He kept waiting in fearful anticipation for the fourth cruiser to strike in unison with the others, knowing that if it timed its attack correctly it would have a clear shot at Acerbic.

Finally the anticipated strike came, but from behind, and weaker than expected though it struck the raider with the first flash of blazing light. Loucas realized that one of the first cruisers must have now fallen too far behind them to do any real damage. This suspicion was confirmed as it fired ineffectually several more times, then its shots began to miss completely, bright azure beams blinking into and out of existence all around them.

The battle remained a stalemate for the better part of an hour. Their assailants tried to vary their tactics, firing in different combinations, but Yari and Olga kept up with them, and the angry red boxes denoting the positions of hostile ships slid slowly across the horizon. Eventually even the cruiser group that had been located almost directly in front of Acerbic eventually slid from their eleven o'clock to their four o'clock, then five o'clock, and after its beams finally began to weaken. Eventually, the destroyers stopped firing at all, though several passed by close enough that Loucas could discern their angular, shapes, thinking they looked identical to arrowheads.

Finally, after Yari was beginning to show outward signs of fatigue, the cruisers stopped shooting again. For several minutes Loucas saw no more warning twinklings on the horizon, and the angry red boxes now clustered in their wake, falling behind.

Trouble was, they were far from alone. Bob released as squeaking cry, and twisting back from watching the fading cruisers Loucas felt his heart skip a beat and his blood run cold.

“And now, we die,” Franz said glumly. Loucas glumly agreed with his evaluation.

Looming like a nightmare on the edge of a dream, the dreadnought was like a vast storm cloud rising slowly over the horizon, almost directly in their path. Loucas felt his jaw drop, the ship now close enough that despite its sharply angled outer faces the enormous warship was clearly visible, too powerful to need to hide.

“Well hello, Moby Dick.” Olga said, teeth and fists clenched, a fierce, eager light in her digital eyes.

Yari stared at the massive shape, gesturing wildly, pulling the Jager flights into a dense triangular formation between them and the dreadnought. A second later, from either side of Acerbic dozens of bolts of light suddenly flashed into existence, filling the sky all around them. It was like a meteor shower had erupted out of nowhere, with the bolts that struck the shields bursting into colorful plumes of fast-scattering particles.

“Don't worry about them,” Olga said quickly, seeing the fear in Loucas and Yari’s eyes. “Just the carriers getting our range so the dreadnought can get a solid fix on us before opening fire. Every time even a tiny bolt hits us, the clash of charged particles produces a signal that radiates for anyone out there to see. These Navy types absolutely love to play this game during intercepts. It’s effing textbook, the carriers flank us on both sides while that big ugly dreadnought just sits and waits for the right time to swat us out of existence.”

“Come on, Franz,” Olga turned to the glum floating coffee can, “if we're gonna die, can I at least detach the Jagdkontrol and play kamikaze? If I have to go down, I want to go out while taking a chunk out of one of those big bullies! Who knows, maybe I’ll hit the bridge!”

“Do whatever you like, Olga. Preparing our own main beam now. We may not be able to do more than scratch a dreadnought that already knows we're there, but at least they'll know we tried!”

Loucas felt panic rising as he listened to the robots make their last moves. He looked wildly from one edge of the horizon to the other and back again. Yari remained almost serenely calm, by contrast. She held her hands in place, ready to do whatever it was that she did to keep the Jager flights in between them and their attackers.

The dreadnought only dully reflected the light of the sun, most of the solar energy deflected away from the massive spaceship's angular structure as the designers clearly intended. Loucas began to see signs of activity on and near the surface of the vessel. Small craft, fighters or drones, buzzed around it in tight formations. At several points, the surface of the ship itself seemed to be shifting, he assumed gun ports allowing whatever fired particle beams a clear shot.”

“Acerbic,” called a voice over a radio channel, “be advised, while they've been fixated on you, we've been monitoring your situation and are now prepared to intervene directly. Keep those Jager flights close to the shields and hold on! You will have to accelerate like a ghost out of Hades if you want to have a snowball's chance of making it through alive!”

Loucas spotted two small and very fast moving blurs accompanied by a swarm of smaller, triangular shapes. They tore past Acerbic, racing between it and the dreadnought, then fired thrusters to close distance with the gigantic warship. Loucas watched them, awestruck, recognizing them as Jagdkontrols just like Olga's.

Two surfaces on the dreadnought visible through the long slender panels Loucas had seen opening began to glow with an eerie light, but it was too late. The Jagdkontrols seemed to throw their Jager flights forward at the glowing surfaces, and the dreadnought's shields flickered and crackled as the little shapes lashed at it like a school of agitated piranhas. Two slender but brilliant beams of light burst out from the Jagdkontrols themselves, raking the disturbed surface of their target’s shields.

They raged against it for a few seconds, then to Loucas’ shock the beams punched through, charring and melting their way deep into the vessel near its main guns. Brilliant flashes of white light marked two massive explosions ripping through the afflicted vessel while the two Jagdkontrols soared past the stricken dreadnought and out into the stars beyond, streaks and pulses of light from lesser weapons chasing them as they went, Acerbic effectively forgotten.

“Hah haaa!” shouted Olga, jumping up and down and dancing in vicious glee. “Burn you monsters, burn! Oh my goodness, thank you Sardonic! At least, I'm assuming that's you guys out there, right? What a save! What a hit!”

“Affirmative,” came the reply. “That’s us. Heard about your exploits while doing covert recon in Lunar orbit. Worked out your escape plan, figured the Toffs would too. Thought we'd strike our own blow for freedom, and pay you back for your good work! The revolution is on, don'tcha know?”

“Hold on, are you serious? Olga shouted, jumping up and down with glee. “Are you truly effing serious?!”

“As the Lunar Plague! Half a dozen habitat sectors openly declared independence from Earth yesterday. The Toffs were totally unprepared for this move and are running scared in the media. Taking you down on your egress was their last hope to play the bombing off as an isolated terror attack by badly equipped Belt pirates. Now they can't deny any longer that we have the ships and the will to take them on. The rebellion is on! For freedom!”

“For justice.” Olga said quietly, smiling triumphantly at Loucas and Yari. They watched in exhausted silence as they sailed away from the stricken dreadnought, now too concerned about its own survival to continue trying to destroy them. A massive chunk of it had been blasted free and was now careening off into the night.

In that moment, Loucas felt suddenly light, as if a terrible weight had lifted. Against the odds, they had escaped. Although several of the ships of the broken blockade continued to fire beams and bolts at them as they went, it was an exercise in futility. Acerbic was on her way to the Belt… whatever that meant.

A shape caught his eye, moving fast on a perpendicular trajectory to theirs. It was similar in size, but not shape, to Acerbic, looking more like a warship, an obsidian arrowhead difficult to make out at long range. He watched the angular lines of Sardonic as their savior seemed to lazily float past by, listening to its crew brief Franz and Olga on what to expect when they reached the Belt. Both had appeared on the Star-Bridge, and to Loucas’ surprise they were not robots, but an elderly couple sitting in rocking chairs knitting a quilt together.

“Do make sure you train your humans up to the necessary standard,” the woman said. “It's sure to be a hard fight all the way back to Insurgence headquarters, even if they aren't going to be looking for you specifically. The default plan for any uprising against Earth rule is to flood the Belt with ships. They know full well that the Habitats rely on the Belt for resources, and to hide our bases. So we'll be on battle duty all the way home.”

“As expected,” replied Franz, “Such is life, and the price of a great victory. “Well, with two raiders and three corvettes we can handle anything short of a dreadnought once able to link up again. And they won't be able to maintain more than four or five carrier groups and their dreadnoughts on station for more than a year, and that is far from enough to smother the entire Belt! And they will be fighting on our terrain. This is a new kind of struggle for them in every dimension. For the first time, we have a chance!”

“Indeed,” the elderly man said, smiling. “By the way, we'd like to know, just for the record: did one of your humans catch on to our stunt with the targeting beam? We did try to mark out your assailants as we detected them, draw your attention as best as we could without giving ourselves away. Fortunately, they were too fixated on you to notice our meddling, but they were operating in full-stealth mode, so we were only able to pick up their signals when they were just about to open fire. Still, we did our best!”

Olga swiveled around to stare knowingly at Loucas “Aha! so that's how you kept getting premonitions about where they'd be shooting from!”

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Loucas said, “but, uh, thanks.”

“Our pleasure,” the man nodded. “Glad you had biologicals aboard, Acerbic, we couldn't risk emitting a clearer signal that a non-human might notice. Machine intelligence is far too clever for old biologicals such as ourselves. Well, we'll catch you on the flip side then. Stay safe, and see you in the Belt. Here's to victory!”

“To victory.” agreed Franz, and Olga together, then the pair disappeared. Sardonic soon disappeared far behind, the fires from the damaged dreadnought like a new star near fading Earth, shrouded in shadow.

Loucas’ heart sank then, partly because he realized that there were even more battles to come, but also because the adrenaline rush was fading fast. He turned to Yari, and guessed from her tired expression that she was thinking along the same lines as him. They had been away from Mimr’s Pub and the refreshing mead of the gods for too long, and having survived, there was no reason to stay away now.

But there was something else in her expression, too. A sort of… eagerness, Loucas realized. An actual desire to meet the challenges ahead. It seemed strange, for her. His little stick of a sister was always having to deal with over-stimulation and the typically inconsiderate behavior of other people. But here, despite the fact that they had just been in a fight for their very lives, it was as if something buried inside of her was now waking up.

He wasn't sure how to feel about it, either. He wondered if it was caused by the strange drinks at Mimr's Pub, the integration with the Olga, or perhaps some deeply repressed part of herself that could only emerge in a time of mortal crisis.

Or, maybe, Loucas realized suddenly, he was just seeing her with different eyes, the kind you develop whenever you share mortal danger with another person and know them for who they really are. He reached out with both hands, and gently squeezed her shoulders, wishing they were back home with their mother and father in Arecibo.

She turned to look at him, clearly on the verge of total exhaustion. She shook her head slowly, and sighed.

“Well, bro, I guess we finally have some time to think, don't we? It’s supposed to be weeks before we reach the Belt. I wonder what we should think about first? There’s just so much it makes me want to take a nap. I never realized how holding my hands up for so long could make me so tired!”

“I’m just glad you kept us alive,” Loucas said with total sincerity. “Everything beyond that is just gravy right now.”

“Mm,” she nodded. “Also, we should go see the others as soon as we get a chance. I really want to pet one of Freyja's kitties right now for some reason. Weiss and Schwartz, I like them! Don't you wish we could bring them here to hang out? Though I don't know if they would like all the metal and robots. But they seem like very cool cats, don't you think?”

Despite his worries, Loucas couldn't help but smile. That was Yari. And tired Yari was the same whether or not she was plugged into a machine. Her mind wandered down strange paths, often towards furry creatures.

“Also,” Yari said pertly, “we need to start thinking about how to stop the end of the world. The Ragnarok thing. I think there has to be a solution if we just think hard enough about it, don't you?”

And that was Yari too. Abrupt transitions and zero sense of when to not remind others of the something they'd prefer not to think about. Or talk about potentially sensitive matters around robots with every reason to ask questions.

Loucas opened his mouth to remind her, then shook his head, changing his mind. They were together, they were alive, and it looked like those basic conditions would continue for at least another day. Let tomorrow take care of tomorrow.

“Let’s leave the Star-Bridge, sis,” Loucas said softly, smiling at her. “And go take a break. We’ve both earned it.”

She nodded, smiling back. Together they bade the strange machine intelligences Franz, Olga, and Bob goodbye, leaving them to their discussions about where to go when they reached the Belt. Loucas thought he heard the name Havoc Station, but it meant nothing to him.

He closed his eyes, and waited to disconnect. When he opened them again, he took deep breath, looked around the Star-Bridge, and when the restraints fell away he walked with Yarielis to their cabin where they summoned the Web of Norns and traveled to the realm of the gods.

CHAPTER 19