"Jason," Kira said, "it's not a competition. Don't go looking for trouble because…because you don't like who you think you are."
"That's easy for you to say! You've got these incredible parents who've done incredible things!"
"You think that's easy?" Kira demanded. "Living with that?"
"Try living with my mom. I'm going to do this."
"Jason—"
"Huh?" he said, too loud and too abruptly. Jason's fingers danced in front of him for a moment while he shook his head at her.
The "app" must have failed again. Kira steadied her voice, trying to sound merely polite. "Thanks for coming," Kira said. "It was…fun."
"Fun?" He laughed and shook his head in disbelief, then looked at her again with that puzzled expression.
"Thanks." Jason backed away, stumbling into the side of his transport. The opening appeared in it and Jason got inside. He waved to her as the opening closed, and a moment later the transport rose into the air again.
Her mother and father came out as Kira stood looking up into the star-filled sky. "Anything else?" Mari asked.
"Not too much." Kira summarized their discussion, leaving out the parts about her personal life. "He seemed to take the warnings from foresight seriously after I explained it, and said the people on the ship have been excited about something. He promised to find out what it was."
"I hope he doesn't get into any trouble," her mother said. "He seems to have plenty of trouble in his life already."
"If he wasn't such a jerk sometimes I think he'd be fun to talk to." Kira shook her head, feeling anger rise. "I don't blame him for hating his mother. I've hardly met her and I hate her!"
"Do not hate," her father spoke firmly. "I have told you. Hate no one, hate nothing. Oppose those who do wrong, but do not hate."
"Why not?" Kira demanded hotly. "Doesn't she deserve to be hated?"
"I am not wise enough to know what anyone deserves. Kira, hate harms no one so much as the one who hates. Do not grant even the worst person such a victory over you."
"But if they're doing things that bad—"
"Then you work to stop them, without letting them harm who you are," Alain said. "Have you ever noticed, Kira, how easy it is to hate? It is like water running downhill. You just have to let it happen and it does. Is anything worthwhile ever so easy?"
Kira looked at him, her father in his Mage robes under the stars of the night sky, and at her mother beside him, emotions warring within her. "I know…that love is hard."
"Yes," Alain said. "Real love is hard. Forgetting yourself for another. Love is like fighting uphill against all of your worst instincts."
"And," her mother added, "Jason is the sort to bring out the worst instincts in someone. Thank you for making the effort to treat him well."
Kira couldn't help a brief laugh. "Yeah, that's my little version of holding the wall at Dorcastle. Being nice to a guy like Jason."
Her mother flinched. "It's not a competition, Kira."
She was about to shoot back an angry response when she remembered that she had said the same thing to Jason. And she knew that her mother's heated tone was because in her reckless response Kira had flippantly mentioned Dorcastle. "I'm sorry," she muttered. "I shouldn't have brought up…that place."
Her mother had that look she got sometimes, as if she was gazing on the faces of everyone who had died in the siege of Dorcastle. "I know you didn't mean it, Kira. You brought it up, though. Why?"
"There's so much…you can't talk about."
"What do you want to know?" her mother asked, startling Kira. "I'll try to answer this time. Do you want to go inside while we talk?"
Aunt Bev must have spoken to her. Her mother was trying to reach out. Kira hesitated. "No. I like being out here. Can you tell me more about what she was like? Sergeant Kira. All you've ever told me is she was a great person."
Mari inhaled slowly and deeply before answering. "She was older than me, and taller, and she was the best shot in the Bakre Confederation. She had an older brother who was a sailor, and she hoped to find a man for herself someday and have a family. I knew her for four days before she died on the third wall. She…she took a crossbow bolt in the forehead and died instantly."
Kira shivered again, feeling cold. "Why did you name me after her?"
"I know I told you this, but it may have been a long time ago. I named you after her because I wanted you to be as brave and as strong as she was, and even though I couldn't save her I wanted her name to live on in you."
"Thank you. For finally telling me." Kira avoided looking at her mother, knowing how sad she probably was. "I know I'm difficult sometimes but I don't want to disappoint you. Ever."
"You have never disappointed me and you never will."
Her mother sounded as if she believed that. Kira wondered if she would ever be able to believe it herself.
* * *
After the tension of the night before, the next day proved to be a letdown. Nothing happened except for her parents having more meetings, and sending and receiving more messages. Instead of working on her studies, Kira spent a lot of time staring out her window, replaying in her mind what her mother had said last night. She also kept worrying about Jason, concerned that she had prodded him into doing something that would get him into trouble and make his life even more unhappy. His life wasn't her responsibility, but that didn't mean she had any right to mess it up even more than it already was.
Her parents were gone at dinner, at another meeting with Queen Sien, so Kira grabbed some leftovers and then as night fell gave up trying to work. She went to bed earlier than usual. hoping that the next day would feel less frustrating.
It felt like it was only a few hours later when Kira started awake, knowing from the silence of the world outside that it must be well after midnight. What had woken her?
A bump at her window. Kira sat up in bed, pulling her sheet around her.
It was Jason. He was standing outside her open second-floor window as if the empty air was supporting him. "Kira? I need you!" he said in a whisper.
She glared at him, barely remembering to keep her own voice down so her parents wouldn't hear anything. "Are you kidding me? You show up at my bedroom window in the middle of the night and announce that you need me? Just how desperate do you think I am?"
"Huh? What are you—?" Jason's panicked look appeared. "No! That's not what this is about!"
"Really? You visit girls' bedrooms at night for other reasons?"
"Yeah!" Jason looked around, his expression growing frantic. "Kira, please. I need help."
Either he had become an extremely good actor since the night before, or Jason really was scared. "Turn around." Kira ordered.
"What?"
"Turn. Around. I need to get dressed. And if I catch you looking I will break parts of you that will never heal right."
"Okay."
Kira, thinking that her rebellious habit of sleeping naked didn't feel particularly clever at the moment, waited until Jason had pivoted so his back was to her window. She kept the sheet around her as best she could as she struggled quickly into clothes. "All right. What is this about?" she demanded as she finished buttoning her shirt, leaving it hanging outside her jeans.
Jason turned to look at her again. She noticed he was sweating despite the coolness of the night, and was gripping a triangular object a bit larger than his palm tightly in one hand. "Can I come in?"
She almost said no, then thought about the security patrols around the house and the possibility that they might spot Jason at any moment. "Yes. As long as you stay right next to the window."
He climbed inside, gasping with relief. "Do you remember what I told you last night? About the thing I wanted to find out about? I planted some bugs."
Kira gave him another glare. "You planted insects?"
"No! Bugs! That's what we call really small things that allow us to listen in to people."
"You spied on them?" Kira said. "Using a far-listener
device?"
"Yeah. Exactly," Jason said. "I was able to see and hear their conversations through most of the day. Do you remember your dad doing some Mage stuff for them?"
Kira had to think back to that first day when the ship had landed. "Yes. He said he had demonstrated a small spell."
"They scanned him while he was doing it. Not a surface scan or a shallow scan, a full deep scan. Which is hugely illegal to do without permission from the subject. Massive invasion of individual privacy. Anything derived from such a scan would have to be destroyed along with the scan itself." He held up the triangular object, dull black with rounded edges. "That's why they loaded it all directly onto this, and only on to this, so there would be no trace in the ship's systems of what they'd done. And they also ran all their analyses and calculations off this and stored them on it. This is the only copy of all that. There's no backup that might trigger a legal investigation when the ship returns to Earth."
She looked from the object back to Jason. "Why does what's on there scare you? Is it what the foresight warned about?"
"It must be. Because they saw enough of how your dad does things to figure out how to use something like the Mage stuff to create weapons that could penetrate any known defense system back at Earth."
Kira sat down on her bed, hard. "Why would they want to build weapons like that? It would break the stalemate that's kept peace on your world."
"Because if anybody makes weapons like that, everybody would have to buy them. Every government everywhere in Earth's solar system would have to buy a lot of those weapons. Because the only way to keep from being attacked would be to have the ability to hit back the same way." Jason shook his head in despair. "I heard them arguing. Some said maybe they shouldn't. Because it would shift us from all being safe behind our defenses to being constantly worried about being attacked, and if anybody misjudged a situation or miscalculated, millions of people could die. Maybe billions. I'm not exaggerating that number. I swear it. But they rationalized going ahead, because building those weapons would be worth incalculable amounts of money to ULS's defense industries and earn huge bonuses for them as individuals. Someone would invent something like this someday, they said. It might as well be them. And all ULS would be doing was manufacturing the weapons. It wouldn't be their fault if someone else misused them."
Kira studied Jason, appalled, hoping she would see falsehood in him, some sign that he was lying about any of this. But she saw nothing but desperate truth.
"It's all on this Invictus Drive," Jason said, his voice as grim as his expression. "Without this, they can't do anything."
"You're sure of that?" Kira demanded. "They can't remember enough to recreate their work without it?"
"No way," Jason said, shaking his head. "I took a look at it, and it's just like I heard some of them comment. This stuff is incredibly complex. Without the reference of the scan of your father's work, there's no way they could rebuild it."
"Then destroy that thing!"
"I can't. You can't. It's called an Invictus Drive for a reason." Jason turned a bit, waving toward the night outside. "Drop it in a volcano, and it wouldn't even notice. Drop it in the deepest water, and the pressure wouldn't hurt it. Fasten it to a bomb, and it wouldn't even be dented. If we could shoot it into a star, like your sun, the fusion explosions and intense radiation would do the job. But there's no way to do that."
"Why can't we hide it?" Kira asked, belatedly realizing that by saying "we" she had taken partial ownership of the situation.
"It's got a beacon tied to biometric detectors. A transmitter. If it isn't within ten meters of at least one member of the crew, the beacon automatically activates, and my mom's ship finds it within seconds."
Kira studied the object that Jason held. "I guess you're a member of the crew?"
"Yeah. By default. If they had taken time to look at the list of authorized holders they would have deleted me, but they were probably in a rush when they initialized it."
"You have to be within ten meters? That's about five lances." Not very far at all. "Can they call that thing? Make it tell them where it is?"
He smiled shakily at her. "I knew you'd be smart enough to ask about that. Normally, yes, they could broadcast a call and it would answer. Unless the Invictus Drive was set to quiet mode, which is what they did to make sure that inspectors back on Earth wouldn't discover it. They didn't think they'd ever have to look for it themselves."
Kira bit her lower lip as she thought. "What if your mother knew where you were, but you were being protected by people from this world? What would she do?"
"She wouldn't care about me," Jason said, "but the drive, that's another thing. There are so-called defensive weapons on the ship. Stuff way beyond what you guys have. She'd use those weapons to get me and the drive back, and justify it by saying you kidnapped me or something. She'd destroy whatever she had to. Trust me."
Once again he wasn't lying. "You must have some idea of what to do," Kira said. "You came here and said you needed me."
"There's only one thing that might work," Jason said, his voice growing desperate again. "I have to hide myself. I have to find a place on this world where I can hide and keep the drive hidden until the ship is forced to leave. They'll look for me. They'll use every tool they've got. They can find me using the same biometrics, if they get sensors close enough to me. That's why I need to find some place a long way from here to hide, where they wouldn't think to look. That's why I need you. I'll probably have a little trouble blending in. I need some quick tips on how to talk and act and…everything. Oh, and where to go. And how to get there."
She stared at him. "Quick tips? How long do we have?"
"Maybe a couple of hours."
"A couple of hours. Jason, if I had a couple of years I might be able to teach you enough for you to blend in here. What you're suggesting is impossible. You wouldn't last half a day. Everybody you interacted with would immediately know you were…very different."
"But I have to," Jason insisted, now despairing. "It's the only way to keep this information away from them. If I don't, ULS will build those weapons and sell lots of them, and those weapons will get used and… You were right, Kira. This stuff is a huge danger to Earth. Kira, please. You're so smart and…and…awesome. You must know a way I can make this work."
"You must have me confused with my mother," Kira said. "Jason, there isn't any way you can do it. You'd need—"
She suddenly realized that there was a way.
Kira gazed out the window into the darkness behind Jason, thinking.
Thinking about how she had spent most of her life feeling sorry for herself because she wouldn't have the chance to do anything important. About all of the people who might die back on Urth if the greedy, selfish crew of the ship brought back the secret for weapons that no one could stop. About her mother simply saying I had a job to do.
Her mother couldn't get involved in this. Lady Mari had to be neutral, the fair and disinterested person everyone could look to. Mari couldn't draw the world, any part of it, into a conflict with Urth. Especially not when she'd be trying to keep an object stolen from the Urth ship away from its legal owners.
And her father was the same. Master of Mages. Lady Mari's Mage. He had to avoid directly confronting the Urth people as well.
But if Kira told them they would feel obligated to try to help. Her parents, who had already given so much, would take on the burden of this as well, a burden that Kira would have handed to them because she wouldn't accept it for herself. And if either of them did get involved, if Queen Sien got drawn into it, too, and tried to keep that drive thing from Talese Groveen and her minions, the Urth ship had weapons which might kill many people here on Dematr. Innocent people, caught in the line of fire.
That left her. The only person that Jason could trust, and that had any chance of hiding Jason from everyone else. Because Jason was right. He and that drive would have to be hidden, and Kira was the only person who had a chance of
making that happen. She felt her life balanced on a knife edge, knowing that every tomorrow would be changed by whatever happened now. She could not be afraid. Not when something this important had to be done.
"Kira?" Jason had no trace of sullenness or anger to him. Just fear, and hope she could tell was centered on her.
"Sorry," Kira said. "I was just thinking. How long would the ship look for you before it had to leave?"
"Before it had to leave? Maybe a couple of years if they stayed as long as possible and got food from the local environment."
Stars above. Why couldn't he have said a couple of months? Kira nerved herself and took a deep breath. "If we're going to have any chance of not being caught, we're going to have to leave right away."
He gave her a puzzled frown. "We?"
"You can't do this alone. It has to be done. So, it's my job, too."
"No." Kira hadn't thought about how Jason would react, but she was still surprised when he shook his head angrily. "No way. That wasn't why I came here. I can't expect you to do something like that."
"You didn't ask me to do it," Kira said. "But there isn't any alternative. You have to hide. You need someone with you, someone from this world, who knows it and can help you blend in. Do you know anybody else we could turn to?"
"No, but—"
"I don't want to do this. I don't like you that much, and I'm not looking forward to spending a long time in your company. But if I don't, you fail."
He looked angrier. "I know I'm not fun to be around, but I'm not useless."
"That's not what I meant," Kira said. "Do you think I can handle myself? What do you think my odds of blending in would be if I tried hiding on Urth?"
"Lousy." Jason made a helpless gesture. "Kira, your mom and dad are the most decent people I ever met. I don't want to repay them for that by stealing their daughter!"