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Reed Ellis and his people were better prepared for this mutiny than the last
one, when they only had about a week to plan. This time, it was months, but
the mission was four times harder. Actually, it was probably harder than
that because the Teaguardians were infinitely more competent than the
security guards on the Tangent. The platform could be moved with four fusion
torches. It was designed for balance and power. But those torches could be
removed, and that was how it was meant to be most of the time for a stable
geostationary orbit. The only reason the torches had stayed on for this long
was because they were evacuating from the poles, and stationkeeping in these
positions was a whole hell of a lot more difficult. They were, at last,
about to be removed, but outsiders were not expecting it. They assumed the
Tangent would be returned to Bungula while the mutineers boarded a
Teaguardian, and faced judgment. Well, they were boarding all right, though
not for judgment, but self-preservation.
Matar Galo was expecting Reed to surrender, but they had other plans, and
everything had to be perfectly timed, because once someone noticed something
out of place, like the sudden detachment of the torches, or the near
complete abandonment of two of the Teaguardians, they would react. The last
of the evacuees were now gone, having been transported to other vessels, but
before the mutiny could begin, the stragglers had to be dealt with too. For
various reasons, these were the ones who chose to stay here for an extended
period of time. Tertius, Aeterna, and baby Dilara were here, along with
their associates, Breanna, and her people. Most of the others felt some debt
of gratitude to the Tangent, and an obligation to stick around and help out.
This was great, but it posed a problem now. He pointed to the shuttle. “This
is large enough to fit all of you. A course has been plotted for the
asteroid known as PC-1124E. It has become a staging ground for interstellar
journeys headed for the Varkas Reflex. VR is a popular destination for
evacuees looking to start new lives with the special energy credit
dispensations that you have all received since your exodus is not your
fault.
“Now, the reason this is being offered to you is because my people and I are
about to stage another mutiny. And the reason I set this shuttle aside is
because it has been stripped of its communications system. You will cruise
towards the asteroid at a fairly slow, fuel-saving speed, but not so slow
that it looks like there’s something wrong with you. You will not be able to
course correct, and not be able to reach out to anyone else. I have to do
this, because I can’t have any of you revealing the truth about what we’re
planning to do. I decided, instead of simply shipping you off, and wiping my
hands clean of you, that I would give you each a choice. You can stay, and
you can help, or you can stay, and stay out of the way. You just can’t
betray us.” He looked down and swept his foot across the floor a few times.
“Let’s call this seam the boundary. If you stay on that side, you get on
that shuttle, and leave the Tangent for good. If you come over here, you’re
with us, and you face the same consequences that we do. If we end up getting
caught anyway, you might argue that you were under duress, but I will argue
that you made the choice. Because that’s the truth. This is your choice. I’m
not here to sway you one way or the other.”
“Why are you doing this?” Breanna asked. “Exactly why, that is? Just so you
won’t get caught?”
“Yep, that’s it,” Reed explained. “There’s no convoluted secret agenda here.
We just don’t want to get in trouble, so we’re gonna keep fighting. We like
all of you, which is why we kept you around, but this isn’t your fight, and
we don’t expect you to stay. If you choose not to, I thank you for your
service.”
Without saying a word to Reed, or even to each other, Tertius and Aeterna
spun around, and began to walk into the shuttle. Reed let out a quiet sigh
of relief. He liked them as much as everyone else here—that was not a white
lie—but he couldn’t guarantee that baby’s safety. That was the thing about a
posthuman society. As advanced as they had become, infants and children were
still mortal. They were still developing, and thor brains were still
plastic. Digitizing them that young was a hurdle that researchers still had
not cleared. Around half of the helpers elected to join them in the shuttle
while the other half crossed that line. Breanna, Cashmere, Calypso, and
Notus expressed interest in taking a hands-on role in the mutiny, while the
majority of the rest didn’t want to fight, but still wanted to stay. It was
unclear what their motivations were, but they would be guarded in case it
was only a ruse so they would retain the ability to warn Teagarden of their
plans.
“Wait,” Reed said. “I forgot one thing, and it hopefully doesn’t change your
mind.” He snapped his fingers. One of his guards opened a door to let in two
more guards, who were escorting a chained up and gagged Vasily. “This man
did betray us, and I finally have my opportunity to be rid of him. Now that
we’ve finished the evacuation, I no longer need to worry about his
influence. These two fine guards have volunteered to hold onto him en route
to the asteroid. You will not be in danger from him. We rigged up a little
hock in there for him, but he will be present, and I understand if you feel
uncomfortable with that. Since I think you deserve to know, his crime...was
murder. The permanent kind.”
“And I would do it again!” one of Vasily’s guards shouted. He took out his
sidearm and shot his partner. Then he grabbed one of the men who was about
to get on the shuttle, to use as a human shield. “Now that I have your
attention, I want you to unlock my brother, get in that shuttle
yourself...Captain,” he spat, “and fly yourself out of here. As a
great man once said, I’m the captain now!”
“Packard. You’re brothers? Since when?” Reed questioned. It may have sounded
like an irrelevant question, but he needed to understand what he was dealing
with here.
“Since I’m not Packard at all, but figured out how to hijack his download,”
the guy who looked like Packard volleyed. “Ever since that Sorel guy took
over the consciousness backup department, your system has been for shite. It
wasn’t even hard.”
“We had to upgrade it, it created vulnerabilities. That won’t work a second
time. Now put down the gun, you dupe, and release the nice man. Last year,
you killed what many would consider an enemy combatant. Today, you have
someone innocent, which is a whole different ballgame. If you pull that
trigger, you’ll start losing sleep over it.”
“I’ll live,” the duplicate version of Vasily contended.
“But you won’t remember anything,” Tertius said as he was casually walking
down the ramp.
Dupe!Vasily’s eyes glazed over as he loosened his grip on the hostage, who
managed to pull himself away from his captor, and rush into the shuttle.
Dupe!Vasily, meanwhile, looked incredibly confused, and scared. When he
realized that he was holding a weapon, he dropped it to the floor. “I
don’t...I don’t know anything.”
“What do you mean by anything?” Reed questioned.
“Anything,” Tertius echoed. “He won’t be a problem anymore. His memories are
gone.” He picked up the gun, and held it up in offering to Reed. “If you
have the consciousness of the true owner of this body stored away somewhere,
you should be able to overwrite the parasite. If you don’t, I can try to
restore him myself.”
“Restore him how?” Reed asked while another guard secured Packard’s weapon.
He looked down at the now husk of Vasily’s host, who was now on his knees,
seemingly trying to figure out what his hands were all about. “You didn’t
even touch him. You didn’t do anything.”
Tertius shook his head. “I didn’t need to touch him. It’s just something I
can do.”
Reed stared at him for a moment, occasionally looking down at the victim
again, and also the other people in the room. “How much can you scale that
up?”
“Oh, God,” Tertius said before sighing. “That’s not what it’s for.”
“Let’s do it,” Aeterna said as she was coming up from behind him without her
baby. “We all know what the Captain is thinking. This mutiny is happening,
whether we help or not. We have the chance to make it bloodless.”
“We could stop it altogether,” Tertius argued, “by erasing everyone’s
memories.”
Aeterna placed a hand upon her father’s forearm. She looked over at Reed.
“This man, and his people, came for us. They came for all of us, and they
did it as efficiently and as humanely as possible. Now they need to get away
safely. These mortal affairs; we inserted ourselves into them. We are
partially to blame for what happened on Doma. It cost lives, it might have
cost more if not for people like Reed Ellis. Let us do one last thing for
the humans before we take ourselves off the board and focus on my daughter.”
“This is why we lost touch for two centuries, my sweet girl,” Tertius said
to her. “You wanted to help, I wanted to walk away. But now you have to
think about the baby.”
“I am,” Aeterna insisted. “I want to teach her to do the right thing, and I
want to be able to teach it by example.”
Tertius thought about it. “Fine, but we’re putting their memories on a
timer.” He approached Reed, and pointed at him fairly aggressively. “You
will have one day to bug out, which I believe gives you a head start of
around two light years. I suggest you don’t leave a trail. These people may
be your enemies, but they deserve to move on with their lives in whatever
way they choose, so I won’t be taking their agencies away forever.”
“That is more than I could ask,” Reed told him. “I don’t know how you do
what you’re evidently about to do, but I want you to know how grateful I
am.”
Aeterna took a half step forward. “We’ll need a list, of everyone whose
memories you don’t want suppressed. Preferably with faces.”
“We’re also gonna wipe your memories of this conversation,” Tertius added.
“You’ll know what happened, but not who, or how it was possible.”
“That’s fine,” Reed promised.
Reed was aware that people’s memories were going to be erased. He believed
that. He trusted that. Seeing it was a whole different animal. This was no
longer a mutiny, but a humanitarian mission. He had Thistle compile a list
of everyone they wanted to be immune to the temporary memory suppression.
The rest were wiped. After it was done, a mass silent confusion fell upon
the Proxima Centauri system. The targets, which were mostly Teaguardians,
though some Bungulans too, didn’t freak out. They had no idea who or where
they were, but they were calm and trusting. Instead of fighting them, Reed
and the mutineers spent most of the energy on helping them.
They rounded up anyone with memory loss and consolidated them to three
Teaguardian ships that they were not intending to commandeer. They told them
to sit tight and wait for medical assistance to arrive. The targets accepted
their instructions without question, without a single voice of dissent.
There was only one hiccup. Well, two if you counted the infighting. All of
the key participants were in their first and only face-to-face meeting. “Why
the hell were my people targeted?” President Abrams questioned with
surprising anger.
“We don’t need them anymore. We don’t need them to hand over your two ships
willingly. We are facing no opposition.”
“That wasn’t the agreement,” Abrams argued. “I don’t like seeing my soldiers
like this. They’re like...children. They’re dumb children. It’s sad. They’re
all sad.”
“It’s better this way,” Reed contended. “Now they never betrayed Teagarden.
When they wake up from this—and they will wake up from this—they will be
able to claim plausible deniability. Not even that, they will have done
nothing. They won’t have to defend their actions at all. Honestly, I
probably should have kept you off the immunity list too, to keep your hands
clean. If I had had more time, I might have, but the window was closing. We
had to act, either with the original plan, or the new one. There was no
third option to delay entirely.”
“Oh, actually, there was,” Abrams said. “You could have turned yourself in,
which was the noble thing to do. It still is.” It took more than the one
conversation to convince him to get on board with this, and he still fought
the plan every step of the way. Reed regretted making him immune. He should
have put him on one of those Teaguardians as just another oblivious docile.
“He’s right,” Ajax agreed. He survived the runaway shuttle last year by
jumping to a new body on the surface of Bungula after his death. He
maintained his captaincy, and had since become an ad hoc liaison between the
Teagarden forces and the Bungulan military. No one ever seemed to suspect
his true loyalties, and he had restrained himself from demanding control of
the Tangent. Which was actually kind of weird, because the baseline command
structure for a captain included overseeing 256 troops, and you only needed
a certain sized ship to accommodate that number. An elevator platform like
the Tangent didn’t need a higher crew count, but it was orders of magnitude
larger, and probably the best assignment this side of Earth. “I would have
gotten my platform back.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you about this before, but I didn’t know that
mind-wiping was an option until it was time to act,” Reed defended. “But
this is objectively better, so I don’t understand why we’re still arguing.
There’s work to be done. Those Teaguardians aren’t going to attach
themselves to the Tangent.”
“They kind of are,” Delegator Chariot reasoned. “I believe in our crew. This
meeting is important. You have still not told us how you suppressed
all of these people’s memories. You didn’t give them anything to eat or
drink, you didn’t disperse any sort of bioweapon, or we would all be
affected. Unless it was a DNA-targeting pathogen, in which case, you would
have needed to plan this for days at the shortest. So are you lying? Did you
cook something up in secret, or was it really just earlier today, and you
genuinely accomplished the impossible?”
Reed blinked. “I don’t know.”
Abrams rolled his eyes. “What?”
“I don’t...I don’t remember.”
“Oh my God, you’re claiming you were bit by your own creation? You expect us
to believe that?” Abrams scoffed.
“He’s telling the truth,” Shasta said. “I don’t remember either. I remember
knowing that this was going to happen, and that we asked for it, but I don’t
remember who or how, or any details. We may have asked for our own memories
to be altered, possibly permanently, or they did it without our consent. But
I know that the targets will recover. I know that we will get
through this if we stick together, and stop arguing.”
Abrams crossed his arms and shook his head. “It smells fishy. Someone with
the technology to do this doesn’t just let us use it for nothing.”
Ajax looked to his left. “You’ve been quiet. I have never seen you without a
bag of opinions over your shoulders. Can we trust Reed?”
Vasily nodded, also with his arms crossed, but in a more authoritative than
closed-off way. “I trust Captain Reed Ellis more than anyone in this galaxy.
If he says that this will work, then this will work. I say we keep moving
those empty Teaguardians into position, fire up their fancy reframe engines,
and bolt.”
“I’m not bolting,” Ajax reminded the group.
“Neither am I,” Abrams said.
“As long as you don’t interfere,” Reed began, “that’s fine. No one has to go
anywhere. In fact, I will afford the same opportunity to all of my people.
They can pretend to have also lost their memories, and maybe the authorities
will go easy on them.” He paused for a moment. “I want to thank you all for
all of your help. I know it wasn’t easy, but I believe the history books
will shine a bright light upon us...eventually. If that is all, this meeting
can come to a close, and those staying behind can leave the Tangent.”
They all went their separate ways. Reed returned to his office, and found
someone sitting in his seat who he did not recognize. Her legs were propped
up on the desk, and she wasn’t scared of him at all. “Security!” he shouted
over his shoulder.
“They can’t hear you,” the mysterious woman explained.
“Security!” Reed shouted again. He turned to walk out of the room, but was
completely unable to. The door that was meant to lead to the bridge had
become a mirror. He reached out to it, but instead of hitting glass, his
hand slipped right through. Meanwhile, that hand reached out
towards him, superpositioning with itself going the opposite
direction. He stepped forwards, all the way through, and ended up back in
his office, his back now turned to the impossible mirror.
“Tripy, right?” the woman said. “You can thank my liver for that little
trick.”
“Who are you, and what do you want?”
“The chrysalis bioprinting room you have. I made that for you. I gave you
that tech. I knew you needed it.”
“I’ve been wondering who our mysterious benefactor was.”
“Now you know.”
“I don’t, actually.”
She stood up. “I don’t really use my name anymore. I try to interact with
others as little as possible. I used to go by Leona Delaney, but if you ever
meet someone who looks like me, it won’t be me, and she won’t remember
this.”
“You’re, like, a future version of her, or something? You’re a time
traveler? Time travel is real?”
She laughed. “Of course time travel is real. Teleportation is real, ain’t
it? That’s just a form of time travel.”
“And the second question?”
“You can’t daisy chain reframe engines,” she began. “It would be like
duct-taping four pairs of scissors together. You end up with no scissors.
This won’t work.”
“Trilby assures me that he’s synced them up properly.”
“Compared to the woman who invented them, Trilby is a drooling buffoon. I’m
telling you, don’t do this. The results are unpredictable. Whatever course
you laid in will become meaningless.”
He approached her menacingly, but he had no plans to harm her. “I don’t know
you. I don’t trust you. I trust my people.” He looked at his watch. “Last I
checked, we were on schedule, which means we’ll be leaving in less than
thirty minutes. I’ve already given the greenlight. You can kill me right
here, and they’ll still launch.”
“I’m not your boss,” Leona clarified. “I’m just warning you.”
“Either way, you should leave. These people are my responsibility, and
whatever comes to pass, I’ll get them through it.”
She shook her head in disapproval. “No one thinks they’re Dr. Smith.
Everyone thinks they’re Captain Janeway.”
“Thank you. You can go now.”
Leona literally disappeared. When he turned around, the magic mirror was
gone. A half hour later, they spooled up the antimatter engines of the
Teaguardians, now affixed to the Tangent where the fusion torches once were.
They activated the reframe engines, and flew away from Proxima Doma. The
traveler turned out to be right. They got lost immediately. But at least
they weren’t in prison.
