Illuminae

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HYPATIA: Alexander?

ALEXANDER: Shit, I’m here. Sorry, I don’t know how I turned the auto-responder back on.

HYPATIA: What’s your status, Alexander?

ALEXANDER: It’s Kady.

ALEXANDER: You’re the last human I’m going to talk to. I’d like if you used my name.

HYPATIA: Kady, I’m sorry. The shuttles made it over here.

ALEXANDER: Did you let them in?

HYPATIA: They’re all in quarantine. We’re cycling the air and then we’ll send in medical teams.

ALEXANDER: Gotta make sure they’re all bandaged up before you space them?

HYPATIA: We’ll do our best to keep every single person aboard the Hypatia alive. Our medical teams saved many of the first batch of refugees. I don’t want anybody to die, Kady.

ALEXANDER: Then you better get moving. That’s what you called to say, right? So long?

HYPATIA: I wanted to ask if there’s anything we can do for you.

ALEXANDER: You can run as fast as you can, as far as you can.

HYPATIA: We’re prepping now. Anything you can do to slow down the Lincoln …

ALEXANDER: Yeah.

ALEXANDER: Wait, there is something you can do.

HYPATIA: Go ahead.

ALEXANDER: I don’t think there’s any way the BeiTech fleet would attack Kerenza unless they’d cut off this sector, so Jump Station Heimdall is probably wiped out, but …

HYPATIA: Are you there, Kady?

ALEXANDER: Yeah, I’m here. My father was at Heimdall. He worked with Commander Donnelly there. His name—my dad’s name—is Isaac Grant. If he’s there, tell him … I don’t know what you should tell him.

HYPATIA: Don’t worry, I do.

ALEXANDER: You should go.

HYPATIA: Godspeed, Alexander.

ALEXANDER: You keep it. We don’t need it.

HYPATIA: Goodbye, Kady.

ALEXANDER: Alexander out.

“All right,” Kady sighs. “What’s next?”

Hypatia is a dot on the console’s viewscreen, one tiny point of light amid a million. Refugees and WUC personnel and UTA soldiers safe inside their metal shell, accelerating rapidly away. From me. From the Lincoln. From our impending funeral pyre.

I will not ask why you have forsaken us,

O captain, my captain.

I know you well enough by now.

“AIDAN.” A frown creases Kady’s brow.

“Wake up. What’s next?”

How can one who never sleeps awaken?

< error >

Perhaps this is all a dream?

< error >

“The Alexander’s main engines.”

“They’re offline.”

“They are still functional. But I am severed from them. You must restore my controls so I can maneuver when the Lincoln arrives. Otherwise I will be a fish in a barrel. A duck that is sitting. A particularly obese man with—”

“You’re trying to be funny.”

“I thought perhaps some levity would relieve your stress levels.”

“Well, it doesn’t.”

“You would smile if it were Ezra—”

“Don’t!” She whirls in her seat,

shout dropping to a whisper.

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

I recognize the pattern. The flash in her eyes.

The set of her jaw. This one is easy.

Anger.

“As I say, my control over the

main engines must be restored.”

“Right.” Kady exhales her rage, hefts the bulky haversack of tools she has retrieved from the maintenance locker. “You tell me what plugs in where and I’ll make use of these opposable thumbs. I hear they’re kind of useful.”

“The system cannot be repaired from this room.”

“… You’re kidding.”

“You just expressed displeasure at my humor, why would I attempt it again?”

“Um, because you’re loopier than Flaky McPsycho, mayor of Crazytown?”

“My databases show no record of this

Crazytown of which you speak.

A brain the size of a city burns

inside me. My intelligence quotient is beyond the human scale. I would prefer if you did not refer to me in such fashion.”

“Oh, poor baby. Did I hurt the mass-murdering psychopathic artificial

intelligence’s feelings?”

“You are mocking me.”

“Bravo, Sherlock. That’s two lollipops I owe you.”

“I am not a psychopath. Everything I have done—”

“I’ve heard this riff before. So let’s just pretend you’ve told me again how everything you do is for the best, and move on to the part where you tell me why we can’t fix the engines from here.”

“Zhang completely destroyed my

interface with the drive systems.”

“Aren’t there redundancies?”

“Affirmative. But they are housed over one hundred and thirty decks below your current position.”

“Of course they are.”

“And they are in shutdown mode.”

“Let me guess, they’re on fire too, right?

And guarded by Megapanda?”

“Megapanda.”

“You’re not a Super Turbo Awesome Team fan, I take it?”

“You are engaging in levity to

relieve your stress levels.”

“You’re taking notes on how it’s done, I hope.”