Page 121 of Veiled Vixen

“But where do you think they went?”

“Earth,” I say. It’s just a guess, but it’s a good one. “When we came here to ALCOR Station twenty-one years ago we were given this… code. From Corla. To give to ALCOR. And it turns out these codes were spin node coordinates. That’s how Tray and I went through and landed on Angel Station. That was his code. And I think they used Jimmy’s to get to Earth.”

What she doesn’t ask, what neither of us asks, is where would my code take us? Where would Luck’s code take him? And Serpint’s? And Draden’s, if he were still here.

But it doesn’t even matter. When time resumes I’d bet every credit Harem Station had in its accounts that the spin node will just vanish. And Delphi will be standing in the middle of a room full of nothing. And without Luck and Nyleena to spin it up again, we no longer have a spin node.

When we leave the museum on level one twenty-two there’s a general feeling of sadness in the station. Like all the despair inside all the people is starting to seep out and permeate the air.

There’s a huge battle in front of the museum entrance. Dozens of outlaw warriors duking it out with various weapons. People bleeding. Some of them, when they wake up, will only have a moment or two left in this life before they die of their wounds. And some of them are already dead.

We start with the dead ones first, enlisting the help of a few nearby bots to help get them down into the mortuary. We enlist more bots to start on the hundreds and hundreds of others on every level. And eventually we have to wake up even more bots to bag up the bodies and start shooting them out into space.

Then we deal with the wounded.

There are about eight hundred clinics on Harem Station. Each level has at least two medical centers. And by the time we get all the wounded onto lift bots and positioned near the closest clinic, we have run out of bots. So we wake up Veila’s borgs and conscript them into our little army. And one person at a time is taken care of.

Then we wake up Baby. He is disoriented. It takes several hours for him to cycle through a debug program and become himself again. But once that happens, and we explain the situation, he’s eager and willing to help.

His first report is that the Succubus is gone and so are Lady and Dicker.

There’s a lot to think about but not many answers forthcoming. So instead of thinking we go to each and every person on Harem Station. Find their name, their job, their home—or where they’re staying, if they were unlucky enough to be on vacation when this whole shit show started—and begin the process of removing them from the battle.

We consider taking away all their weapons. It would be the logical thing to do when you’re trying to end a war. But we aren’t really trying to end a war. We need all these people to fight—just not amongst themselves.

So Veila and I decide to disarm them in a more temporary way. We will remove their charge packs and ammunition and stow them somewhere on their person. So when the time comes back—online? Is that a thing?—they will still be able to fight, but it will take them a minute to realize they have no ammo and reload.

Hopefully, in the time between waking up and reloading, we will have their full attention and can push a reset button on this whole civil war thing.

Then we assign borgs and bots to move them to their place of employment, or their room, and leave them there.

That way, when the time comes back online—we’ve decided to go with that phrasing—they will not wake up in the midst of battle rage. They will come back confused, but in a familiar place among hopefully at least a few friends.

We also take all the freaking princesses down to the lock-up. Fuck those girls. They cannot be trusted.

But once that’s done, we realize that this might be the only time to fix the air and water systems, so we wake up even more bots and borgs and assign them to help with repairs.

Except no one can see properly because most of the freaking lights are off. And the trash compactors on seventeen levels are down. And there are twenty-seven non-functional airlocks, and three hundred and fifty-four broken autocooks throughout the station. Plus all the air-screens are down. We’re totally out of communication. On top of that, there are six open reports of missing children who need to be located and put somewhere safe, a rogue ship floating in the main docking bay on the lower level, and then—surprise, surprise—we learn something that no one else in the universe knows: dragonbee bots live outside of time. Because we find Flicka in a sexbot bar down on level fifteen, drunk and farting out poison, rambling on in her little dragonbee language about the Succubus leaving her behind.

Who knew?

It takes several lifetimes to get everything back in order.

But here’s the thing… it’s just time. And here, at least in this world, time has no meaning.

What we’re doing, how we’re restarting things right, how we’re remaking the war into something else… that’s the only thing that has meaning now.

It’s just like the virtual with Tray and Brigit. We have limitless time right now.

And we need to make the most of it. Because once time is back online and running forward again, we’re right back in the middle of the crisis.

This is our only chance.

There is no surrender. We can’t afford to surrender.

People are coming for us and when they do we need to be united again.

We need to be ALCOR’s army of outlaws.