Fic: Awake The Nation: Chapter VI (part a)

[speak_me_fair]

vi: {a poor man, without irony}

All of space stretched out beyond the view screens, dark and endless, but not nearly so empty as the poets wanted them to believe. Yes, if you went too far out of the normal shipping lanes or into the void between galaxies there wasn't much to see, but here, at the galactic core, every view was broken up by planets and stars and nebulae and people. Of course, it wasn't as if the people were just out space-walking, but their artifacts were everywhere- satellites, and laboratories, and stations- and running between them were ships, hundreds of millions of them, from each one of those hundreds of thousands of planets.

At the moment, however, there was only one ship that Dominic Cobb cared about, a little Mandell with an aged-up paint job and the name Firebrand emblazoned on her hull.

He had sent out a message on all of their usual coded frequencies and had received no message from the ship that he knew to be the one that Arthur and Eames had taken when they left Seisui, the one that he was currently following away from Station Nine. The one that was not, damn it all, answering his hail-calls.

Giving up was not something that ever occurred to Dom- at least not when it came to events or other people. On himself, yes, and far too often for anyone around him to feel secure in his judgment, he knew that- but never on what had to be done. Never on those he loved. He hadn't even been able to give up on Mal, not when he was physically confronted by what she had become, not when he had discovered the lengths that everyone had been prepared to go to just to save him from seeing what she had become- he could no more have given up on her than he could have commanded his own heart to stop beating, and the lords knew, there had been times when he had tried to do just that.

He knew that his single-mindedness was what most people called obsession. He didn't care. Those people didn't matter to him, because they didn't know him, and they didn't know what he was capable of, and they hadn't even got the faintest inkling of just how far he would happily go for the people who did matter to him, and did know him, and thought that what he was capable of was a gift, not a hindrance.

So he kept sending out his messages, and switched up frequencies, and changed codes, and kept following the Mandell's path, not so much hoping as fearing that he was right in judging that it was the ship that held the answers, and not the seven-times damned space-station.

And when the Mandell's path took him to the last place that either Arthur or Eames would want to be, he was even more certain that he was doing the right thing.

The Boneyard? Dom thought incredulously. If he hadn't thought something was wrong before, he would have known it for sure just by the destination. Fuck...

He picked a landing spot close enough to the Mandell that he could extend his ship's cloak to cover it if he wished, but far enough away that he would be able to exit his own ship without being seen.

And a quick exit was exactly what he had in mind. He had to know if Eames and Arthur were alright, why they were there, if they had found another Psion, and most importantly, what in the seven cold hells they thought was so important that they had even considered going back to AR-724.

He could still remember quite clearly what Yusuf had said. That asking Ariadne to go back to Station Nine was the equivalent of asking Arthur to go back to the Boneyard. That it was easier to learn to live with the dead than with failure.

Dom, who lived with both and accepted them as part of his moral and physiological composition daily, was not entirely convinced of that, even though he accepted Yusuf was- and there was the other part to that equation, the equation which was not as simple as death subtracted from failure, the quadratic spin that even genius, cynical Yusuf had forgotten to include.

It was not only Arthur who had failed, in not being at the destruction of the planetoid. Eames's failure was just as great, and just as important, because Arthur had only failed on a very general level- to be there to do what he had train for, and kill as many Psions as he could find.

Eames had failed to be there to be killed, and for all Yusuf's world-weariness, Dom thought that he was a very long way away from understanding just how that felt. Yusuf could guess at Arthur's feelings about the Boneyard, if nothing else then through Ariadne and her embattled generalship- but Dom knew that there was only one person who could ever have completely understood what it was like to fail through the act of having survived.

He had held her last words under his tongue, curled safe and hidden from the inferno that was her dying light, after all.

But, having done it once, Dom was more determined than ever not to allow a similar failure to ever affect himself or his 'family'. He opened a standard hail to the other ship.

"Firestorm, please respond. Firestorm, please issue a response per protocol B574."

The protocols were a farce, something that Ari had set up for all of them. They weren't actual protocols but jokes in numeric form, and Dom only understood about two in ten of them- although they had the distinct benefit of being completely unique, and at least if Arthur and Eames were on the ship they'd know it was him hailing and not someone pretending to be him.

Nothing. Not even the expected crackle and half-laughed curse that meant the Mandell's none-too-reliable comms were running off mods again and reacting badly to the equipment still left on the planetoid. Not even the auto-response of the AI. Nothing.

Dom tried very hard not to panic.

"Firestorm, please respond," he repeated, keeping his voice level, and then, cursing himself, for being such an idiot as to forget that there were other code-words, more basic and older and possibly all that would be understood, if the ship was no longer helmed by anyone who knew him, changed his phrasing. "Firestorm, acknowledge."

His interface shifted. Only slightly, but it was there, and it was definite, and it was proof that someone had heard him. Someone who didn't intend him harm- or at least not yet- and was aiming for direct contact with him, and not his ship. Dom closed his eyes in relief and mouthed silent thanks to anything that was out there.

"Acknowledge," he repeated.

His interface stuttered, and Dom cursed. "Not now, not now, you fucking rotten-"

The stutter repeated, blinked, paused. Stuttered.

A pattern. A rhythm, and Dom knew this, he was sure he knew this, and he couldn't quite remember -

And then he did. The Gates-Planet. Arthur and Eames, showing each other the code differences in what they tapped out sometimes, when they didn't want to be noticed or overheard.

The Psion codes- and those of the City-Corps.

Arthur and Eames had worked out overlaps, little private codings that they only used for each other- and had also kept a lot of the more esoteric codes used by Psions and Corps separate, so that they had all been forced to learn the different signs. It was probably the first time that the two similar sign-code languages had ever been shared by the same group, but Dom, no historian or semiotics expert, had lost interest rapidly.

Dom hadn't kept up with his practice, but the little he had retained and memorized told him enough. He was talking to a Corps-soldier. And it wasn't Arthur.

Acknowledged, receiving, his interface blinked at him, sending the message directly to his mind's eye. Acknowledged, receiving. Respond in kind. Acknowledged, receiving. Respond in kind.

Irritated, relieved, and confused, Dom did just that. And hoped it wasn't a trick.

Reply received, code non-standard but acceptable. Please identify.

And there it was, his bet had been seen and raised. What now? Go for broke or bluff?

Maybe a bit of both?

Companion of owner- Firestorm, he tapped back. Please locate and put in contact.

Let whoever that was make the next move. Dom was fairly confident that he couldn't be tracked even at this proximity.

He didn't have too long to wait, although the reply wasn't completely a surprise. Owner- Firestorm- unavailable. Owner- Firestorm- on planet surface, exact location unknown.

Dom, about to demand why the fuck whoever this was couldn't have just said the last, managed to stop himself in time. This wasn't a bluff or a raise, it wasn't a repetition of a fact he could have worked out for himself- the owner's unavailable because he's on the planet surface- no, whoever was talking to him was someone who knew a damn sight more about the Mandell's set-up than that, and was relying on him to actually pay attention. It was a statement. Whoever was talking to him knew that the Mandell had arrived on Station Nine with two owners. And now- one owner was unavailable. One owner was on the planet surface.

Arthur and Eames had been separated.

The only link Dom had to whatever was actually going on was communicating directly with his interface in a code he'd barely mastered.

And the word 'unavailable' had never seemed so lights-damned terrifying.

Please approximate placement of owner on planet surface, he tried.

And got a string of numbers back.

"What the-" Dom growled to his empty ship. The numbers weren't co-ordinates. They weren't klicks. They weren't any fucking thing that made sense.

Repeat transmission, he sent.

This time there were even more numbers, and they managed to look irritated.

And Dom, with the stark cold of shock rippling through his arms and hands, knew what they were.

Times and dates.

Changing times and dates.

Which meant it was Eames who was on the surface, and he was time-jumping.

More numbers, the list growing each time.

But the co-ordinates hadn't changed.

Eames was time-jumping on the Boneyard, and Arthur was 'unavailable', and the Mandell was talking to him in a code that even the City Corps hadn't used in years, and Dom was starting to go past worried into outright terrified.

Think, Dom, think. He tried to decide what it could all mean, what he had to do next.

There was only one leap he could make, and it was one of faith. He had to hope that whoever was piloting the Mandell had come here to find Arthur or Eames for benevolent reasons and not because of some revenge/phobic/insane plan. He wanted to beat his head against the deck plates. There were several very good reasons that Dom seldom gambled, but the main one was that he was pathetic at calculating the odds.

Pilot- Firestorm- please identify and state purpose of journey.

The answer made absolutely no sense.

Fischer. R. Corps Leader. Purpose- unknown. Aim- retrieval.

"Fucking what?" Dom asked the silence.

He'd got his question wrong, somehow, because weren't purpose and aim the same, even in Corps-talk? And why would anyone put an extra letter into the fact they were a member of the former Fischer Corps? Why would anyone even lay claim to even knowing the Fischer Corps, let alone having belonged to it, now that it was entirely destroyed? The soldiers who had worked at the top level of that particular group hadn't even called themselves the Fischer Corps, they had called themselves the Gate-Corps -

And Dom smacked himself in the face with his free hand.

Not Fischer-no-apparent-reason-random-letter-Corps, leader.

Fischer, R. - Corps Leader.

"Seven hells," Dom whispered in a mixture of incredulous mirth and very real surprise.

Robert Fischer, a man everyone had thought killed during Cobol and Mal's takeover of the Gates-Planet, had survived. Survived, and somehow got to Station Nine- and now he had managed to commandeer the Mandell.

Purpose- unknown.

"Yeah, no shit," Dom muttered.

Aim- retrieval.

Dom started to smile.

Pilot- Firestorm- identity and aim acknowledged, he sent back. Purpose... He paused, and then grinned, unable to resist, because he was going to offer the one thing they had all held out hope for, when they first stole the Mandell from the Gates-Planet, and begun along the course which had led to Seisui, and Saito, and a world they had none of them dared even to imagine.

Purpose- redemption, he finished up.

And waited for the reply.

Purpose confirmed. Ally?

Well, he could certainly use one or two, or a regiment, because whatever was going on with Eames, whether he was jumping willingly or unwillingly, Dom had a feeling that more was definitely better.

Suggestion confirmed. Rendezvous, Firestorm hatch.

"All the lords and stars, I must really be insane," Dom thought as the pilot of the Mandell signaled back, Confirmed rendezvous.

Dom stepped up and started the cycling of the hatch, thinking that at least Fischer, R. (and wasn't that a mind-fuck all by itself?) wouldn't be able to find his ship, if his aim was actually to set up with a fleet of stolen spacecraft.

After all, he reasoned, Saito had been incredibly generous to him, and he'd hate to pay him back by letting his beautiful new ship get stolen.

Even if it was by a Fischer-born pirate who, even if only by virtue of necessity, almost certainly was the real thing, and decidedly not a member of the Pirates-Who-Aren't.

Dom snorted at that last thought. Assuming all went well, and he got back to Seisui with his intended cargo, he couldn't wait to tell Ariadne that he'd finally met an actual pirate.

Or maybe, he thought with cautious hope, I can bring him back to Seisui as well. And just introduce them.

It was an idea that kept his steps light as he cloaked his ship, and stepped out onto the dead ground of the Boneyard.

~*~

Breakfast was a meal that Saito often took in solitude. It helped him relax and calm his mind for the rigors of the day to come. Although he did, often, join the children for their morning meal, that was usually after his own solitary one. After the peacefulness he was much better able to deal with James's latest mad scheme, his own daughter's giggles, and Philippa's ever-changing personality, as she shifted dizzyingly between acting the child she actually was in one moment and asking questions that were far too old for her years in the next. The time of semi-contemplation, of peace and quiet that he had to himself before all that began, allowed him to enjoy, rather than resent, the chaos that they brought into his life; to perceive the happiness and the humor, rather than find the noise and emotion and movement of it all abrasive.

His solitary breakfasting habits were, therefore, inviolate and well known among his staff and his household and no one would think to interrupt him uninvited. Everyone, that was, except for Yusuf.

Saito supposed it shouldn't surprise him that Yusuf never waited for or even thought he needed an invitation, since the man didn't seem to operate on any sort of regular schedule at all- at least not one that wasn't comprised of 'on or off planet; working on new commission or resting'. Everything, as far as Yusuf and his internal clock were concerned, was a decidedly movable feast, and Saito was not the only one who had suffered from his erratic ideas of timekeeping.

On the other hand, Saito had not ever found the interruptions Yusuf inflicted on people anything to concern himself with, as they were more usually based on grabbing whoever was nearest to 'come and look at' something, or simply that whoever was being interrupted had the misfortune to be in the same room at the same time as Yusuf's continual monologue, and feel they should listen- something which was rarely profitable, usually frustrating, and often ended in threats of violence that were duly ignored.

Since he was unburdened with that sense of polite behavior, he was more likely to simply throw Yusuf out than try to follow whatever he was talking about- or redirect him to someone who at least had a vague working knowledge of what was so important this time. And since it never really seemed to matter who Yusuf talked to, or rather at, this had never posed much of a problem to date.

This time, however, not only were the usual victims mostly absent, but Yusuf seemed to have actually intended to seek him out. Which was disconcerting and annoying in equal measure.

"This is bad, Saito. At least I think it is. Surely he isn't doing this on purpose. Maybe it's a malfunction or, you know, one of those anomaly thingies..." Yusuf shook his wrist and frowned.

Saito paused, his tea cup raised half-way to his lips, "Perhaps, if you explained what you are concerned about, I might be able to offer a suggestion?"

Or possibly not, Saito thought. Of all the things he knew about and understood in the vastness of the universes, mod technology was not something he was well versed in. Fortunately, he now had Dom and not so fortunately, Yusuf.

And at the moment, he only had the less preferable option.

"This," Yusuf said, shaking his wrist at Saito this time, instead of thin air, which while being a little more specific in direction, helped him understand precisely nothing at all, "this is either malfunctioning, in which case every single mod I have created can no longer be traced accurately, or the mod I created for Arthur has broken down and fused the entire system, which should not be possible but I might accept as a hypothesis, or the laws of time and space are being broken again, and have I mentioned how annoying I find it when that happens?"

Saito sighed, and put down his cup. "Again, please, and apply logic. Also, for the sake of my understanding, a little structural argument. Possibly, if you can bring yourself to an approximation of lateral thought, a description as to what exactly you are referring to, although I recognize that may be asking too much."

Yusuf waved his wrist in front of Saito's eyes this time, in what was almost certainly not a new and annoying method of greeting him. "This," he repeated, in the tones of someone talking to an idiot, "is my mod tracker."

"I see," said Saito, who didn't. "Which means?"

"Every temp-mod I create and which is in operation should, and I repeat should, show up on the inset-lights."

Saito looked again. "Which lights?" he asked warily.

"Exactly!" Yusuf yelled. "Exactly, there are no lights, it is as though I have never created a single temp-mod in all my time here- and that is impossible!"

"Perhaps your power source is faulty?"

Yusuf rolled his eyes, "Are you asking me if my batteries have gone dead?"

Saito just smiled and took another sip of his tea. That had, basically, been what he was asking but he wasn't going to show the extent of his ignorance by confirming it.

"This isn't a torch, Saito. It runs off of the natural electrical impulses sent from my brain. As long as I'm alive, it has power. "

"But it's still not working?"

"That's what I said." Yusuf threw his hands up. "Not working. Which is impossible."

"And yet," Saito said, looking at Yusuf's decidedly unilluminated wrist, "that appears to be the case."

"Yes," Yusuf growled, "I know."

A feeling of miserable premonition overcame Saito, and he resisted the urge to put his head in his hands and groan. "How many temp-mods are the off-planet members of your team currently wearing?"

Yusuf looked at him flatly. "Enough," he said. "And even if they'd chosen to power them off, they'd still show as being technically operational."

"Ah. And- forgive me- I take it you do not actually believe that whatever it is you made for Arthur is powerful enough to have caused your entire system to malfunction, do you?"

"No," Yusuf bit out.

"Which leaves the alteration of the laws of time and space as your remaining working theory. Correct?"

Yusuf didn't even bother answering him this time. He just kept looking at Saito.

Who wished he had never got up at all that morning.

"Tell me, Yusuf, would the employment of a certain time-jack cause this... ah... anomaly?"

"Yes," Yusuf said, "and then again, no, no it wouldn't. It couldn't. Unless."

Saito waited, but Yusuf, unusually for him, seemed to have come to a complete stop, midway through a thought-process.

"Unless what, Yusuf? My mod only allows me to enter computer systems, it does not enable me to read minds."

"Unless," Yusuf said dismally, "someone has over-ridden the time-jack itself, and is forcing the jumps."

Saito stared at him. "And that isn't good? I assume that this would be necessary, should Eames have needed to-"

"Yeah, no," Yusuf cut him off. "That? That would be fine, I could trace that, because it would still be linked to any work I've done. This would have to be done by someone else. Someone who has found a means of control."

"Rendering its use involuntary," Saito said evenly. "Yes. I see."

And unfortunately, this time he did see.

He was beginning to get mildly alarmed by his vision.

"We have to find Eames. Now. Where's Dom?"

Saito blinked at Yusuf's sudden topic change. "Dominic is in a much better situation to assist you. He has been tracking both Eames and Arthur as well as he can from space. I thought he told you he was leaving?"

Yusuf shook his head, and then nodded. "Yes. Well, no, he was going to get them, I thought, meet up with them somewhere, damn it, I should have had the sense to ask, but now you say he's actually gone to Station Nine?"

Saito scowled, "Is that where they have gone? That was most unwise. And Dominic has not checked in with me this morning, as of yet."

"You know that this could mean that his cloaking extension is no longer working either?" Yusuf waved his wrist around again. Saito took a moment to wish he would stop. It was beginning to make him dizzy and annoyed. "And if he's still near the Station that would be a bad thing."

"And your talent for understatement is improving every day."

Saito frowned to himself and began planning. Yusuf might not be able to track Dom by his mod enhancer, but Saito could most certainly track his ship.

"Saito," Yusuf said, and grabbed him by his wrists, which was definitely not something Saito felt he had in any way encouraged. "Saito, listen. I think I have something."

"I begin to see why Arthur always claims it is syphilis," Saito said irritably, pulling himself free. "And that you earned it."

"No, this- your mod. The mod Dom made for you."

"Yes, I am aware, I was thinking of-"

"Yeah, yeah, tracking Dom, of course, obviously, but I don't think you have to."

"Excuse me?" Saito fought and conquered the urge to start shouting. He was almost impressed with his own control.

Yusuf grinned at him, though, slightly manic and very very pleased with himself.

"Ari gave them the Mandell," he said then. "And you're still linked in."

"Very good, Yusuf, yes. I am. Or could be, if I chose. But if they are no longer on the Mandell, I fail to see how that will-"

"They don't have to be," Yusuf said. "That's the best bit."

"They don't," Saito said flatly. He refused to admit how confused he was.

Yusuf grabbed him by the wrist again, and pulled him to his feet, towing him out of the room at a speed which Saito found more than a little undignified.

"Do you mind not-"

"This," Yusuf said, moving even faster, "is something you are going to enjoy."

"I doubt it."

"Oh, you will." Yusuf was still beaming. "You loved being an AI before, didn't you? And I bet you missed it, even if you never said. Well, I'm going to make you very very happy, Saito."

"Oh no," Saito protested involuntarily. "Oh no, you cannot be thinking of-"

"Yeah," Yusuf said, and he didn't sound manic or pleased with himself at all any more. He sounded serious and determined and far more worrying than when he was at the point of once more extolling his genius. "I am, I can, and you will."

~*~

chapter vi(b)