Thresholder

Before they could go, Brigitta had to spend fifteen minutes marveling at Perry’s earpiece.

“How is it so small?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s pretty tiny,” said Perry.

“How many circuits are in it?” asked Brigitta. “There has to be at least one.”

“Sorry, I don’t know,” said Perry. “If you hand that here, I can check though.”

Brigitta handed the earbud over with great reverence and watched as Perry fit it into his ear.

Perry cleared his throat. “Computer, search design specifications, earbud, component lookup, circuits.”

“Simply dreadful, sir,” replied Marchand. “The earbud has a microcontroller, a digital signal processor, an audio codec microchip, a power management microchip, two microelectrical circuits to serve as microphones with bone conductivity, an amplifier microchip, a microchip for capacitive touch sensing, and accelerometer circuit. There is also some redundancy, but if you’re looking for a total count, I believe I would say eleven.”

Perry dutifully reported this, and Brigitta simply stared at him.

“Most of the size is battery though,” said Perry.

“That string of voice commands, that was able to accurately relay information back to you?” she asked. “How does that work?”

“Voice produces a waveform, that gets decoded into text, that drives a program,” said Perry. He was halfway guessing, and hoping that she wouldn’t want a more technical answer.

“There’s a specific command, written into the system, that returns complex information?” asked Brigitta.

“You have computers, right?” asked Perry.

“Yes,” said Brigitta. “And it’s because we have computers, computers which I program that I know how difficult it would be to implement something like that. The voice detection alone would take an enormous amount of work.”

“Sure,” said Perry. “But you train it, right?”

“Train it?” asked Brigitta. She cocked her head to the side.

“Uh,” said Perry. “You know,” he said.

“I don’t think she does know sir,” said Marchand.

“I’m out of my depth,” said Perry. “Sorry.”

“Mmm,” said Brigitta. “But once we make a bridge between systems, there are text files on your micromech?”

“Yes,” said Perry. “I’m willing to help, to hand over what I know.”

“Soon,” said Brigitta. She looked over at the armor like it was a holy relic. “It’s like technology from the distant past, what the elder mechs possessed.”

“Hardly,” scoffed Marchand as they moved out of the penthouse. “Sir, I don’t wish to gain a reputation as a braggart, but I could easily run laps around the so-called elder mechs. The level of scientific understanding possessed by these people is shockingly low, and I fully believe that extends to their forebears. You would do well to keep that in mind, if you wish to maintain the advantage.”

Perry wasn’t sure that he did. He had the academic tether to think about, and if he could give away technologies that would earn him some goodwill and upgrade their level of living once he was gone, that was a win-win as far as he was concerned.

Brigitta hadn’t mentioned nuclear weapons. Perry hoped to keep those a secret if they hadn’t already been invented. Though they did apparently have nuclear walking mechs, and fusion reactors too. Perry wasn’t sure how easy it was to go from power generation to earth-shattering bombs, and made a mental note to ask Marchand about it later.

They took the elevator down, though not to the level of the mech bay at the tail. Instead, it felt like it must be in the middle of the ship. Perry was desperately hoping that he wouldn’t have to finally learn nautical terms. When they came out, they were in a fairly empty hallway. It was gray, but less utilitarian than he had expected to see, with etching and painting on the wall to give it a bit of style and color. The lights overhead were soft, and reminded Perry of the indirect lighting he most closely associated with the hallway of a modern hotel. That certainly fit with the numbered doors. There was some plush carpeting, though it was threadbare down the center, in need of replacement.

“I thought there would be more people,” said Perry.

“This is a residential area,” said Brigitta. She kept her voice low. “People aren’t supposed to be in the halls unless they’re going to or from, it’s not a place to be social. We’re just passing through, it’s a bit faster.”

Perry followed behind her, and they turned twice, right and then left, to continue down another hallway. It felt like a long way to walk, especially with the knowledge that these were all places where people lived. They saw another person only once, an older man who saw Brigitta and looked like he wanted to find somewhere to hide.

“Where are we going?” asked Perry.

“The atrium,” said Brigitta.

They were still walking when the Natrix came to a stop. Perry kept walking without missing a step, but Brigitta needed to brace herself. He looked at her, but she continued on, seeming unconcerned.

“We’re close to the cold front,” said Brigitta. “You’ll get to see us settle in. We’re almost there.”

“Testing range,” said Perry, sotto voce.

“I hear you, sir,” said Marchand. “However, if you’re able to release some of the nanites near a terminal, I might be able to begin establishing better long-distance communication across the Natrix.”

Perry had taken half the nanite ‘tooth’ with him and left the other half with March, mostly so that he could spend some of his power on multiplying them. He wasn’t doing that now though: this was as far as he’d been away from March since the problems with the Wolf Vessel in the midst of the big fight. Most of his extra attention was focused on the meridians, which were now stretched very far with no obvious tension in them, seeming uncomplicated by the fact that they were moving through a great many metal and plastic walls. It was, if anything, all upside: he would never have to wonder where the suit was again. He wasn’t sure what he’d have done if he proved unable to go more than a few meters away from the armor.

The hallway widened and led to a set of double doors, which Brigitta went through with the swiftness of someone who had somewhere to be.

They came out on the upper level of a jungle. The sight was unexpected, and Perry came up short, taking a moment to take in the sight of it, along with the throngs of people below them. The balcony was one of several which overlooked the greenery, and gently spiraling staircases threaded through the balconies, down to the ground level. Brigitta took a step toward the staircase, then looked back at Perry.

“You can see, if you’d like,” she said.

Perry took a moment to look out at it all.

The plants were similar to those on the surface, or perhaps exactly those on the surface, though they were bent toward internal lights rather than toward the sun. They grew taller than the plants that Perry had seen, with the hollow reed-like ones having formed into proper trees with thick trunks. There were tall grasses, tall enough that he could have hid in them, green and swaying, and vines that had climbed up the side of the walls.

The engineering was artful in a way that Perry hadn’t seen on the ship before, with sightlines designed to give an illusion that it was a larger space, and structural steel or along the outside to hold everything together. The plants were penned in by metal and glass, but the metal skeleton was largely hidden by leafy trees.

As Perry watched, the walls opened up. He was confused about what he was seeing, then realized that metal shutters were being pulled back to reveal clear plastic. It was scratched and had seen better days, but it let the light in, and Perry could see the same land he’d seen from the penthouse apartment, a relatively flat area with springy moss and shallow bogs, the remains of dead trees — or huge reeds — sticking up in various places. It was a quiet and unassuming place, framed by mountains in the distance.

“This is the place you’ll be calling home?” asked Perry.

“For a time,” said Brigitta. Her eyes were scanning the horizon. “We scouted it. There will be room for our farms, water to replenish the tanks, and a source of iron is nearby. The water is shallow, and there’s bedrock below.” Her eyes weren’t on the land though. Instead, they were on the people down below. They were hard to make out with all of the plants spreading their leaves, but it felt like a sizeable fraction of the whole ship’s population.

“Why are they here?” asked Perry.

“Tradition,” said Brigitta. She didn’t seem to like the word. “The atrium opens at the sides, and the children run out to greet the new land. We’ll expand soon, but now is the time to explore a new place, to stretch our legs after a long trip.” She let out a sigh. “And it’s cold.”

“This is as far west as you go?” asked Perry.

“We’ve gone further,” said Brigitta. “We’ve driven the Natrix into snow more than once. But in normal circumstances, yes, we go far enough that the reeds aren’t pushing up from the ground yet.”

They stood there for a while, and eventually, the Natrix settled in and extended long staircases to the ground. Brigitta explained certain details of the engineering, which was what seemed to interest her most, and told Perry that the ship would take some time to lower itself so that people could exit and enter the Natrix at will.

People flooded out to greet their new home. They would be here for a few months or something like that, maybe less depending on the circumstances. Perry had always thought there was something romantic about the idea of van life that the experience couldn’t possibly live up to, but the ability to have new stomping grounds was part of that romance. Most likely living in a van would involve a lot of Walmart parking lots and shitty wifi, but every now and then you’d get a sunrise with a bowl of muesli in a nice park. This was, maybe, that kind of thing for these people, who lived on the moving mech.

The children were enjoying the new place though. The bog wasn’t a proper bog, with little in the way of thick, sticking mud. Instead, it was solid, bedrock beneath a half foot of water, with the clusters of mosses acted like stepping stones for those who didn’t want to get wet. There was no fear among the hundreds who were venturing out, which Perry thought odd until he remembered that this site was specifically chosen for them, and that there were dozens of high-powered guns and precision laser defenses aiming quite a ways into the distance. They wouldn’t have come out if they hadn’t been cleared. Two large mechs stood at either side of the walkways, which seemed more for show than anything else.

“Can we go down?” asked Perry.

“Of course,” nodded Brigitta.

They took the spiral stairs two at a time, since they were shallow.

“I know what you’re thinking. It’s very wasteful,” said Brigitta.

“What is?” asked Perry.

“The atrium,” said Brigitta. “It’s mostly hollow space, unused.”

“It’s part of the commons,” said Perry. “People like moving around in the plants, right? Green space, a garden?”

“They can have green space while we’re at rest,” said Brigitta. “There’s nothing but green space for miles around us, no matter where we go.”

“You’re against having a garden for pure aesthetic pleasure?” asked Perry.

“It’s popular,” said Brigitta with a little shrug. “That’s the only reason we kept it when we took over.”

Perry kept his thoughts to himself. Maybe it was the product of a liberal arts education, but he’d always found some value in things that were beautiful for their own sake. When he went on a trip to a new city, he would try to find some time to go to the local museums and art galleries. He didn’t always get all that much from them, but there was always a thing or two he could stand in front of and say, ‘Hey, that’s neat’. He couldn’t imagine Brigitta doing the same, but she was on a war footing, one it seemed that not everyone aboard the Natrix shared, not if the frolicking children in the pseudo-bog were anything to go by.

Up close, the jungle of the atrium was a bit more ordered, with paths through the plants and benches here and there for people to rest. There were children still inside the atrium, and more than a few adults, but almost everyone had moved outside at the first opportunity.

It was shocking how many children there were, really. Marchand had said that the average age was sixteen, and that seemed about right to Perry, or perhaps even high — though the children were out in the bog, and it seemed likely that there were lots of people who were at their jobs, especially with the Natrix setting up shop in a new location. It was also shocking how similar everyone looked, but they were descended from an initial group of ninety, and even before that, from what Brigitta had said, they had a single island to start from, not a whole world with a long history of drifting genetics and specialization for different climates and cultures. Almost everyone had the same blonde hair, some with just a shade darker than pure blonde. They were tall, on average, and with similar lanky builds. The only place he didn’t see blonde was with those who had dyed their hair, almost always darker, unnatural colors.

Perry was an anomaly among them.

They went along the path together, with Perry following behind Brigitta. Eventually, they came to the long walkway that had been put down to allow access to the ground. Perry paid special attention to the way that people reacted to Brigitta: it was with happiness, joy even, and often a sort of reverence. The children kept their distance from her, but they did stop and stare, both at her, and at him.

The clothes were all simple, with the outfits very similar to each other. The dyes were less rich than Perry had seen across the Great Arc, even if he didn’t include the second sphere. Aside from the fabrics that had been bleached white, there were maroons and vermillions, ochres and forest greens. It was missing vibrancy, and when he looked closely, there were a lot of hand-me-downs, clothes that had been patched and mended. Aside from that, there were plenty of boots, made of some kind of rubber, though many of the younger children were going barefoot, as was Perry.

Brigitta had told him, but Perry was still mildly surprised to find that he was standing in half a foot of clear, cold water rather than mud. His bare feet were touching bedrock, which wasn’t perfectly flat, but had gentle slopes and folds that he had to look carefully at. It was shockingly cold, actually, given how the children were out playing and splashing around.

Among all the people out enjoying the new land, there was one who stood out among them, a woman wearing a dress that was entirely white, its hem wet from the water. She had a crown of flowers, which must have been woven within the last few minutes, and a beatific smile on her face. A throng of children sat in front of her, listening to a story, with one of them perched upon her knee. She could have been Brigitta’s sister, but Perry wasn’t very good at telling these people apart, not yet. The dress had a plunging neckline, which piqued his interest.

“They spread out from the island, and found that there were lands beyond,” she said with a smile. Her teeth were very white. “They found all kinds of animals, those with long necks and sharp claws, but they had lived hard lives on their little rock, and they were wily creatures, thinking creatures. There was no claw that could harm them, not with their armor. And there were plants in those new lands, yummy things to eat they’d never had before, plants like these,” she pushed her fingers down into the soft matted plants that she was sitting on, “that could be woven into fibers and burned for fuel. They grew into a great society, one with a dozen cities, each with a million people, and they sent ships straight up into the skies, to the stars. Those are our ancestors. And when we come to a new place, we should think of them and everything that they found. Maybe, if we work hard, we can find things too.”

The children clapped, and the woman set the girl on her lap to the side, in the matted plants. She made her way over, past grabbing hands, to Perry.

“You’re Brigitta’s new arrival,” she said. “I’m Leticia.”

“Head of Farming,” Marchand added in Perry’s ear.

“Head of Farming,” said Perry.

“That I am,” she nodded. “And mining, and other things. I’ve been trying to change the department name to Procurement, but there are some battles that aren’t worth fighting. And you’re … Perry?”

Perry nodded. She was one of the three who ran things on the Natrix, and from what he’d seen, Brigitta wasn’t the one who had done the glad-handing necessary to get a coup going. If Leticia was a storyteller to children, then there was a good chance that she was also a storyteller to adults, or as many adults as they had on the ship. “Thank you for the hospitality.”

“You’re an aberration,” said Leticia. “You and I will have to have a sit down at some point to get to the bottom of some of your … claims. The micromech isn’t with you?”

“I didn’t want to scare anyone,” said Perry.

“It’s bold technology, according to Brigitta,” said Leticia. “And from what she’s said, it might serve as a symbol of might and power. A noble protector, rather than an alien, to a child’s eyes?”

“Possibly,” said Perry. “I don’t know your people well enough to say. Brigitta is the only one that I’ve talked with for long enough to form an opinion of.”

“And what is that?” asked Brigitta, who had come up from behind him. She’d spent her time at the walkway, removing her boots and socks. They were now part of a large, disordered pile there.

“You’re competent, curious, serious, energetic,” said Perry. “You’d put the fate of the Natrix on your shoulders if you could and probably don’t delegate enough to your subordinates.”

Leticia laughed. “He has you pegged.”

“He’s been reading through the forums,” said Brigitta.

“Is there a time we could meet?” asked Leticia. She cocked her head to the side in the exact same way that Perry had seen Brigitta do. “Soon?”

“Now is fine,” said Perry. “I don’t have a schedule.”

“I, unfortunately, do,” said Leticia. “I’ll have Ops clear as much as possible, and at the start of next cycle we’ll have a private breakfast — you, me, and Brigitta, with Mette if she’s available.”

“And the agenda will be?” asked Perry.

“The truth of the claims, as much as you can find, a discussion of your goals, and the requirements of your swift transfer of whatever technological information you have,” said Leticia. “I expect that most of it won’t be helpful to us in the near future, given the long lead times involved, but I might be wrong.”

“He’s also a warrior,” said Brigitta.

“A warrior for a world that’s not like this one, right?” asked Leticia.

“I’ve fought in a war, which is possibly more than anyone on this planet can say,” said Perry. It didn’t seem like she liked him, which was a shame. “The world I come from fought a great many wars, and I’ve read about them extensively.” This was only a little bit of a stretch. He had read a lot, but he had no proper training or education in military matters. It was, at best, a geographer’s hobbyist view on warfare. He thought that still beat out the theorycrafting they were currently doing, though it was hard to say.

Leticia turned to Brigitta. “Have you seen him fight?”

“No,” said Brigitta. “I saw him dodge gunfire, quite quickly, though I think if the guns had been properly calibrated for tracking a smaller, faster target he would have died. And he wasn’t trying to attack me.”

“Hmm,” said Leticia. She looked Perry up and down. “You can fight without the micromech?”

“Yes,” said Perry.

“And could I watch you spar?” asked Leticia.

“For what purpose?” asked Brigitta.

“I want to see,” said Leticia with a shrug. “A demonstration on one of the most important cycles of the season, something to show off his prowess. If he’s as good as he claims, he’ll have no problem, and everyone will walk away with the understanding that this is a man who offers the solution to our problems.”

“They’re different skills,” said Perry. “But I would happily fight anyone you have. Multiple men, even.”

“How many at once?” asked Leticia with a grin.

“Ten,” said Perry.

“Be realistic,” said Brigitta. He glanced at her just in time to see her roll her eyes. “Even if you’re skilled, there are limits to the human body.”

“With the armor, it would be even higher,” said Perry with a shrug. He turned to Leticia. “But like you said, it’s not as though a war between people would be fought with fists. It’ll be mechs and bombs, missiles and lasers.”

Leticia was watching Perry closely. “Ruben!” she called, raising a hand without changing where she was looking.

“Yes?” asked a man who jogged over through the water. He was taller than Perry, his shirt unbuttoned, showing off a hairless chest with sculpted muscles. Apparently the Natrix had a gym, and he spent a lot of time with it, or he was just a man who used brute strength on a daily basis.

“Are you up for sparring with the handsome stranger?” asked Leticia.

“Is he?” asked Ruben, raising an eyebrow toward Perry.

“Sure,” said Perry. “We go until someone yields, no attempt at injuries? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Cocksure,” said Ruben. He looked at Leticia. “You want me to show him that I’m no slouch?”

“That’s we’re no slouches,” said Leticia. “He seems to have some ideas about our understanding of martial matters.”

“Oh?” asked Ruben.

“He also claims to have come from another world, having traveled through many of them, fighting as a soldier,” said Leticia. “He must be capable beyond compare, if he’s offered to fight ten men at once.”

Perry stayed silent. He would try to let his actions speak for him.

“Here?” asked Ruben, who had already sized Perry up.

“Sure,” said Perry.

“I was asking her,” said Ruben, nodding in Leticia’s direction.

“Here is fine, so long as you don’t get too bloody for the children,” she said. “It does seem like a demonstration the boys will love.”

Ruben nodded. “Clear a ring!” he shouted.

The children moved away like a flock of birds, and one of the mats of plants were moved away by a group of boys who had been listening in and did seem quite eager to see a fight. Perry found himself standing beside Ruben, both of them in a foot of clear, cold water.

Ruben squared up and raised his fists, a pugilist’s stance. Perry watched for a moment, trying to decide how to play this one.

He slipped into the Moon Stance and drew on the power of the cold water. As soon as he did, he was shocked by just how much power there was in the shallow water and the bedrock below it, easily twice what he’d been able to get from even a carefully selected location on the Great Arc that was away from other people trying to draw the same power. It made sense though, if he was the only person on the entire planet who could tap into something like that. The grandmaster’s phrase ‘virgin land’ popped into Perry’s mind, somewhat unwelcome.

Ruben struck out first, and it was like he was moving in slow motion.

Perry had fought against a few first spheres since becoming second sphere, but it wasn’t something that the sects encouraged except for the purposes of teaching the first spheres a bit. Any sparring match would be entirely one-sided if the second sphere was putting any effort into winning.

Even aside from that, Ruben was a terrible fighter. He was strong, but he obviously had only minimal training at hand-to-hand fighting, maybe just a few sparring matches like this with other men who likewise had minimal training. They were making it up as they went along, with no dedicated fighting manuals to read from or senseis or coaches to learn from. There was probably a gym somewhere on the Natrix, but it wasn’t dedicated to fighting. There weren’t amateurs, let alone professionals.

Ruben was, basically, just some guy. He was fit, but he wasn’t a fighter.

Perry slapped the fist to the side and slipped around Ruben. Perry’s movements through the water were as clean and gentle as a fish’s would be. When he was behind the larger man, he drove his hand forward, fingertips in front of him, and delivered a perfect splashing strike with all the power of the clear water.

Ruben yelped and seized up, back arching in pain, and he was quick to turn around, though not so quick that Perry couldn’t have landed three or four killing blows.

“How did you do that?” asked Ruben. He had his fists up, but he was moving around, wiggling his back like he thought he’d be able to dislodge the pain somehow.

“Training and practice,” said Perry. “You can yield now, if you’d like.”

Ruben shook his head.

“Alright,” said Perry. He slowly slipped his left hand behind his back, until it was resting there, depriving him of its use. The crowd around them, mostly small boys, whooped and hollered when they realized what he was doing. He was happy about that, since it meant that they were on his side. The last thing he needed was to deliver a beatdown that would make people scorn him, as had happened at the temple.

“Cheeky,” said Ruben with a wide smile, one given through the pain. “But I’ve got to make a good show of it, don’t I?”

“I don’t know how you think that’s going to happen,” said Perry.

Ruben dashed forward, as much as the water allowed him to, and did a classic jab jab cross combo, none of which came remotely close to landing. Perry could see them coming and move out of the way, even the body blows which required him to step two feet to the side. He was soaking wet, and moving wasn’t easy with his feet in the water, but the Moon Stance was serving him well, and the energy was flowing through his internal systems, misshapen as they were.

“How?” asked Ruben. He was seeming less cheery about it now. “If I could land a blow, you’d be —”

“Try it,” said Perry. He still had his hand behind his back.

“What, you’ll let me hit you?” asked Ruben.

“Sure, I can give you a freebie,” said Perry. “I’ve got to warn you that it’s not going to make you look good.”

Ruben looked at Perry, trying to see whether there was a weakness somewhere, an opening, or at least some suggestion of what was going to happen. Eventually, having no particular clue, he drew back for a haymaker.

Perry took it to the face. He was making up a move on the fly, which he was sure Luo Yanhua would have hated, and he was doing it against someone he strictly outclassed, which in the Great Arc would have been forbidden. Still, with energy flowing and his body rigid, he was only pushed back, water splashing up from his feet. It still hurt like hell, but nothing was broken, and Perry’s body had stayed solid and unmoving, like steel.

Ruben was shaking his hand and swearing. The kids around them, along with the adults, were laughing and jeering. It still seemed to be in Perry’s favor.

“How?” he yelled, before laughing in disbelief. He looked down at his hand and opened his mouth in pain. “Seriously, how?”

“Practice,” said Perry. “I got hit in the face a lot.”

“Well,” said Ruben. He looked over at Leticia. “No way I’m beating him.”

“He has one hand behind his back,” said Leticia. She was smiling. “I guess we’ll have to accept that some of what he says is true — unless you were paid off, Ruben?”

“I’m going to have a bruise the size of your head on my back tomorrow,” he replied, rubbing the spot that Perry had jabbed him. “Not sure what I could be paid off with either, since he can’t cook.” He looked at Perry. “Can he?”

“Nope,” said Perry. “We’re done then? Because next I was going to lose the other arm.”

“Ha!” said Ruben. He puffed up his chest, wincing slightly at the motion of his back muscles. “That, I think I could handle.”

Perry slowly put his other hand behind his back, and just as slowly raised his left foot from the water, controlled and steady. He aimed the foot squarely at Ruben’s chest, coiled and ready to strike. The smile slowly slipped from the other man’s face.

“Alright, I don’t want to see what that foot can do,” said Ruben.

“Boo!” shouted a small boy. “Let him kick you!”

“We don’t kick,” said Leticia. “Only when the other person has agreed to a friendly spar. In fact —”

There were screams, and for a moment Perry was getting ready to summon his sword. He had left it near the terrace of his temporary room, and unlatched the door, just as a precaution. He couldn’t see the bug or whatever it was. The children were running back through the water toward the Natrix.

Perry heard the droning sound first and spotted the planes second. They came from the west, over the mountains that sheltered the valley, six of them flying in formation, shining chrome and glass. Brigitta had called them mechs, but to Perry they looked like something out of World War II, loud propeller driven things that looked to have all come out off the same assembly line. There were guns by the nose and missiles beneath the wings.

They passed low, well within range of the Natrix’s own weapons, buzzing past the children, who were running and screaming. Perry could almost have leapt up to them, if he’d been better prepared and had a death wish. He could see the helmets of the pilots, briefly, and then they passed by, the sound of their engines fading into the distance as they climbed back up the mountains again.

When they were gone, the sound fading over the hills, the mood had soured.

“That was a threat?” asked Perry.

“Yes,” said Brigitta. “Showing that they know where we are, showing their toys.”

“It was a message,” said Leticia with a sigh. “Briggy, go through the data, make sure we could have shot them down if we had wanted to start a war.”

“If they were coming after us, they would have done it differently,” said Brigitta. “They’d launch missiles from a distance. But yes, I’ll look at the data.”

“Ruben, we’re setting up the farms here,” said Leticia. “This cycle, if possible.”

“Moving the timeline up on that?” asked Ruben. “Even with them passing so close by?”

“They’ll keep an eye on us from above, it’s a message back,” said Leticia. “We’re not shooting them down, but we’re showing no fear. It’s business as usual.”

“Normally we’d have a cycle to relax,” said Ruben, though it was clear that was all the pushback he was going to give.

“Perry, it was lovely to meet you, but governance is giving me its call,” said Leticia. She turned to Brigitta. “You’re not distracted by this? By him?”

“I can handle the workload,” said Brigitta. “I’ll delegate, have someone on him, but if there are things we can implement now, then we need to get started on them.” She had furrowed her brows, and was giving Perry a questioning look.

“I need some time alone with my computer,” said Perry. “It would be helpful if you gave me full permissions, or at least as many permissions as you’d give a member of engineering. It’s fine if it’s read-only.”

“Get it done,” Leticia said to Brigitta. She turned back to Perry. “I’m not ready to take you at your word yet, but I’m confident you’re not with the enemy.”

Perry had seen the planes. He had finally seen the face of the enemy, and was already thinking about how best to win against them.