the Eight Year War from ever happening again.”
That wasn’t what I expected her to say. I suppose I expected something about mankind fulfilling its destiny in the stars, creating a galaxy-spanning empire. The kind of grandiose vision the powerful tend to indulge in. Instead Solovyov was trying to convince me that the Eleven were peacekeepers, and everything they had done was solely to prevent another apocalyptic war from ending the human race.
If the Warwick node had been created by survivors of the Eight Year War, it was plausible that they could have made a pact and kept the technology for themselves, working in secret to prevent the horrors they’d witnessed from repeating.
They’d succeeded in a sense. In the centuries that followed, the human race had recovered from the 6th mass extinction, established agriculture and sustainable cities across a radically altered Earth, and settled the entire solar system. Could that have been the work of the Eleven?
“I see you’re thinking about it,” said Solovyov. “I admire that, Mr. Barrett. The ability to pause, to simply stop and consider before acting or speaking. An understated skill, indeed.” She’d walked all the way around the shallow pool and had returned to where she started. She stood there, hands clasped behind her back and watching me with her head tilted inquisitively.
I had to admit, it was a reasonable vision. If Solovyov was telling me the truth.
“August Marcenn’s Eleven,” I said.
“What of them,” asked Solovyov, with a faintly disdainful curl of her lip.
“They spoke of Insidious powers, old and dispassionate. Those were their exact words. They said their goal was the unification of all mankind. If that’s what they wanted, what are your Eleven working for?”
“His actions speak for themselves, do they not? I’m sure you understand that I can’t detail every nuance of our efforts, but rest assured, Mr. Barrett, August Marcenn was a madman—the consequence of misplaced trust in an unworthy ally. It would be an error to place any faith in his words.”
She took a few steps toward me and offered her hand. “Will you join us?”
24
“No,” I replied.
Solovyov sighed and dropped her hand. She stepped back and looked past me.
“Make it painless,” she said. “He deserves that much.”
I turned to see a blur rushing toward me, then I saw a flash of light as she swung her fist at my gut. The attack looked odd, her arm angled wrong for a punch. I caught her wrist rather than block the hit, and it proved to be the wise choice. She was holding a hooked blade nearly the size of my hand. She raised her other arm, unsurprisingly holding a similar blade, and stabbed down at my neck.
Against a knife, the safest thing you can do is close in. The natural urge to back off only gives the opponent space and opportunity, meaning the best place to be is paradoxically as close as you can get. I turned into the attack and pressed myself against her cheek-to-cheek. I hooked my free arm around the small of her back, lifted with my knees, and leaned backward. Inertia took care of the rest, and Katerina tumbled over my head as we fell to the floor.
On Earth, that might have been the end of it. Katerina’s skull would have smashed against the marble tile and she would either die or be rendered unconscious from brain trauma. But Callisto’s gravity undercut the throw, and she had ample time to prepare a breakfall. She instead landed three meters away on the flat of her back, her feet absorbing what little impact there was. She was back up and ready to fight in a fraction of a second.
Solovyov was still standing by his body in the pool, placidly watching us fight with her hands clasped behind her back. Despite the intelligence behind those dark eyes, it was still the frail body of a young girl. There was every possibility Solovyov could get hurt if this continued, whether through accident or Katerina’s intentional malice. If I wanted to end this cleanly, I needed a weapon. The men in the kitchen were my best option.
As I started to back toward the door, Katerina mockingly warned, “Don’t make me chase you, Tycho.”
She was fast, but so was I.
I spun and kicked off into a sprint. Taking my eyes off of her was a risk, but he who dares, wins, as they say. If any of the men outside had recovered, my plan would become magnitudes more complicated, but now that I