on a ship, aren’t we?” Kevin guessed. It didn’t feel the same as the Hive’s ships. This one didn’t have the perfect stability of gravity drives, but it was still definitely a ship of some kind.
“This is the flagship of the escape fleet,” General s’Lara said. “My AI is integrated with it.”
“So every inch of this place is… you?” Chloe asked.
“I guess you could say that,” the general replied. “My AI will connect to the others for your trial.”
“Like the Hive?” Kevin asked, and instantly knew from the general’s expression that it was the wrong thing to say.
“We are nothing like the Hive,” General s’Lara said, in a sharp tone. “They force themselves upon the worlds they destroy, upon the people they make a part of them, upon each other. The misery, the choices, of others mean nothing to them. We join with our AIs, but we still choose what we will do, and we seek no conquest. We sat behind shields because we did not wish to slaughter others, even though it cost us worlds.”
Kevin could feel another wave of guilt rising up in him at that. He’d been the one to help bring down those shields and make their planet vulnerable to what came next. He’d been the one to help the Hive destroy their world, and take his. To his surprise, though, Chloe was more direct.
“You could have fought them and you didn’t?” she said. “You hid away from them when you could have stopped them?”
“Chloe—” Kevin began, but it seemed that Chloe wasn’t done.
“No, Kevin,” she said. “If she’s saying that they could have done more, that they could have beaten them before they got to Earth, then they could have spared all of us this. They could have saved us.”
“We couldn’t even save ourselves,” General s’Lara said, looking mournful now. “We don’t have the tools to stop the Hive. We can kill them, we have the technology to beat their ships, and they just keep coming.” She seemed to listen to something again. “No, I know. Anyway, we’re here.”
She gestured to a set of doors. Kevin and Chloe stepped through, into a large space filled with people. As with the corridors, images spread over the walls, but these seemed more abstract, and Kevin could see the patterns in them. Somehow he knew that this was the AIs communicating with one another.
Ro stood on a blank circle of floor raised above the rest of it. Kevin hurried over to the alien, wanting to make sure he was all right, while Chloe was even faster, throwing her arms around him. The people there stared at them. Kevin could see so many of them, both Ilari and other aliens who had taken refuge among them, that it was hard to pick out individual faces. Even so, he knew that they were staring at the three of them without looking away, trying to make up their minds.
“Ro, are you all right?” he asked. His friend didn’t look hurt, but even so, he seemed shaken.
“I don’t know,” the alien admitted. “I am feeling so many emotions. Guilt, and fear, and… how do people cope?”
Kevin put a hand on the alien’s shoulder. Chloe put an arm around him.
“We do,” Chloe promised him. “And we keep doing it.”
“These three were salvaged from a floating ship,” General s’Lara said, obviously addressing the assembly. “You can see that one of them is one of the Hive’s ‘Purest.’ Of the others, one is the boy who helped to let them into our world, while the last has been changed into one of their creations.”
Kevin hated hearing him and his friends described like that. The worst part, though, was that he couldn’t deny what they were saying about him.
“We are on our way to another outpost,” General s’Lara said. “The ship tells me that our fleet is being stalked, and so we must decide what we are to do with our new guests. Can we risk having them aboard? Are we in more danger by having them here? Are they all that they appear? Are there any who wish to speak regarding the first of them? The girl?”
There was a swirl of images and letters on the walls as the AIs communicated with one another. If he concentrated, Kevin felt as though he could get the gist of their conversations, the signals that made them up transformed for him through the same talent that had let him translate all of their other signals…
…not guilty in all of this…
…a victim, not a foe…
…the device on her arm though…
Two individuals stood up.
“It has been decided that I will speak for her,” a man said. “It seems obvious to us that she was a captive of the Hive, their victim, and not one of them. We should give her safety as one seeking refuge.”
A woman stood up. “It has been decided that I will speak against,” she said. “Although we have sympathy for her plight, we do not know what the aliens have done to her. The item on her arm could be a risk, because the Hive do not design anything safe. We should contain her, or destroy her, for the safety of others.”
General s’Lara nodded to Chloe. “Do you have anything to say?”
“What do you want me to say?” Chloe snapped back. Kevin could see that she was close to losing her temper now, and that probably had a lot to do with how scared she was.
“Then I will say it,” the general said. “We are not a people who kill because there might be a threat. Chloe here is as much one of us as any of the others who have come to the Ilari in search of help. I believe that she should be welcome among us, and perhaps in time, we will be able to reverse what was done to her. Do any others wish to speak? No? Then we will talk of the others.”
Kevin felt the general’s gaze rest on him, then on Ro.
“The arguments around the others are more complex,” she said. “One warned us of the attack, and helped us, but was also the one who brought down our shields. The other is one of the Hive’s Purest, and so our foe. I know that our people are peaceful, but I find it hard to feel anything but anger when faced with this.”
Kevin looked at the walls, and now the writing buzzed around less like fireflies and more like angry bees. The arguments seemed far more complex, and his talent for translation only gave him snippets of it this time, so that it was impossible to follow along completely.
…where does responsibility begin…
…where does it end…
…If he is one of them, he is one of them…
…Destroyed a whole world!
Kevin was so busy letting the arguments wash over him that he almost didn’t hear the moment when the first person stood up.
“I speak for the boy,” a woman said, in a gentle tone. “I feel that although he has done great wrong, he only did it when controlled by the Hive. When free, he sought to help us. He warned us. He broke free, and we should not reward that with harm. We should take him in as we did his friend.”
“I speak against,” a man said. “Whatever else is true, he was one of the Hive. They slaughtered more than we could count without our AIs, and he helped them. Am I supposed
