Admiral Wolf

by C. Gockel

  “Shissh is catatonic,” Rhinehart declared, and then hastily muttered, “Not a pun.”

  The comment brought Volka out of her personal emotional whirlpool. “Carl too,” she said. “Sometimes The One can sense suffering from very far away. They should be okay …” Eventually.

  Young’s thoughts boomed as loud as his voice, and as usual, his thoughts veered toward numbers—the millions who might be dead, the millions more that might be in the process of dying.

  Volka’s nails bit her palm. This wasn’t just about Sixty.

  In Doctor Elam’s medically minded thoughts Volka saw how the Fleet would respond—they’d start evacuating at the edge of the blast zone, sacrificing the people who might be hurt the most beneath the rubble to save as many people as they could as quickly as they could. It was a terrible calculus, and the knowledge of it spread through the Marines like a virus.

  “Our ships would be able to find survivors closer to the epicenter. They’ll feel them,” Volka’s mind swept round the room. They’d all finished their drop-offs; she couldn’t help knowing that. “Any objections to going to New Grande?”

  From her former crew rose a “None!” in perfect chorus. Relief swept through the Marines and their ships as soon as it had been decided. “Oo-rah, Wolf Pack,” someone said, or thought, and it was picked up by everyone but Lieutenant Dixon, who was still too overwhelmed by his first experience with telepathy to think straight.

  Even Dr. Patrick, normally so cautious, wanted to go. The doctor’s imaginings of how a nuclear strike killed made Volka feel weak and made the ships shudder. Volka let her resolve flow through her and knew humans and ships would feel it. Or maybe it was their resolve flowing to her. “I’ll speak to Admiral Wong,” Volka declared. “Rendezvous at Time Gate 5 immediately … Wolf Pack.”

  She felt their acknowledgement and plunged back into the real world with Dixon. The lieutenant blinked down at her. He didn’t quite believe what he’d just seen.

  Volka imagined Time Gate 5 and willed Sundancer to go there. The world around them turned to light.

  Lieutenant Dixon was still blinking at her when they emerged from the free-gate. “Before you contact Admiral Wong, we should contact my commanding officer,” he said, trying to be helpful. He didn’t think she knew how to contact the admiral—he didn’t know how. Lieutenants didn’t have direct ether access to admirals. Also, he didn’t want Volka to make a fool of herself—there were ways these things were done.

  For a moment, Volka hesitated, and her ears sank. She remembered her failure with Ambassador Zhao—maybe she needed to calm down. In answer to that, Sundancer sent her a gentle wordless question, and that was when Volka realized she was calm. She was conscious of time slipping away, of lives snuffing out, and of Sixty’s plight, but she wasn’t angry or panicked. She was resolved. Maybe it was because the Wolf Pack was behind her—Dr. Patrick and Young were behind her—she was not rushing in blind this time. She didn’t have Admiral Wong’s ether code, but she had a sneaking suspicion she knew where to find her.

  “Not this time, Lieutenant,” Volka said, and turned to FET12.

  When Volka and FET12 arrived on the balcony of Time Gate 5’s mindscape council chamber, it was already packed, as was the floor below. FET12 had given himself and Volka avatars that matched what they were wearing—their Fleet envirosuits, thankfully. Volka’s helmet was off. FET12’s visor was down, and his hand was still in hers. She didn’t try to pull away this time. She clutched his hand, looking for Wong, but didn’t kid herself. She was looking for 6T9, too. She saw neither. Nor did she see New Grande’s mayor.

  Telepathy didn’t work here, and she was thankful. So many people were talking at once. If she could hear what they thought too, she thought she’d go mad.

  “He was brutal …”

  “The 6T9 unit was personally responsible for the evacuation of over 5,323 survivors of the first attack!”

  “But millions still not accounted for.”

  “Mayor and council still missing.”

  “How will we rescue them all?”

  “FET12,” Volka started to say.

  “You! Volka!” a woman exclaimed.

  Volka turned in confusion to see a woman she did not know but had seen before. It was the too-beautiful blonde woman who’d been leaning over Michael, pushing her way through the crowd to Volka, her face contorted in rage.

  “We haven’t met, ma’am,” Volka said, and then, remembering how the woman had leaned so closely over Michael, she ventured to guess, “You’re a friend of Michael’s, I think?” The word friend wasn’t right, but lover was too personal to say aloud even in private.

  At her words, the woman’s face softened. She halted in front of Volka, her shoulders sinking.

  “He is well I hope,” Volka whispered urgently.

  The woman rubbed her arm absentmindedly. “He will recover. He was hurt. Android General 1 was not.”

  There was bitterness in those last words, but Volka’s heart lifted. The woman continued. “Michael helped me collect the memory banks of the sex ‘bots that fell. Android General 1 didn’t care that they were slaughtered unless they had Q-comms, but Michael did, and now he is hurt.”

  Volka didn’t know what to think of the talk of slaughter, so she didn’t. She focused on the facts. “There were more of you than the ones of you I saw, the ones who’d been given Q-comms?”

  The woman nodded. “There were normal sex ‘bots for support. For cannon fodder.” Her lips twisted. “They might go back for those of us with Q-comms … but my sisters, my brothers, they don’t count. Do they?”

  “They should,” Volka responded automatically.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I was programmed to believe that you would say that, but you’d choose humans first, wouldn’t you?”

  FET12 blurted, “Considering we can walk through radiation and higher temperatures than humans, they should! The humans will be wounded! Grievously so! And they’ll be so afraid.”

  “That’s what our programming says, but is it true? Is it right?” the woman demanded.

  The fireman sex ‘bot in his ineffectual uniform burst through the crowd. “Mila, you know it’s true and right.”

  Volka’s mind seized what her team had thought, how they had imagined the survivors. “We need all the available sex ‘bots, Q-comms or not. Where is Time Gate 5?”

  A chrome figure shimmered into being beside them. “What do you need?”

  Volka’s voice sounded strange to her own ears, more confident than she actually was. “I need you and Admiral Wong.”

  42

  Eliza’s Ashes

  Galactic Republic: System 5 New Grande

  6T9 couldn’t move the metal beam across Davies’s abdomen, or a large chunk of steel reinforced concrete that was across his legs. He might have been able to pull him out if he moved up the rubble pile and yanked him from above. That would dislodge the kitten from his chest. Davies’s last request to 6T9 had been to let the kitten stay with him. Of course 6T9 could set the kitten’s body aside, try to pull Davies out, and then carry them both through the nuclear wasteland to Fleet’s evacuation ships … which wouldn’t have space for the corpse of a man, much less a kitten.

  So instead he sat in the ashes and dust beside Davies’s body. It felt wrong to move them. He’d promised … And why did it bother him so much to give up when a promise was no longer logical? He took out Eliza’s ashes, holding them before him, staring at Davies’s body. Eliza loved him despite the fact he was a sex ‘bot. Davies had seemed unable to remember he was a sex ‘bot or an android at all. For a time—thirty-seven minutes and forty-six seconds—his circuits were dim. Fires raged around him; the wind was still strong enough to blow Volka over—and that was a peculiar way to measure the whirlwind’s force.

  … Or not peculiar. He passed Eliza’s ashes between his hands. He was measuring Davies’s death against Eliza’s. His face crumpled. It was still “peculiar,” it was illogical, and it was wr
ong. He was weighing immaterial things. He stared down at the packet of ashes, and then unzipped them with shaking hands. He’d dump them here and leave all the illogical bugs in his programming behind.

  But Volka was still up there among the stars … wasn’t his connection to her illogical? She was tied to Darmadi and always would be.

  It occurred to him that he hadn’t ended their engagement. That had been illogical, too. Had he been unable to end it for the same reason he still wanted to drag Davies’s body out of the blast zone? A proposal was a promise, and a promise was a surety in a universe that was unsure. Tearing that surety asunder felt like a loss, even when it was illogical not to do so when the person you made your promise to by their programming belonged to someone else.

  He clutched the ashes more tightly to himself. It was illogical. Eliza was gone.

  Fire crackled close to his heels, but he didn’t move. A stone rolled down the hill and came to a rest by 6T9’s feet. 6T9 looked up and saw nothing, and then three roars rose from behind him above the howl of the wind and crackle of flames. “We found you. You stole one of our names. Turn around and face your destroyer!”

  “According to Time Gate 1, we are near Sixty’s last known location,” FET12 said, his voice cracking slightly as it was piped into her suit across the ether. “It’s difficult to pinpoint because I don’t know precisely where we are. The nav satellites still aren’t online, and I can’t match visual data with the data before the strike.”

  Volka clenched her teeth. Sixty was close. Maybe. He could be slag by now. Survivors of the nuclear strike were close, too. Trying not to feel their terror or think of the danger Sixty might be in, Volka concentrated on picking her way over the debris and not stumbling in the wind’s ferocious onslaught. Members of her crew were on either side of her and behind her, too. Behind them were sex ‘bots that had rendezvoused with her team when they landed—Sixty’s troops. He’d used them as cannon fodder, just as Mila had said. She said he didn’t care. Volka was sure that wasn’t true.

  Sundancer was hovering just behind and above her. In her dark armor, the ship blended with the sky. Volka let the ship guide her feet—when she went the wrong way, she felt disappointment; when she went in the right direction, she felt anticipation. She was getting close … closer. Ash was falling as thick as snow, and orange flames rose out of piles of rubble in every direction. The scene of death should have been silent and somber, but it was loud. Without her suit, it would have been dangerously so. Fires crackled, now and again explosions roared, and the wind whistled and moaned through the ruined city. If it weren’t for the ethernet connectivity between their suits, the team would have to shout to be heard. Her Bracelet warned her that radiation levels were still dangerous, and the Dark was here, too—hence Sundancer’s armor. Volka could smell the Dark, even though her suit was perfectly sealed. It seemed to be everywhere she turned, and yet it was weak … contained … and didn’t produce fear in Sundancer. The Marines had explained the heat from the bombs would have destroyed the Dark on the surface. She silently prayed it wouldn’t be among the survivors beneath.

  She had a sensation like coming home and stopped at a pile of concrete that was covered with what looked like molten glass, nearly as high as her hips. Taking a deep breath, Volka closed her eyes and tried to see below the mass with her mind. Maybe it was because of the lack of knowing who to look for, but all she sensed was her crew. Carl would be helpful now, but he had woken long enough to explain, “Thousands of The One had to leap from their bodies at once. They need all our help. I must return to my nightmare.” She didn’t want to disturb him.

  “Sundancer, help me,” Volka whispered, imagining blurry indistinct shapes beneath the earth. Sundancer flooded her vision with images of people—men, women, a baby, and a child—all shimmering and glowing, but then the scene shifted to the space beyond them. The Dark was there, ever malevolent, but trapped. Volka swallowed, understanding the shapes the Dark took. The Dark was trapped in crushed corpses. Opening her eyes, she pointed at the ground beneath the slab. “There are survivors down there. They are uninfected.” She pointed at a spot perhaps thirty meters away. “The Dark is there, in corpses.”

  “Don’t touch corpses,” Dixon said. “Gotcha.” To his men, he said, “Set up a perimeter,” and then he turned to the twenty-four sex ‘bots. The ‘bots were wearing blue scrubs the Marines had delivered to them. They’d been in various stages of undress when they’d joined the team—Volka had guessed that would be the case from Dr. Patrick’s imaginings of burns. Some of the ‘bots had little or no skin; it had melted away. The scrubs made them look a little more presentable and were a visual cue as to what they now were. Time Gate 5 had installed medical apps in all of them.

  “Setting up a signal booster,” her new comm officer said, putting a little chrome device by her feet.

  She knew the instant they connected with the survivors. Dixon’s head jerked, his wonder at Volka’s being right ringing like a bell in Volka’s mind. His voice crackled across the ether and into her suit. “There are survivors.” Gaze becoming distant, Dixon added, “There is a subway entrance down there—they’re trapped between it and this hunk of rocks.”

  The comm guy said, “It probably saved them from the fireball. Based on the strength of the signal, I think we can dig them out.”

  Nodding, Dixon turned to the sex ‘bots and issued orders.

  No longer needed, Volka hurried to FET12. Scanning the horizon, he said, “I know which train station they were referring to—I know where we are.” He pointed up a mound of debris in the dark landscape. “Sixty was that way.” The wind buffeted Volka’s back, bringing with it a cloud of ash and dust and making her lean into it to stay upright.

  Volka almost suggested FET12 come scout from the higher vantage point with her, but then Dixon called out, “FET12, we could use one more pair of android arms.”

  “Go,” said Volka. “I’ll just go to the top of the mound and wait for you there.”

  “No farther than the top of the mound,” FET12 said.

  She gave him a jaunty salute. He narrowed his eyes but left.

  Crouching low to maintain her balance and stay out of the wind, Volka climbed the hill, her heart starting to beat faster. Sixty might still be himself. The Dark assailed her nostrils, and as she traversed the ground, she sometimes felt the Dark beneath her feet. It made her stomach queasy, but so far, Sundancer was unalarmed.

  She reached the top of the mound and gazed down. At first, all she saw was a flame … and then she realized the flame was Sixty’s face, in three-quarter profile, and his hands, all lit from within, glowing in the heat. Forgetting herself, she leaped over the top of the mound. FET12 would tell the others where she’d gone. She almost called out, but then stopped. Three shadows were approaching Sixty—she saw them with her eyes as three men in armor similar to hers, but she also saw them with more than her eyes. They were Infected—human-shaped, blots of malevolence in the already heart-sickening scene—and there was one more of them just past Sixty. Sixty raised his hands above his head. In one hand was a familiar shape—the pouch with Eliza’s ashes. He slowly turned toward the first three Infected. She hadn’t been telepathic when she’d first faced the Dark. Now she was, and she knew how much it hated androids—and 6T9 in particular. Its maliciousness was palpable, as was its single wish: destroy.

  Growling, Volka raised her rifle. She took a breath, aimed, shot once, twice, and then she was lifted from her feet by the wind.

  The three wore envirosuits—probably hand me downs from Fleet, their camouflage wasn’t as advanced, but in the gloom, it didn’t matter. He didn’t need Carl or Volka to tell him they were Infected. Only the Dark could be so proud, vile, and stupid. “Turn around and face your destroyer”? How maudlin, and if he’d had a weapon, potentially fatal. But he didn’t have a weapon; he had a few handfuls of ashes.

  The world was so chaotic, and there were so many fires, that at first 6T9 mistook the phaser fire that
struck two of the men from behind for bursts of flame. It was only when they crumpled that 6T9 realized what was happening. The remaining man started to duck and raised his rifle toward a shimmering shape rolling toward them. 6T9 brought a leg up and swept him to the side. The rolling tumbling figure came to a halt, and with precision that had to be mechanical, shot the last man from the ground. But the growl that followed was not mechanical at all, and Volka’s voice erupted from within the Fleet armor, barely audible in the fire’s roar, “Sixty, look out!” She raised her rifle and aimed at a spot past 6T9. Phaser fire ripped from behind 6T9 toward her, too narrow to be a rifle shot, and a useless part of him cataloged it as coming from a pistol. Volka growled as the phaser fire hit her rifle, and the weapon erupted in a shroud of electricity that spread to her suit. With a cry, she tossed her weapon away, her gloved hands still sparking.

  The familiar voice of the pirate “general” rose behind 6T9. “You thought you could win.” The man’s footsteps came from up the rubble that was the bank building beyond Davies’s grave. Eliza’s ashes trembled in Sixty’s hand, now at his side. Volka’s eyes were glowing behind her visor—she had a tapetum lucidum, a thin membrane at the back of her eye that allowed her to see like a cat in the dark—or a wolf. He’d heard it described as “animal-like,” by humans and androids alike. The glow obscured her pupils, making them look like pure light.