by M. D. Cooper
The AI highlighted another bit of information: the building was sealed against unauthorized entrance by nothing more than a decorative gate and a simple security panel.
Judith was opposite his position, climbing the last few meters to the building’s entrance. As he watched the feed, he saw the woman reach the pumping station’s door and place the flat of her hand against its security panel in an attempt to breach it.
If he had any doubts as to who was in control of the woman’s mind, her actions now left no doubt. He thought back to what he knew of Judith, and his blood ran cold.
Judith Andrews’ specialty was planetary sciences; if Prime’s goal was to sabotage the habitat, he couldn’t have chosen a better subject to carry out his final order.
Terrance returned his attention to the icons on his HUD as Eric dropped a pin on Judith’s location, placing her at the top of the cliffs across from him. Jason must have noticed, as well, for the pilot’s icon began to move more rapidly than the exec had ever seen.
L2 speed, he marveled, as the icon’s telemetry clocked him at eighty-five kilometers per hour.
At this rate, Jason should reach his sister within minutes.
* * * * *
the AI replied.
Jason didn’t bother to ask who ‘we’ was; he was too focused on getting to Judith. He felt his reserves slipping as he rounded a curve and spied her in the distance. Just another thirty seconds, dammit; but his injured body refused to cooperate.
Stumbling to a halt, he sucked in air as he fought a wave of nausea that had come crashing down on him. He tried to direct his mednano to give him either another pain blocker or a stimulant—he didn’t much care which—but his Link informed him his store had been depleted.
“Judith!” he called out, knowing she was too far away to hear him, but oddly, she stopped and turned to face him.
Jason sent a mental nod over the net as he slowed to walk the rest of the way to the base of the cliff, his good hand wrapped tightly around his bicep to immobilize his shattered shoulder as best he could and minimize the shooting pain. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Logan’s frame slip around an outcropping and begin to silently scale the cliff, below and a little behind where Judith stood.
“Hello, Jason,” Judith smiled down at him and beckoned him closer. “Why don’t you come up here and join me?”
Something about Judith’s voice—her cadence, her demeanor—alerted him, and he slowed his pace yet again, his gaze locked with hers. The expression on her face, it was all wrong somehow.
* * * * *
Terrance had inched his way up to the top of the hill and was crouched behind two boulders, peering across the water at the scene unfolding at the base of the pump building. When Logan had begun his climb, they’d lost the AI’s feed, so Eric had directed his meat-suit to run an optic through the crack between the boulders. This now provided the combat net a clear image of the building.
Terrance now saw Judith turn at Jason’s call. He heard Jason’s exclamation over the Link. He held his breath as Eric responded sharply.
Terrance watched Jason come to a stop at the foot of the cliff and stare up at Judith for a moment.
Jason replied, then paused a beat.
Terrance felt something shift along his connection to Eric.
Jason’s feed allowed them to hear the exchange.
“Judith,” he said, “I’m kind of beat; want to give your brother a hand and meet me down here instead?”
The woman laughed, and even over the feed, Terrance could tell it was an ugly sound.
“Nice try, Jason. But I think it’s better if you come to me. Wouldn’t want anyone to come to any harm, now, would we?”
* * * * *
Shock reverberated through Logan, and he sent his frame creeping forward at Jason’s words. The movement loosened scree and sent it tumbling down the side of the cliff. He froze, but it was too late; he saw Judith’s body wheel from where she was intent on Jason to focus on him.
“Oh, look!” the voice that was not Judith’s sing-songed as her eyes turned to Logan’s mech frame. “It’s the grieving twin.”
Through his forward optics, he could see the AI force Jason’s sister to bend over the railing at a precarious angle to glimpse him. He heard Tobias break in, addressing him and Jason.
Logan didn’t respond. His focus was entirely on the AI embedded in the human above him. His frame quivered with the need to rush the slope and rip the cylinder from Judith’s head, and yet he knew that was exactly what the monster wanted.
The eyes of the woman burned into him as the AI spoke. “We’re more alike than you know, Logan.”
Like hell we are, he thought.
“I know what you are, Logan. What your brother was.”
He didn’t need the commodore’s voice over the combat net to tell him that. He was the profiler. He knew Prime was trying to provoke either him or Jason to come close enough to shackle. He wasn’t about to underestimate Prime.
“Your brother was a worthy opponent, Logan. He put up quite a fight, you know. Would you like to know how he died?”
He saw Jason begin to slowly ease his way up another few steps. “Judith, I know you’re in there,” her brother called urgently. “Fight him; I know you can. Don’t let him win.”
The woman ignored him, her attention focused on the AI hanging on the cliff beneath her.
“Landon couldn’t fight me,” the woman’s voice said silkily. “Did you know that I forced him to remove his own cylinder from his frame?” Judith’s hand flew up. “And then I ordered him to pulverize it.” She made a fist. “Right in front of his main optics array. Just like that.” Her hand dropped. “He was powerless to stop it.” Logan’s limb twitched as the woman’s fist closed, and he felt something ugly and dark begin to build inside himself. It took everything he had to remain mission-focused as his world shrank down to the utter simplicity of kill or be killed.
He saw Jason move up another step as the woman pulled back from the railing. She turned and placed her hand once again on the station’s security panel, this time for several seconds.
Logan used her movement to edge closer to Jason. That decision—to move toward Jason instead of toward Prime—was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
He knew better than anyone what Jason must be feeling right now. Logan’s own emotions were a tumultuous mess inside him; he would love nothing more than to rush Judith, knock her unconscious and wrest the offensive cylinder f
rom her body. But his training was screaming at him to wait. So was his commanding officer.
He knew Eric was right.
He could sense the desperation in Jason, knew the man was near the breaking point. Stars help him, but he was going to have to stop the pilot from trying to save his sister. He wasn’t sure if Jason would be able to forgive him for that. Had the roles been reversed, had it been Landon in Prime’s grasp, he doubted he’d be able to stop himself from advancing either.
He was just a few meters away now….
* * * * *
As Prime wheeled Judith’s body away from the railing, Terrance swiveled the optic to follow her movements. He manipulated its zoom feature and tried to focus on the actions of her hand at the door.
Switching back to the combat net, he barked out a series of rapid-fire commands.
Terrance froze in momentary shock at the commodore’s order. He barely registered Jason’s mental voice as the pilot began protesting Eric’s last command, and Logan and Tobias attempted to calm the pilot down and keep him from rushing the rest of the way to Judith. Muscles functioning on automatic reflex, he unslung his rifle, checked its load and carefully settled it into the crevice, just above the optic.
Am I really doing this?
Eric’s voice cut through the chatter on the net.
Terrance drew a deep breath and sighted through the rifle’s scope, one hand on the barrel, the other on the rifle’s stock. No way in hell was he getting his finger near that trigger. He caught movement from the optic feeding over his HUD and saw Jason once more begin to ascend the steps that led to the station.
Eric saw it too.
Eric’s words seemed to have the desired effect. Jason stopped climbing, though he did not retreat.
Terrance drew a deep breath and reached out to Eric privately.
He heard the AI give the equivalent of a sigh.
Terrance waited as the AI paused to let his words sink in. He sent Eric a mental nod, and the AI continued.
Terrance drew in a deep breath, but before he could speak, Eric went on.
* * * * *
Prime’s voice was everything Eric had envisioned it would be: arrogant, condescending, and with an edge of mania to it that told him this was a creature no AI court would consider sane.
It wasn’t supposed to be possible.
Eric cut Jason off with a sharp word and turned his attention to the connection with the creature standing across the lake from them.
Judith’s arm flopped down to her side.
The silence on the combat net drew out for a breath, and then two. In that silence, Eric heard the whine of an aircraft approaching.
He made a decision.
Reaching out to Terrance through their private connection, he spoke calmly and deliberately.
Eric felt more than saw the man’s nod.
The barrel of the rifle dipped, then wavered.
The human’s heart began to speed up, and the man took in a sharp breath. Jason must have had a monitoring program pinned onto Terrance’s rifle barrel to alert him if the exec altered his target, because the moment Terrance’s rifle settled on Judith’s head, the man exploded into action.
The profiler, who had been slowly working his way along the side of the cliff just below the station, began crabbing sideways at an astonishing rate, heading to intercept the other Andrews.
Terrance’s hold on the rifle wavered.
Judith’s head shot up, and Prime looked straight into the rifle’s sights. Her hand raised….
Terrance’s finger hovered over the trigger, and Prime flung Judith’s hand back toward the panel….
I’m so sorry, my friend, Eric thou
ght deep inside himself as he seized control of his host for the briefest of moments, and Terrance’s hand pulled the trigger.
Judith’s head snapped back as blood, bits of bone, and grey matter exploded against the station’s door, and the woman’s body was flung backward from the impact.
Jason wrenched himself away from Logan’s grasp, and the AI let him go. The profiler followed him up to where Judith’s body lay, and as Jason felt for a pulse, Logan gently rotated her body until she was resting on her side.
Her head lolled at an unnatural angle, and he reached one three-fingered hand down to the base of her skull, probing searchingly. Eric saw Logan pull his hand away; in it rested a dented cylinder the size of a test tube, covered in Judith’s blood.
In one swift move, Logan’s fist raised the cylinder and—before Eric could protest—crushed it.
GENERATION WARRIORS
STELLAR DATE: 03.16.3192 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ESF Speedwell, C-47 Dock
REGION: Proxima Centauri System
Calista stood on the command deck next to Logan. The AI had exchanged his battle frame for his usual humanoid one; it was nice to see his familiar form again.
Stars, it was nice to be on the other side of battle again.
She, Logan, and Shannon were reviewing the data he had retrieved from Prime. That asshole had recorded everything, including the events that led up to Landon’s death. That had been particularly difficult to watch, but Calista had insisted Logan not view it alone.
She checked the impulse to turn to Frida and ask for a connection to Tobias; the shackled AI had been pulled into an Expanse called by the Proxima AI Council—which Calista had not known existed—to be both unshackled and debriefed. Shannon had told her that the comms officer hadn’t originally been an unwilling party to Prime’s plans and would be tried for her crimes.
Calista grimaced. Frida had endured a lot over the past few years. She certainly hadn’t deserved to be shackled a first time and sold into slavery, but to willingly aid a fellow AI who intended to do the same to humankind was taking retribution too far. She wondered how the Council would handle that case.