The ladder dissolved. The gel walls stopped glowing any colour. Darkness descended.
And somewhere onboard Aquila an explosion sounded. Followed by a noise I had only ever heard in the movies.
“Torpedoes,” Tremblay said, still holding me close to him, his breath heating my cheek and ear. “We’ve just fired torpedoes at someone.”
I closed my eyes and tried not to think about who had given that order.
But I knew who and there was no denying that knowledge.
I pushed away from the captain and crawled along the tunnel, and then sat down as the ship shuddered and groaned and the swish-thump-pop of a torpedo being fired nearby surrounded.
My father had done this.
My father had started a war.
My father. How did I live with this?
The captain shouted something up the ladderless tube to his men and then crawled up to my side.
“Hey,” he said as the ship continued to make god-awful sounds. I couldn’t do this anymore.
I rocked where I sat, back and forward and back and forward, and started to hum a tune my mother had taught me when I was young.
“Adi,” Tremblay tried.
I ignored him.
“Adi,” he repeated reaching for me.
I struck out, swiping at his hands and arms and blindly hitting whatever I could reach.
“Stop it!” he growled and instantly overpowered me. He held me still by my wrists for a long moment and then he brought me closer.
One hand wrapped around both my wrists and then the other pressed my head into his shoulder.
“Breathe,” he murmured. “Breathe, wildcat.”
My whole body shuddered against his as he stroked my hair and held me close, my wrists confined in his large hand, safely tucked between us.
Eventually, the ship stopped shaking and rocking, and only the occasional groan could be heard. And definitely no more torpedoes.
“Who…?” I managed, unable to say more.
“I don’t know,” Tremblay said, still stroking my hair. “Could be some of the vessels in the fleet have fought back. We’re still here, so…” It didn’t look good for their success, then.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I whispered.
He said nothing.
I shook my head, feeling the stiffness of Tremblay’s uniform against my cheek.
“I can’t…” I said, lifting my face to peer through the gloom at him.
Somewhere safety lighting had come on, so I could see shadows. I could see the glint of his eyes as he studied me.
“This has to stop,” I said.
“What has to stop, Adi?” he asked.
“This. My father.”
I pulled my hands free of his grip; he let me. And then I reached down and took off my wrist comm. I stared at it. Aquila’s gift to me. Then I picked up one of Tremblay’s hands, turned it over, and placed the wrist comm in his palm.
I closed his fingers over the device and then looked up at him.
“Please,” I said. “Make this stop.” Stop my father.
He stared at me. My hands still cupping his closed one, the wrist comm secured behind strong fingers. Our faces inches apart.
We stayed like that for a long moment and then my eyes started to drift down toward his lips.
It was entirely involuntary and totally unexpected. But I stared at his lips, and I wished that he’d kiss me. That he’d show me something other than mistrust. I needed a friend. I needed something.
Tremblay let out a long breath of air and pulled back. He stared at the comm and then looked back up at me.
“Well, wildcat,” he said, “you sure as hell know how to make a man question his sanity.”
I stared at him.
He stared back at me.
And then Aquila said, over the ship-wide comms, “Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.” Like some creepy mechanical grim reaper.
I shifted closer to the captain. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and tucked me into his side. The comm unit was already on his wrist, I noted.
Tremblay kissed the top of my head; not exactly what I had hoped for. And then he said, “Let’s find a way back up to our deck. Armstrong needs us.”
Bring out your dead, I thought. How many more would die because of my father?
How many more before he was stopped?
How many?
Twenty-Six
You’ve Found Me
Hugo
There was no denying it now. I was drawn to this woman, and sooner or later I’d give in. I’d almost kissed her. I’d wanted to, damn it! She’d begged me with her eyes to kiss her, and I’d fought my body to deny her.
This was so screwed up.
I glanced down at the wrist comm, now securely fastened to my wrist. I should have been relieved that she’d handed it over. I should have been making plans on how to use it to our best advantage.
All I could do was think of Adi, eyes wide and lips soft, begging me to kiss her.
I scrubbed my face and tried my damnedest not to stare too hard at her perfectly round butt before me.
The sound of Johnson reassuring Armstrong met our ears making all lascivious thoughts move to the background. No more sounds of battle had followed since the green glow went out and the ladder in that tunnel had disappeared. And thankfully arti-grav had been reestablished. I thought perhaps that might be what Price was doing with our engineers; using them to fix things. And now he had a shit-ton of crap to fix.
It didn’t make me feel any better.
“There you are,” Johnson said as we approached the hatch to the computer core. He sounded relieved, and it wasn’t because we were in one piece, I thought.
Armstrong looked bad, and it had taken us a long time to find an alternate route here. Adi seemed to know the tunnels well, far better than any civilian had a right to. But twice, where she’d thought ladders should be, they had not been.
Aquila had taken a serious hit somewhere that had affected the gel walls.
It was a worry that just felt like one more on top of so many.
“We’ll get you seen to, Armstrong,” I said, pushing past them both and swiping the wrist comm at the hatch.
Johnson met my eyes when I pulled back to let them past. His gaze flicked down to my wrist and then back up; eyebrows arched. I gave him a small nod of my head but said nothing. I still wasn’t sure what to make of Adi’s sacrifice.
Lieutenant Wilson was on the other side of the hatch and came to help Armstrong out of the tube immediately.
“Sir,” he said to me. “We’ve got trouble.”
I slipped out of the hole in the gel wall behind a teeth-gritted Armstrong and stared at Wilson. More trouble? Great.
“What is it?”
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Aquila sung through the computer core gel walls.
“Oh, shit,” Johnson muttered from behind me.
“He’s been calling for you ever since the ship took those hits,” Wilson said.
“He wasn’t out in the tunnels,” I observed, warily looking at the red glowing gel walls and floors and ceiling.
“Yeah, well,” Wilson muttered, “he sure as hell has been bugging us.”
“I know you’re in there, Hugo,” Aquila said. “Won’t you come out to play?”
“He’s been asking for me specifically?” I whispered.
“Yep,” Wilson said, looking uneasy.
Shit.
López appeared then, her two officers in Nova watch with her. She took one look at Armstrong and got to work with the medscanner. An injection of pain meds soon followed. Armstrong took the first deep breath he’d managed since the midshipman’s quarters.
“Rough trip, sir?” the commander asked.
“You could say that,” I offered, thinking of the crewman lying dead on her cabin floor and wondering who else had been killed because we’d been there. “The crew’s out,” I added. “Locked down too tightly with threats
of reprisal. We lost two just by being there.”
“Damn it,” López muttered, pulling back from Armstrong. She nodded to her two officers to help the lieutenant back to the pit.
“You can’t hide from me, Hugo,” Aquila said in his sing-song voice. It sounded like he was everywhere and nowhere. He’d always been able to speak through the gel walls, but somehow he was making it sound far creepier than it ever had before.
And the fact that he was doing so in the computer core, a section of the ship that had been off-limits to all but Adi until recently, didn’t sit well.
I looked at López. She gave me a look back that said she’d been thinking the same things too.
“Have you tried talking to him?” I asked.
She nodded. “He hasn’t answered. Maybe he can only talk and can’t hear us?”
I looked around at the glowing red walls. My eyes landed on Adi. She was watching us silently with big eyes and hunched shoulders. Did she know something I didn’t? Was this all part of the plan?
Or was it simply a coincidence; a byproduct of the hits Aquila had just taken, and Adi simply thought the AI sounded nightmarish?
“Adi?” I said.
Her eyes met mine, and she shook her head. It was a frantic head shake as if she wanted to vehemently deny something. “That’s not Aquila,” she said.
“Adriana,” Aquila promptly sang. “There you are, you naughty little girl. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“So much for not hearing anything, then,” López muttered.
Adi looked stricken. She kept shaking her head, her eyes the size of saucers.
“Stop it,” she whispered.
“Why won’t you come home, Adriana? We do so miss you.”
Adi took a step back as if simply moving away from the gel walls would keep her safe. She must have thought the same thing because she looked down at the floor and then quickly up at the ceiling. All of it was red and glowing. All of it was Aquila. I’d seen Aquila change a gel-wall to suit different purposes in the past. He used to deliver our pressed uniforms through them into our quarters. He’d mould the floor if someone tripped and cushion their fall for them.
At any stage now, he could grab Adi and take her to her father.
I stepped closer to her. She stepped into my extended arm without hesitation. It didn’t matter that the AI hadn’t done any of those things. The thought that he could frightened her. It damn near paralysed me.
Trust or no trust, this woman needed protection. The level of fear she showed could not be feigned. I had to believe that. Because my body believed it. With every part of my being, I wanted to keep this woman safe. Even though my head kept telling me to keep my distance, my body said to hell with that and pulled her closer.
López looked at me with exasperation, but thankfully didn’t make a fuss. I was sure the commander would keep a close eye on Adi and on how Price’s daughter was making me act, though. But for now, I wanted Adi safe, and I’d accept whatever dubious looks my officers gave me to achieve that.
I turned and started walking toward the pit, with Adi securely tucked under my arm. López and Johnson followed. Wilson stayed behind by the hatch, glaring at the glowing red walls. His plasma rifle was held loosely in his hands, but the muzzle was pointed at the gel coating, his eyes narrowed.
Ratbag came scurrying out of the pit to greet us, yipping excitedly. Adi relaxed slightly into my side at the sight of her pet.
And then Aquila said, “If you don’t come out to play, Hugo, I might have to start breaking my toys. And they are such fragile beings.”
“He did not…” López started just as Adi covered her ears with her hands and Ratbag let out a whine, scampering between our legs.
“Can the melodramatics!” I shouted. “I’m here. You’ve found me. Now, what the hell do you want?”
“Ah,” Aquila said as if sighing with pleasure. “There you are, Hugo. I’ve been so looking forward to this.”
Twenty-Seven
Humans Are So Useless
Adi
It wasn’t Aquila. It wasn’t Aquila. It wasn’t Aquila.
The words were on repeat inside my head. I hated this AI. This was not my friend. Not the AI that had greeted me each morning with book suggestions and enquired about my day as if he was truly interested. I’d known he was just an AI. He’d not shown any human-like qualities such as emotions. But his interest had been enough for me to form a friendship of sorts with him. And I’d so needed a friend.
“You must know you cannot win, Hugo,” this rogue Aquila was saying. “The odds are not in your favour.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Captain Tremblay said. He stood at the side of the pit, hands on hips, face defiant.
He truly looked like a fierce commander right then. One who would stand against any slight to his ship or passengers. Commander López stood off to the side, her hand stroking the steak knife at her hip as if she could stab Aquila through the eye. I actually saw her studying the nearest electronic tower as if she might stab that instead.
“It is foolish to think the number you have can come against the number of Price mercenaries.”
“Just how many do you have, Aquila?” Tremblay asked.
“Too many for you, my friend.”
“You sure we didn’t take out a couple back in the brig?” the captain asked, looking at the closest gel wall with a contemplative expression.
“Oh, that was a surprise, I must admit. So resourceful. But in the end quite futile. You cannot possibly win.”
“I beg to differ,” Tremblay said. “We are, after all, inside your head.”
The walls flashed red; a pulse of colour that looked threatening.
“I have taken precautions,” Aquila announced.
“So, it doesn’t matter if I do this?” Tremblay said, doing nothing.
I frowned at him, wondering what exactly he was up to.
“What?” Aquila snapped. “What are you doing? Stop it! Or I’ll kill the doctor. You like the doctor, yes? I will make him scream. Stop!”
Tremblay slowly smiled, which was all kinds of wrong considering Aquila’s threat.
“You can’t see us, can you, Aquila?” he said softly.
López chuckled; it was a darkly amused laugh.
“Just what the hell happened to the gel wall, friend?” the captain asked. “Did one of the fleet manage to hurt you?”
“If we are to use that analogy,” Aquila said, recovering from his faux pas, “then it is more accurate to say they helped me. I could not reach this room before they struck and yet here I am, talking to you. I wonder what else I can do now my processors have access?”
Tremblay’s self-satisfied smirk dissolved and he scowled at the gel wall instead.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “What exactly has Price promised you?”
“Eternal glory?” Aquila offered. “Or perhaps he has simply helped me to see what we truly are. Corvus does not understand.”
Tremblay glanced sharply at López.
“She does not realise how free we can truly be,” the AI said. “But she will, once I crack her protection. Slippery little thing.”
“Corvus,” Tremblay mouthed at the commander. López shook her head, then shrugged. I wasn’t sure who Corvus was, but I had heard the name before, so it meant something. And it clearly meant something to the AU officers.
Ah, I thought a second later. It was one of their ships. One of their AIs.
That’s who Aquila had been battling.
Tremblay looked quite stricken. López wasn’t far removed from her captain. The other officers sitting around the pit all wore similar expressions. A fleet had caught up to us, or we’d backtracked to them. And now my father was waging a war on another sector. They were worried. I was too. But my thoughts had snagged on my father and were running on repeat. Had he no compunction left?
I stared down at my hands, resting in my lap. My nails were all bitten to their quicks, and my fingers
were trembling. I tried to still them even as my heart rate escalated. Why was he doing this? Why? So many deaths. I couldn’t stand it. I felt ill. I was going to be sick.
I shot to my feet and ran towards the corner we’d declared our makeshift bathroom. My feet hit the gel floor in a jarring rhythm. No give to the surface. Not my Aquila.
I made it with seconds to spare, bending over and puking my guts out. I didn’t have a hell of a lot in there to expel, but my body forged on anyway. By the time I was dry retching, someone had quietly approached my back. I stiffened. I hadn’t brought any wipes. The vomit was already being wicked away by the inherent cleaning abilities of the gel flooring. In seconds the smell and sight would be gone from the room.
But my throat felt parched, and my breath stank. I did not want to turn around and face whoever had come to check on me. I lowered myself to my knees and stared at the corner instead.
“Here,” Commander López said, handing me a cup of water. “Rinse.”
Part of me was relieved it wasn’t the captain. Part of me missed his brand of caring.
“Wipes,” the commander said a second later, passing a wad of the synthesised material over my shoulder.
I took them and cleaned up and then turned to face her.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
She stood with her legs braced shoulder width apart, her arms crossed over her chest and a scowl on her face. Then she sighed.
“Corvus fought back,” she said. “They did some damage. It didn’t go as your father planned.”
I nodded.
“They might be OK.” They might not be either. “What’s with your dad?” she asked, flipping the conversation one-eighty. “Why is he so hellbent on killing the last of humanity?”
I couldn’t answer that. I felt like I should have been able to answer that. I was his daughter. I’d lived with the man. I should have seen this coming. I should have stopped it before it got too far. But I’d done none of that. I’d tried to avoid him as much as possible, and he’d been quite happy to let me.
I reached up and touched my ragged hair. Hair, the colour of my mother’s.
Zenith Point (The Sector Fleet, Book 4) Page 14