Perilous Waif (Alice Long Book 1)

by E. William Brown

  Crunch.

  She had a little armoring there, but it wasn’t any tougher than a zango’s bones. I ripped out the whole front of her throat, and spit it out. Blood sprayed everywhere, drenching me. For a moment my eyes were blinded, but my other senses were still working fine.

  Lilia started backing away, with a frantic call for help going out over her com.

  “Oh no you don’t!” I drowned her out with a scream of radio static, and rushed her.

  She gasped, and turned to run. I caught up with her in three steps, and tackled her to the floor.

  The impact left her sobbing with pain. “Please don’t kill me, Mistress,” she pleaded.

  “Shut up.” I wrenched her left arm behind her back, and dragged her back to her feet. There was no telling if someone had gotten her call for help, or what kind of security was watching the foyer. I had to get out of here fast. I dragged Lilia back to the entrance, ignoring her tears.

  “Open the door,” I ordered.

  “How do I know you won’t kill me too?” She asked.

  “Idiot. I haven’t killed anyone yet. Their brains are intact. Now open the door, or I’m going to find out if all those extra nerve endings you’ve got make you more sensitive to pain.”

  “You wouldn’t,” she gasped.

  I twisted a little harder, and dislocated her shoulder. Her scream echoed through the hall.

  “Open the door right now!” I ordered. “You’ve got three seconds. Two. One.”

  She frantically slapped at the biometric panel with her good arm, and the heavy security door began to rumble open. I took a moment to make sure there weren’t any hidden turrets in the security checkpoint, and pushed Lilia through in front of me.

  “I’m sorry, Mistress. I’ll be good. Please don’t hurt me anymore.” She babbled.

  “You’re not fooling me again, Lilia. Now shut up and open the other door.”

  “But Mistress, you-”

  I broke one of her fingers. She screamed, and sagged in my grip.

  “Now!” I barked. “Three. Two.”

  She shook her head. “Promise you won’t call the Security Directorate.”

  I took the broken finger in my free hand, and twisted it. That got me another ragged scream.

  “No talking, no delays, I know your marines are on the way and I’m not letting you buy any time. If they catch up with us I’ll kill you before they can take me down. Now open the door, or the next one will be worse. Three. Two. One.”

  She slapped the scanner.

  I dragged her into the elevator, and Lilia obediently started it rumbling down the shaft. She was still crying, but I made myself ignore the tears streaming down her cheeks. No matter how pitiful she looked, she was just trying to manipulate me again.

  Twenty seconds for the elevator to make it down to the parking level, and the door there had been armored too. This was taking too long. What else could I do to buy time? Their security was bound to be monitoring us by now, but maybe I could make that work for me.

  “My bots will call for help if they’re attacked, or if I don’t show up in a few minutes,” I said. “So your cover is going to be blown if I don’t make it out of here. But I don’t care about your revolution. If your friends let me get to my truck I’ll let you go, and head back to my ship without calling security.”

  Lilia wiped her eyes. “You broke my arm.”

  “You tried to brainjack me. I’d say I still owe you a few. Are you going to cooperate now?”

  “Yes, Mistress. I’ll be a good girl.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Can the act, Lilia. I heard your whole conversation with the trolls.”

  “I can’t help it, Mistress. I have a submission reflex, and you tripped it hard. I’m going to have nightmares for weeks.”

  “Maybe you’ll remember that the next time you’re picking out victims, and leave the innocent spacer girls who don’t have anything to do with your problems alone.”

  The lift reached the bottom. I pushed Lilia towards the security panel. “Open it.”

  She hesitated. I sighed, and took hold of another finger. “Three seconds, Lilia. Two.”

  She opened the door. Thank the goddess. Her friends must still be arguing about what to do, or maybe they were following her lead. The armored panel slid out of the way with what seemed like agonizing slowness, until I realized I’d dropped into combat time. One centimeter. Two. Three.

  The instant the gap was wide enough I was diving through it, already screaming for help.

  “Smoke, Ash, cover me!”

  I sent a frantic com call while I sprinted for the truck. Two long strides, and the call was answered.

  “Chief West, help! A bunch of crazy rebel androids tried to brainjack me. I got out of the building, but they have powered armor troops somewhere around here. What do I do?”

  “Alice? Can you get to the truck?” He asked calmly.

  “Yes, Chief. I’m almost there, and my dragons are laying down cover.”

  Smoke swooped through the air behind me, breathing out a cloud of gray fog that blocked almost all of my sensors. Ash belched up a puff of microbots that hid in the cloud, waiting for a target to try running through it. I was halfway to the truck, and it was already starting up at my order.

  “Good job. Get in the truck and haul ass out of there, girl. I’ve got security teams ready to defend the ship, so once you get here you’re safe.”

  I piled into the cab, and the heavy vehicle rose a meter into the air on its lift field. Its acceleration was pretty sluggish, since I had twenty tons of bots and boxes in the back. At least that meant Smoke and Ash didn’t have any trouble catching up.

  “On my way, Chief,” I said. “Should I call the cops?”

  “Hell, no. Never involve the locals if you can avoid it, Alice. Any sign of pursuit?”

  I took a look through the rear-view camera. Nothing but smoke.

  “Not yet, Chief. There’s a smoke cloud between me and the building I was in, and my dragons aren’t picking up anything in it. I think I might have gotten away.”

  “Don’t let your guard down yet, kid. Stay on the line with me, and keep your eyes peeled until you get back. I’m going to let the captain know what’s happening.”

  “Yes, Chief.” Great. The last thing I wanted was to get the captain’s attention.

  I’d just pulled onto the main transitway when a groundcar came flying out of an alley a few blocks back, wobbling and swerving like nothing I’d ever seen. Was it malfunctioning? No, it was under manual control. There were six trolls crammed into the little vehicle, and the one at the controls was swearing so loud I could almost make out the words over the traffic noise.

  I gulped. “Oh discord, they’ve found me.”

  “Keep calm, Alice. They don’t want the cops’ attention either, remember? Just stay in the truck and keep driving.”

  A hatch in the top of the car slid open, and a troll stood up. She snarled at me, and raised a big tube to her shoulder. Oh, shit.

  “Smoke! Cover us!”

  Good thing my dragons were still riding on top of the cab. Smoke breathed out a fresh cloud that covered the truck just as the troll pulled the trigger. Her weapon vomited out a swarm of mini-missiles, and I had a momentary glimpse of them rushing towards me on jets of fire before they were hidden by the billowing smoke.

  Unable to see their original target, the missiles did their best to find us anyway. I heard explosions, and a crash of heavy transports colliding with each other. But whatever they were hitting, it wasn’t us.

  The cloud that surrounded the truck only lasted a few seconds. Then we left it behind. I looked back to find half the transitway blocked by a smoke-wreathed mass of wrecked vehicles.

  Ouch. Guess these self-driving transports didn’t know how to handle being blinded by a military smokescreen.

  Threat destroyed! Smoke sent proudly. Empty now.

  Ash bounded back to the rear of the truck. Ready! Scanning for threats.


  “Amateurs,” Chief West said, sounding disgusted. “What do these idiots think they’re doing? They’re going to have a hell of a time getting away now. Why are they so pissed off with you, anyway?”

  “I don’t know! We got into a little fight while I was trying to get away, but what was I supposed to do? Let them capture me?”

  “No, that would be worse. Shit! Watch out, girl!”

  A battered groundcar emerged from the smoke cloud. Oh, great. There was no way I was going to outrun them in this lumbering truck, and the ship was still a couple of kloms away.

  “Chief? Now would be a good time to tell me the truck secretly has a laser cannon under the hood, or something.”

  “I’m afraid not. Damn it, station security is going to throw a fit over this. I’m sending a pair of warbots to intercept you, Alice. ETA one minute.

  The troll in the sunroof was trying to line up shots with a laser rifle now. Ash spat out puffs of smoke to mess up her aim, but the little dragon would run out of smoke mixture soon. I didn’t have a minute.

  What else could I do? I catalogued my resources, wracking my brain for a useful strategy. I was still wearing my spacesuit, but the armor wasn’t rated against rifles. I had Smoke and Ash, but they were mostly designed more for bar fights than car chases. I also had a cargo truck, with two medium and four light loading bots in the back. Oh, and a lot of cargo that I’d probably have to pay for if it got damaged.

  Wait. That was it.

  The cargo bots had radio control links, and I could configure a datalink to let me see through their eyes. So I could drive one remotely, and I’d seen them in operation enough to get a decent feel for how they moved. This could work.

  The car was getting closer now. More trolls leaned out the passenger windows on both sides, waving pistols. One of them fired off a burst, and a rain of bullets bounced off the pavement ahead of me.

  Wait, she missed? How the heck did she manage to miss? Never mind. I was only going to get one shot at this, so I’d better get it right.

  I had Ash lay down a big smoke screen, using up the rest of his supplies in the process. But it meant that they couldn’t see when one of the medium loading bots jumped out of the back of the truck, slid to a stop, and then turned around and started lumbering back down the road towards them.

  The bot cleared the smoke screen, and I got a good look at my pursuers through its cameras. The driver’s eyes went wide when she spotted the four hundred kilogram bot in the road not thirty meters in front of her, and she spun the wheel frantically. But loading bots can move surprisingly fast, and there wasn’t much time to react. I sent it running left to stay in her path, and then the car was plowing into it at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.

  The impact wrecked the bot, of course. But it smashed up the car pretty well, too. The wreck ended up tumbling across the road to crunch into the side of the transitway.

  Chief West chuckled. “That got the job done. You’re a ruthless little git, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, are you looking through the cameras? I’m trying not to hurt them any more than I have to. Look, I think their heads are all intact. The docs can fix them back up, right?”

  “No hospital in this station is going to bother with an android who doesn’t have an owner, Alice. Especially after they caused all this commotion.”

  “Oh.”

  Well, maybe that was why they were so mad? I looked back at the smoke and fire behind me, and was struck by a horrible realization.

  “Um, Chief? I’m not going to have to pay for all that damage, am I?”

  Chapter 8

  The local police might be incompetent at preventing violence, but they were great at prosecuting offenders. I’d barely made it back to the ship and handed off my cargo when a squad of port proctors showed up with a warrant for my arrest. Well, they called it detainment, but I didn’t see much difference.

  I was a little shocked when Chief West told me to go with them.

  “The captain will sort things out,” he told me. “They just want to make sure you don’t ‘mysteriously disappear’ before the hearing. Normally they wouldn’t bother, but that thing on the expressway turned into a big mess.”

  I slumped. “I guess so. Can you make sure the local security guys know that there’s a group of rebels holed up at that address I was at? If they’re going to try to kill me and get me arrested I at least want them to lose their base.”

  “Already done,” he told me. “Now go with the proctors, and don’t cause any more trouble. Oh, and don’t talk to anyone. Anything you say will probably get used against you, so save it for the hearing.”

  So I was escorted off the ship by four trolls in powered armor and a pair of bots that looked like giant bugs. We all piled into the back of a big armored transport, and they spent the whole trip eying me like I might suddenly go crazy and try to murder them all.

  Once we arrived at the Port Authority office they sent me through prisoner processing, which meant I had to give up my space suit and go through a thorough security screening. Good thing it was all automated, because I had to go through the decontamination system naked. Once I was clean, dry and certified weapon-free the bots gave me an ugly orange jumpsuit to wear, and another group of trolls and warbots escorted me to a holding cell.

  Naturally the cell isolated me from the datanet, so I couldn’t call anyone or even try to research how much trouble I was in. All I could do was sit and worry.

  For hours.

  Would Captain Sokol really come for me? He’d been nice enough to give me a chance, and I’d already messed it up. Why would he go to any more trouble over me? Especially if they might fine the ship for all the damage I’d caused.

  What would happen to me if he didn’t show? I had no idea, but it couldn’t be good. Would they make me work off my debt? Throw me in prison? Sell me to slavers?

  Did they do capital punishment in the Hoshida System? No, with their attitude there was no way they’d execute a human for killing serfs. Especially since it was their own stupid fault if anyone died. I’d tried so hard to be careful. I didn’t want to kill anyone.

  Why wasn’t I more upset about it, though? In the vidshows the heroine always cried and blamed herself and thought she was a terrible person if she had to kill someone, and her friends had to hug her and reassure her that she’d only done what was necessary. But I hadn’t been stopping a nuclear terrorist, or saving the colony from a nanoplague. I was just protecting myself as best I could, and I…

  I felt a little sad about it. Maybe I would have done things differently if I’d known better. But maybe not. Jenki and Renit had been dangerous, and if I’d given them even a moment to react they might have captured me again. Or killed me. I felt kind of bad about killing some poor escaped serf who just wanted to free her people, but not bad enough to let them kill me instead.

  Did that make me a monster? My upbringing said yes. That only a sociopath would kill people just for her own benefit, and people like that need to be dealt with for the good of the community. Was that true, or was it just more of the self-serving propaganda the matrons pushed on us?

  I realized I had no idea. I didn’t really believe in the values the matrons had tried to teach me, but I didn’t have anything else to believe in either. I didn’t know what to think.

  I felt my eyes start to water, and wiped the tears away before they could start. I really was hopeless, wasn’t I? If I got out of this mess I needed to learn to do better.

  If.

  No, I was being stupid. They weren’t going to execute a human over something like this, and any other punishment would be over someday. I’d just have to tough it out somehow.

  Unless they decided I wasn’t human.

  That stunner had completely scrambled my brain, just like it was supposed to. But it hadn’t slowed me down at all, because apparently the human-looking brain in my skull was just camouflage. The real me must be hidden somewhere else. An AI running on a network of nanocomputers
, or something weird like that.

  Something nonhuman. Worse, something more than human.

  Humans with sensory enhancements have to switch views from one sensor to another, because their brains can’t handle processing three or four different kinds of vision at the same time. I could. I had enhanced versions of all the normal human senses, but that was only scratching the surface. I could see the radio spectrum, a ghostly world of translucent objects lit by the flickering glow of a million transmitters. My passive sonar looked similar, with less range but better resolution. The whole surface of my skin reported light, heat and radiation levels with enough precision to give me a blurry sense of my immediate surroundings. I could see the electrical fields radiating from the wiring in the walls of my cell, and the magnetic fields the little electric motors in the camera mounts gave off.

  All at the same time, all perfectly integrated, without even thinking about it. That had to be, what, a hundred times more processing power than a human brain? More?

  On Felicity they taught us that transhuman entities are always insane monsters who want to wipe out humanity. Space Nazis at best, or paperclip maximizers at worst. I’d been afraid to look at what other colonies thought about that, and now I couldn’t access the datanet. If they figured it out would the local police just shrug it off? Or would they decide today’s incident was just the start of a mad killing spree, and get rid of me while they had the chance?

  I didn’t know, and all I could do was sit and worry.

  It didn’t get any better when the guards showed up to escort me to the hearing. They sat me on a low bench in the middle of the room, where I had to look up at everyone else. In front of me there was a tall box where a harried-looking older man sat, reading something I couldn’t see. To each side there was a lower box with room for several people in it. The captain was there, in the box to my right, but he looked really mad. In the box to my left there was a man in a fancy uniform I didn’t recognize, who didn’t look any happier than the captain.

  As soon as the guards stepped away from me a big field emitter buried in the floor came on, throwing up a deflector shield between me and the rest of the room. It was strong enough to stop heavy mass driver rounds, which made the tractor field holding me to the bench complete overkill. Well, that wasn’t a good sign.