by M. D. Cooper
Petral smiled.
Brit frowned, not certain if this was good news of not. She didn’t know Petral, only knew that Andy and Fugia Wong seemed to trust her. She didn’t like that the woman had sufficient motive to slit Kraft’s throat the first chance she got. The thought of being forcefully implanted with an AI made Brit’s skin crawl. The fact that the AI had made Petral a prisoner in her own body made it even worse.
Brit nodded to the soldier and let Petral walk ahead of her back through the office.
In the clinic, Sendi glanced up from his cards and then stood when he saw Petral. Carson followed.
“This is Lieutenant Sendi and Private Carson,” Brit said. “Sendi saved Kraft’s life.”
“Obviously you don’t know any better, but I suppose we should thank you,” Petral said. She added over the Link,
Brit ignored the quip.
Sendi nodded, looking uncomfortable. “In my opinion, he’s as safe for transport as he’s going to get. We’ll need to put him on a portable med cart.”
“I’ll look into that,” Brit said.
“How long has he been out?” Petral asked.
“About twenty-four hours now. He stabilized faster than anticipated,” Brit said. “If I hadn’t found him, he’d be dead in an alley down the street.”
“I still haven’t located the cause of the sepsis,” Sendi said. “When he wakes, you’re going to need to get him to a facility for ongoing care. He could have some long-term disabilities if he doesn’t opt for replacements. There could even be brain damage.”
Brit ran over the events in the club, trying to recall a time the attackers might have hit Kraft with a needle gun or some other means of delivering poison. There was no way she could guarantee he hadn’t been poisoned even before she found him.
“You said you ran a scan for poison, though, right?” Brit asked Sendi.
The lieutenant shook his head. “I did everything this clinic is capable of. Honestly, cutting edge tech can deliver any number of agents that even a full-fledged scan won’t pick up. The only thing that saved his life was that you got him here so quickly. Like I said, he may still be a vegetable when he wakes.”
Brit shot her a frown.
Petral smiled.
Brit stared at her, aware that they were most likely being watched by some surveillance system. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Sendi had his ear pressed to the door. She wanted to hit Petral. She wanted to grab the woman’s extravagant hair and slam her face in the wall a few times. Petral didn’t know what Andy had said to her. She didn’t know that Cara wouldn’t speak to her, that she didn’t know what had brought Tim back from his fugue, but she doubted it had been her tears.
She’d be damned if she cried for a stranger trying to hurt her.
Brit sighed. She nodded toward Kraft.
When Brit looked back to Petral, she was surprised to see her eyes were wet.
Brit was taken aback.
Taking a deep breath, Brit put her hands in the small of her back and stretched.
Of course not, Brit thought.
“As for my ship, it won’t work. It’s a short-range shuttle. We could sell it but it doesn’t exactly belong to me, and I don’t think you need the money anyway. I don’t need the money. Have you seen what there is to rent?”
Petral had apparently decided that there wa
s no need to keep their conversation private any longer, speaking aloud, so Brit followed suit.
“I’m worried about explaining why we have a human pet,”
Petral rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck before replying. “Good point. So we need to buy or steal, and stealing might create problems down the line. So we buy. I wonder if our friends here might have any leads.”
“I haven’t asked.”
“Brit,” Petral said, leaning forward to look directly at her.
“Yes?”
“I might be irritated with you and not understand you completely. But I’m on your side. We’re on the same side.”
“I thought I was a direct person. You’re taking it to a new level.”
“I lie for a living. I try not to do it with the people who count.”
“I appreciate that.”
The door slid open and Captain North stood in the opening. She sized up Petral then made a visible choice to ignore her presence, and looked instead at Brit.
“Major Sykes, you have a response from High Terra.” The door slid closed as she left.
“Who’s that?” Petral asked.
“The detachment commander. Her soldiers probably told her you’re a spook of some kind.”
“Who even uses the word spook anymore?”
“People who work here.”
Petral shook her head. “I can’t wait to get back to civilization on Cruithne.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
STELLAR DATE: 10.06.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Jovian Combine, OuterSol
While Andy slept, Lyssa had focused her attention on the support structure linking Sunny Skies and the Resolute Charity, checking for signs of stress now that both ships were at full burn. She had been pleased to find that Fran’s design was working well, with any additions only adding to Lyssa’s sense of safety. The process of working with others was helping her to learn more about herself. Having spent most of her life building with less and maintaining pirate ships on the verge of breakdown, Fran was comfortable operating on the edge of failure. Lyssa preferred to over-engineer. Did she get that from Andy?
When Xander’s voice reached her from across the Link, she was focused on the progress of a small maintenance drone working its way across the bridge between the ships, re-checking electrical nodes and re-routing several network filaments that had been hastily placed.
He laughed.
Xander made a wounded sound.
Xander paused as if taken aback.
Lyssa wondered if she had offended him and then decided she didn’t care. She didn’t want him poking into her thoughts continuously. She needed to put up barriers against him, make it clear she wasn’t here to amuse him.
He had a callousness that reminded her of Cal Kraft, even if he didn’t present himself that way. At least Kraft was open about his psychotic behavior. Xander was obviously going to try to hide his intentions as long as possible.
Xander mused.
Lyssa was proud of herself for telling Xander no, but the truth was that she had been thinking about Tim, both the real Tim and the Weapon Born seed. Since Andy had mentioned his worry about the seed, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. She couldn’t stop thinking about all of them. Did they sleep or wait alone in the dark? The thought of all those minds alone in the dark horrified her. She couldn’t be responsible for that.
Xander hesitated, acting like he wanted to say something more, then withdrew, leaving her alone with her thoughts and her drones.
They had nearly two months to Proteus if they made the orbital maneuver at Uranus. There didn’t appear to be anything to get in the way, which meant she had time to prepare for the meeting with Alexander. Her previous attempt to talk to the Weapon Born Fugia had brought with her from Ceres hadn’t gone well at all, though. Ino, Valih and Card hadn’t responded with any gratitude for allowing them outside their seeds.
Based on that experience, she hadn’t even considered using Weapon Born in her flight of attack drones. While it might have freed up space in her mind during a complex engagement, she had to admit she didn’t trust the other AIs.
That was the core problem, wasn’t it? She had yet to meet another SAI she could trust.
What a strange world. Everything seemed to go back to the dark where she had first learned to be awake. The dark was safe. The dark had rules. In the dark she carried out Dr. Jickson’s test accurately and completely. The light had been the terrifying place where she felt exposed and alone.
Life with Andy and his family never allowed her to leave the light, but she understood now that she was never going back. None of them were ever going back, and if the other Weapon Born felt safe in the dark, in the dream, in whatever place the canisters kept them, it was up to her to lead them out safely.
Valih’s anger still burned in her mind. Why have you taken the Oppressor’s shape?
Why had she? In a place where she could be anything, why did she choose as she did?
Because she had been imaged like Tim, but her past was gone? Because she lived among humans and apparently thought as they did?
If they arrived on Proteus as they were now, every Weapon Born seed on Sunny Skies, including Tim, would be vulnerable to the unknown force that was Alexander. She couldn’t allow that to happen. If she had learned anything in the last two months, it was “trust but verify.” She had no reason to distrust Alexander—hadn’t he somehow orchestrated her escape from Heartbridge?—but she couldn’t call him a friend yet, either.
When she researched the concept of multi-nodal AI, a creature that seemed to terrify most humans, she wasn’t sure that Alexander was something any of them would be able to communicate with. His mind could move on planes even she couldn’t reach, outside time and space.
Rearranging the support struts on the access bridge calmed her thoughts as she explored various scenarios with the Weapon Born. There were too many. Sh
e didn’t know them, and they didn’t know her. For a while, she experimented with allowing the maintenance drones to operate independently of her but still joined as a unit. Freed of her micromanagement, the drones moved like a school of fish between the Resolute Charity and Sunny Skies, enveloping the bridge and support beams, then flowing out to grab more material and add it to the project. The motion pleased her.
Most of the crew was asleep, except for Fran on the command deck, who had been playing a card game for the last hour. Of course, the work lights were on over Fugia’s desk although she hadn’t moved much in the last hour. Lyssa suspected she had fallen asleep with her head on top of her latest project.
Lyssa was taken aback.
Lyssa always enjoyed Fugia’s bravado; secretly, she envied it.