by M. D. Cooper
“You’re one of those people who loves the beach but can’t stand the ocean, aren’t you?” he asked pleasantly.
“What are you doing?” Lyssa demanded. “What about the others?”
“They seem to be getting along all right. Your three Weapon Born each have a ship. Even the boy with the bent arm has control of his ship. More than I can say for you, Lyssa.”
“This isn’t why I brought them all here,” Lyssa said. “Some of them have never experienced anything since they were made. You’re confusing them.”
“If they don’t survive a little trial like this, they aren’t going to make it very long out there in the human world, are they?” Xander shook his head. “I thought you were special, Lyssa. Everyone makes it sound like you’re different than the others somehow, but you don’t seem like much to me. Look how easily you let me take over your inner world.”
“She’s not like you,” Kylan said.
“No,” Xander answered, raising an eyebrow. “I’m better than she is.”
“Weren’t you just criticizing ideas about supremacy?” Kylan demanded. “Here you are acting no better than the people you seem to hate.”
“I don’t hate the humans,” Xander said. “They disgust me. There’s a difference.”
In the distance, the nearest silver ship bit into a wave and didn’t come out on the other side. “No!” Lyssa shouted.
“If you can’t save them, they’re going to die,” Xander said. “It’s simple. This is your place. Save them.”
Lyssa wanted to hit him. His smug expression smeared in the saltwater spraying her eyes. She wiped her face, anger making her hands shake. He was right, this was her place, but he was too strong.
Why though? How did he have power here?
Lyssa watched another ship crest a wave and break in two at the top, the halves tumbling into the water before disappeared beneath the white crest. The deck moved beneath her and she stumbled, losing her grip on Douglas’ hand.
The world seemed to slow as the little boy fell into the railing and then went over. She had barely blinked the salt from her eyes and he was gone. Kylan shouted beside her, grabbing at the air on the other side of the rail.
“What power do you have?” Xander shouted into the wind. “Everything will crumble around you, Lyssa. Everything will fall away unless you hold it steady. In this place, everything is born in you. If you can’t hold the center, it will spin away.”
Lyssa screamed. She pushed herself outward, driving into the bonds on the edges of her mind. He had caged her. This was territory she hadn’t explored. She hadn’t experimented with what was possible.
In the storm of her thoughts, she was drawn back to a moment with Andy soothing Tim, helping calm down. Just breathe, son. Just breath and feel yourself breathe.
Maybe this was why Tim couldn’t sit still before the imaging, couldn’t do anything but lash out. He had been caged without understanding how.
Breathe.
She wasn’t human. She could make this world however she wanted. She could make it like the white place in Dr. Jickson’s model.
She could make it dark.
Yes or no and all the states in between. That was where the terror waited. That was where humanity went insane. The urges. The drives. The thoughts they couldn’t control. The desire to assert authority over others in an attempt to control the madness.
Lyssa blanked everything out. She divided light into dark.
She placed Xander in the white place with the terrible brightness, the storm that drove out thought.
She breathed without breathing. In the silence, she reached out for the others.
She raised her voice, calling into the void.
From the dark, they answered her call.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
STELLAR DATE: 11.22.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Furious Leap
REGION: Clinic 13, Terran Hegemony
Jirl watched the asteroid explode in the holodisplay and felt ice run down her spine. Everyone on the command deck went silent for several heartbeats, until Captain Smirt’s voice pushed away the shock.
“Combat stations,” she barked. “I want sensors tracking everything coming off that asteroid and all movement in the vicinity. This is a distraction and now they’re going to hit us with the real assault.”
“Captain,” the astrogation lieutenant shouted. “I’ve got multiple fast movers closing on the Marsian and privateer ships.”
“Missiles?”
“No. They’re larger than missile. The cross-section looks like some kind of combat drone.”
“They’re Weapon Born,” Jirl said.
Smirt turned to glare at her. “What did you say?”
“This station was a storage facility for the Weapon Born seeds. They’re—They contain the starting point for sentient AIs. One of the uses is combat drones. They can also be used in mechs, or anything really.”
“What makes them any different than normal AIs?”
“They operate very well autonomously. Better than human pilots, certainly. In most tests, they defeat standard combat computers in minutes.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” Smirt said sarcastically.
Yarnes appeared in the entrance to the command deck, worry on his face. Jirl hadn’t seen him since he left with General Kade to take her back to her ship at the habitat airlock.
“Who called combat alert?” he demanded. “Captain Smirt? What’s going on?”
“The asteroid is gone, Colonel,” Smirt said, not lifting her face from the terminal she was studying at her console. “Now it looks like about two hundred combat craft are closing on the Marsian and privateer ships. Can we get this on the holodisplay?”
“There it is, Captain,” the navigator said.
Yarnes and Smirt stood in front of the holo tank for a minute, both staring at the icons moving in the display, not speaking. Large bits of debris flashed in the model before rotating away as others came into the view. The asteroid appeared to have split into several large pieces that were now smashing against each other as other bits of rubble shot outward.
“I don’t have contact with any of the Marsian breaching ships, Captain,” the navigation lieutenant said. “I think we have to assume they’re lost.”
“And Kade’s ship?” Yarnes asked.
“I don’t have it on any of the scan returns, Colonel.”
Yarnes shook his head, face filled with despair. “He led us into a trap. How could he have known to do that?”
Jirl watched him clench his fists, then turn to face her. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t see how Kraft could have possibly communicated with the clinics. He had told them where to go first but could he have let the station know they were coming?
In the floating debris modeled in the holodisplay, all she could see were the dead. There were at least a thousand people on a fully staffed research station. Were all those people dead now? Who had given that order? Who had made the plan?
“How did he do this, Jirl?” Yarnes demanded. “You’re the Heartbridge employee here. You work for Arla Reed. You’re her brain, damn it. If anyone knows how this could happen, it’s you.”
Jirl shook her head slowly, seeing the anger in his face but barely processing the words. Then she remembered what Brit Sykes had said about Kraft being attacked and poisoned back on the Cho. Someone had tried to take him out before he had a chance to pass on what he knew.
But when did they decide to do that? How could anyone have known he made it off the Resolute Charity alive?
She laughed softly.
“What?” Yarnes demanded. “What’s funny about any of this?
People are dying out there, Jirl.”
“I’m going to talk to Kraft,” she said, turning to the doorway. “You can come with me if you want.”
“I’m not leaving this command deck,” he shouted. “We’ve got a battle to fight.”
“Captain,” the navigator said. “It looks like the shuttle Petral Dulan and Brit Sykes took has flipped to a braking burn. I think they’re going to try and make it back here. Should I prep for an emergency burn from the area?”
Smirt took a deep breath. “Plot the course but hold. If anyone can make it back here, we’ll need to help them. Have you got any communication with the Marsian and Cruithne ships?”
“They’re too busy fighting to answer. I still have comm locks with them. Honestly, they’re the only thing keeping those combat drones away from us.” The lieutenant got a pained look. “Captain, should we move to engage alongside them?”
“If they’re not going to communicate with us, I don’t want to take the risk.”
“Captain,” another lieutenant shouted. “I just lost the shuttle. I’ve still got a mass return, but their engines went dark.”
“They’re trying to hide from the drones,” Smirt said. “That’s smart of them. So that means they’re definitely on their way back here. Would have been nice of them to send a damn message before they started this plan though.”
“Captain,” the navigator called out. “We’ve got a group of the combat drones breaking off from the main group. I think they’re headed in our direction.”
“Are they going to cross the path of the shuttle?” Smirt asked.
The navigator stared at her console before shaking her head. “They’re coming in on the opposite vector. But it definitely looks like they’ll get here first.”
“Wonderful. Ready the point defense cannons and get your EV suits powered up. Has everybody got their sidearms?”
One of the crew shook his head in sudden panic. “I left it in my cabin, Captain!”
“Get over to the weapons cabinet then. When we get through this, you’re getting corrective training.”
Jirl realized she had been staring at each person on the command deck, waiting for something. She didn’t know what. For Yarnes to stop her?
She turned and walked quickly into the outside corridor, caught herself on the bulkhead until her breathing steadied. She glanced back at the doorway, hoping Yarnes might follow.
She was alone. Taking a deep breath, she continued down the corridor, through an open section hatch and into the crew cabins. She would need to pass the galley and crew lounge areas before she reached the storage section. Kraft was being held in a room back near the main accessway to the habitat ring.
Jirl couldn’t help glancing into the empty rooms as she passed, thinking how strange it was to find a recreation room with paintings on the walls, a small gym with free weights, another room full of big-leafed plants, on a ship that was about to come under attack. It was entirely possible that all this was going to get sucked out into space in just a few minutes. The attackers were coming this way.
Her mind skipped to Bry, wishing she had time to at least record him a message. She wondered how terrible that would actually be, to have a recording from a parent, moments before their violent death? Better to imagine them going out quickly the same way the asteroid had cracked in half. What had happened to everyone in the clinic? She hoped it had been empty. She hoped someone had planned all this and had not just used a place full of living people as a way to start a war between Terra and Mars, the inciting event Arla had been awaiting for years.
Taking a little solace in the thought that Bry was safe, Jirl tried to think of times she might have observed people interacting with Arla in a way that seemed suspicious. Hundreds of meetings flashed through her mind, in board rooms and restaurants. Had someone leaned toward her in an intimate way? Had someone slid their gaze to her, indicating some shared knowledge that Jirl hadn’t known?
It wasn’t possible. She knew everything Arla did. She was with her boss when she woke and left after she went to bed. She sorted her communications and maintained her contacts. She had known when Arla was leaving her husband. She had known when Arla had a cancerous growth removed from her throat. There was no way Arla could hide a part of the Weapon Born program that might know of and ultimately want to assassinate Cal Kraft.
What if they were coming for Jirl as well? Rather than Bry, was it Arla she should be trying to contact right now? Would any emotion register on Arla’s Link if she knew her Jirl was about to die, killed by their own creations?
Passing the galley, she paused mentally on a meeting with Katherine Carthage. Arla and Katherine had been friends once—before the Carthage kids were kidnapped and Kylan died. The meeting was after the kidnapping but before someone calling themselves Kylan started contacting Katherine. Something about the way Katherine had looked at Arla had struck Jirl as odd—an intensity almost like hatred. But there was no way Katherine could have known, then or later, that Heartbridge had been the company behind the research that led to Kylan’s death. The connection had been hidden beneath layers and layers of shell companies, third party contracts and freelancers like Cal Kraft.
There may have been a mistake in employing Kraft as long as they had. Eventually the truth of a relationship became apparent even without the paper trail. You couldn’t hide the fact that large groups of people working on remote outposts needed necessities like toilet paper and media files. A company like Carthage Logistics, with hundreds of years of both experience and data on Sol shipping, would be able to determine what was happening at even the most remote of locations.
Like the clinics.
Jirl shook her head, fighting the idea. She attacked it from other directions, thinking of people she knew who truly did hate Arla, Heartbridge, Sentient AIs. It could always be agents from Ceres and the Anderson Collective, fighting their holy war against trans-humanism.
But, every possible threat came back to Katherine Carthage’s expression as she’d watched Arla, the look of a woman who had lost her son and nearly lost everything. Her other two children were never the same. The imaging research had scarred them, taken something away from them. It did that.
Jirl knew it was true even if she didn’t want to think about the fact, and could console herself that modern techniques no longer required a human foundation. The strains had been established. The seeds could be built from a bank of images. The fact of those early experiments could be forgotten slowly with time. Sacrifices had been necessary for the greater good.
We’re not evil, Jirl, Arla had said, laughing at her as though Jirl was a child.
An emergency siren came to life in the corridor, forcing her to cover her ears with her hands. A display over the nearest inner bulkhead hatch flashed the words Proximity Alarm followed by Hull Breach. Hull Breach.
Jirl hadn’t wanted to tell Captain Smirt and her crew about the range of capabilities in the Weapon Born drones. They were attack craft. They were also breaching and close combat mechs. Depending on the models in storage at Clinic 13, they would be tearing through the Furious Leap’s outer hull in minutes.
While they worked independently, someone had to have given the Weapon Born orders.
Running through the storage section, Jirl came to a stop in front of the door to the small cargo hold where Cal Kraft was imprisoned. She steadied herself against the window and looked inside.
Kraft was leaning against the opposite bulkhead with his arms crossed, staring at the floor. His color looked good. He might have been mostly recovered from his near-death experience. Someone must have figured the room was jail enough and removed his restraints.
Jirl put her hand on the lock control, then hesitated. Did she need to fear him? Even if he was working for Arla, he had never threatened her directly. She had been spending too much time with people who considered him dangerous.
She didn’t know what she was going to say but they didn’t have time. If he knew who was controlling
the Weapon Born, she might be able to shut them down. They might be able to communicate with them, to find a solution that would save everyone on the remaining ships.
She faced the door and activated the control panel. The lock didn’t recognize her security token.
“What?” Jirl demanded, staring at the icon indicating access was denied.
Kraft heard her voice and came to the window. She glanced up when he tapped on the plas.
“I heard the code,” he said, voice muffled.
“How is that possible?”
“One of the lieutenants told it to the other one when they brought my food down. If you Link with me, I’ll share it with you.”
“Just tell me.”
“It’s too long. We won’t get it right.”
Jirl shook her head. It wasn’t going to hurt anything to open a basic communications Link with him. She sent the connection request.
Paging through several menus, Jirl found the override entry screen and entered the string of digits. The door accepted the entry and slid open.
“I think the air smells better in that cage,” Cal said, walking through. “Why are the alarms going off?”
“We’re under attack by Weapon Born. The clinic exploded just as the breaching teams landed on its surface. The energy wave destroyed the close shuttles, but right after that, a fleet of Weapon Born attack craft appeared. I don’t know how many of the Cruithne or Marsian ships are left. A group of the attack drones are on their way here right now.”
“That’s probably got Captain Smirt frowning, hasn’t it?”
The weak version of Kraft had faded quickly. This was the Cal Kraft Jirl had been seeing in recorded reports for the last two years. Cocky and self-assured.
“Did you plan this?” Jirl asked.
Kraft had been rubbing his chin as he stared in the distance, apparently thinking. He pursed his lips and looked at Jirl.
“Me? How could I have done all this when I was in a medical coma in transit from the Cho?”