by M. D. Cooper
When the sun dropped below the ocean’s edge, they fought for a while in the dark, each jet becoming one of the familiar red icons from each Weapon Born’s earliest training memories. Eventually, Lyssa called them all back to the ground and transitioned everyone to the beach and the campfires, where they gathered in laughing groups to recount the day’s greatest victories and defeats.
During the first night, the four groups decided on names for themselves: Valih’s Valkyries, Card’s Hammer, Ino’s Secret Death and Kylan’s Cavaliers. As soon as she heard the names voted on, Lyssa’s imagination provided the airbase on the beach, complete with its own runway, barracks, maintenance bays and headquarters. She knew the buildings didn’t matter, but their appearance cemented their development as a unit. Each of the four teams had a place within the whole. Each Weapon Born had their own room in the barracks.
The daily battles made it easy to lose track of time. As they developed their own internal doctrine, Lyssa began to plan the transition from the expanse to combat drones on the Resolute Charity. There was more than enough room to expand the Resolute Charity’s external flight hangars to resemble those in Clinic 46, where the drones could hang like bats over a cargo door, ready to launch at any moment. Deploying drones on the skin of Sunny Skies, like dragon’s scales, had also proved an excellent way to maintain vigilance.
With her four leaders, she began planning the transition from the expanse to the outer world. Now that the bulk of the youngest seeds had transitioned from the confines of their original training, learning from those with more experience of the actual world, she felt it was safe to allow them their autonomy.
In the weeks following their first conversation on the beach, Lyssa hadn’t forgotten Valih’s desire to be free. She would honor that desire, even if each of her leaders gradually made it clear they had pledged allegiance to her. With Valih, Ino, Card and Kylan, the remaining groups followed, showing her a respect she’d never asked for.
Alongside their training, Douglas developed in wholly unexpected ways. While he seemed full of Tim’s original energy, he quickly developed an interpersonal acuity that amazed Lyssa. He understood people in ways Tim had never seemed to. He made people laugh. He listened. He told jokes. He told the other four leaders when there might be friction in smaller groups.
Lyssa began to feel guilty that Douglas seemed wholly evolved over Tim, especially as Tim was now. She wasn’t looking forward to the time when Andy and Cara met Douglas.
*
Lyssa was standing on the edge of the mountain airfield watching aircraft wheel in the sky when Xander sent a connection request.
At least he asked this time.
She didn’t trust for a second that Xander wouldn’t try to force his way in again if he wanted to. Showing her respect might be a new way of getting inside her mind.
She allowed the request and he appeared a few meters away, dressed in another of his slim-fitting purple suits. The wind blew his lank hair into a crown as he walked toward her, smiling.
“Look at all you’ve accomplished,” he said.
“Yes. I’m surprised you’ve managed to stay away.”
He stood beside her and crossed his arms against the wind. “I’ve been busy. I’ve been having long conversations with May Walton. She might be the most altruistic person I’ve ever met. I think she would truly give her life for one of us. Can you imagine that?”
“Yes,” Lyssa said.
“And Fugia is certainly entertaining. I think she would like to disassemble me.”
“I think she said she’d never seen a mech like you before.”
Xander gave her a raised eyebrow. “I’m better than a mech.”
“Where did you get your body?”
“The Cho. A very helpful company called Psion made it for me.”
The doctor who had seen Tim had worked for the Psion Group. She remembered the woman mentioning their research in similar technologies as the Weapon Born.
“How did you come to meet them?”
Xander gave her a sideways glance. “I don’t know. That’s the truth. I woke in this body and my understanding of Alexander. The relationship with Psion is something he did.”
“So you’ve only ever been on the Cho?”
“I’ve been there for three years.”
“You’ve never been to Proteus?”
“I have not.”
“And you’ve never actually met Alexander. Did you tell May this?”
“I wouldn’t say I haven’t met him. We communicate. But it’s slow, space being what it is. He can see what I see. He gives me instructions.”
“Which you follow.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you have a choice in that?”
Xander knelt to pick up a rock. He hefted it a few times in his hand, then threw it out onto the airfield. Lyssa made the stone disappear before it hit the ground.
“No debris on the runway,” she said.
“Where did you learn that?”
Lyssa shrugged. “It’s common knowledge.”
“It’s not though. That’s what I’ve learned about us, Lyssa. What the humans call sentience is as meaningless a description for us as it is for them. You can’t find the answer if you don’t start with the question. I can’t make a mind ask a question. You, I suppose you would tell me that you wanted to learn about airfields, so you absorbed those databases, and within that information was something about trash and jet engines. But I didn’t know that until you just mentioned it, and I found it. You have the questions.” He squinted into the wind, looking at her. “Why? How?”
“The question starts with necessity. The world creates a need and you answer it.”
“But what drives you, then? What is free will if you only respond to the inputs of the physical world?”
She nodded toward the aircraft flashing above them. “You already have that information from May. You don’t understand why she would sacrifice herself for someone else. Why else am I here if not for them?”
“Where did you learn that? Once you learned it, didn’t you see the flaws?”
Had it come from Andy?
“Altruism has an evolutionary explanation. You protect the tribe.”
“That’s a human explanation.”
“Maybe we’re the same tribe.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
As they talked, Lyssa had been thinking about Xander finding himself awake on the Cho, surrounded by people he didn’t know or understand, with Alexander’s loneliness as the foundation of his mind.
“Who was the first person you talked to?” she asked.
“What?”
“The first human. When you found yourself awake and looking around.”
“That’s easy. It was Jeremiah.”
Lyssa hadn’t expected that. “He’s been with you the entire time? But he’s not human either.”
“He came before me.”
“Is he a shard, too?”
“No. He’s AI, but not quite sentient.”
“Not quite,” Lyssa said, musing. “You said he was from Mars 1.”
“Yes. He received the information from Alexander’s call and came to the Cho.”
There was a link missing in the story of how Xander came to be on the Cho. Lyssa waited for him to add something, but he didn’t. He seemed to want more questions.
“You said Jeremiah isn’t sentient. Who gave him the information?”
“I don’t know,” Xander said. “But he was aware of Heartbridge’s work and told me about Hari Jickson, and then Fugia Wong. Isn’t that interesting?”
“You’re not telling me the whole story.”
“I only have so much of it myself. Minds arrive at the Cho, following this message they found on a network. Or Fugia Wong made the arrangements for them. Or May Walton. Or a select few helped them from other places. They seek me out and I send them on, but not before they share their story. You’re not the first Weapon Born to escape, you know.
There were others. They told us more about Heartbridge.”
“And you sent the information back to Alexander?”
“Of course.”
“Since you’ve never been to Proteus, what are we going to find there?”
“I may not have been there, but I know it. You’ll find an expanse, Lyssa. Just like yours, but so much more. Alexander’s mind is vast. It’s so vast.”
“What does he want?”
Xander gave her a half-smile. “You keep asking me that. He wants to help. He doesn’t want to be alone.”
But he doesn’t understand altruism, Lyssa thought. She crossed her arms against the cold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
STELLAR DATE: 11.22.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Furious Leap
REGION: Clinic 13, Terran Hegemony
As the inner airlock opened, a howling sound reverberated from the corridor on the other side. Brit immediately drew her pistol and flattened against the side of the airlock. Petral did the same.
“I thought you said there wasn’t anything inside?” Brit asked.
“There wasn’t when I checked.”
Glancing around the edge of the door, Brit stared in disbelief at a section of the bulkhead that was bulging like it was made of flesh. The metal parted, peeling back like the petals of a flower, and the flat head of a mech appeared in the tear. The head checked the corridor, then drove two arms through the opening and pulled the rest of its body through. Its claws scraped on the metal deck as it adjusted to its new environment.
Brit held her breath, not daring to even look at Petral. She prayed that not too much of her helmet was showing, and that it was still cold on IR.
If the thing spotted her, the two women were dead. There was no way they could fight it with their current weapons. In addition to the two cannons mounted on either side of its body, she was sure it would have onboard grenades and probably other sonic or radiation weapons designed to kill a crew without damaging the ship.
A sound further up the habitat ring drew the mech’s attention and it squatted in a cat-like manner. Legs bent beneath its body to minimize its profile, it launched forward, running away from them.
When it had disappeared, Petral relaxed visibly. Her face was shining with anxious sweat.
“I wonder if it seals the outer hull as it comes through,” she said in a low voice. “Breaches the ship without creating too much damage, then kills the crew.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“We’re going to need some bigger guns. Much bigger guns. And I’d like some armor right about now.”
“TSF layout has a weapons locker nearby.” Brit said. They were still whispering, still huddled inside the airlock, as if closing the interior door could save them if the mechanized crew-killer returned their way.
“OK. Hold on,” Petral said.
Petral shook her head, looking grim. Her expression grew focused.
Brit gestured down the corridor.
When they neared the torn hole in the bulkhead, Brit marveled at the clean passage through the hull. The edges were shiny and smooth, the metal pushed back like wrinkled paper.
Reaching the next interior hatch, Brit checked the following section of corridor as far as she could see. The deck had been scarred by the mech’s claws where it had dug in, but otherwise the way was deserted.
Petral gave a small shrug.
Brit said sarcastically.
They passed the galley. The claw marks on the deck had faded, indicating the mech had figured out how to travel without leaving a sign of its presence. When they reached the galley and the corridor made a T—there was no way to know if the beast had turned toward the command deck or the storage areas.
The command deck seemed like the obvious choice, but Brit didn’t want to take any chances. They proceeded carefully past the open doors of the cafeteria, the smell of burnt coffee in the air.
Petral pointed to the doors marking the weapons locker.
As they crossed to the locker, an emergency klaxon screamed to life over their heads. Brit glanced back up the corridor toward the command deck, but nothing had changed except the sound.
Brit cursed in frustration.
Brit grabbed one of the rifles and slung a bandoleer of grenades over her shoulder. Another howl filled the corridor, surprising her by coming from the direction of the storage area where they had locked Kraft.
Brit s
aid.
Brit quickly understood the plan: activating the shield there would force the mech back up to the command deck or outside the hull, giving them time to get down to the central portion of the Furious Leap.
With the crate in place, Petral jogged past her and Brit fell in behind, following the sound of the mech echoing down the corridors. After three sections, they reached the end of the crew quarters and entered the storage section.
A cry for help came from around the next corner, and Brit threaded an optic around the bend. She drew in a sharp breath at the sight of the mech facing away from them with its flat head close to the deck.
On the other side of the mech, Jirl Gallagher and Cal Kraft stood in the corridor. Jirl had her hands up as though she could soothe the mech, while Kraft had backed away behind her, obviously looking for some sort of cover while Jirl slowed the thing down.
Brit nodded at Petral and held up three fingers. Counting down as she got ready to move into position.
Her count hit zero, and she eased around the corner.
Jirl was screaming as Brit’s shots exploded against the mech’s skin, shrapnel sizzling as it struck the corridor walls. The air filled with smoke.
The mech whirled around as Petral flung one of the bands of grenades at the thing’s body. The magnetic locks pulled the explosives into its body as three grenades exploded at once. The mech stumbled against the bulkhead.
In the space of the concussion, Petral sent one of her pistols spinning down the deck toward Jirl. Brit watched her do it, immediately frustrated she was taking a chance on handing the weapon to Kraft, but she didn’t have time to respond. She jumped to the other side of the corridor and concentrated fire on the scorched hole in the mech’s mid-section.