“What happened, Boss Lady?”
“Wolf killed him.”
“You mean Cypher?”
“No, it was definitely Wolf.” She remembered the blue eyes, so intense, so full of love. And the warning to stay out of it. Even now, he insisted on protecting her.
She gripped her twisted fingers and pulled them straight, letting the pain burn away the confusion and doubt she felt. The sensation of her cells moving beneath her skin felt sluggish as they struggled to reorder themselves and heal the breaks, but the ache remained. And the emptiness inside.
“But why kill Costos? He was one of us.”
“No. He turned on me and Wolf had to stop him. I suspect Tritico sent him to get me out of the way so Cypher could get a shot at Ari. Costos might even have had orders to clean up the mess, to finish off Cypher when he accomplished his mission. If Wolf hadn’t been here, I’d be the one dead on the floor.”
“Then I don’t understand. If it was Wolf, why did he run away? Why not just pull his spike and get rid of that Cypher character once and for all?”
Fitz shook her head. “Too many questions, maybe. If he showed up here now, he’d be connected to the assassin. I’d like to think it’s all over now, that Wolf will be waiting for us at home when we get back, but Cypher won’t give up that body easily. He’ll fight to regain control.”
“Yeah, I could feel both of them inside him, fighting for dominance. It felt weird. Creepy.”
A pair of armored marines clattered through the hatch, followed by Hazel Mandisa and her Captain.
Wellborn hurried to the console, shut down the last of the alarms, resealed the shuttle bay and began checking for damage. The XO eyed the body, then stepped around it and placed a hand on Fitz’s shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah, but the assassin’s gone. Took one of the construction pods and went out the airlock.”
“We noticed. The control panel on the bridge lit up like a whorehouse during shore leave when he blasted out of there.”
“Hazel, I need you to pack up Costos’ body in a stasis box and ship it down to Imperial Medical. Tell them to treat it as a Level One bio-hazard.” Fitz ignored her friend’s puzzled look.
Wellborn turned from the board. “We lost both pods and anything that wasn’t stowed properly, but there’s little damage except for a few monitors in this room. He programmed in an emergency blow, overriding my captain’s security protocols. Only an executive level Fleet access code could do that, so how in Malick’s Hell did he get that?”
Fitz cleared her throat. “We’ve had a few incursions into our computer systems recently.”
Wellborn’s startled glare expressed his opinion on that subject quite nicely. He nodded his head toward the empty bay. “That would have been one hell of a ride. Do you think he survived it?”
Fitz certainly hoped so. “Maybe. Probably, with the luck we’ve been having trying to catch this guy. What about Ari…, the Emperor?”
“She’s still on the bridge,” Mandisa said. “And madder than a wet cat that we messed up her fun.”
“She’ll get over it. When do we dock?” The whisper of air through the ventilation system was the only other sound; no vibrations from the engines.
“We don’t, for now,” said Wellborn. “We’re sitting fifty klicks off the station, out of the traffic lanes. No way I’m taking a ship in if there’s any possibility of a bomb aboard that’ll blow out an entire docking bay.”
“I doubt there’s a chance of that; the bomb would have to be small, with a limited blast radius.”
“How so?” Mandisa asked.
“He snuck it, or its components, through security. Anything powerful enough to destroy a ship would have registered on the scanners. Unless he went down to Marine country and pulled something from their munitions stores.”
“No, I was with him pretty much all the time; he never went down there.”
“You never left him alone, even for a few minutes?”
“Well, yeah, in my office. I stepped out to sign off on the repair checklist. That’s why a pack of ensigns is tearing apart my quarters and pawing through my underwear drawer.”
“Then his explosive source will be something small. A weapon’s power core. Did he have a sidearm?”
“Of course,” Mandisa said. “Don’t you black jack…, ah, SpecOp agents, always go around armed?”
“And you didn’t ask him to surrender it when he came aboard?”
“You know what it’s been like these past few years. No one’s had the nerve to tell an augie what he can and can’t do. We’ve all been walking pretty softly around them.”
Fitz nodded. “I’m sure he counted on that. If the power core from his pistol is all he had to work with, then we’ve got some time.”
“How do you figure?” Wellborn asked.
“Timing, Captain. We were early. He’s not interested in blowing up your ship; he’s only after the Emperor. We have almost an hour before her original arrival time, and with such a small blast radius, he’d have to be sure she’d be in the immediate area. He’ll have left the bomb somewhere along her itinerary. She planned to start on the bridge…”
“But he never when up there,” Mandisa said.
Fitz nodded, striding out of the control room and back toward the stairs. “So we can rule that out for now but, just in case, have your bridge crew take a careful look around—air ducts, access tubes, that kind of stuff. Jumper, I want you back on the bridge with the Emperor.”
“And Faydra. Right, Boss Lady.” The cat dashed away.
As the chrono in Fitz’s inhead counted off the minutes, they traversed the ship, visiting crew quarters, mess hall and environmental, eventually ending up outside engineering.
“This is no good,” Fitz said. “Ari wouldn’t be in any of these places long enough for him to get the timing right. It needs to be someplace she planned to be for some time. The conference room.” She raced back to A deck, leaving the Captain and XO behind.
The bomb threat had interrupted the mess staff’s preparations for the ceremony, but cups, coffee urns, and pitchers of water occupied the center of the table. Fitz began a methodical check beneath it, under every chair, and inside the ornate sideboard. The frame of the viewport underwent a careful inspection before she palmed the blast shield down to seal it. Where else could it be? This had to be the spot. She felt sure this was where Cypher would have set up his attack. But where was it, dammit?
Mandisa stepped through the door. “It could be anywhere in here. Pike was all over, scanning everything.”
“It wasn’t Pike. The assassin’s name is Cypher.” Fitz dragged her hands through her hair, wincing at the pain still lingering in her fingers. “And you didn’t leave him alone, not for a second? Remember, he’s an augie; a few seconds would be all he needed.”
The XO shook her head. “No, wait, I did step out to answer an ensign’s question. And when I came back…” He words stalled and she glanced up, her eyes narrowing. “…he was standing on the table. Said he found some kind of scanning anomaly in the light fixture.”
Fitz jumped up, kicking urns and glasses aside as she worked her way around the edges of the fixture. Lifting the heavy glass, she scanned the darkness inside the recess, but there was little room, only the narrow channel the cover rested within. She ran her fingers in, searching the top of the glass, but found nothing. Where was it? Only a few more centimeters and she’d have searched it all. She pushed up the last section and found it, balanced on a tiny ledge where the wiring left the ceiling and attached to the fixture. She froze.
“Colonel?” The XO asked.
“Yeah, it’s here.” Fitz’s words were barely above a whisper.
The bomb resembled a wad of spacer’s tape, with the glint of metal visible in a few spots and wires looping out at odd angles. She reached to pick it up, but switched hands to use the uninjured one. Dropping this could be a fatal mistake.
She squatted, easing the device to the table to
p, then hopped down and crouched to study it. With all the tape, she could see little of the components. That would all have to come off first.
Mandisa broke the silence. “Colonel, we’ve only got fifteen minutes until the Emperor was originally due to come aboard. We’re running out of time. Can we chuck it out the airlock?”
“Do you want to be the one carrying it through the ship to the closest lock?”
Wellborn and his XO exchanged a nervous glance. “Not me,” the captain said. “And we’re not dumping it down the recycler either, the resulting blast when the power core is ripped apart would be far worse than the original detonation.”
“Bring me some tools,” Fitz said. “Wire cutters, pliers, probes, anything small. And I need the two of you out of this room. Get back to the closest pressure doors and seal them.”
“You’re going to defuse it?”
“You’ve got a better idea? Wellborn, you said your shuttle bay escaped major damage?”
“Yes, it’s serviceable.”
“Can it handle a Chimera-class shuttle?”
“If the pilot’s good.”
“Lizzy’s better than good. This bomb isn’t big enough to destroy the ship, but to be safe, I want the Emperor and her guards off it. If she argues with you, tell her to call me. Now get out of here, and I don’t want to see either of you back here unless you have a tool box in your hands.”
She activated her comm, patching a call through to her ship. “Lizzy, I need you over here, double time.” She quickly brought the ship’s avatar up to speed.
“My clearance is coming through right now; I’ll be there in ten. Tell the captain to have his shuttle airlock open and waiting. I’m coming in hot.”
Fitz rose, circling the table to study the bomb from every angle. She picked up one of the scattered spoons and lifted the corner of the tape warily, exposing the edge of the power cell. What was the thing stuck to the top of it? Gnawing her lower lip, she pulled the tape back farther to expose the open end of a canister packed with hundreds of tiny black needles. Her breath stalled.
Cypher hadn’t needed much of an explosion; just enough to blast the deadly darts throughout the conference room, killing every Lazzinair inside.
The door hissed open and Miah Lister rounded the table, placing a tool box down with exaggerated care.
“What are you doing here?” Fitz asked.
“Sounded like you could use some help. I am an engineer, remember?”
Hazel Mandisa appeared at Fitz’s other side, sparking an exasperated remark, “Are we having a party here?”
The XO smiled. “Quit your bitching and get on with it.”
Lister began extracting instruments, lining them up in precise rows next to the device. She picked up a needle tool and probed the tape-wrapped bundle. “I’ve seen these before. During the War we cobbled together hundreds of these little beauties. Surprise packages for the bugs.”
Fitz wondered if Lister realized she’d just admitted to being over eighty years old. Mandisa hadn’t seemed to pick up on the slip, but there might be questions later about how such a young looking woman had fought in that long ago conflict.
“What’s this?” Lister reached a finger toward the dart-packed canister.
Fitz blurred out a hand to grab her wrist. “Don’t touch it.”
The other woman frowned. “We need to get some of this tape off to get a better look, but I think I know what we’re dealing with here.”
“Agreed.” Fitz picked up the scissors and a pair of needle nose pliers, and lifted up the corner of the tape, preparing to cut when her comm sputtered to life. Startled, she twitched. The bomb slid across the table and skidded to a stop. Three sharp intakes of breath filled the room.
“I’ve arrived, Colonel,” Lizzy said. “Mamma Dragon and her six white chicks are boarding now. And the cats.”
“Get them out of here. Straight home. Lock her out of the controls so she can’t make any unscheduled detours.”
“What about you, Colonel?”
“I’ll find my own way home. Go. And, Lizzy, don’t call me back until you’re down.” That should give them enough time to deal with the device, but to be safe Fitz shut down her comm and shuffled all unnecessary functions to standby, leaving only the scrolling digits of her chrono up in her inhead display.
She rolled her neck and bent over her patient, beginning the surgery of removing the tape like so much dead skin. Lister lifted away each piece as it came free.
“Hazel, stop breathing down my neck,” Fitz grumbled.
The XO shifted away. “Sorry.”
Finally, with the tape a pile of fragments, the canister was exposed, wedged between the timing mechanism and the power cell. Afraid to touch even the case, Fitz lifted it away with the pliers and eased it into the now empty tool box, snapping down the lid. With that out of the picture, all she had to face was an explosion, and she might be able to survive that.
Lister delved through the exposed device’s wires and components. “Just a power core from a sidearm, and the timer looks to be from a personal appointment tablet. So simple, but effective. I must have seen Wolf assemble hundreds of these things.”
Fitz looked up at the woman sharply, but Lister seemed not to notice her scrutiny.
“From here on it’s a piece of cake.” The engineer pointed out wires, in a precise pattern and order.
Fitz’s cutters hovered over the fat red wire leading into the power cell. “Not this one?”
Lister shook her head. “That’s a good way to get blown to smithereens. It’s a failsafe, to keep someone else from defusing the bomb. You have to cut the others first.”
“Who were you worried about, besides the bugs?”
“He did tell you that some of the bugs weren’t as stupid as…, well, as bugs, didn’t he?”
Following the directions, Fitz snipped each wire in turn, finally coming to the last one. The one she would have cut immediately if Lister hadn’t been there. She placed the now harmless pieces in the tool box.
Tension flowed out of the room with a collective sigh.
“Hazel, you can go tell your captain that he can take his ship into dock now,” Fitz said.
“Gladly.” Mandisa rushed out the door.
“Very good, Colonel.” Lister rounded the table. “Back at the Atrium, I wasn’t sure about you. I had you pegged for some sleazy SpecOps bimbo trying to manipulate Wolf. Not that he’d ever let you get away with that. But I was wrong. You’re just the kind of badass he needs to keep him in line. And I suspect he knows that.” She patted Fitz on the back as she left. “I’ll bet the two of you will have an interesting future together.”
Alone, Fitz stared at her shaking hands. She hoped with every centimeter of her being that Lister was correct.
__________
Cypher walked, peeling off pieces of the vac suit and dropping them in his wake. Awareness returned, and he stopped, seeing his surroundings for the first time. Only a few seconds ago there had been nothing, only blackness. He remembered blasting out of the shuttle bay, but nothing more.
“You okay, Bud?” a voice said.
Cypher looked around. He seemed to be in a maintenance area. Behind him, a trail of castoff pieces of vac suit led back to a landing bay. The inner airlock stood open, revealing the construction pod lying in a welter of broken parts and bent antennas, its side smashed in and manipulator arms twisted at useless angles.
“Hell of a job flying that thing in here. You sure you don’t want me to call a medic? Looks like you hit your head; there’s blood on it.” The anonymous voice continued to prattle at him.
Cypher rubbed his hand across his bristly head, fingers coming away sticky with blood. He looked down at the bottom of the suit, still encasing his legs, then scraped it down his hips and kicked it away. Ignoring the startled yells, he walked toward an exit, moving faster with each step, until by the time he reached the station concourse beyond, he was in a flat-out run.
The Othe
r had brought them in on the commercial side, bypassing the problems of getting back out through military security. He had no memory of their flight; his mind partner had been in charge the entire time, saving them both. Why hadn’t he just pulled his spike, flushed Cypher away with a tap on his mental delete button?
He couldn’t stay here. They were probably already searching for him. The cubical he’d rented earlier would offer a hiding place until he figured out what to do. Head down, he set off across the crowded concourse, ignoring the wary looks his appearance drew from passersby.
Cypher wanted out, away from these games of death and power between the Smiling Man, Ransahov, and Gray Eyes. Games where his body was the battlefield and he a weapon. He planned to run as far and as fast as this body would take him, now, while The Other had relinquished control to him.
This failure had cost him a lot of money, but he still had the retainer, safely squirreled away in banks all over the Alliance. It wouldn’t set him up as comfortably as he’d hoped, but he could make more. This body’s augmentations could earn him a nice living out in the Back of Beyond, where people didn’t ask question, only wanted results.
Maybe he could track down a renegade med-tech who could cut The Other out of his mind. Was that even possible? He was the owner, the organic entity who had given rise to the thoughts, knowledge, and skills Cypher sometimes found so useful, but could he continue to control The Other? He seemed to be getting stronger, breaking through more easily.
Cypher was the invader, the trespasser, only a program running on a computer buried deep inside this body’s chest. Maybe he could escape, flee to another body? Computer programs with real human emotions and memories controlled ships, didn’t they? And androids? Could a new body be built for him?
Despite all the augmentations he carried, he didn’t want to be a machine and never feel emotions again. Or the touch of a woman, like Gray Eyes. He remembered the way she’d looked at him, love turning her eyes silver. No. Not him. She saw The Other.
Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) Page 20