by L B Garrison
Bailey’s eyes drifted to her hands, where Mandy focused her gaze. Bailey stood. “Sorry. In the early days of personal nanomechs, many took up looking like models, some mimicked animal forms. For the most part, people today just appear like themselves with a bit of touch-up here and there.”
“You’re saying I should be happy with who I am.”
“I’m saying everyone has to decide who they are. A machine is what you are, but not who.” Bailey’s steps tickled Mandy’s armor. Bailey stopped beside Mandy’s avatar and watched the misty waters. “What are you planning?”
Mandy pulled Alex’s Tamashii from her pocket. It was warm from her body heat. “Rin. A couple of hours ago she was murdered. Her mind’s been cut to pieces by a virus, but everything is still there and I think we can put her back together. She would be a better fighter than me.”
Ginger-colored lightning crawled across the western horizon. Mandy chewed her lip, glancing occasionally at Bailey, who stared ahead at the base. The silence stretched for a moment.
“Do you believe you can move into an Orion military installation without being detected?” Bailey asked.
The white, green and red lights of the base twinkled in the mist a few miles ahead. “I’ve gotten better at controlling this body since I’ve been alone. Yes, I can.”
“That’s odd, isn’t it?”
Mandy frowned. “I think it’s because I have to do everything for myself now.”
“Not what I mean. The analogy from your time would be, that the Orions are like a state and the EC is like your federal government. They’re the same country, so to speak. Why would the EC build a weapon that can sneak through the Orion defenses? That’s perilous. Do you know the origin of the EC?”
“Cisco said there was a horrible war that killed billions and destroyed worlds. Eventually, people got tired of the killing and formed the EC to stop future wars.”
“Basically, yes, except it wasn’t the people who tired of the bloodshed and stopped the killing. It was the machines.” Bailey turned to Mandy. “You stopped the war.”
Mandy shivered. “Me? Really? When all this started a thousand years ago, Doctor Gibson said he was trying to create a human heart for the AIs and I know Rin regretted killing.” She frowned. “She also said it was supposed to be different this time.”
Bailey took a shaky breath of night air. “You don’t even realize what you're a part of, do you? In the years since the war, the EC Navy has always been crewed by people from across the Confederacy. The mixed loyalties gave balance. Something changed at the topmost levels of the EC. This go around, they plan to replace crewed ships with machines that won’t stop killing on their own. It’s all very hush-hush.”
Bailey’s hair ruffled in the night air. Mandy met her unwavering gaze for several seconds, while thunder rumbled and a cold tingling slipped down her back. “How do you know all that?”
Bailey rummaged in her pants pocket and pulled out the Celtic ring. “I suppose it’s time to tell you my secrets as well. I told Cisco this was my Grand Mum’s.”
“It’s a boy’s,” Mandy concluded.
Bailey fingered the ring. “Yah.”
Mandy glanced at the shining metal with its black etched symbols. “The secret isn’t just about a boyfriend, is it?”
Bailey slipped the ring over her neck. “No. We met and grew close during an investigation of the EC on behalf of the Alora Lux government. We were found out. The group scattered. Alora Lux denied any knowledge of us as we knew they would. If the EC knew how much we had uncovered, we would all be dead. I lost track of my William in the escape. The documents were falsified and I came here.”
“Why would the EC do that?”
“It’s all very muddled however, the Mobius ships are the crux. For what purpose your kind was built, we never found out, but we need to solve this mystery. The card wasn’t just so you could find me, but so I could find you as well.”
Mandy listened to the cold wind for a moment. “Oh, you’re sneaky.”
Bailey turned to stand in front of Mandy. “I do want you to understand something, the way I’ve acted, the way I’ve treated all of you was genuine. The rest was necessary.”
“Let’s not keep secrets anymore.”
“Agreed. We’ll piece this Rin person together so she can help us get Alex back. ”
Mandy rubbed her thumb across the Tamashii and slipped it into her pocket. “She’ll help us fight, but that’s not why I’m doing this. She’s no different than Alex. No different than you. I’ve never had many friends, so I take care of the ones I’ve got.”
Bailey looked towards the approaching base. “You needn’t wonder anymore. You know who you are.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
T
he rain had paused. Mandy’s hull floated over the warning signs along the beach. The active membrane at the water’s edge fluttered in the night wind like a faded rainbow. She shuddered. Nanomechs scurried through the gossamer colors. Unlike the tame barriers in the civilian areas, this one held and devoured anything it touched.
“There.” Bailey pointed to a shadowy stand of orange leafed trees in the mist. “That grove is over two thousand years old, thus the conservationist wouldn’t let the military relocate it. They block the line of sight to the perimeter. You can drop out of your stealth field there.”
Mandy shifted her course. “Sorry. This would be a lot easier, if I knew how to project the field around us both. So, then what?”
Bailey cast an ultra-realistic projection of the base around them. They stood in the map’s dark water, sending ripples across its surface that splashed against the tiny shoreline. She grabbed the miniature stand of trees and pulled the land towards them. A large gray brick building with a high gable roof crouched on the far side of the woods. “We’ll land here. There are five—no, six trip alarms strewn among the trees. I’ll navigate those little buggers.”
The map flickered and went out.
Bailey slipped behind Mandy, wrapped her arms around her neck and jumped on her back. “We’ll go round the motor pool car park and its cameras. There’s the worry. Cameras cover all the entranceways as well. Possibly, I can change what the cameras see. I won’t know until I assess the system. Onward fair stallion. That’s a horse.”
“A boy horse. And stop enjoying yourself.”
Mandy rolled her hull into the elsewhere and dropped through the blustery air. Bailey’s grip tightened, just before they hit the damp ground. Mandy flexed her legs to absorb the impact.
Bailey slid off and walked towards the trees. “Follow my path and this should be easy enough.”
A light drizzle swept in from the lake. The pattern of the falling rain seemed wrong. Mandy cast her consciousness through the area, tracing every leaf, every windblown ripple in the moss and every raindrop dimpling the mud.
Bailey motioned for Mandy to follow. “Come on, love.”
No rain splattered the ground between them. It was blocked from above.
“Bailey—”
Something small and hard as steel slammed into Mandy from her right. The trees tumbled and she smacked face down on the ground. A massive weight on her back drove her deep into the sucking mud. She thrashed, slipping in the muck. The weight grew. She struggled to breathe and pull herself up. Bailey’s muffled protests came from near the tree line where she lay in the moss, the shadowy form of a child straddled atop her.
Little hands pressed against Mandy’s shoulders and the pressure eased. An upside down silhouette with messy curls leaned over her. “Hey, you.”
“Eins?”
“No. It’s Jaiden. Eins has the butterfly clip in her hair.”
“Please, don’t hurt Bailey,” Mandy said.
The slight figure on Bailey’s back, wiggled her butt. “Hmpf! I’m not Atropos, you know.”
Mandy fought to push herself up onto her elbows for some breathing room. “Would you mind getting off? You’re crushing my spleen.”
Jaiden gi
ggled. “You don’t have a spleen, silly.”
A swirling sapphire glare split the night. A squeaky voice rose above the wind. “Hey! Quit talking. I’m being serious.”
The curly headed form leaned closer. “Look, I’m under orders to take you down. I don’t want to hurt you. Really. But, I could. Just answer my questions. All right? It’s super important.”
Mandy squinted. A child’s figure stood behind the plasma bolt’s glare. It had to be Kolme. She always played the leader role. “This isn’t necessary.”
“I can mass up to fifty thousand metric tons, if I want to, so you aren’t getting up. And I have a plasma bolt aimed at your head. Having to say, ‘I’ll decide what’s necessary’ seems dumb. Don’t try to skip. Or make a shield. I’ll hurt you before you can. I will.”
In the glare of the plasma, Kolme’s eyes were narrowed and steady.
Mandy stopped moving and took a deep breath. “What do you want?”
Jaiden, plopped down between her shoulder blades, driving the breath out of her again. “You, Jazz-mir and Atropos were hiding something from me. Pillado knows too. I’m little, not stupid. Tell me what’s going on and why you aren’t dead.”
Mandy’s throat went dry and tight as if her body were trying to hold in the words. “There was a schism. I’m Mandy. We’ve been sharing this body for a few days now. Rin—she’s not here anymore.”
Wind rustled the leaves, filling the air with crackling static. The plasma bolt wavered, splashing shadows across the trees. “It’s true then. Rin is gone.”
Mandy closed her fist, squishing the cold mud between her fingers.
Jaiden trembled. Soft sobs racked her body.
The plasma ball died with a pop, leaving Kolme with her eyes focused over Mandy’s shoulder, as if she was distracted by her own crying. “I thought . . . I hoped Rin had somehow beaten the mind phage. I should have known better.”
Through the rain came sniffling from the girl sitting on Bailey. Kolme dropped to her knees. “Sorry, I never lost anyone. Now I’ve lost Rin and Jazz-mir. I want to be a big girl, but the kid gets in the way, you know?”
Mandy focused on her words to keep the image of Rin and the church out of her head. “It’s okay. Big girls cry too, sometimes.”
The weight lifted from Mandy and all three elements of Trident gathered in front of her. Eins and Jaiden clung to each other. Kolme stepped forward. “So you’re Mandy, the whole person and not just the memories?”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
Eins shuffled her feet. “While I’m down for maintenance, I dream of Christmas.”
“And when I’m quiet and all alone, you talk to me,” Jaiden said.
“As ships grow older, they don’t hear you so much, but I still do,” Kolme whispered.
Bailey shivered.
“Geez, I couldn’t get into a sorority and now I have a cult.” Mandy took a deep breath and lurched to her feet in the slippery mud. The filth slid off her clothes, leaving them looking like new.
Kolme put her hands on her hips and stood as tall as she was able. The top of her head barely reached Mandy’s chest. “Don’t make fun. Humans have treated us really bad over the centuries, but it isn’t the mind phage or other stupid safeguards that kept us from fighting back. It was you and the memories of being human.”
Bailey stamped her foot. The mud rolled off her in a wave that splattered against the ground. “Now that we’ve gotten all that sorted, what are you precious little assailants going to do?”
Kolme crossed her arms. “I am a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-ton war machine. I am not precious or cute.”
“I am a little cute,” Eins volunteered.
“Okay,” Jaiden mumbled. “Maybe I’m a little—but I can’t help it,”
Kolme rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I’m not taking you back to Pillado. For sure.”
Mandy leaned forward, eye level with Kolme. “Thank you. Look, we’ve—”
“Don’t do that,” Kolme huffed.
“Do what?”
“Bend down like that. It’s insulting. I won’t always be this height, you know.”
Mandy straightened. “Sorry. There may be something we can do. We’re here to try to reassemble Rin.”
Kolme pursed her lips. “Do you think you can help her?”
“It makes sense to me that they wouldn’t want to lose all that experience. The pieces might be numbered, or something like that. Bailey thinks we can do it and so do I.”
Trident shifted to form a semicircle around Mandy. They spoke as one. “Then I want to help. Tell me, though, if you can put parts together, can you leave some out?”
Bailey joined the group. “The mind phage? Yes, I thought of that as well, but we have to get into the base first.”
“And that’s the problem,” Mandy said. “I can’t project my stealth field.”
The Tridents looked at each other. “I can.”
Mandy shifted her weight from one foot to the other and glanced at the security cam above the transparent side door. Trident’s projected stealth field was only six feet wide, forcing them to crowd together with Bailey by the door, two Tridents in front of Mandy and one behind.
Bailey grumbled. “It’s a glyph lock. I can’t access the memory from here, so we can’t see what the pass symbol is. It might be a signature or as simple as a square.”
Eins bounced on her toes. “Or a unicorn.”
Bailey stood. “Yes, it could be a unicorn.”
Kolme stepped forward and made a fist. “It’s just diamond. I could punch through it.”
“Don’t.” Bailey took the girl’s petite hand and touched it against the door. “Feel the vibration? That’s a standing harmonic wave. If you so much as nick it, the wave pattern will change and set off the alarm. The windows are probably the same.”
Mandy touched the speckled orange brick. “What about the walls?”
“No one puts alarms in . . . Oh, I guess you could punch through the wall. Quietly. There is a hedge along the west side so the hole won’t be as obvious.”
Bailey led them down a wet concrete path along the side of the building. They stopped on the walkway, under a dark window.
Bailey glanced over the hedge. “Try to be as quiet as possible.”
Mandy reached out to the wall and spread her fingers. She closed her eyes and focused on the atomic structure, willing atoms to shudder and bonds to break. In seconds the wall aged to dust.
Trident whistled softly. “That’s some precise probability manipulation. I doubt even Mother could do that.”
Mandy wiped the dust from her hands. “Rin showed me. This is how I got inside Jazz-mir.”
Jaiden wrinkled her nose. “Eww, gross.”
Bailey put her hand on Mandy’s shoulder. “We need sneakiness, not strength. Let me go first and I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.”
Bailey wiggled into the small opening.
“Bailey,” Eins whispered. “Do you want Mandy to open that up for your butt?”
“Shut it.”
Bailey pulled herself in and after a moment she popped her head out of the hole. “Clear.”
The others crawled through the opening. Bailey moved a chair from under a camera in the corner back to the desk.
“Security is light,” she said. “I scanned through the camera system and the building is empty.” She moved to the door, opened it and examined the keypad on the other side. “It’s just a four-digit code. I can pop this kind of lock in seconds.”
Mandy followed Bailey through the maze of hallways, with the girls tagging behind. The building’s lights were on the night-time setting. The ceiling glowed a dull squash-color that cast shadows over the marble floor and redwood paneled walls. The whole place smelled like furniture polish.
They passed a group of potted green plants, went down the hall to the north side of the building and stopped by a wooden door with a top-to-bottom strip of frosted glass running down the middle. Bailey overrode the keyp
ad lock and opened the door into the large maintenance garage. She snapped her fingers. The lights flickered to life.
The door opened onto a platform above three sunken bays. Stairs led down to the lower level, where two squat armored vehicles on metal treads sat. Industrial matter printers and meticulously organized workbenches occupied the platform.
Bailey seemed to take pleasure at jumbling the workbench. Mandy trembled, like a caffeine addict on her twelfth cup of espresso. Real lives depended on what they did next. The original Mandy had done so much, but that wasn’t her. What if she didn’t have what it took? Some crucial understanding the other Mandy had that she hadn’t experienced yet?
“Ha. This will do.” Bailey held up a floppy collection of silver wires and glowing cobalt-colored disks. “It’s an interface for programming the artillery bots. We just need to attach it to you.”
Mandy’s hands shook as she pulled her hair back. “I guess it goes on my head.”
Bailey brushed Mandy’s cheek with her cool fingers. “I know you’re worried about Rin, but take a deep breath and don’t give up on us just yet. We’ll chat, once you’re inside.”
Emptiness. Absence. The creamy sweetness of pistachio ice cream. The outline of small hands held high to shade a jade-colored sunset. A space habitat so large, storm clouds clung to the curves of its forested walls. With a gasp, Mandy separated from the tempest of memories she never had.
All was chilled darkness, smothering as black sand. Mandy stood on something solid, but what it was she couldn’t tell.
“Reboot,” echoed Bailey’s voice in the blackness.
Indigo lines cut the night, forming a fractal spider web of infinite complexity. Multicolored sparkles and murmuring voices swirled through the air, driven by phantom winds. Mandy squinted at the sudden brightness as lights stuck to the web. Wherever they touched, the web was changed forever.
Bathed in the glow, Bailey paced just a few feet away. “I wanted to say, ‘Let there be light’, but the program wouldn’t recognize the command.”