In Fury Born

by David Weber

  It does not matter.

  You're crazy! This gate's got real, live sentries, Lady!

  But they will see nothing. Have you forgotten the nurse?

  Damn it, they don't rely on just their eyes, and this thing is armed! Their sensors are going to go crazy!

  Let them. We need only a few moments of confusion.

  No way. Alicia began to slow the skimmer. We're out of the hospital. Let's pull back and rethink this before we get in so deep we-

  Her thought shattered in white-hot anguish, and she grunted as her eyes went blind. The pain and blindness vanished as quickly as they had come, and her brain writhed in useless revolt as her body obeyed the Fury's will. She felt the skimmer surge forward under maximum power, blazing through the security gate, and the alert sentires saw nothing at all. She caught a glimpse of them in the aft display, spinning towards their com links in total confusion as lights flashed and sirens whooped, but her hands were on the controls, whipping the skimmer higher and wheeling for the shuttle pads.

  Let me go! she screamed, and wild laughter flooded her mind.

  Not now, Little One! The game has begun-there is no going back!

  I'm not your puppet, damn you!

  Ah, but you are. The Fury's voice paused, then resumed a bit more tentatively, as if puzzled by her resistance. This is what you asked of me, Little One. I swore to give it to you, and I shall.

  This is my life, my body! The sense of content had vanished, and her rousing will battered at Tisiphone's control. She gritted her teeth, smashing with fists of outrage, and fresh pain surged. She panted with the ferocity of her struggle, gasping in triumph as her hands began to slow the skimmer, then cried out as Tisiphone struck back furiously.

  You must not! Not now! This is to lose all at the last moment!

  "Then let me go, goddamn you!" Alicia gritted through clenched teeth. Her anguish-tight voice was strange and twisted in her own ears, but somehow she knew she must speak aloud. "I want myself back!"

  Oh, very well! Tisiphone snapped, and the skimmer swerved wildly as the Fury abruptly released all control. Alicia moaned in relief-then yelped as a plasma bolt whipped past her canopy. She hurled the skimmer into a screaming turn, still in the grip of the tick, and a second miss sent a parked air lorry's hydrogen reservoir fireballing into the darkness.

  I trust you are satisfied now? Tisiphone remarked, but Alicia was too busy to respond as she writhed in a mad evasion pattern. More plasma slashed past like lethal ball lightning, and she punched up the skimmer's light screen. It wouldn't do much against a direct hit, but it should fend off a near-miss.

  Fires glared in the night as she turned the vehicle almost on its side, trading lift for evasion. Warehouses belched flames under the fury of her pursuers' fire, and she swerved down a narrow opening between freight carriers and loading docks. The com unit yammered with demands for her surrender and warnings that deadly force would be employed if she refused. Not that she'd needed that, she thought as the flames vanished astern and her scanners reported atmospheric sting ships closing from the north. Closer to the ground, security skimmers were howling in pursuit. They'd overshot when she whipped to the side, giving her a small lead to play with, but they were just as fast as she, and they knew the base far better.

  At least she had decent instrumentation, and she cursed as she picked up still more security vehicles. They were outside her, and she swore again as she checked her map display. She still didn't have the least idea what Tisiphone was up to, but the pursuit had cut her off from retreat. They were closing in, driving her deeper into the base in what looked entirely too much like a preplanned security maneuver. There had to be something nasty waiting for her, yet the only place left to go was directly towards the shuttle pads, exactly as Tisiphone had originally planned.

  She wrenched the skimmer through another turn, half her mind watching the sting ships' traces. They'd responded quickly, but it would still take them a couple of minutes to get here, and the pads loomed ahead of her.

  "All right, Lady," she gritted, punching commands into the auto-pilot. "If you can still make us invisible, this is the moment."

  And what good will that do? Tisiphone sniffed. As you yourself have pointed out, they will still have us on their sensors, and-

  Just shut up and do it! Alicia snapped, and hit the eject button.

  The pilot's canopy blew off, and the ejection seat's tiny counter-gravity unit flung her high. She gasped with the shock of it, but her hands were on the armrests, riding the control keys.

  The maneuvering jets flared, and she swallowed a hysterical cackle. This, by God, was seat-of-the-pants flying! The jets lacked endurance-they didn't need it, with the counter-grav to do the real work-but they were designed to dart away from a plunging wreck or make a last ditch effort to evade hostile fire. That gave them quite a kick, and the seat was made of low-signature materials, almost invisible to the best sensors. She sent herself flying towards Pad Alpha Six and pirouetted in midair to watch their stolen skimmer execute her final command.

  The vehicle rocketed upward in a desperation escape attempt as the security skimmers closed in at last, and bursts of fire followed it. Not just plasma cannon, which were relatively short-ranged in atmosphere, either. The security people were playing for keeps, and the red and white flashes of high explosive converged on the wildly careering hull, but Tisiphone seemed to have worked her magic, for no one was shooting at her. An explosion flowered amidships, and the skimmer shuddered, shedding bits and pieces but still climbing vertically, almost out of sight from the ground. More hits splintered armorplast and alloy, and then a sting ship screamed in.

  Alicia winced as twin bores of eye-searing light blazed. Those weren't plasma bolts; the skimmer was high enough for them to use heavy weapons on it, and it vaporized in a sun-bright boil as the HVW struck at seventeen thousand KPS.

  Crap, those people aren't kidding!

  No, they are not, Tisiphone replied tartly, then relented. Still, this was very clever. No doubt they will think you died in the skimmer.

  As long as none of them noticed us punching out. Alicia hit her keys again, killing the jets and powering down the counter-grav. They landed in the shadow of the freight pad, and she shucked the safety harness. And now that we're here, just what the hell do we think we're doing?

  Escaping. I have arranged an appropriate vehicle for the purpose.

  A cargo shuttle? Alicia was sprinting for the pad stairs even while she protested. That's not going to get us very far.

  It will get us far enough-and have I said anything about a cargo shuttle? Tisiphone replied as Alicia cleared the stairs and rocked to a halt.

  "Oh, shit," she whispered, and closed her eyes as if that could make it go away. When she opened them again, the fully-armed Bengal-class assault shuttle was still sitting there.

  It is amazing what one can arrange through computers.

  You are out of your mind! That thing costs sixty million credits! They'll never let it go-and I've never handled one in my life!

  You are already pre-flighted and cleared to lift in two minutes, and I checked carefully, Little One. You are fully qualified on Leopard-class shuttles, and while the Bengals are larger, the major changes are in payload, sensors, and increased armament, not flight controls.

  But I haven't flown anything in over five years!

  I am sure it will all come back to you. But for now, I suggest we hurry. Our launch window is short.

  "Oh, God," Alicia moaned, but she was already dashing for the ramp. She had no choice. Tisiphone was out of her mythological mind, but whether Uncle Arthur believed in her or not, the Fury had done too many fresh impossible things. Alicia would never get out of observation after this!

  The shuttle interior was cool, humming with the familiar tingle of waiting flight system. It was like coming home, despite the madness, and she charged through the troop section towards the flight deck. A freight canister-a very large freight canister -was webbed to
the deck, and she almost stopped when she saw the codes on it.

  There is no time. You may examine it later.

  B-but that can't really be-

  Certainly it can. You may need your weapons, so I ordered it prepped and loaded aboard.

  Alicia moaned again as she flopped into the pilot's couch and reached for the headset. This couldn't be happening. Trained mental reflexes brought up the synth-link, reached out to the flight computers, but underneath them was a bubble of wild laughter.

  So far, in a single night, she'd escaped custody, assaulted a fellow cadreman, stolen a skimmer worth at least twenty thousand credits, crashed through Fleet security onto a restricted military reservation, refused to stop when so ordered, and caused the destruction of said stolen skimmer and damage to sundry base facilities as the direct result of lawfully empowered personnel's efforts to apprehend her-and none of that even compared to what she was about to do. Talk about grand theft! This shuttle alone represented a good sixty million of the Emperor's credits, and if that canister really contained a suit of Cadre battle armor, the price tag was about to double. They'd build a whole new jail just so they could put her under it!

  Only if they catch you, Tisiphone pointed out with maddening cheer.

  Alicia felt her teeth grate but swallowed her savage reply, for the computers had accepted her and placed themselves at her disposal. It was a disturbing sensation, almost frightening, as their inhuman vastness clicked into place about her. She hadn't felt it in a long time, and for just an instant she quailed, but then everything snapped into focus and she was home. The shuttle and she were one, its sensors her eyes and ears and nerves, its power plant her heart, its counter-gravity and thrusters her arms and legs. Joy filled her like cold fire, burning away the confusion and dismay, and she smiled.

  Yes, Little One, Tisiphone whispered. Now is your moment. We are training flight Foxtrot-Two-Niner.

  Alicia punched up Flight Control and announced her flight designation in a voice so calm it astonished her. There was a moment of silence, and her adrenalin spiked. Her intrusion had scrambled operations. Security had imposed a lock-down on all flights until they got to the bottom of it. Someone in FlyCon had her head together and was using her own initiative to hold all takeoffs until the situation was sorted out, or -

  "Cleared to go, Foxtrot-Two-Niner," FlyCon said, and she swallowed another tremulous laugh as her atmospheric turbines screamed.

  ***

  The shuttle sliced up through Soissons's atmosphere, and there was no pursuit. None at all, and that was truly amazing. Of course, there was really no pressing need to pursue a purely intra-systemic craft. Where could it go, after all? For that matter, who in her right mind would steal an assault shuttle of all damned things?

  "So now what?" Alicia asked aloud.

  Set course to rendezvous with beacon Sierra-Lima-Seven-Four-Four.

  Alicia started to ask what they were rendezvousing with but bit her tongue and checked her computers for the proper coordinates. No doubt she would know soon enough. Too soon, judging by what had already happened.

  The shuttle swept higher, air-breathing turbines shutting down and thrusters firing to align its nose on one of the Fleet shipyards, and she frowned. If they wanted out of the system, they had to get aboard a starship, and that should have meant guile and stealth. Could Tisiphone be so confident-so crazy, she amended dourly-as to think they could hijack a ship?

  If so, she was finally up against something even she couldn't manage. At absolute minimum, they needed a dispatch boat, and that meant a crew of at least eight. Not even a drop commando could force eight highly trained specialists to perform their tasks when all they had to do to maroon her was refuse to obey. And no way were Fleet officers going to help a crazed cadrewoman steal their ship out from under them!

  They continued unchallenged on their flight path, and Alicia's brows furrowed as she realized they weren't headed directly for the shipyard after all. Their destination lay in a parking orbit of its own, and she brought her sensors to bear on it. It didn't look like anyth -

  "No!" she gasped. "Tisiphone, we can't steal that!"

  We certainly can, and we must.

  "No!" Alicia repeated, and unaccustomed panic sharpened her voice. "I can't fly that thing-I'm no starship pilot! And... and..."

  It is too late for such thoughts, Little One, the Fury said sternly. I have studied this matter with great care and obtained all the information we will require. Nor will it be necessary for you to pilot the ship. It will, so to speak, the Fury actually chuckled in her brain, pilot itself, will it not?

  Alicia tried to reply, but all that came out was a faint, inarticulate whimper as the shuttle continued toward the waiting alpha-synth ship.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The alpha-synth glinted ominously in the light of Franconia.

  A cargo shuttle was docked on the number two rack, but Alicia's momentary panic eased when she saw the fuselage number. It matched the one on the ship's hull, so it must be an assigned auxiliary and not a bunch of yard workers waiting for her. Not that it made the situation much better.

  Her mind was numb, frozen by the impossibility of Tisiphone's plan, yet she felt the ship's sinister beauty. It lacked the needle-sharp lines of a sting ship, but the Fasset drive's constraints imposed a sleekness of their own-different from those of atmosphere yet no less graceful-and it floated in space with the latent menace of a drowsing panther. She'd never expected to see one, especially not at such proximity, but she knew about them.

  The size of a big light cruiser yet possessed of more firepower than a battlecruiser and faster than a destroyer, literally able to think for itself and respond with light-speed swiftness, an alpha-synth was lethal beyond belief, tonne for tonne the most deadly weapon ever built by man. It was too small to mount worthwhile numbers of SLAMs, so it used the tonnage it might have wasted on them for even more broadside armament. Nothing smaller than a battleship could fight it, nothing but another alpha-synth could catch it, and she hated to even think how Fleet would react if she and Tisiphone actually succeeded in stealing it. The damned thing cost half as much as a dreadnought just for starters, but having one of them running around loose in the hands of a certified madwoman would turn every admiral in the Fleet white overnight. They'd do anything to get it back.

  She tried not to consider that as she guided the Bengal mechanically toward the number one shuttle rack and through the docking sequence, yet she couldn't stop the gibbering thread of horror in her thoughts. Bad enough to be hunted by every planet and ship of the Empire, but there was worse if their theft succeeded. Far worse, for there was only one way to pilot an alpha-synth, and her throat tightened at the thought of meeting the ship's computer. Of impressing it, mating with it, becoming one with it -

  She'd actually begun to undock before she could stop herself, and she closed her eyes, panting through clenched teeth while panic pulsed deep within her. But Tisiphone had burned all of her bridges; there was nowhere else to go, however terrifying the prospect, and she cursed with silent savagery.

  Do not worry so, Little One! I but awaited this vessel's completion to act, and I do not set my hand to measures which fail.

  Damn you! You never warned me about anything like this!

  There was no reason, the mental voice said austerely. I require your body, your hands, and you have sworn to give them to me.

  Body, yes, and hands, but not this! Do you have any idea what you're asking of me?

  Of course.

  I doubt that, Lady. I really doubt that. I don't have any training in this-I was never even cleared for cyber-synth, much less an alpha link. I don't even know if my synth-link software will let me interface!

  It would not have. Now it will.

  Great. That's fucking great! And did it ever occur to you that if I link with that thing-assuming it lets me in, which it probably won't-I'll be part of it? That I can never unlink?

  It did. Tisiphone paused, then cont
inued with a sort of stern compassion. Little One, it is unlikely you will survive long enough for it to be a problem. A chill filtered through Alicia with the words. Not surprise, but a shivery tension as it was finally said. I am not what I once was. You know that, and so you know that I may strike your enemies only through you. This ship will be your sword and shield, yet everything suggests the pirates have more firepower than even it represents. We will find them, and we will seek out and destroy their leaders, yet that is all I can-and will-promise you. The Fury paused for a moment. I never offered more, Alicia DeVries, and you are no child, but as great a warrior as I have ever known. Would you tell me you have not already realized this must be so?

  Alicia bent her head and closed her eyes and knew Tisiphone spoke only the truth. She drew a deep breath, then straightened in her couch and removed her headset with steady fingers. A snake of fear coiled in her belly, but she climbed out of the couch and walked towards the hatch... and her fate.