“What’s the Founder’s Day Triumph?”
“Our triumph over the last major claim-jump attempt. Untrained rabble funded by Old Empire interests. The decisive battles established our dominance over this star system.”
“It took place here….”
“We triumphed all over the planetoid. Nothing is special about this mine.”
“Except that it’s farthest from the rest of the population centers.”
“Hmm?” He turned away from his eager exploration of the disrepaired dome. “What did you say?”
“It’s isolated,” she connected the pieces of facts into an uncomfortable tapestry, “and obvious from the sky and somewhat close to the wreckage of the tower.”
He focused on her with the full concentration of his dirt-smeared, adventuresome, beloved face. “What are you saying?”
“I could be wrong.” She tried to wipe away the smear of dirt from his nose, and only ended up streaking it. “But I think this place would be perfect for—”
“Ah.” He turned back to his screen, lighting up. “She put it right in there.”
Resa stood. “—an ambush.”
A shuttle of about the same vintage as the one they had destroyed slowly emerged out of the sand beneath a thousand-ton mirror of a shuttle-loader. The shuttle-loader was in fairly good repair, considering its age. The shuttle came to a rest, and the mirror rested against its roof, fitting perfectly into a dent.
A frisson of recognition shuddered through her.
Aris climbed the dune of the emerging sand and levered open the door. “Look.”
She expected the shuttle to be full, for some reason. Full of minerals and equipment pieces and pirate stuff. But it was empty inside, cleared of detritus, and somewhat new. On the floor of the shuttle rested a metal cube.
Aris’s restore point.
He walked into the shuttle.
She felt the cooling calm of her robot regaining control. Ah. He was too far away. Conscious of the danger here, she rubbed her elbows and started to cross the floor.
Something struck her from behind.
She went out like a light.
Aris slid his hands over the restore point. It stood at the height of his shoulder, and he took several strides around it. As they had agreed, the lady rogue left it here, undisturbed.
She must be nearby. This was their agreed meeting spot should he have survived his encounter with the zero class. Now he hoped to use her technology to surpass his uncle’s betrayal, and the Robotics Faction controls, to broadcast the dangers to everyone. And to finally reach out to the Antiata family for their more powerful help.
He pressed the communication button on his MAC necklace.
No response.
He went to the shuttle door and looked out. Resa was faced away from him, gazing out at the old mining site.
“Watch out for anything out of place,” he said. “The lady rogue will be around here somewhere.”
She nodded once, tight.
He ducked back into the shuttle, searching for clues. Ah, there was a message recorded in the cockpit. He leaned on the seat back, resting on his elbow, and played it.
“Hello, Aris.” The lady rogue rested her chin on her hand. His restore point was in the holo behind her, much like how now it was in the shuttle behind him. “I’m not there to meet you because I need to save your other relatives right now. It turns out I was wrong about this whole plan. I’m sorry. You need to be strong.”
The pit of his stomach dropped out. He curled his hand over the back of his seat. He continued to watch, but one ear tuned for activity behind him. Resa. He had to keep watch for her to keep her safe.
“I researched the new zero class.”
Did he hear something? No one appeared behind him. He turned back to the screen.
“The Robotics Faction got a hold of a particular individual you know well.” An image of the first governor flew up on the screen. “One of your ancestors especially famous for causing a ruckus. You know her as the first governor, Star of the Hopeless Brigade, Knife of Justice. Her original name was Resalynn Zenyar.”
At a young three centuries, like the holo in his hall, the first governor possessed the same fiery determination as Resa but looked much older. That was back when looking well-worn was more fashionable than it was today.
Of course, he knew the first governor. One of the survivors of the Founder’s Day Triumph, one of the first victors against the Old Empire expansion, one of the key generals fighting strategically against the Antiatas. A fighter who never gave in.
“She also carries the genetic flaw. Before it was identified as a flaw, her compatibility with robotics made her a natural fit for the zero class ‘seed’ persona. I don’t know how they got a hold of her data, but I can tell you that when they put her in a metal body for the first time, she refused Robotics Factions orders.”
Yes. That was his Resa.
“They went through a hundred iterations until they cut out most of her original personality and put the remainder through a training program, mutating her until almost nothing of the original remained. Your siblings met that twisted persona as ‘Zenya.’ You, I am sure, are meeting the original Resalynn.”
That fierce determination was definitely the woman he knew. And she ought to know. He raised his voice. “Resa?”
“But beware.” The lady rogue darkened. “Her Robotics Faction controllers are cruel and evil. They have her under their control. There’s nothing you can do to save her.”
No. He refused to believe that.
The lady rogue rolled her lips as though she heard Aris’s objections. “She has no choice. Worse than that, she is being used as the final test of the Robotics Faction. They don’t care about your restore point, and they aren’t fooled by our ploy.”
“Shit.” The word emerged from his mouth as his stomach plummeted through the floor. A ringing sounded in his ears.
This was all for nothing. Resa was a carrier of the genetic flaw, just like his half sisters, and the Robotics Faction was testing her persona.
“She will be ordered to kill you. I’m sorry, Aris.” She smiled and raised her fingers to the screen. “On the off-chance that you’ve made it here alone, I’ve programmed the shuttle to fly to a rendezvous point with your half sisters. Leave her behind and leave now.”
He flexed his hands.
“If you’re not alone… be strong. And have faith.” Her smile fixed. The message shimmered to a static screen.
Leave now. The rogue told him it was his only chance. He flexed his empty hands again. Twitches of indecision warred with each other, fighting his nerves. Stand. Run. Slam the door shut and break for the dome. Run out before the Faction ran on him.
Before he met Resa, he would have done it. He would have left her behind.
But that was before. Resalynn would never have run from a fight.
The shaft of ice solidified in his chest.
He was terrified of his feelings for Resa. He was terrified that she would betray him. The lady rogue assured him that she would. He was terrified that he wasn’t strong enough to handle her betrayal. But maybe the real problem was that he wasn’t strong enough to handle her faith.
He had run from his half sisters instead of standing and fighting for them. He had run from all past relationships, even ones that might have worked out, because he was terrified of opening up his chest and handing over his beating heart. But Resa had taken it already. With her honest sweetness, with her strong naiveté, with her frightened faith.
Fuck.
He had never run from a challenge, and he wouldn’t do it now either.
Even if the challenger was his own heart.
He stood and strode to the door of the shuttle. The dome before him stretched empty. A faint wind blew sand particles across the dustiness. There, on the edge of his vision, a silhouette in shadow.
He walked out of the shuttle. “Resa—”
A flash of white light seared his chest.
He slammed against the doorframe. Agony stole his breath. A ring of black char smoked in the center of his chest. He clapped his hand against the black spot.
His MAC necklace turned to ash and disintegrated.
In front of him, the landscape wavered. Two soldiers appeared out of thin air in the center of the dome. One held a pistol. They stepped apart. Behind them, Resa had been hidden.
She stared him in the face with a hard, dead expression. The sweet vulnerability she had shown him in these mines hardened. The vibrant woman she had revealed these past days left. All emotion dropped from her face.
She looked like the robot he had first met outside the census bureau. Cold, mechanical, robotic.
Deadly.
No.
He closed his eyes to what he didn’t want to see.
Her voice, deadened, reached him. “I told you I would betray you.”
Piercing pain stabbed through his ribcage in a thousand places. His chest felt like a sieve. A sense of impending doom made the distant floor tilt.
“Now you must hate me.”
He snorted. His chest heaved. It hurt like hell.
“Why does that make you laugh?”
His Resa sounded like a child.
He opened his eyes on the woman he loved trapped in the body of a robot. More soldiers winked into existence around her, deactivating their chameleon suits to emerge. The ceiling ripped off the dome and exposed them to the screaming sand winds of the Robotics Faction.
She waited for his response, and the rest of the androids waited on her.
Maybe there was more of her left inside than the lady rogue had realized. Maybe only he heard her melancholy plea. She had betrayed him. And it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He forgave himself. He forgave all of them.
He sucked in a breath—it squeezed his ribs like a spiked corset—and replied. “I don’t hate you.”
A flicker of a frown crossed her expressionless features. “I’ve shot you. Pieces of your bones have disintegrated, and when they reach your heart, you will die.”
The red tint to his agony suggested they already had.
He shook his head. “Don’t hate you.”
“We are going to destroy your restore point, destroy you, take over this shuttle to sneak off to your half siblings’ rendezvous, and kill them as well. You must hate me.”
His amusement battled the numbness in his cheeks. “Don’t hate.”
She seemed puzzled. “Why not?”
“Because I love you anyway.” He coughed. The spikes dug into his lungs, squeezing away his breath, and a red mist coated the back of his hand. “Love you anyway, beautiful Resa.”
Resa-as-robot stared at the hedonistic governor, the man her human persona had judged and hated from the beginning, as he used his final breaths to laugh at her.
To declare his love for her, and to laugh.
It was completely illogical.
Her robot controlled their body completely and took away her human ability to care, but populated a variety of theories about lack of oxygen affecting his shaky mental state.
Outside, the atmosphere shield burned as the Robotics Faction Third Brigade drilled through to the surface. Domes drifted into the lasers and burned on fire. All around the Faction attacked his family, and it was all her doing.
How could he love her anyway? What was there in her to love?
She was a robot. Her human, who was weak and frightened and easily misled, had confused her attraction with safety. Only her robot could keep her human safe. Safe from being reprogrammed and destroyed. Safe from Zenya’s memories of torture and destruction. Safe from her crushing memories.
A strange, electric shiver crackled across her circuits.
I accept the memories, her human persona said, stretching from the safe place where the robot had secreted her. Yours. Mine. Zenya’s.
No. She couldn’t handle those memories. They were too emotional. Too dangerous. Watching them would damage her human. The events were too horrific.
I accept all of them.
Unexpected strength flowed into her mind. As though her human had somehow become external to her, reached out, and wrapped her in an infinite embrace.
No. Even as she lost her grip on the blackness, the welling terrible things leaking through her controls and poisoning her mind, she scrambled to capture the fragments spilling away from her.
Her human persona mustn’t see the memories. She would hate the robot for allowing Zenya to perpetuate so many awful crimes.
I don’t hate you. Her human persona echoed the governor, slumped against the shuttle doorway, his breath coming labored and shallow. I forgive you.
She couldn’t forgive what the Faction had made them do.
I love you anyway.
Resa-the-robot lost control of the memories. They flooded into her human persona’s consciousness like black sewage, sucking everything down into their horror-filled depths. But instead of drowning, a bright light emerged in her center and flowed outward. Words rang in her chest like a bell.
I forgive you. I love you anyway. I forgive you. I love you anyway.
Her robot clasped onto her human. Together, they swirled into one complete consciousness, flowing to fill the gaps, shoring up the dangerous vulnerabilities, wrapping each other in brilliant golden light.
She remembered everything.
Her childhood. Coming to the mines. Her brother’s death. Her decision to fight.
A hundred thousand other memories. Some hers, some her robot’s. Terrible choices. Brilliant choices. They swirled together into the whole person who was her.
She focused on the situation at hand.
Her love, Aris, was shot in the chest. He slowly eased down the wall of the shuttle, his strength giving out as his heart collapsed. A smile touched his white lips. Lips that she would kiss again, well and whole, once she rescued him from the massed soldiers on the ground and hovering troop ship waiting for her to reveal what side she was on. More specifically, waiting for her to betray herself so the Faction could activate the x-class soldiers hidden in the populace to kill the people they had targeted while their Third Brigade broke into the atmosphere shield, flew into the tunnels, and destroyed their restore points from space.
She could surprise them all and kill Aris. Enact the rogue’s original plan and mislead them into setting back their research by decades. One easy shot and the Faction withdrew from Seven Stars, leaving them all in peace.
Oh, come on. The voice that smiled in her head could have been her human’s or her robot’s. Both sounded the same, a little swirled with the other. You’ve never chosen the easy path.
Damn right she hadn’t.
Her hand strayed to the weapons attached to the soldiers flanking her on either side. Thin magnetic stripping holstered the weapons to their muscular thighs.
Everyone poised to attack Aris and his restore point. No one looked at her.
Good.
She took a single step backward, even with them, and demagnetized their pistols.
Resa grabbed the guns of the two x-class soldiers to either side of her and twisted. Her hands overpowered theirs and she fired, shooting both in the vulnerable, weak spots through the sides of their open eye sockets. Her two victims fell sideways, away from her.
How long until the Faction reacted?
She counted idly in her head as she mowed through the army, ducking under shots and dancing between blasts, perfectly calculating a million variables at infinite speeds.
One x-class falling, two x-classes falling, three x-classes falling….
Resa twisted and shot the next two, destroying the army as rapidly as they unfroze. Instant kills, pinpoint accuracy. X-classes were swift and unquestioningly powerful; her only edge was that she reacted faster than real-time. She took orders only from herself.
Two more after that lined up, and the rest broke away from her easy line-up, five or six, too many and all armed. So, she had to chase them down.
Overhead, the remainder of the dome cracked as the troop ship repositioned. Great chunks of the ceiling collapsed.
Whipped sand highlighted her chameleon-suited foes so that even a human eye could see them. She leapt atop the shuttle. Any second now, the Faction would order the x-classes to stop shooting at her and start shooting a much more vulnerable target.
Crossfire scarred Aris’s biceps and shoulders.
She dropped in front of him. Using him as the eye, she shot around him, bouncing lasers off reflective panels and ricocheting crumbled ceilings into their target area, forcing the x-classes away. Aris passed through the shots, perfectly calculated to miss and create a safe box.
The x-classes scattered.
She stood over Aris, defending him from every direction, deflecting everything.
Overhead, the doors opened and new x-classes released, slamming into the ground all around them. Ship lasers blasted covering fire and targeted the restore point.
The ship’s lasers melted the ground between her and Aris in a sizzle.
They couldn’t hold out against an infinite horde of x-classes forever.
Resa leapt over Aris, firing on targets, absorbing some returned fire and deflecting it.
The collapse of the dome had moved sand and uncovered more of the stage-loader, a fifty-calibre mirror used for inspecting giant loads for space, exactly where she remembered it from what they told her was centuries ago.
The ship’s laser finally cut a full swathe to the shuttle.
The ground underneath cracked. A piece fell through, and a crevice yawned open. The shuttle slid backward into it.
Uh oh.
The x-class soldiers turned as one to the remaining live target: Aris Hyeon Antiata.
Indeed no.
Overhead, the troop-loader’s laser charged, humming deep in Resa’s ear bones.
She calculated angles, focused her stolen shatter pistols, and, at just the right moment, sliced off the ancient, weakest springs attaching the thousand-ton mirror to its loader.
The final spring launched the mirror across the sand.
Liberation's Vow (Robotics Faction #3) Page 22