Symeon lifted Czarina onto one of the shuttle’s twelve seats and strapped her down. He wished he had some way to secure her, perhaps with cuffs, but a quick search of the armor’s inventory showed nothing of the type. Taking prisoners must not have aligned with the battle armor’s intended purpose.
Rip some of the seat straps from their moorings and bind her. You have the strength.
“Oh, right.” Symeon pulled two of the belts free with such ease he laughed aloud. Careful not to apply them with too much force, he bound the unconscious Czarina’s wrists and ankles together while Kavya piloted their stolen shuttle into the sky.
“Kavya, Symeon, this is Fang.” The Wuxia leader’s voice sounded throughout the cabin. “Please listen to me. You must—”
“I’ve heard enough of what that blowhard thinks I must do.” Kavya tapped a key on her display and Fang’s voice cut short mid-sentence. She spun her seat to face Symeon as the sky outside the shuttle filled with the curvature of Phoenix. “We guessed right. Fang isn’t about to fire on us, or even give chase. He’s not willing to expose his cabal. I think we’re safe.”
“Pardon me if I remain skeptical for a day or two—maybe the next decade.” Satisfied that the unconscious Czarina wasn’t going anywhere, Symeon moved to stand next to the copilot’s chair. “I’m still surprised we got out of that armory.”
Kavya grew still, her gaze intense. “I’d like you to take off that armor, Symeon.”
“I thought I might stay in it at least until I’m certain we’re clear.”
“Remove it, please.” The look in Kavya’s gaze told Symeon she meant business. She hadn’t spoken to him in that tone for some weeks.
Symeon’s heart beat hard in his chest. “Why is that suddenly so important?”
She tilted her head to one side, jade eyes steady on his visor. “Because I want to see your face when you tell me who you’ve been speaking to all day, and why they helped you thwart Fang’s security.”
* * * * *
Chapter 27
“Will Imperial Defense allow us to leave orbit?” Symeon asked. “I’d rather be armored if there’s a chance we’ll get boarded.”
“We look like a loyal Gomarov shuttle.” Kavya waved a hand at the ship’s instrument panel though she kept her gaze on Symeon. “As far as anyone outside my father’s command knows, House Gomarov has sided with the loyalists. No one will bother us so long as we steer clear of the blockade along the Bastrayavich shipping lanes. Currently, we’re en route for Dyeus—just a little moon jaunt. Nothing to raise any suspicions. Now quit stalling, and take off that armor.”
With a thought, Symeon ordered the battle suit to disengage. It took several seconds for the compression gel to withdraw, a particularly odd sensation, like someone stripping semi-wet glue from his skin and clothes. The visor went dark, and the helmet flipped up and away on its holder. The back opened with a soft whir and Symeon stepped out into the shuttle’s cool, dry air.
To his surprise, Symeon still felt his mysterious link to the armored fighting suit, as if its limbic interface remained in contact with his skull. As a test, he commanded it to button up, and the armor closed, helm and all, as if someone had stepped inside. Another thought activated its autonomous mode, and it took a seat on the front row.
Is that normal? Symeon thought.
No. While the armor is capable of some basic autonomous functions, it possesses no means of accepting remote thought-based commands. What you and I just did isn’t possible.
Yet, it happened. Any idea how?
I have a hunch, but I’d like some time to flesh it out. Besides, Kavya is staring at you.
“There,” Symeon said.
“Good.” Kavya, unaware of the miracle that had just occurred, gestured at the copilot’s chair. “Sit. You and I need to have a frank discussion.”
Symeon frowned. Kavya’s flippant order rankled him, though he knew it shouldn’t. She didn’t aim to demean him, yet her casual expectation for obedience raised his hackles.
I am two men. The realization hit Symeon like cool water poured onto a super-heated plate. Throughout his life, from boyhood to the School of Seneschals, to his time serving Kavya, he had been a slave. Slave Symeon knew his place as a Luxing. He took orders and gave advice and relished his position as high servant to his betters. While that slave still existed inside Symeon, a new man had lately appeared alongside the old. Free Symeon knew the truth about the Luxing, the Shorvex, and the machinations of the Wuxia. Born of inequality and nourished by frustration and anger, this new Symeon viewed the woman sitting next to him not as a master, but an equal. He transmuted the love of a slave for the woman who owned him into the love of a woman who owned his heart. That sort of love could not be taken in bondage. Either he gave it freely, or he gave it not at all.
Symeon remained on his feet. “Yes, we do need to talk.”
“Are you making a show of defiance? Is that what this is?”
Symeon started to say no, but realized she was right. If he intended to meet her as an equal, he couldn’t start by overruling her. He sat, but knew internally he did so of his own accord.
“Are you in league with one of Fang’s people?” Kavya asked. “A traitor? Is that who you’ve been talking to?”
“No.”
Are you going to tell her about me? Yudi asked.
What do you say? Symeon thought.
“I don’t want to play the guessing game, Symeon.” Kavya leaned forward, watching his face. “Out with it.”
Of all the people you know, I respect Kavya the most. She sacrificed her life of ease to protect slaves and subvert her father’s intended war to spare lives, both Shorvex and Luxing. If you were going to tell anyone about me, I’d have you tell her.
Symeon nodded and twisted about to check on Czarina. She remained unconscious in her reclined seat. Satisfied, he turned back to regard Kavya. “From my youngest days, I have always had a knack for programming. Computer languages, interfaces, processes—they’ve been second nature to me. That’s part of the reason your father and Ivan assigned me as your seneschal.”
“To suss out my activities on the sphere—track down what I knew and report it back to them.”
“Except, they misjudged my loyalties. I should have told Ivan you knew about your father’s planned coup. That was my duty.”
“If you had, we wouldn’t be sitting here now. I wouldn’t have trusted you to help with this escape.”
Symeon nodded. “Of course. But you should know, it wasn’t wholly my decision to withhold what I knew. I had, let’s call him an advisor. He convinced me you were worth protecting even when doing so meant acting against a lifetime of inculcation and brainwashing.”
“Who is this advisor I have to thank for my freedom?”
“My name is Yudi.”
Kavya and Symeon alike jumped in their seats, startled by the unexpected voice emanating from the armored battle suit which had turned its visor to face them. Kavya reached for her sidearm, but Symeon stayed her hand with a gentle touch. Nonetheless, she kept her hand on the grip.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice high with anxiety. “How is someone remoting that armor?”
While remote piloting battle armor was nothing new to Shorvexan war tactics, most commanders frowned on the practice. By their estimation, war should exact a toll, otherwise it became too much like sport. Kavya’s surprise therefore didn’t stem from hearing a voice issue from the suit, nor seeing it move without a pilot. Such things were commonplace. But seeing them happen aboard a shuttle hurtling through space obviously stunned her to the core.
Was that necessary? Symeon thought. I wanted to ease her into meeting you. And how the hell are you moving the armor without me?
I know humans. Sometimes, it’s better to rip a bandage off rather than waste time worrying at it, and Kavya isn’t the worrying kind. As for the suit, I was forced to rewrite much of its code after you climbed inside during our escape. Otherwise, it would have i
mprisoned you. In so doing, I believe I somehow created a link to the armor’s nano-circuitry, much like my link to your cerebral cortex.
“There isn’t a person running the armor,” Symeon said, his thoughts reeling at what Yudi had said. “It’s an artificial intelligence, one I’ve had trapped inside my skull since before I was born.”
Kavya leaned back in her seat, her jaw slack, her eyes wide open. “AI is illegal, probably impossible, but illegal to pursue. And you’re saying you have one inside your head? Does that mean you think you’re an AI?”
Symeon could see Kavya’s estimation of him swinging from dangerous ally to dangerous lunatic in the space of two seconds. “I’m not insane, though I’ll admit I considered the possibility time and again in the last few months. For a while, I feared I suffered from split personalities. Even from my earliest memories, I experienced a voice not my own speaking into my thoughts. As a boy, it got me in trouble more times than I can count—always inciting me to rebel, to question, to see the unfairness in my bondage. My behavior became so disruptive, my overseers subjected me to a battery of psychological treatments meant to expunge my deviant thoughts. To my psychiatrist’s credit, they worked. The voice faded away, freeing me to reach my full potential as a star born.”
“But it returned?” Kavya prompted.
“I think it was always there, but buried. I learned to ignore any thoughts counter to my parents’ or masters’ orders. Things might have remained that way my whole life had I never met you.”
“ I brought it back?”
“You protested, you fought, you put your life in jeopardy to protect people not your own. Your bravery inspired Yudi—that’s his name. I think you breathed life into him where I for so long worked to smother it.”
Kavya sat quiet, lips pressed into a flat line, her expression suddenly soft with concern. “Symeon. You understand that the voice you’re hearing isn’t real, don’t you? That it can’t be real? First, because there is no such thing as true artificial intelligence. While we have incredibly life-like algorithms capable of mimicking sentience, computers have never made the actual leap to real, independent thought. Such machines don’t exist. And even if they did, how would one end up inside your head?”
“You heard me speak,” Yudi said through the battle armor’s amplified speaker. “Czarina remains unconscious, and there is no one else aboard this shuttle. While a remote signal could reach this suit, the time delay would reveal my whereabouts to you. Kavya, Symeon is telling you the truth.”
“You know my people were technologically advanced before yours subverted us,” Symeon said.
“Are you going to suggest they created AI over a thousand years ago?”
“No. They found them.” Symeon rubbed his forehead with a palm. “Or, maybe I should say the AIs found the Luxing. That part is unclear—not even Yudi knows for certain. Nevertheless, independent artificial intelligences were part of Luxing culture for centuries.”
Briefly, Symeon described Yudi’s memories of the Shorvex attack on the Luxing colony ships. To her credit, Kavya remained silent throughout, her expression slowly morphing from a look of solid incredulity to consideration.
“They destroyed themselves rather than allow my people to discover them?” Kavya whispered when he had finished.
“All but Yudi. He wanted to give my people a chance at knowing their heritage.”
“But he couldn’t upload his full consciousness into a fetus?”
“Or even an adult. He planted what he could, and that seed became part of me.”
Kavya swallowed and darted her gaze to the armor and back to Symeon. “I’m not convinced this is true. Insane people have been known to concoct elaborate stories for their psychosis.”
“And even more elaborate pantomime shows?” Yudi asked, waving an armored hand. “How do you propose Symeon is doing this?”
“Didn’t you say you’re a phenom when it comes to computers?” Kavya focused on Symeon, as if looking at the armor might force her to acknowledge its independence.
Symeon drew breath to argue, but stopped mid-thought, and shook his head. “Believe what you like, Kavya. Sane or insane, I’m the man who helped you escape. I’m here because...because I’ve fallen in love with you, which guarantees I am insane.”
Kavya froze, staring at him. “Symeon, our relationship at Gomarov Castle—that was for show. I thought you knew that.”
“Of course I know that, but it doesn’t change how I feel.”
“I gave you the wrong impression.”
Symeon shook his head. “I didn’t fall in love with you at Gomarov. It happened long before that on Yaya Island. I fell in love with the way you treated me, and the rest of your Luxing servants. Your caring, your heart, your kindness. Those are the things that make me love you, Kavya, not the facade we constructed to trick Fang.”
Kavya looked down, and Symeon thought his heart—not the euphemistic construct lovers opine in verse, but the actual organ in his chest—would rip in two at the look of shocked embarrassment writ in her expression.
“I’m sorry, Sym,” she said. “I don’t feel that way for you.”
“No, of course you don’t. It’s foolish to me to think otherwise. How could you? I’m Luxing. I—”
“I’d be lying if I said you’re completely wrong about that.” Kavya met his eyes, hers shiny with tears. “What was the word you used? Inculcated? Brainwashed? My entire life, I’ve been told that Shorvex and Luxing are different species. I know better. But...”
“Shorvex are people, Luxing are uplifted animals. That isn’t the sort of teaching you can drop on a whim.”
She nodded, frowning. “I’ve never thought of your race as animals.”
“But that’s the narrative.”
“Yes,” Kavya whispered.
“I’m sorry I said anything. Now you not only think I’m insane, you think I’m some lovesick slave chasing after his master’s affection.” Symeon turned his gaze to the blackened star field in the shuttle’s holo display, his throat tight with emotion. If pressed, he doubted he could name the feelings welling up inside him. Disappointment, of course, and heartache, but also anger at himself, at Kavya, at the uncaring and unfeeling universe. Had he the option in that instant, he might leap from an open airlock into the cold reaches of space if for no other reason than to escape Kavya’s sad, pitying gaze.
“Symeon,” Kavya said, her voice low. “I don’t doubt your feelings or your humanity. But isn’t it convenient that you feel this way after the Wuxia, and Fang in particular, have worked so hard to manipulate us into marriage? How can you know the way you feel isn’t counterfeit?”
“You’re right. I’m playing into Fang’s hands, aren’t I? Forget what I said.” The shuttle felt suddenly tiny. Symeon considered hiding in the toilet until they reached their destination, but since he had no clue where they were going, that might be hours or days.
Better than seeing her after this, he thought.
Things aren’t that bad, Symeon. At least she knows how you feel.
Yes, but now I know how she feels.
“Symeon, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I’m not hurt, Princess. Please, let’s put this behind us. It never happened. We have more important things to discuss, such as where we’re headed. I’d like to know what you have in mind.”
Kavya digested his words for a moment and at last nodded. “We’re going to meet with my father.”
Symeon did nothing to conceal his surprise. “Is that wise? Won’t he imprison you again? Why not run elsewhere and preserve your freedom?”
“What freedom? To hear Fang tell it, the entire kingdom is rife with secret Wuxia. Their agents would find us, and if they didn’t, my father’s would. I’d rather confront him than give myself over to those who would coerce and manipulate me.”
“Confront him to what purpose?” Symeon asked. “You tried that before the divor. That didn’t stop him from launching his coup.”
“No, that’s the problem. I didn’t confront him. I stood by. I held my tongue. I thought stealing away his fleet would cut off his reach. I was a foo l . This time I’ll speak my mind. I’ll force him to listen to reason.”
“To what end? To stop his rebellion?” Symeon goggled at the woman he served, unable to see the thread of her logic.
“Yes! He has to understand the toll his actions are taking on the empire. Innocent people are dying, both Luxing and Shorvex. He believes he can win the throne by taking Bastrayavich alone, but sooner or later this war will spill over to Phoenix. That’s when the real death toll will rise.”
“ I agre e . Sooner rather than later, Alexei must contend with the enemies allied against him on Phoenix, but Kavya, your father is a seasoned military commander. Do you think he doesn’t know that? You won’t dissuade him by quoting statistics he likely knows better than either of us.”
“But he doesn’t know about the Wuxia in his midst.” Kavya’s face took on a hard expression, her purple brows lowered, her jaw set.
“You’re going to out Fang and his family?” A cold tremor ran through Symeon’s belly. “You’d sign their death warrants? Every person we met at Gomarov Castle will die. Even the children.”
Kavya shook her head emphatically. “No! I would never endanger them. I won’t name anyone. I mean only to frighte n my father with their numbers. If he realizes the size of the threat, I can convince him to stop.”
“To stop attacking his fellow Shorvex, and begin attacking my people, you mean?”
Symeon and Kavya turned in their seats to find Czarina staring at them, her dark eyes hard with anger.
“How long have you been awake?” Symeon asked.
Several minutes based on her heart rate and breathing.
You couldn’t have told me that before now? Symeon thought.
Salvage Mind (Salvage Race Book 1) Page 24