by M. D. Cooper
Harl gave her a sideways glance through his faceshield, nodding at the memory.
Andy walked up and slapped Harl on the back, a gesture the power armor magnified into a shove. Harl stumbled slightly and turned.
Brit wasn’t sure if Harl was going to answer with a growl. Instead, the Andersonian laughed. The armor seemed to have put him in a strange mood.
Lyssa said,
Harl said, punching a fist into a palm.
Lyssa said.
Brit crossed the distance to the emergency door and fired up the torch. She cut two gashes in the alloy to bleed off atmosphere, followed by another four arcs. Then she kicked away from the door frame.
This time Harl led the way through the opening and immediately came under fire. He shouted obscenities across the Link as he stood in the opening and returned fire with his kinetic scatter gun.
When Harl didn’t seem to hear her, she quickly cut another opening to his right, kicked the remaining piece of the door away, and crouched against the bulkhead to take in the situation on the other side. Andy moved up behind her, firing over her shoulder.
Shipping crates and scattered maintenance equipment in new vacuum filled a wide room on the other side of the emergency gate. Heartbridge defenders in armored EV suits had set up positions behind portable shields. Two heavy guns on tripods attacked from either side of the room, laying down an excellent field of interlocking fire, with Harl currently caught in their kill zone.
With the fire moved off him, Harl roared a laugh and charged at the remaining machine gun, squeezing off three-round bursts as he ran.
Brit said.
Before Brit could respond, he was through the ragged opening Harl had vacated, bounding between bits of cover to the wall on their right. The guns on Andy’s shoulders tracked enemy and fired as he moved.
Brit dashed through the hole in the barrier and followed Harl, who was now pinned behind a maintenance drone that looked like a giant ant. He popped up, taking fire to the chest as he tried to hit the remaining gun emplacement again.
To the left of the gun emplacement, a defender rose from cover with a missile launcher on their shoulder. Brit had time to acknowledge the shape of the weapon before her HUD flashed a warning and laid a tracking icon on the new threat.
Harl surprised her by barking laughter and charging toward the emplacement. He was within twenty meters of the missile launcher when it fired. He rolled to the side, armor denting the deck, and the missile dropped its lock. The rocket veered off toward the ceiling, righted itself, then shot down toward Andy.
She sprinted toward the wall to the right, jumping over a pile of crates. In her HUD, icons representing the defenders rearranged themselves, pulling back to consolidate near an entrance on the far side of the room. Harl was pushing from the left, on the other side of the gun emplacement now. Several heavy explosions indicated mines were going off near Harl.
Brit found Andy pinned against the wall, taking fire from a line of defenders with a mix of projectile weapons and grenade launchers. Taking in the situation, she stopped behind a dock car and pulled up her grenade controls. The HUD targeted the attackers on Andy, dropping five incendiary grenades down their line. The fire stopped abruptly as their weapons and armor caught fire. Several turned to run into the service airlock behind them.
Andy straightened and gave her a nod as he slung his rifle.
A satisfied laugh crossed the Link.
Harl snorted.
On the other side of the airlock, they found a narrower corridor. It was deserted except for several discarded ammo cannisters.
Harl Nines immediately turned in the direction of the command deck, some twenty levels above them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
STELLAR DATE: 09.23.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Clinic 46
REGION: Jovian L1 Hildas Asteroids, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Aside from maintenance drones with the same cutting torches they’d encountered on the Forward Kindness, there was little resistance between the outer sections of the station and
the central lift shaft. Andy covered the corridor behind them as Brit cut out the sealed doors with her plasma cutter. She jumped into the open shaft, activating the thrusters along her armor’s legs, and Andy followed, gritting his teeth as his stomach flipped in the shifting gravity.
He lost count of the levels they passed, focusing instead on the icon showing him where Tim was being kept.
she answered, sounding irritated.
Andy sighed.
Andy frowned.
Below him, Brit’s thrusters increased as she slowed. Andy came down beside her. In the center of the asteroid, they were nearly in zero-g.
She nodded, facing a sealed set of doors. With four swipes of the plasma cutter, one door fell out of its frame. Brit reached for the edges of the door and pulled herself through. Andy followed, unslinging his rifle to have it at the ready.
They emerged in a broad corridor with doors and wide windows on either side that allowed observation into small rooms. It was obviously some part of the clinic meant to house test subjects. As they walked forward, Andy glanced through the windows to find each room contained a narrow bed and desk, with no discernable way to operate the door from the inside. The place made him think immediately of Fortress 8221 where they had first encountered black market research.
Turning a corner, they were met by a barrage of weapons fire from two small ceiling-mounted turrets. Projectiles ricocheted off Andy’s helmet as he raised his rifle and fired on each one until only smoke hung in the corridor.
The door under the turrets was heavier than any they had encountered so far. Brit pulled out the plasma cutter but the torch’s flame barely penetrated the material, leaving long scorch marks that made it look like she was drawing lines rather than attempting to cut the door. She cursed and let the torch drop.
The room with Tim’s icon lay on the other side of the door.
Andy checked the armor’s remaining arsenal.
They backed away from the doors. Andy hit the barrier with the incendiary grenades in a line directly down the center of the opening where the doors met. Smoke filled the corridor as plas on the side walls burned and melted. Andy had to depend on the HUD to target the final grenade, which sent debris flying back at them as the weakened walls rippled and disintegrated.
Andy walked into the smoke to check the doors. They were heat-warped and blackened but still standing.
If she wanted to bait him, he ignored her. Together, they kicked the weakened door until it finally fell away under the onslaught of the power armor.
Smoke blew through the opening into the new section, which was a smaller corridor with more rooms but no windows. Each door had a reinforced frame that gave the place the look of a prison block. Another set of turrets in the center of the corridor fired on them but Brit took them out with the pulse cannons on her shoulders.
Tim’s icon grew larger until they faced a final featureless door. Brit activated its control panel and the door slid open on a narrow room with an elevated bed in its center and cabinets down either wall. Tim lay on the bed, still wearing the oversized EV suit. Over his head arced a network of silver filaments, almost like a piece of antique lace, that connected with a base plate on either side. It looked like a refined version of the neural connections they’d seen at 8221.
“Tim!” Andy shouted. His son didn’t respond.
A tall man that reminded Andy of a praying mantis stood near one of the cabinets, checking a small console. He turned and saw the intruders, his eyes going wide. He looked to his left in panic, and Andy turned his head to see Cal Kraft standing near another cabinet with a transparent plas front. Five of the cylinders Fugia Wong called Weapon Born Seeds stood inside the cabinet.
Andy raised his rifle. “Step back,” he commanded, voice amplified by his helmet’s speakers.
The thin man raised his hands. He had an assurance on his face that sickened Andy.
“Stop,” the man said, obviously one of Heartbridge’s researchers. “Don’t harm us or your son will not survive this process.”
Andy stepped into the room as Brit pushed in behind him. He felt oversized in the armor. Kraft had his hands up as well. He was still wearing the EV suit he’d worn on Sunny Skies, with a pistol holstered on his utility harness.
“What’s going on,” Brit demanded. “What are you doing to Tim?”
“Be calm,” the scientist said. “The process needs to complete and he won’t be harmed, but if you do anything to the equipment now, your son will not survive. Believe me when I say this.”
Brit’s voice rose. Andy knew she was on the edge of losing control.
“What are you doing to him?” she repeated. She leveled a pistol on the thin man’s head. “I imagine that machine can run without you here to operate it.”
He was surprised when she only answered with a whimpering sound. He frowned, unsure what he had heard.
Brit took another step toward the scientist, shoulder leaving a gouge in the nearby cabinet door. “You let my son go or I’m going to kill you,” she said evenly. “Do you understand me?”
The scientist shook his head.
“Listen,” Kraft said. “Your son is safe.”
Lyssa made another choked sound that communicated pure agony, as if she were being torn apart.
Lyssa said softly.
“You’re done,” Brit said. She fired her pistol and the scientist’s head burst in a pink spray.
“Brit!” Andy shouted.
Cal Kraft was immediately in motion. He slid behind the raised bed, putting Tim between him and Andy and Brit. He fired two shots with the pistol and ducked back behind the bed.
Andy moved to Tim, unconcerned with Cal’s small caliber weapon. He was uncertain if he should lift his boy from the bed.
Brit was st
ill in the doorway, pistol leveled on Kraft. The awkwardness of being so close, like family in a hospital room, made every action seem slower than they had been just seconds before. The scientist’s body lay on the floor to Andy’s right, blood pooling from his neck.
“He wasn’t lying,” Kraft said tensely, staring at Andy. “You move Tim, you’re going to kill him.”
The sound of Tim’s name coming out of Cal Kraft’s mouth, after everything he had done, filled Andy with rage he could barely control. Behind Andy, Brit leveled on the pistol on Kraft.
Kraft gave her a crooked smile, not appearing afraid of her at all. He nodded toward the cylinders in the clear cabinet. “You see those? You kill me, and those things right there are going to suck your son dry. You’re lucky I’ve watched these scientists perform the procedure enough times that I know how to finalize the transfer. Otherwise the imprinting process will run until Tim’s a vegetable.”
“I think you’re lying,” Brit said.
“You met Kylan,” Kraft said, adjusting his grip on his pistol. “I performed his procedure all by myself. It’s practically off-the-shelf, now. Some of these eggheads try to say the Weapon Born aren’t true AI, but Doctor Farrel, the guy you just blew away, he explained the process as creating fertile soil for the new mind. That’s poetic, isn’t it?”
With his pistol still raised, Kraft took two steps backward, placing him near the cabinet with the seed cylinders again. There was recessed door in the wall behind Kraft. Andy hadn’t noticed it at first. Below the clear cabinet door, a display showed rapidly changing numbers and several meaningless graphs.
On the table, Tim stirred, making a whimpering sound. His eyes fluttered open and he looked up through the neural lace.
Kraft slapped the side of the cabinet and a panel slid down, hiding the cylinders from view. The door behind him opened simultaneously and he moved backward, firing at Brit. Andy lurched forward over Tim, reaching for the far side of the bed.