Unfortunately the sergeant who’d sided with her had already left with Stavos. Wheeler smiled ruefully at him. “Are you going to put me in a cell with the admiral?”
The sergeant shook his head. “By yourself. The admiral is coming back here as soon as he wakes up.”
Wheeler’s hand drifted to her sidearm, but the sergeant beat her to the draw. A paralyzing jolt of energy hit her, and she lost all control of her body. She fell to the floor with her muscles spasming violently, and then a second stun bolt swept her into oblivion.
Chapter 46
Astralis
Tyra awoke to the sound of Theola crying piteously. She blinked bleary eyes and fought against the thick fog swirling inside her head. Waking up from a stun blast was never a pleasant experience, but General Graves’ Marine bots had shot her more than once, and that made it doubly unpleasant.
Tyra rolled over to find Theola crying and crawling in mindless circles, dribbling a trail of snot and drool on the carpet around the bed. Her heart leapt into her throat, and she struggled to reach Theola, but her legs were still numb. She ended up dragging herself along the floor until she could grab her daughter’s legs. Theola struggled and cried louder, but Tyra flipped her onto her back and pulled her close, wrapping her body around her baby in a fetal position.
With the familiar warmth and smell of her mother, Theola’s cries subsided. She buried her face in Tyra’s blouse and popped her thumb in her mouth. “There, you go... shhhh,” Tyra whispered as she stroked Theola’s hair and kissed her head.
She glanced around for some sign of the general or his marines. Graves was absent from the room, but a pair of bots stood by the broken door, quietly tracking her movements with their cold blue holoreceptors.
“What are you looking at?” she demanded.
Neither of the bots replied, but Tyra heard footsteps coming up the stairs. She clutched Theola tighter. A few second later, Graves walked in. Followed by Atara. Both of them were smiling. “You’re awake! Good,” Graves said.
“I’ll frekking kill you! Do you hear me?”
Graves nodded reasonably and gave Atara a shove to push her in front of him. She glared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. “If you’re going to kill someone you should start with her. After all, she’s the one who alerted us to what you were planning.”
Tyra stared at Graves in horror.
He drew his sidearm and walked up to her, holding it out butt-first. “Go on. Shoot her.”
Tyra stared at the weapon, not trusting Graves, but unable to resist the chance. She snatched the gun, aimed it at Graves’ chest, and pulled the trigger twice.
The weapon clicked uselessly, and both Graves and Atara laughed. The general drew a charge pack from his pocket and wagged it in Tyra’s face. “It would help if the gun were loaded, wouldn’t it?”
Tyra tossed the weapon aside, and it skittered along the floor. “What do you want from us?”
Graves’ smile vanished. “Simple. If your husband succeeds in exposing us, then I’m going to kill you both, just as I told him I would. If he fails... then I’ll stun you again and have Director Helios make some adjustments to your recollection of events.”
Tyra glared hatefully at the general. She tried using her ARCs to call for help, but the familiar light of colored HUD icons in her periphery was gone. “You took my ARCs.”
“Of course,” Graves replied. He opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped himself and cocked his head, listening to something only he could hear. “Excuse me...” he turned his back to her and walked a few feet away. “What do you mean the admiral isn’t responding?”
...
“A mutiny within a mutiny? That’s got to be a first. If the loyalists have control, then what’s the problem?”
...
“The Marines are inside the center? Who told them to go in?!”
...
“That seems premature. There’s still time. And even if we fail, their bomb could still go off. If it does, we won’t have anything to worry about. There won’t be any evidence left.”
...
“Very well. No, I understand. I’ll let you know once I arrive at the stasis rooms.”
General Graves turned back to Tyra, looking flustered.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing you need to worry about.” He flicked a glance at the bots standing guard by the door, then to Atara. “Watch them,” he said, and handed her the charge pack for his sidearm. “I have an urgent matter to attend to.” Turning to the bots, he said, “The girl is in charge until I return.”
“Acknowledged,” both bots replied in androgynous voices.
Graves left the room at a brisk pace, and Atara hurried over to collect his discarded sidearm.
“Atara...” Tyra said.
She loaded the weapon and aimed it at her mother. “Yes?” she replied in a dulcet tone.
“Think about what you’re doing! I know you’re in there somewhere. It’s me, your mother!”
“You’re right,” Atara nodded agreeably, and her aim shifted to Theola. “Babies first.”
“Atara, don’t you dare!” Tyra wrapped herself more fully around Theola and twisted away, using her back as a shield.
Atara scowled and nodded to the bot standing closest to her. “Separate those two. I wouldn’t want to miss and hit the wrong target.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the bot replied, as it stalked toward Tyra. She screamed as it laid cold metal hands on her. It pried her roughly away from Theola. The sudden absence of her mother’s warmth provoked a dramatic frown from Theola. Her lips trembled, and she began to cry.
“It’s okay, sweetheart!” Tyra managed, while struggling furiously against the machine holding her.
Theola didn’t buy it. She started to scream.
“Let me go!” Tyra twisted and wrenched her arms with all of her strength. Warm blood trickled from her wrists and dripped between the bot’s fingers.
“Please do not struggle,” it said. “You are injuring yourself.”
“That... monster is going to shoot my baby!” Tyra screamed, trying to appeal to the bot’s sense of logic as it dragged her away.
“The baby is a dangerous terrorist,” Atara explained. “She must be eliminated.”
“No...” Tyra whimpered.
“All threats must be neutralized to ensure the safety of the ship’s passengers and crew,” the bot replied in a reasonable tone. “Do not be afraid, ma’am.”
Marine bots had human sergeants to command them for a reason. They were little more than walking guns waiting for someone to point them in the right direction.
Atara flicked a switch on the side of the general’s pistol.
“Atty,” Tyra tried, smiling through a veil of tears. “I know you’re in there somewhere. Listen to me—if you do this, you’ll never be able to forgive yourself.”
Atara looked straight at her and grinned. “Oh, you’re wrong about that. I’ve done far worse things and forgiven myself. The secret lies in knowing that there’s no need for forgiveness, because there’s no such thing as right and wrong. Judgment and guilt are lies from the pits of Etheria.”
Tyra blinked in shock. No five year old talked like that. If there’d been any doubt before, there was none now. Atara was gone.
Taking the pistol in both hands, Atara aimed it at her sister’s head.
“Atara! No!”
A deadly flash of crimson light shot out—
And missed, carving a chunk out of the wall behind Theola.
The gun went flying from Atara’s hand and skittered along the floor. She clutched her hand to her chest and screamed, casting about wildly, her eyes flashing with fury. “Shoot it! Shoot the Gor!”
Both bots looked around the room, their arms and integrated weapons tracking aimlessly. “No threats detected,” one of them said just before its head popped off in a shower of sparks.
The other one watched as the headless body of its partner floated across the floo
r toward it.
“Shoot that bot!” Atara screamed, and scrambled to reach the general’s sidearm.
The bot holding Tyra managed to spare an arm to fire on its partner. Crimson beams flashed out and sprayed molten chunks from the headless bot’s armor. Then it fell to the floor, and the one holding Tyra lost its head, too. Both bots fell in a noisy clatter.
Tyra wasted no time gawking. She ran to intercept Atara, but she was too late.
Atara reached the general’s sidearm and brought it up, one-handed to point it at her mother’s chest.
She pulled the trigger.
A flash of crimson light blinded Tyra, and a blast of super-heated air hit her in the face. The sharp smell of ozone filled her nostrils, but the scalding stab of pain never came. Instead, Tyra heard chunks of castcrete debris pitter-pattering to the floor behind her.
She opened her eyes to see Atara trying to steady the pistol for another shot, this time with both hands, but her right hand was swollen and purpling with a bad bruise. No wonder she’d missed. She’d fired the gun one-handed. The recoil had been too much.
Before Atara could fire again, she was hoisted up by an invisible force, and held dangling by her arm. She kicked and screamed, cursing in a language that definitely wasn’t Versal.
Then the air shimmered, and a wall of corpse-gray skin and rippling muscle appeared, hissing in Atara’s face.
“Brak!” Tyra had never been more happy to see anyone in her entire life.
He wrenched the pistol from Atara’s hand and flicked it back to stun.
“This isn’t over,” she said, smiling smugly.
Brak thrust the pistol into her chest and pulled the trigger. A flash of blue light rippled over Atara and her eyes rolled up in her head. Brak set her down gently with her muscles still spasming as arcs of blue fire leapt off her body.
The Gor turned to face Tyra. “Are you okay?”
She ran to pick up Theola before answering. “I am now,” she said, while bouncing Theola on her hip to quiet her desperate cries.
“Where is Graves?” Brak asked.
“You didn’t see him?”
Brak shook his head.
“He just left.”
“I just arrive. I climb up to the window,” Brak said, nodding to the en-suite bathroom.
Tyra let out a shaky sigh. “If you’d arrived just a second later...” she trailed off, shaking her head, unable to finish that thought.
Brak nodded. “Graves. Where is he?”
Tyra pointed to the open door of the bedroom. “He left. I overheard him speaking to someone. It might have been Ellis. He mentioned something about going to the stasis chambers.”
Brak hissed. “That is where the Faro prisoners are!”
“You think they’re planning to break them out?”
“Maybe,” Brak said. “Are there more bots inside the house?”
“If there are, they won’t be a threat. They need a human to give them orders.”
“Then make sure she does not wake up to do so,” Brak replied, nodding to Atara’s unconscious form. He passed her the general’s pistol to her. “In case she does,” he explained.
She took the weapon with a grimace and nodded, watching as Brak hurried for the door. “Where are you going?”
“To find Graves,” he replied, and promptly vanished, the air shimmering around him as he cloaked once more.
As soon as Brak was gone, Tyra turned to Atara. She glared at her daughter, lying face down on the floor, her back rising and falling slowly. A paranoid thought skittered through Tyra’s mind: Atara might only be pretending to be unconscious.
She almost stunned Atara again to be sure—the risks be damned—but a flash of guilt answered that thought. Atara was her daughter!
And yet she wasn’t. Whatever this thing was, it only looked like her.
Tyra waved to the holoscreen at the foot of the bed, and selected the comms panel to place a call to emergency services.
The head and shoulders of the operator appeared on the screen. She looked infuriatingly calm. “Emergency services, what is the nature of your emergency?”
“My daughter just tried to shoot her baby sister with a gun.”
“Does she still have the weapon, ma’am?”
Tyra held the weapon up in front of the screen. “No. She’s been stunned.”
“Okay. The police are on their way. Does your daughter have a history of mental illness, or violent behavior toward family members?”
“No. Not until recently. She’s five.”
“I see...”
“Don’t give me that look. She was touched by the aliens when they came aboard. They did something to her.”
The operator’s expression went from wary to suspicious. “Have you been watching the news, ma’am?”
“No, why?”
The operator frowned. “No reason, ma’am... the police will be there soon.”
Tyra had an odd feeling that this woman didn’t believe her. “I’d also like to report a break-in.”
“Your daughter broke into her own home?”
“No. General Graves of the Marines did. He stunned us and held us hostage along with my daughter, but he left. You should send a squad to arrest him.”
The operator’s eyebrows beetled and her frown deepened. “I see... ma’am, have you taken anything recently?”
“Taken anything? Like what?”
“Pills, drugs, alcoholic beverages...”
“I’m not high!”
“Of course not,” the operator said. “The police will be there soon. Please try to remain calm.”
“I’m already calm!” Tyra shouted, and hung up. She glanced at Atara again, but she was still out cold. It was too soon for the effects of the stun blast to be wearing off.
Tyra paced the floor while she waited for the police to arrive. Theola looked up at her with big eyes, sucking her thumb. The operator clearly hadn’t believed even half of what she’d said. She probably thought Tyra was the crazy one, but she’d have to send the police either way.
Tyra’s thoughts turned to Lucien while she waited, and something the operator had said clicked. Have you been watching the news, ma’am? She turned back to the holoscreen and tried using it to contact Lucien, but he was listed as offline.
Failing that, she set the screen to a local news channel to see what the operator had been talking about. A reporter appeared standing on a dark street in front of a bright holographic sign that read, Resurrection Center. Police patrol cars, fire trucks, and ambulances lined the street in the background, their lights all flashing blue and red. Glowing yellow police tape barred the entrance of the center.
The reporter on the screen was midway through her report. “...appears to be some kind of an armed confrontation in the records room between the center’s security forces and the terrorists. As you saw just a moment ago, several squads of Marines have now gone in to join the fight. They declined to comment on their orders, but it seems they may have been sent to put a stop to the fighting before the bomb goes off.”
The scene switched to show two more reporters sitting behind a desk back at the news station. The one reporting live from the center was reduced to a box in the bottom right of the screen.
They discussed the implications of everything that was happening amongst themselves, leading viewers to the unsettling conclusion that the center could blow at any second thanks to the dead-man’s switch that the terrorists had wired to their bomb. Tyra’s heart thundered in her chest. Things had gone badly awry at the center. Lucien was in the middle of a firefight. She imagined Coretti’s bomb going off and Lucien being ripped apart in the explosion. If that happened, there’d be no bringing him back to life. With the center destroyed, he and anyone else who died in the explosion would be gone for good. Get out of there, Lucien! Just get out! But she knew he wouldn’t. This was their only chance of saving Atara. Not to mention the rest of Astralis.
Sirens came screaming to Tyra’s ears along
with the idling rumble of hover car engines. The police had arrived. She waved the screen off and ran downstairs with Theola to meet the police.
Tyra reached the front door—what was left of it after Marine bots had blasted it open. Two policemen came running up the walkway, their stun pistols drawn. “Drop your weapon and put your hands above your head!” one of them yelled.
Tyra dropped the weapon, but raised only one hand. “I’m holding a baby!”
The officer who’d spoken stopped a few feet away. “Kick the gun toward us.”
Tyra did so, and the policeman picked it up.
“I’m not the threat here!” Tyra said. “Look at the door! Do you think I could have done that much damage with that little gun? And why would I break into my own house?”
The policemen appeared to see the sense in what she was saying.
“Who’s inside, ma’am?”
“Just my eldest daughter. She’s upstairs, stunned. She tried to shoot us with that gun.”
“Wait outside, ma’am,” the policeman said as he and his partner pushed by her.
Tyra watched them storm through her living room, their guns sweeping left to right, looking for hidden threats. Not encountering anything, they proceeded up the stairs, on their way to arrest Atara.
Tyra couldn’t bring herself to feel anything but relief. A mother’s love was supposed to be unconditional, but whatever Atara was, she wasn’t her daughter anymore.
At this point all she could think about was Lucien and whether or not he was going to make it out of this alive.
Despite Tyra’s utter lack of belief in Etherus, she found herself whispering a prayer to keep him safe. The true test of an agnostic was in facing death unafraid, but she was terrified.
Chapter 47
Astralis
Lucien fired another burst from his pulse pistol. This time it hit something vital and his target collapsed in a shower of sparks. “One down,” Lucien muttered, as he ducked back into cover to avoid the bots’ return fire.
“The dead man’s switch is offline!” Fizk crowed over the comms.
“Finally!” Lucien replied. Feeling empowered by that news, he peeked out of cover again and fired a steady stream at the bots advancing on him.
Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within Page 36