by C. T. Phipps
William looked up. “You think they heard us?”
I followed his gaze, seeing no sign of any movement through the grates even as white bioroid blood dripped down on the side of my face. “I can’t imagine why they would, can you?”
“Shut up,” William said. “Have you checked on the others?”
“Hiro’s dead.”
William closed his eyes. “Those sons of bitches. He was just a kid.”
I didn’t feel the need to correct him on Hiro’s true allegiances. “I know where Isla is. One of the jailers claims they’ve impounded the Melampus, too.”
“I’m going to kill Clarice for this.”
“Focus on getting out of here,” I said, still unsure about my own feelings regarding all this. “We can worry about that later.”
“She took my goddamn arm, Cassius!” William hissed, getting up in my face.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” I snapped back. “Now keep quiet until we can get Isla and figure a way out of this place.”
William growled under his breath and looked over his shoulder, muttering about how he had thought his time in aristocrat’s dungeons was over.
Finding Isla’s cell just a few doors down, I entered the passcode for it and tried to figure out what I was going to do if she’d been tortured the way the others were. If that turned out to be the case, I decided I would stay and kill Janice. Despite the threat Cognition A.I. posed, I realized I honestly didn’t care anymore. I’d devoted too much of my life to serving other peoples’ causes. It was time I started working on protecting those I cared about.
And no one else.
I closed my eyes and slid the cell door open. Bracing myself as I opened my eyes again, I saw the chamber was actually rather pleasant. There was a toilet, bed, shelves, and a holovision display tuned to a Shogun news channel.
Isla was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing a diaphanous blue gown as well as a set of expensive shining flexi-silver shoes. A holographic book about xenoarchaeology was open on the bed, showing images about Community species interacting with early spaceflight humans.
“I’m not sure whether to be pissed off or relieved,” William muttered, staring inside.
Isla looked up, staring. “Dear God in Heaven, what the hell happened to you two?”
“Surgical spiders,” I said, calmly. “My ex-wife wished to make me look like she remembered me.”
“Ex-wife?” Isla asked.
“As Count of Asteroid-227, mining rights included, I officially declare our union dissolved.” It was a surprisingly liberating feeling to let go of the past that way. It was just too bad the act did nothing for the emotional ties.
Isla got up, wobbling a second, then looking uncomfortably down at her shoes. “She came to speak with me earlier. Judith argued that my skills would be better served with the Free Systems Alliance and that bioroids would be emancipated once the Commonwealth was destroyed.”
“And what did you say?” I asked, unsure of how I felt about that promise.
“Something akin to the fact I would believe her claims about emancipation better if not for the fact her organization’s primary ally is a slaver.”
I smiled then looked to the side of the door. “We need to get out of here. I don’t know what’s going on outside but someone is trying to help us. I won’t lie to you, though, there’s a lot of dead bodies out there and it looks like a murder spree worse than the Rhea’s cargo hold.”
“More like a blue and white paint fight,” William said, before looking between us. “Oh, right. Never mind.”
Isla frowned and walked past us. “What part of our association has made you of the mind I am of a weak stomach?” Taking one look at the bodies around us, she knelt down to pull the shoes off one of the corpses and tore at her dress to give her greater freedom of movement. “Please provide me with one of your rifles as well.”
“All right,” I said, handing her one.
“Thank you.” Isla took it in hand and charged it. “Are the elevators working?”
“No,” I said. “They’ve been locked down.”
Isla nodded. “I’ll hotwire them. You’ll have to cover me, though.”
She proceeded to aim at the control panel, fired her rifle, and then placed the item down before reaching into the white-hot ruins without a shred of concern. Seconds later, I heard the sound of the elevator’s turbines.
I stared. I hadn’t known she could do that.
Isla said, “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The elevator doors opened up to the top floor of the Rin-O’Harra’s dungeon. Beyond was a single long concrete corridor, stretching toward a pair of thick eighteen-foot-tall and ten-yards-wide super-steel doors.
A metal door was built into the left side of the hallway a single long pane of glass showing a room full of computers beyond. There were a dozen more corpses on the ground but all of them were human, eviscerated by what looked like talons or their necks broken.
We were not alone here.
The place smelled of burning ozone, which only added to the mystery of just what the hell was going on. If this was a rescue attempt then it was the strangest damn one I had ever been a part of, and I’d once had to fly a sewage treatment vessel to Albion.
Raising my plasma rifle, I slowly stepped into the hallway and took a look around. There were no more sounds coming from below, either boots or talk. Whatever had killed these people had finished off the rest of the security staff.
“What the hell is going on here?” William muttered, following close behind.
“It could be Clarice,” Isla suggested.
“I sincerely doubt it,” William said. “Your baby-doll gave us up. Sold us to her cousin for mutilation and dismemberment. No matter what excuse she has, Hiro is dead because of her and I’m not about to forget that.”
Rather than argue, Isla said, “Don’t use the term doll around me. It’s offensive.”
“Sure, whatever,” William said, holding tightly to the rifle he was ill-equipped to handle. “Is this the way we came in? I don’t remember because of the excessive number of shocks to my brain.”
“I believe so,” I said, gesturing down the hallway. “I didn’t get much of a look on my way in, though.”
“Medical, Central Command, and Containment is this way. The exit to the rest of the palace is all here, too,” Isla said, stepping off the elevator as its doors shut behind us. “I should be able to override the lockdown on the building from Command.”
“Aren’t you just a wealth of surprises,” William muttered. “Where the hell did you learn so much about security?”
“Running for my life from bounty hunters,” Isla said, walking down the hall. “Now come on. We can maybe get your arm fixed while we’re there.”
“We don’t have time for that,” I said.
“Piss off,” William said. “If there’s a chance of my getting a decent replacement then I’ll take it.”
Isla shook her head. “We just need a prosthetic and if they have bioroid maintenance then it can be connected via an emergency procedure. I’ve done it dozens of times on the battlefield.”
William’s face fell at her explanation.
“You served during the war?” I asked, following.
“On a relief ship during the war, yes,” Isla said. “They didn’t ask questions until after the fighting was over. I thought they could be trusted with my secret. They couldn’t. They tried to deactivate me for the crime of operating on people by myself.”
“You’ll have to tell me that story,” I said.
“I’d rather not,” Isla said. “It ends badly.”
“And if I don’t want a robot arm?” William asked, kneeling down to look at one of the dead guards.
“Then you’re a liability while we try and sneak out of this palace,” Isla said. “Both in your ability to fight and the fact you’re glaringly noticeable.”
William looked at her with disdain and turned away. “
Fine, I’ll take the damned thing until we can get an organically grown replacement. A real arm.”
Isla rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
The three of us walked to the door beside the glass window and found ourselves in Central Command. There were no dead bodies present but plenty of monitors showed images of the prison interior. On the screens were images of the guards talking, eating, and beating on the prisoners. I saw myself suspended from my wrist-bindings, Isla lying on her bed, and William staring forward with pure hate in his eyes.
“Looped footage?” I asked, looking at the screens.
“No, it’s too good,” William said, behind me. “It’s real-time artificially generated holo-animation. I used to use this sort of stuff all the time to get into Archduchy facilities when I was part of the Marines.”
“Why did you leave?” I asked, sitting down at one of the control desks. There was a keyboard whose user hadn’t logged out of, giving me free access to the system. It wouldn’t help with the lockdown they’d been clearly unable to override but it could help me with the internal systems as well as passively linking up with the main Water Palace network.
“I’m not really a joiner,” William said, frowning and looking around. “Besides, I was happy to take every world I could from Crius’ control but less so at the prospect of invading other worlds for Albion. The pay was shit and the food was worse.”
“I’ll see what’s in the medical bay,” Isla said, heading to the back of the control room where there were two additional doors. The first was helpfully marked MEDICAL while the second was marked CONTAINMENT.
“What now?” William asked.
“I’m going to try and lock the door to the outside,” I said, looking at the one we just came through. “I’d rather keep whatever killed all those soldiers out there.”
“Assuming it’s not in here already,” William said, looking to the air ducts. “Or moving around above us.”
The door to the Control Room slid shut and locked before I closed the metal shutters over the window. “What do you think it is?”
William, reluctantly, put his rifle down on the computer console. “It’s difficult to say with the lack of information I’ve got but I’m going to probably say a kriegermonster.”
I looked up. “Those have been banned by the Archduchy for decades.”
“And that’s ever stopped the nobility before?”
Kriegermonsters were security constructs that took hybridized predators and cybernetically uplifted them into something even more deadly. Security Constructs were fairly common across the Spiral with everyone wanting an intelligent dog, cat, dragon, or tiger to look after their loved ones. Kriegermonsters, though, were a specialized breed only found in Sector 7 with their primary purpose being to execute enemies.
Tales were still told on planets where Crius’ nobility had unleashed hordes of kriegermonsters to the aftermaths of battles to hunt down and execute targets in hiding, keeping them from having to accept any of their foes’ surrenders. Despite my incredulity, I remembered a hideous bulb-headed ant-creature, which had been one of the most effective killers I’d ever seen. It had been used by Thomas to hunt prisoners for the amusement of Prince Germanicus during his morgue parties.
He called it the Ripper.
“Then let’s be glad it’s on our side,” I muttered, thinking about the hundred or more people who’d died in this jailbreak.
“Is it?” William said, taking a seat by me. “It seems to me that’s a big assumption.”
It was.
“Yeah, well, let’s just focus on finding out on what’s going on outside.” I pulled up the exterior feed and discovered, to my joy, we were still able to access the Water Palace’s lower systems.
Pulling up security camera and drone footage, I was surprised by the results. I half-expected a full-on attack to be going on but everything seemed…fine. The exterior of the prison was locked down and guarded by mechs, but the security status was Code Yellow rather than Code Red.
Security was at a heightened state of alertness, but the Palace Guards were not making any moves to secure the prison or evacuate the floating citadel’s inhabitants. Whoever was responsible for the massacre outside had made sure no one would know about it until someone important tried to visit the prison again. It meant we were safe until Judith, Janice, or one of the other Rin-O’Harras tried to enter.
“Okay, that’s just creepy,” William said, having called up the same image on the computer adjoining me.
“Whoever has control over this prison has massive computer skills.”
“Or a machine that can manipulate computers better than any human,” William said, typing with one hand.
“A disturbing thought.”
“Show us what the rest of the party is doing.”
I nodded and searched the rest of the Water Palace for answers. What greeted me was further confirmation no one knew what was going on here. The courtyard was filled with guests, mostly of Crius descent, wandering about what appeared to be a massive party.
I saw Sector 7 celebrities, nobles, businessmen, and individuals wearing the uniforms of Commonwealth military and commerce officials. Kristoph hadn’t been kidding about Janice assembling an army of supporters. If Judith managed to convince all of them to support the Free Systems Alliance, then she had the beginnings of a force capable of bringing down the regional government.
“Can you get the Melampus?” William asked.
“No,” I muttered.
“Search for Clarice. I want to see what that bitch is doing.”
“Language,” I said. “She is still a lady.”
“Something I forgot,” William muttered. “Never trust an aristocrat.”
I glared at him.
“Should I trust you?” William asked, smiling.
“Next time, I’m leaving you in your cell.”
William looked to the side and called back to medical. “Any luck with the arm?”
“I’m working on it!” Isla said. “Give me a minute.”
I used the palace’s DNA scanners to search for Ida, Judith, Janice, and Clarice. Little red dots appeared on the monitors and I soon had images of all four mingling among the crowd. Clarice was standing beside her cousin, decked to the nines, greeting the various Crius present. The sight of her made me ill as I couldn’t help but think of all the times we’d shared each other’s bed, had each other’s backs, and spent time together as friends. Those images were contrasted now with Zoe’s head and William’s missing arm.
Ida’s presence was almost as bad a blow. The security camera footage gave me an image of the old woman wearing a heavy formal robe, which was a few decades out of style, and sipping honey nectar as she talked to a Merchants Guild Admiral with a bemused expression on her face. I couldn’t help but wonder what game she was playing.
Somehow, she’d managed to talk her way out of being imprisoned but not so much that we weren’t picked up and tortured. Was Ida the one responsible for our freedom? Clarice? Judith? All three? I had no idea and it was bothering me immensely. I didn’t know who to trust and it seemed the answer was increasingly, “no one.”
“Dammit, Ida,” William muttered, looking at her. “Not you, too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Can we send any messages to the Melampus?”
“No,” I said. “Nor can we check the prison’s interior, I’m locked out. Everything it’s showing is the false images its program is generating. Maybe Isla has a program for it, but I don’t. If Munin were here, maybe, but—”
There was a weird whale-song-like call from down the hall, echoing through the dungeon. It was simultaneously beautiful as well as unnerving. There was also something familiar about it I just couldn’t place.
William looked up. “What the hell was that?”
“Our kriegermonster I suspect.”
“We need to open the damned doors out of here,” William grumbled, standing up and grabbing his gun.
“W
hich would lead us right into a bunch of guards,” I said. “Whoever released us didn’t give us a clear avenue of escape.”
“Another point to saying they aren’t our friends.”
“Perhaps.”
Isla called back from the Containment room. “Guys, I think you should come back here.”
“Dammit, what’s she doing back there? She should focus on getting me my arm,” William said, getting up. “Never trust a bioroid.”
William’s attitude was starting to piss me off. Getting up, I asked, “May I ask what your problem with bioroids is?”
“Excuse me?” William said.
“It’s not a good attitude to have when someone is trying to give you your arm back.”
William shrugged. “I don’t hate bioroids.”
“Enough to drop Clarice as a lover and give Isla shit even though she’s about to get you a new arm.”
William frowned. “We weren’t lovers. We were just friends who had sex. Big difference.”
“If you say so.”
“As for the rest, I don’t like what bioroids represent.”
“Represent?”
“They’re people made as commodities. Say what you will about Crius’ aristocracy and the Commonwealths’ corporate overlords, God knows I will, but they can’t just go fiddling with your brain to make you do what you want. Can you really say a bioroid is a person if you can add or delete whatever memories they have? If you tell them to go pick up a box and they have to do it because that’s the way they’re made? Someday, people are going to figure out how to rewire human brains that way and that’s going to be the end of our race with bioroids instead of people.”
“Isla is free.”
“Isla thinks she’s free,” William said, shrugging. “But what she is, is malfunctioning. The right programmer could reset her back to whatever she was before. Then she’d be singing show tunes and talking about self-respect for girls. I’ve met a bunch of her model and they’re all the same. Can you really say that person is alive with those sorts of facts? Is a real person? Isla may just think she is because she was programmed that way.”