by Isaac Hooke
“Get some good food in you,” Rade told him.
“Sure,” Fret said. “Once I work up an appetite. I just want to sleep right about now.”
Rade watched them go and then sat there alone in the compartment. He stared at the exit hatch for long moments.
“You all right?” someone said.
Maybe he wasn’t quite so alone after all.
He glanced to his right and saw Tahoe watching from the far side of the compartment, where he sat with his back to the bulkhead.
“Yeah,” Rade said.
“You shouldn’t take it out on them you know,” Tahoe said. “It’s not their fault.”
Rade sighed. “I’m more angry at myself than anyone else.”
“And yet you take it out on your crew,” Tahoe said.
“Maybe I should start working out alone,” Rade said. “Put you in charge of PT. At least for the short term.”
“Probably a good idea,” Tahoe said.
“All right, done,” Rade said. “Effective immediately, you’re in charge of PT.”
Tahoe nodded. “So truthfully, now, how are you holding up?”
Rade gazed down at his hands. He opened his fingers, stared at his palms. “Honestly? I’m a wreck.”
“You’re putting on a good show for the crew, then,” Tahoe said. “Because I see a man fighting.”
“I’m holding myself together just enough to get through this,” Rade said. “You can’t notice it, but I’m almost bursting at the seams. I am hanging on, however. And that’s all I can do at the moment.”
“I hear you,” Tahoe said. “If I lost Tepin, I would... actually, I don’t know what would happen to me. I wouldn’t be the same man, I can tell you that.”
Rade nodded. “That’s it, I think. She makes me the man I am. Around her, I want to be a better person. I leave behind the ruthless killer I was on the Teams. But now that she’s gone, the killer is coming back. Whenever I think of Zoltan, sheer murder fills my mind.”
“When we find him,” Tahoe said. “Ms. Bounty better hope that she gets to this Zoltan first. Because when you or I, or any other member of the crew meets him, there won’t be much left of the Artificial.”
“No, there won’t,” Rade agreed. “It’s just too bad we can’t touch him.”
“That whole body-hopping bullshit?” Tahoe asked. “I’m not sure I believe it.”
“I’m not sure either,” Rade said. “But I’m going to try to hold back.”
“Think you’ll succeed?” Tahoe said.
“Honestly,” Rade said. “When I meet this Zoltan, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop myself from throttling the Artificial.”
twenty-three
Shaw opened her eyes. She had fallen into and out of a drugged consciousness for the past few hours, but now she was wide awake and lucid. She struggled against the straps that held her to the bed. She was able to shift her limbs back and forth slightly, but not enough to get free—mostly she was simply sliding around the upper layers of skin underneath the binds.
“Bax, let me out of here,” Shaw said. “Bax?”
The Argonaut’s AI didn’t answer her.
Her cheek area seemed numb, but she did sense what felt like a bandage secured to the area. She glanced down; all her other cuts had been replaced with pink scars.
“Remain calm,” a nearby Weaver unit said. “All of your injuries have been healed. I replaced your shattered cheekbone with 3D-printed osseous tissue, and grafted fresh skin grown from your stem cells. It will take a few hours for everything to set, and then I will remove the bandage.”
“Cut me free,” she told it.
“I am sorry, I am not authorized to do that,” the Weaver said. “Not even after I remove the bandage.”
“Why?”
No answer.
“When Rade gets back, he’s going to have you dismantled for this, you realize that don’t you?” she said.
Still the Weaver didn’t respond.
“Hell, I’ll do it myself when I get free,” she muttered.
She accessed the overhead map, but the AI had apparently limited her access because she could only see her current position aboard the Argonaut, and not that of the intruder. She attempted to bring up the tactical display to get an idea where the Argonaut was headed, but received an “access denied” message.
Via her Implant, she began toying with the various remote interfaces around her, trying to see if she could log into any of them.
None of the interfaces answered her requests. But when she tried one of the video cameras in sickbay, her viewpoint automatically switched to it. She tried the second camera in the compartment, and then the hallway outside. They all worked.
So I still have access to the cameras.
She continued to cycle through the feeds. She noted that she had visual data only, no audio.
Eventually she reached the cameras on the bridge. She saw the robed Artificial seated at the captain’s station. Its mouth was moving. Having a conversation with Bax, no doubt. Given how quickly the Artificial had reprogrammed the earlier robot, she had no doubt it had already converted the Argonaut’s AI to its side. She wondered where the Artificial was taking the ship.
She tried to access the lip reading app she had stored in her Implant, but once more was hit with an “access denied.”
She had a thought, and switched to an external camera. Stars filled her vision.
So far, so good.
She attempted to rewind the feed by a few hours. That worked.
She had the local AI in her Implant compare the current position of the planets and other celestial bodies with footage taken from a few hours ago, and from the changes had it deduce the course of the Argonaut. Apparently the Artificial was steering the vessel straight for the exit Gate. Well, that wasn’t too surprising, she supposed.
She continued cycling through the cameras, switching back to the internal placements. She reached the cargo bay feed and paused. She saw the Persians that had accompanied the Artificial from the planet. Dressed in robes, they were lying about, scattered across the deck, looking extremely pale, foreheads covered in sweat. They were quite obviously sick. Purple blotches had formed on the exposed skin of some of them. It looked worse than any bruising that Shaw had ever seen, and she suspected these poor people had been injected with some sort of engineered contagion.
She continued cycling through the remainder of the cameras, both internal and external, but discovered nothing else of note. She dismissed the feed entirely to ponder her predicament.
She had felt a persistent throbbing in her right wrist since awakening, and had attributed it to the overly tight restraints. But she was starting to wonder...
Glancing down, she shifted her wrist as far as she was able within the strap, and spotted something that made her suppress a grin. The Weaver had missed a fragment of the exoskeleton that had embedded in her wrist area when Zoltan crudely tore the metal framework from her body.
She rotated her wrist as far as the binding strap allowed, positioning the protruding steel sliver against the thick material, and began sliding her forearm back and forth a few millimeters at a time.
I’m going to saw my way out of here, if it takes the next week.
SHAW FELT A growing despair after the first few hours, because the binding material showed no signs of yielding to her slow attack. Instead, all she really seemed to accomplish was the creation of fresh friction burns to her wrist from the constant rubbing.
But Shaw didn’t give up. She sawed every waking moment. It took her a few days, but her dogged persistence paid off, and she finally managed to file through the restraint. The end came quickly after she had cut halfway through—she started yanking on the bind in between sawing sessions, accelerating the process.
When she had successfully freed that hand, she remained motionless, knowing that the watchful eyes of the Argonaut’s AI would alert the Artificial the moment she lifted her arm.
She cycled throu
gh the cameras once more, confirming that the path to Engineering was clear. Luckily, her captor had lasered through all the potential breach seals between sickbay and her destination. Out of curiosity, she cycled the camera to the cargo hold to check on the human prisoners. She had watched a terrible transformation take place over the past few days, with the passengers slowly becoming unrecognizable. They had ripped off their robes since the last time she had checked on them, and their backs had swollen into large purple masses. She didn’t know what was happening to them.
Didn’t want to know.
What the hell was the Artificial planning?
She checked the bridge camera, confirming that the robed intruder still resided there, then she dismissed the feed.
She stared at the ceiling and took several deep breaths.
Well, it’s now or never.
She lifted her arm from the table and quickly freed her left hand from the other strap. She sat upright, and worked on the restraint that tied down her right leg.
The Weaver attempted to intercept her. She freed the leg and aimed a kick at the surgical robot’s midsection, sending it crashing into the nearby bulkhead. She removed her other leg from the last remaining restraint and then leaped onto the deck. She hurried out the breached door into the tight corridor outside.
“Please return to the sickbay, Shaw,” the Argonaut’s AI came over the main circuit. “For your own safety.”
“Screw you, Bax,” Shaw said.
“There is no one here by that name,” the Argonaut’s AI replied. “Please return to the sickbay.”
Shaw ignored the AI. She hurried through the passageways, once again glad that the intruder had cut through all the seals, preventing the AI from blocking her. She only wished she could see where her enemy currently resided on the overhead map. She quickly accessed the bridge camera: the robed Artificial was no longer there. She had no doubt it was racing to intercept her. While the sickbay was closer to Engineering than the bridge, given the faster speed of an Artificial versus a human, she judged she would have about thirty seconds after she reached her destination until the intruder arrived.
At Engineering she hurried to the control panel. She wished she could manually seal the hatch behind her, but like all the doors that led there, it was permanently cut open.
She reached under the panel counter and retrieved the security chip TJ had hidden. She shoved the chip into the provided connection.
“Please stop what you’re doing, Shaw,” the Argonaut’s AI said. “You don’t realize the enlightenment Zoltan will bring to humanity.”
Most military-grade starships had various defenses in place in their engineering sections to prevent crew members from doing what Shaw intended, like flooding the compartment with incapacitating agents for example, but the Argonaut had no such capabilities. The Marauder wasn’t military grade. The Artificial would have to come down to the compartment itself if it wanted to stop her.
Using the chip, in moments she had usurped control of the Argonaut from the bridge. The tactical display filled out. She could see the planets around her once more, and another vessel pursuing four days behind.
Rade.
Shaw pulled up the Hellfire launch interface. First of all, she had to prevent the Artificial from destroying the undefended Gate. The Hellfires could be timed to detonate after the Argonaut passed through the Gate, destroying it behind them and trapping Rade and the others in the system. She intended to remedy that by firing all the missiles now. The Viper lasers could destroy the Gate, too, of course, but only before the Argonaut traversed. If the Artificial did that, he would strand everyone in the system.
Shaw set random targets and fired all missile tubes; she waited for the reload and fired again, repeating the process until the last of the missiles were away. She watched the green warhead indicators expand outward on the tactical display, sourced from the blue dot of the Argonaut. She smiled. As a side bonus, by launching all those missiles, she stripped the Argonaut of long range offensive capabilities, making it even easier for Rade or anyone else to intercept the ship in the future.
She wiped the smile from her lips. Next, she had to—
Something struck Shaw hard in the back of the head, and she slumped forward.
twenty-four
Rade sat in his spacious office aboard the Tiger. While the extra room was nice, he missed his old ship terribly, mostly because Shaw wasn’t there. Any ship could be his home with her around. He hadn’t been lying when he had told Tahoe he was a wreck without her. The most obvious absence were the scents he associated with her.
She was an early riser, and every morning when he woke up, it was always to the distinctive smell of the fresh coffee she had brewed. Or when he returned to their shared stateroom after his shift, sometimes he was greeted by the aroma of one of her home-cooked meals—usually some variation of chicken and leavened bread.
Then there were the smells of her body. At her station on the bridge she wore a very slight amount of perfume. It wasn’t enough for him or anyone else to detect under ordinary circumstances—she was very conscious about not “disturbing the olfactory sensibilities” of the bridge crew, as she put it—but when she leaned toward him, or he brushed past her, he always picked up the subtle yet intoxicating fragrance. There were other scents: the sweat of her after working out, or making love. The smell of her hair after a shower. The minty fragrance of her breath in the evening.
All of that gone in the blink of an eye.
With the absence of her pleasing odors, his own stench was made all the more obvious. And vile. Especially considering he had neglected his personal hygiene in recent days.
Really should take a shower.
The call indicator flashed in the lower right of his vision. It was Lui.
Rade answered, voice mode.
“Boss,” Lui said. “I just detected multiple missiles leaving the Argonaut.”
Rade stood up. “Shaw.”
He dismissed the call and hurried from his office.
Lui glanced at him as he stepped onto the bridge.
“It has to be her,” Lui agreed. “She’s dumping the full inventory of missiles.”
Rade nodded slowly. “Making sure Zoltan doesn’t blow up the Gate behind him.” That’s my girl.
He took his place at the Sphinx. “Do we have trajectories on those missiles?”
“Yes,” Lui said. “They’ve been fired perpendicular to the Argonaut. Well away from our ship, and the Gate. Wait... they’re detonating.”
Rade nodded. There was no way to change the target of those missiles, not after they had been launched. Not with that model of Hellfires, anyway. But Shaw apparently had elected not to take any chances.
He saw that the others were looking at him expectantly, as if waiting for him to give another order. Rade realized there wasn’t really anything more they could do at the moment, and that he probably should have stayed in his office.
Despite all the years he had been in command of these men, he still sometimes felt uncomfortable. Like a fraud. He didn’t have all the answers, didn’t always know what to do. But he could never let them see his doubts. He had learned that early on. Which is not to say he wouldn’t ask his crew for advice when he was uncertain what course of action to take. A good leader did that often.
But now wasn’t one of those times. He knew exactly what they needed to do.
Keep following Shaw.
“Let me know if you detect anything else unusual,” Rade said. He glanced at Fret, who had made a full recovery after the exhausting workout session. “And keep trying to hail them. Watch for a reply, no matter how weak, even if it seems like mere background radiation.”
“We’re going to get her back, boss,” Manic said.
Rade nodded. He forced himself to stay sitting there, even though he felt like going back to his office immediately. After twenty minutes, he finally rose and returned to the adjacent compartment.
He sat down on the couch. Yes, th
at was another plus of the corvette: it had room enough for actual furniture in the captain’s office. He could only imagine how much more he would be able to do if he had a couch in his office aboard the Argonaut. He would be so much more productive with all that room and a comfortable place to sit...
He lay back and closed his eyes.
OVER THE NEXT twelve hours, while the Argonaut yet remained in the system, Rade often found himself gazing longingly at the fleeing vessel via the external camera. Even at maximum zoom, the craft was only the size of his fist.
Shaw was aboard.
Shaw.
So close. Yet so far.
When the ship finally passed through the Gate and out of view entirely, Rade felt a complete and utter sense of loss.
She’s gone.
He sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Gone forever.
No. She’s still alive. Just in a different system.
Still, while he was sitting in his plush office chair, she was likely suffering at the hands of the Artificial. Who could say what tortures he was inflicting? Rade imagined them all, and it only stoked the fire of rage inside him.
The killer within was at full force by the time the Tiger reached the Gate four days later. It was well that he had stopped working out with the others, because his physical training spanned half the day by that point, three hours per session. He had talked to Bender, and the man had shared his stash of gear with Rade. The steroid kind. Rade needed a shot of testosterone to boost his recovery—otherwise, all of that training would have been for nothing, and he would have driven his body to the ground. Instead, he felt better and stronger than ever, completely energized, like he could take on anything.
He didn’t care about the side-effects to his body. He took as much test and other gear as he could, despite the cautioning of the Weavers. He had the surgical robots monitor him of course, so that he didn’t completely destroy his liver, but he continued to push himself. Nothing else was important right then, except for the single woman who meant everything to him.