by Gwynn White
But her destination was finally in sight. There were already two other journeymen-level engineers at the console, and the image looking back at them belonged to Master Engineer Jason Goodwin. Good. He was competent and would be able to help Ven if he were really in distress.
“The lifts are still down, and so are aerial transports,” Goodwin said. “You’ll both be running a lot… Get going.”
The other two journeyman engineers took off running, and Goodwin’s image now looked out at her. “Olivia, is that you?”
She winced at the use of her full name. It was a bad sign if her supervisor wasn’t using nicknames. “Do we know what’s wrong?” she asked.
“No,” he answered. “We can only assume it’s a disconnect. Vengeance is an older model and due for upgrades. His telepaths will be linked with him, but most ship-wide communications are still down, so I can’t confirm what the exact issue is without help.”
“Yes, sir. What do you need?”
“You’re the best runner we have. I’m getting faulty relay signals from multiple locations. The areas around Level 39, sections 15a, 17, 18, and 20 are the worst. Reports coming in show electrical impulses are making it up the nerve line until that level. There may have been an overload that damaged conduits in those areas. Check every relay, neuron sequencer, biogel conduit, nerve cluster, and switch sensor between here and Level 39. Find out how far Vengeance’s disconnect extends. For all we know, it could be complete. Find me answers and find them fast.”
Goodwin looked over his shoulder and nodded to another person off screen. Liv couldn’t see who else was in the room with him, and she hadn’t heard whatever message had been relayed, but when he glanced back at her, his expression was pinched. “I just received word that we still haven’t been able to raise command on the comm, and bulkhead doors are closed between some levels. Having to override them will slow you down even more, so get moving. I’ll see what I can do from this end. Goodwin out.”
The screen darkened into standby, and she took off at a jog.
Liv paced herself. Thirty-nine levels was a hell of a lot of ground to cover, and she didn’t know if she’d run into any help along the way. She had to assume the worst-case scenario and pretend she was on her own with the massive moon-sized warship.
As she ran, she plotted the fastest route to Level 39. The hydro-gro zone ran a third of the warship’s length and stretched up the height of five levels. She could circumvent several bulkheads by first navigating the gardens and climbing a fruit tree to reach one of the upper floor balconies. She wasn’t above breaking into one of the officer’s spacious rooms either.
Decision made, she increased her speed, her boots pounding against the synthetic tiles.
When she reached the gardens, they were eerily devoid of life. Silent, empty, and yet, seemingly watchful.
“You’re letting your imagination win out again, Hawthorne,” she muttered. “Pull yourself together, woman.”
But her trek was taking too long. She tried to reassure herself that Vengeance would be fine, but with each passing minute, her telepathy threatened to override reason and survival instincts and merge with his primary core.
The simulated breeze blew cool air across her hot, damp cheeks. She halted and doubled over to catch her breath. Her legs like rubber, her lungs burning, and her brain fired up with adrenaline, she pressed her back against a pear tree’s trunk for a few seconds to try to calm her thoughts. The last thing she needed was for her telepathic ‘gift’ to rear its head and screw her life up worse than it already was. With a pained grunt, she pushed herself into motion again.
Oh, stop being so foolish. He’s three millennia old with at least fifteen telepaths serving him. He’s fine. I’m the one who’s in serious trouble if anyone finds out I’m hiding aboard this ship.
Ahead of her, the path curved around a small, tranquil lake, the area artfully landscaped, with no luxury forgotten. This part of the garden was unfamiliar to her, likely far beyond her journeyman status clearance. She faltered as a bubble rose to the surface, breaking the calm of the water. A painful memory suddenly swelled within her, sending aching ripples through her mind, and Liv stumbled over her feet.
She caught herself before falling and pushed the memory back into the corner of her mind where it belonged.
As she cleared a blind turn in the path, she found herself in the middle of a well-manicured clearing, surrounded on all sides by neatly trimmed fruit trees. Liv had the inane urge to wipe her boots off before walking across the perfectly trimmed green. A stone fountain in the likeness of a robed woman stood in the center of the lawn, her face peering out of her hood as if she were watching something move beyond the hedges lining the clearing. Liv watched the hedges, too, and gradually realized the movement was caused by a maintenance drudge.
And it was still functioning.
Liv froze as the six-foot maintenance drudge moved a bench with surprising agility as it worked.
Maintenance drudges caught in a loop shouldn’t have been able to function that well. If the drudge wasn’t getting commands from Vengeance, it would be more likely to trip over the bench, rather than work on repairs to the garden. For the first time, Liv’s fear about Vengeance’s wellbeing turned to suspicion. There was something highly unusual about his “emergency.”
The drudge had its back to her, seemingly unaware of her presence. She narrowed her eyes and ordered, “Maintenance bot, commence emergency override protocol by command of Journeymen Engineer Olivia Hawthorne, Guild member authority. Prepare to assist. Acknowledge.”
The drudge stopped his work as he assimilated her order. Lights running along his shoulders flared to life. Now that the robot was moving out from behind the foliage screen provided by the trees and hedges, he was easier to see.
A blood red glow emanated from his shoulders.
Red.
Not the mellow blue of a maintenance bot. This was no drudge.
As he stood up—apparently, he’d been kneeling while he worked—he stretched up to his full twelve feet.
Shit. Twelve feet. Red lights. She’d just issued commands to a sentinel.
She hated sentinels.
But Vengeance’s sentinels were so far above her in rank that she never interacted with them. Even if they hadn’t outranked her, she would’ve avoided them if possible.
The sentinel trained his weapons on her.
Liv felt like a small child again. She couldn’t move. All she could do was listen as his weapons powered up, humming in a quiet, deceptively soothing way. She doubted she’d have time to use her telepathy to neutralize the sentinel for the few moments it would take her to run out of his range.
The soft glow of laser sights painted her body in misty, crimson beams of light.
After all she’d survived as a girl, she was still destined to die at the hands of an AI. And not just any AI.
Vengeance was about to kill her.
6
Liv closed her eyes and waited for the onslaught of plasma cannon fire to rip through her body. When it didn’t come, she dared to peek at the sentinel again.
“Journeyman Engineer Olivia Hawthorne, is that the best you can do?”
His deep, pleasant voice washed over her, and she jerked like she’d been slapped.
“Were you honestly going to stand there and let me shoot you?” the familiar voice asked, his soothing tone at odds with the outward appearance of the sentinel’s body.
“Um...” Liv managed. How could she possibly explain her sudden fear and inability to act?
“If you can’t differentiate between my drudge and sentinel units, your record of education is inadequate, with numerous holes and misleading recommendations,” Vengeance continued.
“But, I thought you were… You’re not...” Liv stuttered, grappling with the reality of his deception.
“Yes?” he asked.
“You’re not in any distress,” she stammered then immediately felt like an idiot for pointing out the
obvious.
“No.” He tilted his head in an almost bird-like manner, obviously studying her, which made her squirm beneath the sentinel’s gaze.
“It’s a surprise drill, isn’t it?” Another stupid thing to say. Of course it was. Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner? Instead, she’d immediately panicked and jumped to the conclusion that the worst had happened, that they… that she… was about to lose Vengeance forever.
Despite her overwhelming need to keep her past a secret and honor her promise to her sisters to hide her real identity, she couldn’t cut herself off from the sole source of her only happy childhood memories.
“Captain Welner wished to test crew response times, which are down 5.89% overall,” Vengeance reported. His sentinel straightened, perhaps finally sensing how nervous having him that close made her. “You were doing remarkably well, though. Up 3.59% from your last observed performance.”
Liv stared at the toes of her boots and shrugged off the compliment, even though it wasn’t really a compliment. He was only reporting facts. “I try to be useful.”
“Unfortunately,” Vengeance added, “had this not been a drill and you’d actually encountered a malfunctioning sentinel, you would have died a swift death when you had alternate means of escape.” He raised one massive, thin-fingered hand and pointed it over her shoulder.
Liv glanced behind her at the fountain and statue, but she wasn’t exactly sure what Vengeance wanted her to see.
“You had a three-second window to throw yourself behind the fountain while my weapons were priming. From there, you could have escaped around the shrubs. My sensors would still have been able to track you, but if you ran quickly, you had a 72% chance of escaping into another part of the garden, thereby increasing the likelihood that a malfunctioning sentinel would fixate on another target. It would be as likely to target a leaf blowing in the breeze as anything else. This was covered in first-year training and again in your orientation packages. Perhaps it would benefit you to read through yours again.”
Liv bit her lip to keep herself from speaking too quickly and recklessly. She had been distracted: First by her fear for his safety, and then, by the unexpected presence of a sentinel. But if she had a weakness, it was his fault.
“Your tactical instincts are nonexistent,” Vengeance chided.
Swallowing back anger and pride, Liv nodded toward the sentinel and promised, “I will endeavor to improve myself.”
“Chess!” Vengeance rumbled the one word like it was the answer to the greatest mysteries of the universe.
“Chess…” Liv repeated slowly.
“Yes. Tonight, I will meet you at the mess hall and begin your education.” Vengeance made it sound like the whole matter was settled, whether she wanted her education continued or not.
A renewed wave of panic raised goose bumps on her arms. The more time she spent with Vengeance, the more opportunities he would have to discover her secrets—who she’d once been and could never be again. She had to find a way out of his chess lessons.
“I don’t think that would be an appropriate use of your resources,” Liv reasoned. “There are other crew members who would make much better candidates, and who are more deserving of your special attention. There are certainly higher-ranking candidates.”
“It is my choice whom I choose to spend time with, and it is my wish to see you reach your full potential. I will meet you later tonight—three hours before sleep cycle.”
She was hopelessly trapped. She couldn’t disobey him, and she already knew just how stubborn the old warship could be. Liv lowered her eyes but nodded in acquiescence.
What else could she do?
Absolutely nothing good could come from Vengeance exhibiting new interest in her. While she didn’t want to leave her post, if she had to, she could find work on another ship, but it would have to be one of the big battle cruisers like Vengeance. The electromagnetic field and radiation produced by his massive engines effectively cloaked her mind if her telepathy slipped her control while asleep, particularly if she were in the grip of a nightmare.
But the candidates able to accommodate her specific needs were limited, and her timing between reassignments had to be damned near perfect unless she wanted to forego sleep for a few days.
“Journeyman Engineer Olivia Hawthorne, I did not take you on just so you could complete your apprenticeship then go serve under another Warship of the Spire.”
Olivia flinched and gaped at the sentinel. “How did you know…?”
“You’re expressive, and I’ve had a long time to study humans. Because of that, I find your kind easy to read. However, I cannot read minds as some uninformed humans believe.”
“I know that.” And she did know that about him—about all AIs—but as the renewed surge of adrenaline abated, her legs still felt weak.
“You shouldn’t play poker,” Vengeance advised.
Was he making a joke?
He used to do that…often, in fact.
She’d heard he’d stopped twenty-one years ago.
“I suppose you’re right,” Liv said. “I’m not much of a gambler anyway.”
She glanced over her shoulder toward the fountain again, trying to plan her retreat, but she stayed. She had to know why he’d chosen her. “Why me?”
The sentinel’s arms jerked, and she imagined if one were capable of shrugging, he would have just shrugged at her. “I have plans for you. Out of all the journeymen from your batch, you alone show great potential.”
“I’m flattered,” she murmured. And she was, just as she’d always been delighted to hear his praise. But if Vengeance were picking up on something uniquely special about her now, she obviously hadn’t been careful enough.
Her telepathy allowed her to scan the biocircuitry of the great AIs and “read” when a component was damaged or faulty, and sometimes, even fix the problem with her mind alone.
Over the years, she’d learned to use her telepathy very carefully—just a touch here and there. Never enough to make her stand out. Or so she’d thought.
Apparently, she was wrong.
“Good, then I see no reason we shouldn’t become a good team one day,” Vengeance announced.
Liv nodded toward the sentinel for a second time, the Spire’s symbol of respect, and twisted on her heels to get the hell out of this garden and away from the one AI who could blow her cover.
How could she have thought she’d be able to hide from him aboard his own ship?
And yet…she’d been unable to stay away.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Vengeance demanded. “Since I admitted to you that this is only a drill, I require you to stay here until the exercise is completed or risk effecting the results of other crew members.”
Another coil of anger wound tightly in her chest. Had he really just told her he planned to keep her under his thumb? Yes… yes, he had. AIs, especially the older ones, tended to become set in their ways, and Ven had always had a stubborn streak. If he didn’t want her leaving now, there was nothing she could do about it.
Or, rather, nothing she would ever be willing to do about it. Not to Ven.
So Liv set her jaw and turned around again, fixing his sentinel with her most determined stare. The sentinel stared back at her with all six of his eyes glowing their unusually intense blood red.
But she wouldn’t back down. Not this time.
Their experiences had changed them both, but ultimately, they still had something in common: They were both incredibly stubborn.
“With all due respect, I really have to go. I’ll be needed elsewhere for regular duties as soon as the drill ends, and I’m in an area for which I don’t have the appropriate clearance. But if it eases your mind, I’ll lock myself into my room until the drill is over so that I can’t possibly interfere with anyone’s performance scores.”
The sentinel actually shook his head at her. “You’ll remain here for the next standard hour. Besides, my link wishes to meet the young engineer fo
olish enough to issue orders to one of my sentinels.”
This time, Vengeance didn’t give her a chance to argue. His sentinel twisted around and vanished between the fruit trees to his left. The heavy metal clanking of his treads assured her he assumed their argument was over.
And, really, it was. She couldn’t disobey him, even if the thought of coming face-to-face with Renee paralyzed her with fear. She’d always liked her—quite a lot, actually—but Renee was one of the most powerful telepaths of the Spire. How could she possibly hide her identity now?
Twelve years ago, while she’d been hacking one of the Spire’s archive nodes, she’d learned that Vengeance had performed a primary core purge of certain memories about his visits to Nualla… his visits with her. Those memories were now only part of the archive. In essence, he knew about the events on Nualla, but he wouldn’t be able to relive them over and over in an endlessly destructive loop. He’d deleted her from his existence.
At first it had hurt to know he didn’t want to remember her. But it had saved him from self-termination, for which she was grateful. Then something else had occurred to her.
She could stand directly before his drone and he wouldn’t know her.
That was the beginning of her present life.
She’d convinced herself of so many lies when she’d stolen Olivia Hawthorne’s identity so she could rejoin the Spire. Her training and her ultimate plan to become one of Vengeance’s crew had fallen into place. She’d assured herself that her position would keep her far from the telepaths, and that she’d almost certainly never have any direct contact with Ven himself. Above all, she’d have no reason to have any kind of contact with Renee since telepaths didn’t venture to the engineering compartments. The low levels of radiation and other sources of interference hindered their telepathic ability.
But with one misstep, she’d just jeopardized her future.
Again, Liv seemed frozen in place as she scrambled for an excuse to get out of this meeting. She would have even settled for a black hole suddenly opening beneath her feet and sucking her into its abyss. When neither excuse nor black hole materialized, she reluctantly followed the sentinel toward a building at the edge of the garden.