by Gwynn White
“It’s all right, Renee. It’s Liv. I’m shielding you from the rogues, which has cut you off from Ven too. I’ll protect you.”
“Liv?” That whisper had weakened to a breath. Blood dripped from her nose and ears, and Liv placed a hand on her forehead, affectionate and heartbroken because in that moment, she realized she might fail after all. Even with a full complement of nanos and all the best equipment at medical, they could still lose Renee.
“I spent weeks learning how to block the rogues,” Liv explained. “That’s how we eventually escaped. We’ll get you to medical. I’ll stay linked with you until we’re safely away from these rogues.”
“Vengeance,” Renee pleaded.
That one word repeated in her mind. Vengeance. Renee was asking Liv to do the exact thing she’d been avoiding her entire adult life. Renee wanted her to fill the gap she was leaving behind.
“I can’t,” Liv insisted.
Renee’s eyes fluttered open and momentarily held Liv in an unwavering gaze before they closed again. The exertion of their conversation was taking a toll on her. “Death…” Renee whispered.
Liv glanced up at Ven’s drone, who watched her carefully. She understood what Renee wanted to tell her but couldn’t: If she didn’t forge a link with Ven, everyone—including Ven himself—would die. And while she didn’t want to die, she couldn’t remember how to form a link with an AI.
Liv let her hand slide from Renee’s forehead to her arm then she wrapped her fingers around the link’s cool, clammy hand. Around the deck, the conversations of the crewmembers as they struggled to repel the rogues seemed muted and distant, like she’d plunged herself beneath the tranquil waters of a crystalline lake filled with bradan.
She closed her eyes and pulled up a memory that had been tucked away for twenty years, a peaceful, happy memory of lush green grass next to the bank of an aquamarine river of Nualla. Ven set her basket of dolls on the ground, and she sat next to it, pulling out the doll with auburn hair so she could hand it to him. And his drone lowered himself to the ground, digging through the basket until he found the doll with blond hair and, smiling, handed it to the little girl who wanted to play.
How boring it must have been for an AI like Vengeance to sit in the grass of Nualla and pretend a doll was alive. But he’d indulged her, as always.
She’d spent years believing he hadn’t loved her enough to rescue her. As an adult, she’d learned he’d had to archive his memories of her in order to survive, but even now, with everyone’s fate in her hands, linking with him again required a kind of trust she didn’t think she still possessed.
Renee’s fingers twitched, and Liv opened her eyes.
The link had been watching her.
“Please…” Renee’s voice seemed so weak now.
A stabbing pain in Liv’s chest made her blink back tears. Ven couldn’t know yet that she was losing hope Renee could survive.
“I’ll try,” Liv promised.
With Ven attempting to reconnect with Renee, Liv suspected his link could serve as a conduit between them. Liv could connect fully with Renee then as soon as Ven’s mind touched his link’s, she’d use her own telepathy to keep him from suffering a sensory disconnect as he transited. She released the shield she’d constructed to protect Renee long enough to merge their telepathic abilities then she wrapped her own defenses protectively around the older telepath’s mind.
Liv hoped Renee’s mind would mask her true thoughts from Ven. He’d know she was a telepath, but he wouldn’t be able to see her memories of him from her childhood. If she had to escape after this battle, assuming he and the crew were able to get to safety, she’d figure out how to run then. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Renee suddenly groaned, fresh blood dripping from her nose. As if there’d been some kind of silent signal, Ven clutched his link to his chest and ran, his sentinels flanking his drone to protect Renee.
Liv swore under her breath and followed them. Commander Lisk’s voice trailed after her, but she had to disobey him. If his drone and sentinels made it around the bend in the outer corridor before she caught up, she’d never run them down. They were all far faster than any human.
Crewmembers scattered before the drone and sentinels but formed obstacles that slowed him down enough for Liv to gain ground on the rearmost sentinel. When he slowed again at a sharp bend in the corridor, she launched herself at him and prayed he didn’t swat her like a bug.
She collided with bruising force but managed to hook an arm and a leg around his massive forearm. After hoisting herself up, she straddled an uncomfortably warm cannon.
“Ven, hand me Renee!” she exclaimed. “I’ll help keep her warm. She’s going into shock. Your sentinels can outpace your drone body, and they can get us to medical much faster.”
Seconds ticked by, and Ven continued to run, his drone making no outward response that he’d heard her, much less that he intended to obey her. But the lead sentinel suddenly twisted at the waist and lifted the humanoid drone and Renee into his arms then the sentinel carrying Liv shifted his massive forearm, causing her to slide. Liv shrieked, thinking he planned to shake her off, but instead found herself being repositioned into the crook of his arm, like he was cradling a child.
While her new position was more than a little embarrassing, at least it was secure. Another sentinel gently lowered Renee next to her, his careful movements delicate, at odds with his otherwise fierce and lethal demeanor.
Liv wrapped her arms around the older woman’s frail shoulders. The smaller body was already wracked with violent shivers. It hardly seemed possible that this was the same woman who had always seemed so strong and invincible, particularly when she was a child.
She’d idolized Renee, and looking at her now, Liv’s throat clenched and burned as she struggled to maintain their link.
“Hang in there, Renee,” Liv begged, pressing her body as close as she could to the older woman’s, whose tremors and damp, cool skin signaled she was losing this fight. “We’re almost at medical. Ven and his med units will have you fixed up in no time.” Liv forced a weak smile as she shored up her mental link with Renee.
“Liv,” Renee whispered into her mind. “Merge fully… now.”
She held her breath and stared at Renee. After a seemingly endless moment of indecision, Liv pushed past her fears and galvanized their link. Shifting thoughts and emotions flowed between them, transforming until she was no longer alone in her own mind. She and Renee became the same woman, a different woman, no longer themselves but someone else altogether.
And together, their primary concern was for the man both women loved.
Ven’s sentinels and drones faltered, their pace slowing as they gaped at the women who had reestablished a link with him. But Vengeance hadn’t earned his reputation as a legendary Warship of the Spire because he hesitated in the heat of battle. After blinking at Liv, his surprise was quickly replaced by elation that he could finally do something to fight back. With the link reconnected, he could transit. And his crew stood a chance at survival.
Outside, the space battle still raged. Liv assessed Ven’s damage through their link, and his hull was being riddled with impact craters. His deep space communication array and eight of his portside fusion cannons had just been sheared from him. He was leaking atmosphere from several levels. But hope had been rekindled and sparked across all his thought patterns.
“Ven,” she said, “Trinity-Nine informs me that the station has been successfully evacuated of all crew and civilians. The last ship just transited. Fire main engines and initiate transit by order of my command authority. Victor 5-delta. Emergency safety override protocol.”
Liv had directed the commands to Ven’s primary core. He couldn’t disobey.
“Acknowledged,” Ven responded, his mind merging with theirs. He immediately assessed the damage to Renee’s body and discovered three separate hematomas that were causing increased pressure in the cranium. All were within repairable thresholds.
The great Neit Class warship shook all around them as he transited without proper failsafe or stabilization. After thirty-seven seconds of intense hull shaking, Ven flowed into full transit mode, his trajectory, speed, and stabilizers aligning to proper parameters.
“Transit achieved. Enemy ships unable to follow,” Ven reported. “Assessing damages to self.”
Reports flashed thought their mind as the rigors of transit took their toll on Ven. If not for the heavy damage he’d sustained, he would have required full link immediately upon entering transit to stave off sensory disconnect, but innumerable reports from his own nervous system had flooded in moments before transit and had sustained him for the first few seconds of travel.
But now, Ven depended entirely on them to provide life-sustaining information, critical for optimal balance.
As Ven’s emotions and sensations merged deeper through their link, those fears that had become instinctive for Liv disrupted their connection, partially separating Renee from Liv, just enough to allow the younger telepath to reestablish her sense of self.
The sudden, unexpected distance from the other two minds left a hollow pit within her, and for a moment, she understood the AIs’ great fear of disconnect from the hive-mind and the resulting sensory deprivation. Liv somehow managed to maintain enough of her link with Renee that they could still provide what Ven needed to transit, during which time Renee continued to weaken.
“Exiting transit in five, four, three, two, one,” Ven called out over the ship-wide comm. Liv allowed the link with Renee to break, and finally paid attention to her surroundings. Ven’s sentinels had continued to cover ground, and she recognized this part of the ship as the medical ward.
She smiled and had just begun to untangle her arms from around Renee’s body when tendrils of warning slid along her mind and scattered her thoughts. She sat up straighter and searched for the source.
From the east corridor, two sections away, a rogue’s mind caressed hers with icy curiosity. And it was approaching fast.
Without telepaths of their own, the rogue AIs had been unable to enter transit and follow Ven as he fled. But they hadn’t transited alone.
Basilisk’s sentinels had infiltrated Vengeance’s warship.
19
As soon as Ven was out of transit, Bas had been able to reestablish his control over the infiltrator sentinels, and he once again pursued the link he’d almost killed. Liv realized he was coming for the injured woman and threw her shields around her again, crying out to her even though she doubted Renee was still conscious. “A rogue’s sentinels are onboard!”
Renee stirred but didn’t open her eyes or answer her. Liv yelled her warning aloud to Vengeance. “Infiltrator sentinels must have been onboard already when we transited. They’re converging on our location now. At least five of them.”
Ven’s sentinel that had been holding Liv and Renee lowered them to the ground, and Liv immediately put her body in front of the older woman’s, even though the only way she could help her now was with her mind.
Ven’s humanoid drone held two large energy weapons scavenged from one of his sentinels. The soft hum of the rifles arming was a sweet sound.
“Got a couple more of those anywhere?” she asked.
“Affirmative,” he answered, but didn’t divert his attention from the seemingly empty corridor. One of the inbound rogue sentinels surged around a tight intersection, and two more followed closely behind it. They opened fire on a drudge unit who’d been assessing battle damage then darted behind the massive corpse of the maintenance bot and used it as cover while Vengeance’s sentinels were still taking up positions.
Since the rogue sentinels hadn’t attacked yet, she assumed they were waiting for more of their number to arrive. The others couldn’t be far and would probably be on top of their position in less than a minute.
“Give me a gun,” she tried again. “There have to be more coming since the other three are waiting.”
“Correct.”
Liv narrowed her eyes at his drone. “How far away are your nearest reinforcements?”
The drone glanced back at her and narrowed his eyes too. “Too far.”
“Then give me a weapon,” she demanded.
He looked her over quickly then told her, “You’re my engineer. It’s my duty to see to your welfare.”
Liv grunted at him and put a hand on her hip. “That’s a lame excuse, and you know it. Stop trying to protect me and give me a weapon. I can help. Because I’m an engineer, I know where to hit the rogues to hurt them. They probably haven’t seen proper maintenance in years and will be glitchy as hell.”
While most telepaths weren’t strong enough to push commands at a sentinel, even if they knew how to circumvent the primary and secondary security subroutines, she was no ordinary telepath. And she’d make damn sure those sentinels were glitchy as hell.
Ven’s drone blinked at her then dual clinking sounds as one of his sentinels released the clamps on his leg sheaths made Liv smile. She marched over to the massive hulk of metal and plucked the gun from its holsters. As soon as she had the weapon in her hand, the holsters slid back into his calves, the clamps locking in place and the bio-metal skin smoothing over seamlessly.
Liv turned around to resume her position by Renee, but a large metal hand slammed down across her shoulders and shoved her face-first into the floor. Energy fire crackled above her head. Liv winced and groaned, her body aching from all the recent contusions, but at least she was still alive.
More deafening cannon fire echoed up and down the corridor as Ven’s sentinels engaged the rogues.
Two of his sentinels concentrated fire on the closest enemy. From her position on the ground, she leveled her weapon at the nearest target. With a quick mental scan, she assessed all enemies and switched her aim to the sentinel on the left of the one she’d first picked out. He had a deep gash running along his side from an earlier firefight. One of the armor plates underneath was buckling at one corner, exposing softer, sensitive parts.
The sentinel must have known about the weakness because he was using his shielded forearm to protect that area from Ven’s targeted hits. But Liv had an advantageous position from the ground.
Liv fired at the wound. The gun had more of a kick than she’d expected, and in the two seconds it took her to steady her grip, she missed seeing the kill. But she felt the sentinel’s core power source overload. As the sentinel lost control, he knocked into a nearby rogue, providing Ven with the distraction he needed to take out another enemy.
Renee groaned, and Liv risked glancing at her, reaching out to her mind to encourage her to hold on.
The dying woman didn’t answer.
Ven glanced at his link, his drone’s eyes round and fearful, but unlike his panic before, he continued to fight the rogue sentinels. Liv returned fire as well, but allowed her telepathic ability to unfold even more until she could feel all the sentinels within range. She singled out the enemy sentinels then targeted the one farthest from her.
She pushed her telepathic gift outward, narrowing it into a spear, and slammed through the sentinel’s armor into its newly exposed network. Once there, she fried the sentinel’s ability to receive outside commands.
Then she made a rash decision, fueled by her anger and fear.
She struck out at Basilisk himself.
“Remember me, asshole?”
His chaotic, irrational thoughts and emotions, the result of being an unbalanced AI, answered her. Beneath the turmoil, she sensed his pain and hatred for everything, including himself.
Time hadn’t been kind to the AI. Soon, his mind would deteriorate beyond the ability to function. Until then, he would continue to spew all his self-hate and destructive tendencies onto everyone he encountered.
But even through all the chaos, Bas had retained just enough of his original self to remember what he’d been before he’d become a rogue warship—a being of seemingly limitless power and a vast wellspring of knowle
dge, nearly immortal in his ability to inhabit new bodies. In that memory, that kernel of awareness of who he used to be and could never be again, existed misguided beliefs that he could regain his power and immortality by finding a link-level telepath.
Basilisk’s hatred and anger shifted to surprise then curiosity as he realized she’d touched his mind.
“Remember what I did to Agrona?” Liv asked. “Keep pursuing Vengeance and me, and I’ll be your death as well.”
His thoughts scattered into a million different patterns then slowly solidified, sharpening into one obsessive emotion: desire.
Liv shuddered, but with Bas’s intense, covetous attention on her instead of the fight with Ven, she could better turn his own fighters against themselves. Controlling the sentinel she’d hijacked earlier, she forced him to wrap one hand around his neighbor’s neck while also directing him to clasp his opponent’s head. With a sharp twist, the other sentinel was beheaded in a shower of sparks. She aimed the forearm cannons at the nearest enemy, but her sentinel took heavy fire before she could reciprocate.
Her link with the sentinel was severed by its death.
Mildly disoriented, Liv shook her head, but gray spots still danced around the edges of her sight. One of Ven’s sentinels engaged the last remaining rogue in the corridor with them, and as it fell to the ground, she asked his nearest sentinel, “Are you okay?”
“Minimal damage to this unit. Reports coming in from other parts of the ship confirm that there are only two other skirmishes in progress. Damages and casualties from the driller attack are localized. Repair units and medical aid are en route.”
“Good,” she sighed. “Let’s get…” A sudden burning pain lanced though the muscle of her left shoulder, causing her to collapse in agony.
As Ven’s sentinels returned fire, she willed herself not to pass out, but the pain washed away her ability to think of anything else. The hulking form of one of his sentinels stood over her, protecting her from the enemy she still couldn’t see. She closed her eyes and the sounds of the fight quieted.