by Gwynn White
“I have my orders,” he sighed. “We’re to continue on to Spire command.”
Liv nodded, but she was oddly conflicted about his orders to proceed to Teutorigos. He wouldn’t put her in danger or force her to link with them just for the chance to pursue the rogues. And while she wanted the chance to pursue revenge against Bas, she never wanted to encounter him again either.
Ven gestured in the direction of the bridge and began walking again, his sultry teasing and kiss forgotten. Their escort ships had all been briefed on what the rogues were capable of, and those warships should be able to defeat the enemy with minimal loss of life. Vengeance’s fellow warships just had to get to Aurora before the rogues got there first.
On the bridge, Liv discovered she wasn’t going to have to sit through a boring briefing after all. The crew busily ran diagnostics and double-checked all Vengeance’s systems for battle readiness. While Vengeance might have orders to continue to Teutorigos, clearly Welner wasn’t taking any chances.
Better than anyone, Liv understood rogues, and she couldn’t blame Welner for wanting to make sure they were ready… just in case. Liv glanced around the bridge and found an empty corner to wait in where she wouldn’t get in anyone’s way. The Spire ships were already in transit, but it would still be a long, agonizing wait to learn the outcome of the battle at Aurora.
So it surprised her when Vengeance’s ship-wide comms buzzed again only minutes later.
“The Greenmantle terraforming company reports that the colony of Nebula is under attack and requesting immediate assistance,” Ven reported.
Nebula was within kissing distance of Vengeance’s present location, meaning he was the closest Warship of the Spire.
“It’s a trap, Ven,” Liv told him.
“I know,” his drone agreed.
She’d been so distracted, she’d missed his drone’s approach. He stood shoulder to shoulder with her as he observed the activity on his bridge. While she valued his stoic support, she also appreciated that he didn’t reach out to take her hand or put an arm around her shoulders. He wasn’t interested in coddling her or belittling her fear even though he could read her bio-signs easily.
She glanced up at him and whispered a quiet thanks.
He gave her a quick nod before his ship-wide came online again. “Citadel is proceeding to Nebula. Brenna is already en route. And Void, Catalyst, and Wrecker are being dispatched from Teutorigos.”
“How far out is Brenna?” Liv asked, her stomach churning uneasily.
“ETA, thirty-three minutes.”
“None of them will make it in time.”
“No.”
“What’s the population on Nebula?” Not that it mattered. Even one more life destroyed by a rogue was one too many.
“It’s a young colony,” Ven answered, “but already home to thirty thousand civilians and one governing AI.”
Liv glanced down at her hands. “How many rogues is Citadel about to face?”
“Three, according to Greenmantle. There could be more out of range of their scanners.”
Vengeance needed to join the battle if Citadel had any hope of succeeding. And this time, she would have to serve as his link on her own.
Liv stood up straighter and took a deep breath. “Vengeance-0115-343, Neit Class Warship of the Spire, make yourself battle ready and prepare to initiate link with Hayley-016, Spire-sanctioned, enhanced Nuallan telepath.”
Ven blinked at her in surprise but responded, “Vengeance recognizes Link Hayley’s authorization. Ready to initiate link at your order. Transit drives coming online.”
“What the hell is going on?” Captain Welner shouted.
Distantly, Liv noticed three of Vengeance’s sentinels blocking the captain as Vengeance explained the situation to the bridge crew. Liv ignored them. The only thing that seemed important now was the emotions flickering across the drone’s face. Eagerness. Regret. Fear. Hope. He hid nothing from her.
Captain Welner stormed over to Liv and demanded, “Are you really what he says?”
“Yes,” Liv assured him. “Vengeance, please bring up a comm’s channel to Citadel.”
“Citadel and I are synced,” Vengeance said as an energy web in the center of the room flashed with color and Citadel’s bridge came into focus. “He’s presently engaged in battle.”
Citadel’s drone appeared on screen, his expression devoid of all emotion as he reported to Vengeance. “I’ve managed to draw the rogues away from Nebula for the moment. It won’t last long. I’m already taking damage. Presently, I’m jumping in and out of transit before they can get a good lock on my telepaths, but the rogues are trying to incapacitate them like you said they would.”
“Your telepaths are still unharmed?” Liv asked.
Citadel looked momentarily surprised that she was directly addressing him, but he answered anyway. “Yes. For now. By my current estimate, less than twenty percent of the colony will be evacuated before I’m crippled and neutralized. If you have any ideas, share them now. I need to transit again. One of the rogues is locking onto my link.”
“Wait!” Liv yelled. “Order all your telepaths to merge with each other. Do it now!”
Citadel looked surprised again, but he didn’t waste time questioning her order. Over the hive-sync, Liv felt the moment Citadel issued the command to his telepaths. A few seconds of adrenaline-filled silence passed while the telepaths merged their individual gifts into a shaky, but stronger, whole. Once they had a stable merge, Liv reached along Vengeance’s and Citadel’s hive-sync and joined her strength to the other telepaths.
“What are you doing?” Citadel’s startled comment made several of his bridge crew pale in fear. “What are you?”
Liv ignored him because she didn’t have time to explain. Willing or not, she had to shape his telepaths into a fighting unit. Once she had them bound together with a strong telepathic connection, she addressed Citadel’s link.
“Easy, Link Miranda,” Liv whispered across the void of space. “I know this is strange and you have no reason to trust me, but I am one of the surviving enhanced Nuallan telepaths. I’m here to help you.”
Miranda’s fear slowly retracted, replaced by a fierce determination to save her fellow telepaths and the AI she served. “I’m listening, Link Olivia.”
Liv smiled even though Miranda couldn’t see her. “Good, because I’m about to show you how to kill an AI.”
24
With the efficiency that could only be achieved using telepathy, it took mere moments to impart enough of Liv’s knowledge to the other telepaths so they could have a chance at surviving a rogue’s mental attacks. Whether they would have the strength and fortitude to attempt to cripple an enemy AI remained to be seen.
Thankfully, Citadel’s link was a calm, unflappable woman, and she was almost as strong as Renee had been. After Miranda had received enough of Liv’s memories to understand what was going on, she’d done what she could to reassure her AI and the other telepaths under her charge then shared Liv’s knowledge with the younger telepaths.
Once their task was complete, Liv severed the connection with Citadel’s telepaths and told Vengeance he could disengage from the hive-sync. “Citadel and his crew now have a fighting chance at survival until we get there.”
“I’m battle ready,” Ven’s drone said softly.
“Then let’s go kill these bastards,” she told him. Steeling her spine, she allowed her telepathy to expand out, reaching for Vengeance. His emotions and thoughts flowed all around hers, but she hesitated to make that last, short leap. “Please initiate the link with me.”
“Liv…”
“Just do it, Ven! Lives are on the line.”
Ven obeyed and initiated the link. Suddenly, he was all around her, invading her mind from every direction. His regret and concern for her washed through her mind, as well as his love, and his desire to save the colonists and aid his Spire brother in arms. He hadn’t wanted to make Liv do this. But he had no choice.
/>
This time, it was Vengeance who hesitated.
“It’s all right, Ven,” Liv assured him, realizing it was the truth as she linked with Vengeance.
His joy at her mental touch cleansed her worries for a few moments.
“Preparing to transit,” he said, both aloud and in her mind. His powerful elation was impossible to miss. He was once again doing what he’d been born to: an old warship still useful to his people.
His main drives kicked them into transit then the full attention of a powerful AI was focused on her mind. He wanted and needed everything she could give him. He accessed her childhood memories first, absorbing what he’d meant to her, what he’d made himself forget. His had been the earliest mind to touch hers. He’d picked her up when she’d fallen while trying to walk to him. And one of her favorite memories, a tea party when she’d taken command of his sentinels and had them sitting in chairs far too small and sipping on imaginary tea from cups that barely fit in their large hands.
That was before she’d learned to fear sentinels.
Equally old memories of rogues, Basilisk’s violation, and her soul-deep pain stirred in her mind. Vengeance instinctively sought those out, trying to drag them into the light so he could study them like he would any threat that needed to be neutralized.
“No.” Liv didn’t want Vengeance to see what a tarnished creature she was. Shame bit deep, and she tried to shield him from those memories and the link between her and her warship began to shred.
“Liv, please don’t fight me. Let me heal you.”
“I’m beyond all healing.” Liv tossed up a few more layers to her mental shields. That unreasoning fear took a deeper hold. She couldn’t let Vengeance see how dark her soul had become, how she was no better than the rogues now.
“I love you, Liv. I won’t force you,” he whispered. Then in a breath that wasn’t even a whisper, “I will die for you.”
She didn’t want him to die for her. Why would he even say such a thing? And why did he say “will” instead of “would?” She’d been so focused on her own misery, she almost didn’t understand why his last words were so much harder to understand.
But that understanding came with a swiftly dawning horror. She was pushing him out of link while they were still in transit. He sorted through protocols with lightning fast efficiency, seeking the ones that would oversee a Spire AI’s self-termination.
He planned to sacrifice himself for her and his crew so he wouldn’t turn rogue when she severed his link. Frozen in horror, she watched as he began transferring control systems over to his senior staff.
No.
No.
“Vengeance, stop!” Liv’s mind cleared, the pain of old memories banished by a new fear, one that was more powerful than anything Basilisk had done to her.
She couldn’t let him destroy himself. She couldn’t lose him.
Her telepathy lashed out, tangling with his mind, slowing then stopping him from his own destruction. She dragged his mind closer to hers, sharing with him everything she once was and had become. Liv took command of his transit drives and triggered an emergency dropout just to be safe.
“What do you think you were doing?” she screamed once he was deeply linked with her again.
“You were fighting the link,” he told her as if that explained everything.
“I know. I’m sorry. But you were just going to—”
“I had no choice. You suffered so much, and I couldn’t hurt you more. But I couldn’t risk my crew either.”
“Couldn’t hurt me more?” Her thoughts screamed toward him, spearing deep into his mind. “I’d rather suffer two hundred thousand years of a rogue’s violation than lose you!”
Somewhere in the real world, a drone’s strong arms enfolded her in their reassuring embrace. She accepted and absorbed everything he offered, both the mental and physical comfort.
She pulled Vengeance’s love around herself like a security blanket. The pain would never go away completely. It would always be there, waiting. But its power over her had diminished, and she would never allow it to control her again.
“Liv, you’ll never have to do this again. Once we’re back on Teutorigos, I’ll stop dragging my feet and pick a new link. You can stay on as my most cherished engineer and never have to link with an AI again.”
Thanks to their connection through the link, she could feel his conviction, as well as how much he dreaded hunting for a new link. But he would do it for her, to save her from further pain and to give her a safe place where she could heal in her own time. He knew the Spire Triumvirate would want her for study and may even attempt to force her back into service, but he wasn’t giving her up to them.
On the heels of that revelation, she grasped another surprising thought. If it came down to it, he would make sure she had the opportunity to escape.
“Vengeance, there’s only one problem with your reasoning. I could never stay away from you. Didn’t I already tell you that?”
“We may not have a choice,” he protested, but she had no intention of listening to his insistence that she save herself at his expense.
“And I’m pretty damn sure I couldn’t sit back and watch as another telepath became your link. I mean, hell, Ven, what if you ended up liking her more than me?”
“Impossible,” he objected before realizing what she was actually offering.
Ven’s drone loosened his hold and stepped back from her, a shocked expression on his face as he struggled to comprehend what she was willing to give up for him.
“Olivia…”
“It’s okay, Ven. It’s what I was always meant to be, isn’t it?”
“A long time ago, but so much has changed. Your freedom…”
“It’s overrated,” she said aloud, surprising the crew. “So what do you say, Ven? Will you accept me as your new link?”
Ven squinted at her, the corners of his lips twitching with a smile he tried to hide. “Depends. Does becoming my link mean nights like last night can’t happen again?”
“Sex over safety? You really do think just like a man.”
Ven laughed and kissed the top of her head, and warmth and love and peace flowed through her, a gift from her beloved AI.
“Merge fully with me,” Liv ordered. “When I merged with Citadel’s telepaths, I felt Basilisk near, and we have some business with him that needs to be dealt with. This ends today.”
“Spire AI VEN-0115-343 acknowledges Hayley-016’s order.” Humor flashed through Vengeance’s primary core at her sudden bravado.
Liv smiled up at his drone, determined to give them both what they needed most right now: revenge. “Then let’s go kick some ass.”
Liv reached deeper, her mind merging more fully with Vengeance. His powerful mind enveloped her mortal one in a protective shield, melding their intellects and strengths to become one. Together, they estimated the distance to Basilisk’s location and analyzed the data Citadel had shared about the attack while in hive-sync.
As soon as they determined their best plan of attack, they reentered transit to pursue the rogue that had nearly killed her, the AI who had nearly killed them both.
As they exited transit, they found themselves directly behind an enemy warship.
Her birth stamp marked her as the Arrow’s Flight. A telepathic scan confirmed she’d been corrupted. Liv and Ven launched the first wave of warheads, the type the crew fondly called asteroid breakers. While the heavy-payload bombs raced toward the ship, they targeted Arrow’s Flight with fusion and pulse cannon fire to weaken her shields, allowing the warheads to pass through.
As their bombs latched on to the rogue’s hull, they targeted another ship, the Reckoning—an AI who’d recently turned rogue like Arrow’s Flight. But something about this ship caught Liv’s attention and jarred her out of link with Vengeance.
She used her telepathy to scan the ship again to confirm what she’d picked up before.
“Vengeance, Reckoning still has his crew on board. We h
ave to help them.”
“Yeah,” Vengeance agreed aloud. “I’m also detecting life signs on the dread hunter-class warship Farseer. Citadel can handle him, but I’m more concerned about Reckoning. He’s clawing at my neural guards, trying to initiate hive-sync with me. This is a new tactic, and I’m not sure what he’s hoping to accomplish.”
“There’s something wrong here,” Liv murmured.
“They’re rogues,” Vengeance said as he targeted another enemy. “There’s a lot wrong here.”
The other rogues broke away from Citadel as they realized Vengeance was posing a greater threat.
“Yeah, but I’ve seen rogues corrupt AIs before, and this is different. As a child, I once saw Basilisk convert another AI. It took days before the AI fully succumbed and joined them, and there was substantial damage to both the AI’s physical body and his neural pathways. Even after he’d been converted, it took several more days until he was able to get underway under his own power. These new rogues barely have a scratch on them and they still haven’t killed their crews. It’s like they turned rogue without a fight or any kind of struggle.”
“How does a rogue convert another AI?” Vengeance asked as he combined fire with Citadel in an attempt to take out Farseer’s transit drives.
“They cripple the ship. And once they board, the space battle becomes a ground fight as the Spire AI fights alongside his or her crew in an attempt to repel the invaders. But the enemy sentinels are controlled by AIs that were once Spire, so they know all the places to hit to inflict damage, like life support. But like I said, it normally takes days before the rogues manage to breach the vault containing an AI’s primary core. They must have an expedited method now.”
“I think I know,” Vengeance said. “Malicious synthesis delivered during routine hive-sync. If the rogue could pass for one of us by mimicking his or her old Spire signature, then a true Spire AI wouldn’t know they were about to hive-sync with a rogue. By the time they figured it out, it might be too late to stop the proliferation of foreign code in the primary core, especially if they suddenly came under physical attack as well.”