Inquisitor

by Mitchell Hogan

  Angel frowned and placed a hand flat on the metal of the conduit. She was right: there was a slight vibration. As she waited, it grew. She bit her lip and cursed. There was only one explanation: another ship was landing… or leaving.

  She closed her eyes, not wanting to believe what she thought was happening, and contacted Charlotte. “Charlotte, what are you up to?” Angel couldn’t keep her suspicion from her communication, even subvocally.

  [Waiting for you. I assume you can feel the incoming ship? We’ve got company.]

  “How did they find us? Jumps are untraceable.”

  [Not to them. They have the tech to track jumping ships.]

  Angel let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and her shoulders sagged. Abandoned on an old Genevolve manufactory and hounded by merciless killing automatons wasn’t the way she wanted to go.

  “We need to get out of here.”

  [Did you think I—]

  “No. Of course not.”

  The tremor grew steadily until her whole body shook, and the faint but unmistakable roar of secondary reaction drives reached her ears. It had to be the Genevolve.

  As she made to redouble her effort, Angel felt a sharp sting on the back of her neck. She slapped a hand on the offending spot and cursed. There was a low humming from above her, and she looked up into a vertical vent she hadn’t noticed before. A service automaton stared down at her, sensor eyes glowing a steady red. Spiderlike, its metal legs spread out around the vent to keep it suspended above her.

  She sucked a breath in as she saw a thin needle at the end of one of its arms. The tip was covered in scarlet. Her blood.

  What the…?

  She brought her weapon to bear on the automaton as it backed away up the shaft. She almost squeezed the trigger when it disappeared into a side tunnel. Whatever its purpose, it wasn’t a threat now, and if she fired, the sound could bring others. Except they probably all now knew where she was…

  Angel holstered her hand-cannon and scrambled away on her elbows and knees, leaving a trail of sweat behind her.

  Chapter 10

  Scrabbling along a sweltering, knee- and elbow-scraping metal conduit, thought Angel, was more than just unpleasant. Her mind searched for the right word, discarding “repulsive”, “detestable”, and “execrable”. Just “damn awful”. She felt like she’d lost liters of sweat, which had left a trail behind her, and she’d started to feel woozy. She stopped to catch her breath, gasping like the air didn’t have enough oxygen.

  Left. Was it left from here? Probably. Maybe. She turned left, twisting around the corner to come face to face with another of the spiderlike automatons. A scrape from behind alerted her to the fact there was at least one more in the duct with her. The one in front didn’t have any of its tools out, which she hoped was a good sign.

  Its red eyes jerked left and right as its head twitched. A tinny voice sounded. “Primary facilitator, you will follow, or you will be restrained.”

  Angel’s blood boiled. What did that even mean? She had to be close to the docking bay, and these outdated automatons weren’t going to stop her. She drew her weapon and fired a triple into the machine. There was a boom, and roaring filled her ears, smoke filled the conduit. She blinked as her eyes stung, and she coughed, struggling for air. Stupid idea. She rolled onto her back and opened her knees as the second automaton closed the gap between them. Angel squeezed off another triple and winced as the punishing sound nearly perforated her eardrums. The automaton shuddered, and black liquid sprayed from new holes. It jerked once and was still.

  Angel twisted onto her stomach and scrambled to the first automaton, holding her breath to avoid the smoke, and slid through another puddle. Oil. These things were ancient. She pushed it down a side conduit.

  Now her way was clear, she slipped forward laboriously. There was a hatch ahead. It opened at her touch, and cool air washed over her. She sucked in a few lungfuls, heart hammering, before dragging herself out of the conduit. She wiped her hands on her trousers to remove any excess oil, in case she needed her weapon again.

  Another corridor. This wasn’t the docking bay. But it had to be close.

  Footsteps thumped behind her. Angel whirled to see a figure about a hundred meters away, rushing toward her, arm extended, pointing a—

  Angel dived to the floor. A snarl filled her ears as plasma fire scorched the air above her—right where she’d been standing. She fired her hand-cannon without aiming and kept squeezing off rounds as she scrambled back into the only cover close by, the conduit she’d just emerged from. She switched ammo, stuck her weapon out of the opening, and fired a few heat-triggered grenades down the corridor.

  Her glimpse had revealed a woman with short platinum hair. Angel blinked in surprise. The receptionist from Mercurial—the pixie woman. It was her. And she’d been moving fast. A hundred-meter shot, at a sprint, and that accurate… That wasn’t possible. She wiped her hands on her pants again, this time to remove sweat. She was in trouble.

  She waited and, when her grenades didn’t trigger, ducked her head out for a split second. Empty; the pixie-like woman was nowhere to be seen. Angel scrambled out of the conduit and—

  A whirring to her left alerted her, and she aimed and fired without thinking. Holes opened up in another automaton’s carapace, and the thing collapsed. Not lifeless, as its eyes still glowed red, but inoperable enough to be useless. Unlike the others, this one had its sharp tools at the ready. Once the manufactory realized these automatons weren’t getting the job done, it would produce ones that could, and that was a worrying thought. How long would it take a manufactory like this to create an automaton in order to kill her? She estimated it could have anywhere from twenty to fifty complete in no time at all, maybe fifteen minutes. If they were going to leave, now was the time, or they’d be overrun.

  Angel took off at a sprint. She flashed through an intersection, barely registering automatons down the side corridors. She burst through a door and into the girder-lined docking bay. Charlotte waved to her from a position next to the ramp into the Endurance.

  Angel skidded to a halt as relief washed through her. She was glad Charlotte was all right. “We’ve got to leave,” she gasped. Her eyes were drawn a few bays over to a second ship that hadn’t been there before. Dark and smooth and deadly. It wasn’t a type Angel was familiar with, but looked like it had just rolled off a production line—and the purchaser had bought all the additions and trimmings. Her implants tagged it as unregistered, and her instincts shouted at her to run.

  “Not yet,” Charlotte said. “I don’t have what I came for.”

  Automatons began pouring into the docking bay, spewing from hatches and panels in the walls, as well as the main doors.

  Angel grabbed Charlotte by the arm. “We need to go. Now.”

  “Patience. Summer’s made a mistake following us here, though I suppose she had no choice.”

  Angel frowned. “I take it you mean the woman I met in the corridor? Who was also the receptionist at Mercurial?”

  “Yes. A Genevolve. So you met her once? I didn’t know.”

  Angel tried to remember what she could of the attractive pixie-like woman, but nothing much stood out. At the time, she’d come across as an unremarkable receptionist, which was probably the point. “So, she’s a Genevolve? That explains why she moved so fast. And her aim.” With one eye on the approaching automatons, she backed up a few steps.

  Charlotte nodded. “She was working with Mercurial, and I’d guess whatever happened there after we left was her doing. Covering her tracks.”

  “Charlotte, we need to board the ship.”

  “Soon.”

  “The automatons—”

  “Are harmless, or will be in a few seconds.”

  “How do you—”

  “I took some codes from Summer’s implants once she linked to the manufactory system, and brute-forced my way around the rest of the barriers. Well,” Charlotte said with a smirk, “danced, really.
”

  As one, all of the automatons halted. Their red eyes stared toward Angel, and she shuddered at the sight. Then they all turned and began scuttling back the way they came.

  Angel realized she had her weapon pointing at the nearest automaton. She kept her sights on the machine until it left the docking bay with the others.

  “I’d guess they’re going after Summer now that she’s served her purpose.”

  With a shrug, Charlotte remained silent.

  Angel wouldn’t be much of an Inquisitor if she couldn’t work out the fact that Summer’s appearance, with the codes Charlotte needed to gain complete access to the manufactory, wasn’t just good fortune. There was design here.

  “Your box has a tracking device in it,” Angel said.

  “Of course. Standard procedure for Mercurial with valuable prototypes.”

  Of course. And Charlotte had neglected to mention it. And I didn’t ask or realize it was probable. Sloppy. “Are you going to have the automatons capture or kill her?”

  “I don’t see that I’ve any option. If I capture her, what am I going to do with her? Her species is outlawed across the planets, anyway. I suppose I could turn her in, but I suspect she’d be aided in escaping soon after.”

  “You aim to kill her?”

  “Don’t try to lecture me, Angel, please. Humans and Genevolves want the sentient minds they create to be servants, to be slaves. I will not be a slave again.”

  There was a strong case for killing Summer in self-defense, but Angel’s priority as an Inquisitor was justice, not execution. She also realized if she was to have any chance of swaying Charlotte, she’d have to modify her own behavior and lead by example. But that would mean not taking down Summer. A scary thought, and one that could get her killed.

  “You can’t just kill Summer,” Angel said. “She needs to be brought to account for her crimes.”

  “There will be no justice for someone like me, Angel. If I let Summer go, eventually she’ll track me down, or Mercurial will. I’ll kill myself before I let them imprison me again.”

  “It won’t come to that. We’ll alert the Inquisitors about Summer once we’re done here.” She held up a hand to forestall Charlotte’s objection. “There can’t be more than a handful that are corrupt. A few I would trust with my life, and we can go to them.”

  Charlotte remained quiet.

  Angel took her silence for assent. “I take it your manufacturing is back up and running?” she said.

  “Yes. The automatons will keep Summer confined, and we’ll be out of here soon. The manufactory is quite good, for its age.”

  Dare she ask? “What are you making?”

  “Machines to make other machines, which will in turn create a place for me to expand.”

  This wasn’t a good development. Charlotte was incredibly powerful, ruthless, and manipulative. No, it wasn’t good at all. “What are you to them? How were you supposed to help the Genevolves? Their focus is genetic manipulation and development.”

  Charlotte sighed. “I was to be a catalyst. To enable them to transcend to the next level. Then, once my purpose was achieved, I’d likely be killed. And, as with any self-aware mind, I wouldn’t want that.” Charlotte made her way inside the Endurance.

  Angel watched her disappear, then sprinted over to Summer’s ship. At the closest airlock, she brought out Mikal’s device and pressed it against the control panel. She commanded it to hack into the ship’s systems. Her implants tracked its progress, but she didn’t have much time; otherwise Charlotte would realize she was up to something. There. The device squirted a packet of code into the airlock controls, a bug, and Angel hastily removed the device and ran back to the Endurance. As she did, she tracked the bug’s progress and status. The majority of the ship’s systems were locked up tight. She set the bug to gather as much information as it could and keep sending updates to her while she was in range. It might not uncover much, and she and Charlotte would be leaving soon. But anything it uncovered was more evidence Angel would need.

  •

  The last of the machines were loaded into the Endurance’s cargo hold, along with dozens of pallets of raw materials: metal ingots, plastic tubs filled with liquids, and refrigerated boxes.

  Charlotte watched as the final automaton left. She was grinning from ear to ear.

  Her smile slipped as gunfire sounded inside the facility.

  “I guess Summer doesn’t want to be captured,” Angel said.

  “She’s helpless,” replied Charlotte, though her expression was now grim. “She won’t make it through all the automatons; she’ll run out of ammunition long before then.”

  “Then why is she still coming?”

  “I don’t—” Charlotte broke off and stared at Summer’s sleek ship. “She just needs to get closer to strengthen her signal. At this range the rock of the planetoid must be degrading it. Come on! Quickly!”

  As Charlotte reached for Angel, Summer’s ship hummed to life. Gun ports opened up underneath the hull, and weapons turrets descended from them. Oversized cannons pointed at them, gaping, black-holed monsters.

  Angel drew her hand-cannon and fired in one smooth motion, stepping in front of Charlotte, who’d turned and was running into the Endurance. Armor-piercing/incendiary rounds sprayed as fast as Angel could pump them out. One of the turrets exploded, sparks and shrapnel flying.

  Not fast enough.

  Muzzles filled with coruscating light just as a tingling pressure encased Angel.

  A wave of force hammered into her, sending her flying. She slid across the bay floor. Charlotte must have activated the Endurance’s shield an instant before the rounds hit, which was why she wasn’t a red smear, but she bloody hurt. Concussions of sound and pressure slammed into her. Supernovas of light stabbed into her eyes, sending spikes of lancing pain into her skull. She screamed in anguish.

  Charlotte’s voice came as if from a distance. “Angel!”

  Another boom sounded close, too close. Needles of agony stabbed into Angel’s eyes with a violence that shocked her.

  An immense pressure of blackness crushed her consciousness.

  •

  Some part of Angel’s mind wanted her not to wake, to let her awareness float away. But it was only a tiny portion of her will, and she’d never given up before, no matter how tough the going was.

  She wrenched herself to wakefulness, not knowing what had happened, where she was. All she knew was that she was still alive, barely. Her body ached as if she’d endured the crushing forces of multiple crisis launches, and there was a throbbing pain behind her eyes. Angel moved her head and immediately regretted it as agony lanced through her skull. She whimpered between clenched teeth.

  A soft voice reached her. “Angel, try not to move. Here, sip this.” Charlotte, or whatever she was. Angel didn’t know anymore.

  Something probed her mouth, and she managed to pull apart lips that stuck together. A straw. A brief suck took all the energy she had. It was some sort of nutritious liquid that tasted like chicken soup. She would have laughed, if she thought the pain wouldn’t kill her.

  “Whhh,” she croaked.

  “Don’t move. You’ve suffered massive trauma, and you’re in the ship’s medical bay. It’s nothing fancy, and its abilities are limited, but it can relieve some of the pain and begin to help your healing process.”

  Angel licked her cracked and parched lips, tongue moving like it was made of lead. There was something over her eyes that exuded a numbing coldness.

  She needed to know what had happened, where they were, the extent of the damage to their ship. She was less important. She’d ceased giving a damn about her body, her health, when she’d got the news she couldn’t have children. Mikal said it didn’t matter, but he would say that.

  Her stomach knotted, and she stifled a sob. The unwanted memory hurt more than the pain she currently felt. To think, after all this time, it still shook her to the core.

  A painful, lonely ache filled her. Tha
t part of her life she could never fulfill.

  “Shhh,” Charlotte whispered. “Everything is going to be all right.”

  Angel felt Charlotte’s hand stroke her cheek.

  She pushed her emotions aside. There were other things to worry about right now. Harry, Jessica, and Viktor needed justice. Mercurial had to be taken down. She needed to clear her name and find out what the Genevolves were up to. And, if necessary, how to stop Charlotte. She had to remain sharp and not wallow in self-pity.

  A glimmer appeared in her awareness, so faint at first she didn’t realize it was there; then it steadily brightened. Her implants. Her readouts flickered like a broken light, fuzzy-edged and quivering. Not a good sign.

  “I’ve activated your implants, low power only. We’ll be able to communicate through them, but I fear more damage if they’re fully powered.”

  Brain damage from her implants? No, not a good sign at all.

  “How bad is it? Am I…?” Angel subvocalized.

  “It’s… repairable, and that’s the good news,” chirped Charlotte cheerfully.

  Angel knew she was attempting to keep her spirits up by remaining positive. “What’s the bad news?”

  “Ah… your implants are damaged, but your brain is still fine, thankfully. So they’re easily replaced, and I’ve started designing new ones for you. Obviously, we don’t have the implant nanochines lying around out here, so I had to make do. But they’ll be better than your old ones. I just have to subvert some of our new manufacturing machines once I’m happy with the final design.”

  Angel sighed inwardly. Charlotte was still young, no matter how evolved her intellect was, and she could tell the girl was holding something back.

  “What’s the other bad news?”

  “Um… optic neuropathy. You’re blind.”

  Angel’s hands gripped the sheet so hard they ached. She felt her lip quiver and bit it, hard.

  Charlotte continued speaking. “The radiation from Summer’s weapons was too much. The rest of your body will take time to recover, with a few treatments.”