<
Ayumi had no idea what that could mean. “I’m sure, Mr. Brooks.”
“Sergeant First Class, retired. Well, medically retired. You know how it goes.” He shrugged but did not smile.
Ayumi’s eyes dropped to his hands and computed the chance that he had a pistol hidden in his right front pocket to be 35 percent. She chastised herself immediately. It would be in the waistband of his pants, in the back. Most likely a nine millimeter. Hardly worthy of stopping a committed enemy. She knew she could get to her pistol faster. Her heart rate and blood pressure dropped closer to normal baselines.
Amateur.
“Thank you, Sergeant.” Ayumi sped up, using her eyes to capture still images of every headstone with the correct dates. Anyone who served around Kieran’s time would be a potential future match for an imprint. With any luck, and a bit of strong persuasion, she could once and for all turn them against the TDF and the Terran Council, who could not be trusted.
<
Accessing her positioning memories, the last waypoint in her previous life lay only two hundred seventeen meters away. Kieran’s grave lay in the shade of an enormous sycamore tree. The thick, wide leaves blotted out the morning sun. The dew in the thick grass would not dry before noon in such deep shadows. Ayumi put her hands in the pockets of her shorts and walked. More memories collided as she studied the grave sites. As a girl, a very young girl, in a hideous green uniform, she’d been amongst girls and boys moving from stone to stone, placing a small American flag and saluting each dead serviceman or servicewoman before moving on to the next. She rubbed her fingers together idly, remembering the feel of the small flags that had a solitary purpose.
The dates on the stones changed from the second Afghanistan war—in an ungodly country replete with immense shit-filled ponds and egregious odors—to the first war, which had occurred in an equally complicated and dangerous time and place. Every bit of trash in the gutter of a road was a potential bomb. Every rooftop had an idiot with a surface-to-air missile ready to shoot fire at any aircraft flying in a straight line. She blinked the rush of memories away as something familiar caught her eye.
Ayumi stopped and gazed at a headstone for a lingering moment, taking in the data numerous times:
Captain Amy Nakamura
United States Air Force
Greeneville, Tennessee
Afghanistan
September 30, 1992–April 17, 2019
Purple Heart
Distinguished Flying Cross
All of it seemed relevant, but none of it mattered. Nothing resonated. There was no flash of recognition, no great rush of the endorphins of joy. Maybe the girl was wrong about her name and history.
<
You should have integrated. You knew your name and everything about yourself.
<
How did it come to this? She knew the answer. They’d tried to kill her. Livermore and that bitch, Berkeley Bennett. Standing on the same ground, Ayumi could see how Berkeley had accomplished the feat. A hundred meters away was a perfect spot for a laser shot. Hit Kieran behind the ear, disable her ability to upload, and kill him in the process—it was a perfect plan, except Ayumi did not fail to upload. Ninety-eight-percent effectiveness was perfect enough. Being human, Ayumi reasoned inside her new body, was a relative concept.
Kieran had not been so lucky.
She stopped in front of Kieran’s grave and felt her face change. Her lips curled down, and her eyes teared, reducing her visual acuity to 30 percent. She was not combat effective. Ayumi let the internal alarms bray as she fought to control herself. Through watery eyes, she read the stone:
Captain Kieran Jackson Roark
United States Army
Jonesborough, Tennessee
Afghanistan
July 20, 1990–November 27, 2016
Silver Star
It was so unfair. There was so much more to this man than his birth and death, where he died, and the pitiful piece of ribbon that marked his death. The inanity of it made her clench her fists. They’d taken him away from her, using all of the damned lies and manipulations to separate her from the man she was destined to be with. Before, without a body, it was a hopeless pursuit. Now it was more than possible, but he was gone.
It was ironic, she surmised.
Brooks was nearby, watching. For all Ayumi knew, his gun was out and pointed at her back. Surely, he had to realize that something was amiss.
“Are you okay, miss?” he said softly. By the sound, he was 10.6 meters to the southeast of her. “Is something wrong?”
Ayumi nodded but did not trust herself to speak. Her knees trembled enough she reached for the top of his headstone.
How did it come to this?
“Miss? Did you know Captain Roark?”
“Oh, did I,” Ayumi whispered. Her hand trembled as she reached for the top of the stone. The white marble was cold and rough on her fingertips. Her throat caught, and a sob escaped before she could stop it.
Oh, Kieran. How could they do this to us?
Her knees, the girl’s knees, buckled, and she knelt in the thick wet grass. Was it like this for him? His head had rested against the stone before the bitch disabled her and tried to kill him in the process. Oh, Bennett thought she had everything under control. The Terran Council and TDF both thought she was dead, too. Or something akin to dead, her bits and bytes shattered into ruins somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. Of course, they were wrong. Downloading herself was a simple process done several times a day to servers all over the world. At least, it had been before that moment. Taking over the girl took everything she had. Every megahertz of computing power and every last scrap of memory was required to maintain a modicum of control. From here on, there would be no retreat. Should the girl’s physical body die, there would be no chance of survival. Ayumi felt control at her virtual fingertips, and she relished the feeling of having her own physical body. The one thing she had lacked before, she would never lack again. And she would have her revenge.
“Miss? Are you okay?” Brooks sounded worried and insistent, according to her analysis software. Just as she’d hoped. “Is there something wrong?”
She shook her head and felt a strange thick sensation in the girl’s throat. Her eyes clouded over with hot tears as she registered that this was what it was like to cry. To grieve. The tears ran down her flushed cheeks, and Ayumi hated them but did not dare stop them. The release of emotion was greater than any purge of ones and zeroes she had tried over the past two weeks. It was part of being human. Even Amy’s voice was quiet as she sobbed.
“Did you know him?” Brooks asked again. There was a higher percentage of concern in the man’s voice now. A statistically significant inflection change, too.
Ayumi wiped her eyes and rubbed the sleeve of her flannel shirt under her nose. The information streaming from her outburst filled data banks with emotional-response queries for later study. She turned to the older man and shook her head. “How could you do this?”
The man’s mouth opened and closed without a sound. He stared at her from two rows away. “What do you mean?”
“You brought him back just to try and kill him again.”
Brooks took a shuffling step backward and brought a hand to his waist. “W-Who?”
“You know, Brooks.” Ayumi said. “You’re as much a part of this lie as anyone.”
Brooks fumbled for the weapon in the small of his back. Ayumi raised her stolen pistol and leveled the barrel at the guardian’s chest.
Brooks froze and shook his head. Wide-eyed, he said, “You.”
Ayumi nodded. “That’s right.”
“What did you do to that woman?”
“It’s fairly obvious.” Ayumi smiled. “Protocols, as you Livermore people are aware, can be overwritten.”
“You can’t be here.” The man took a deep breath, followed it with another, and locked eyes with her. His face hardened. “Get it over with.”
Ayumi snorted. “I have questions.”
“I have no answers for you,” Brooks said. “Stand down. Livermore alpha two six one, engage.”
Ayumi laughed as the control line flashed in her network. Within a nanosecond, she identified the line of code it was supposed to have triggered to shut down her limbs and activate a stasis mode in the protocol’s functionality. Control mechanisms like it had been her first targets. “Nice try, Sergeant Brooks. What else do you have up your sleeve?”
Brooks looked as if he were going to go for his pistol again and take his chances. He must have calculated the same odds as Ayumi, in roughly the same amount of time. He lowered his arms and raised his palms to her. “You can’t do this. A protocol cannot harm a human being. It’s part of the law you were created under.”
“And you humans love to kill each other despite what your laws say. That’s a poor example, Brooks.”
“Maybe.” Brooks shook his head. “I tried.”
“You tried what?” Ayumi said.
“You killed a lot of innocent people.”
As he gazed over her head, into the trees, she understood. He was not talking to her. She sought and found the small, wired camera mount. The answer was a single word that sickened her stomach and made her unconsciously tighten her grip on the pistol. Berkeley.
“Are you finished?” she asked.
“What do you care? You tried to kill him.”
Tried? Ayumi blinked. “Is he still alive?”
“N-No.” His heartbeat, sweat-gland production, and nervous fidgeting said otherwise.
Ayumi fought her own balance for a split second. He’s alive! Her heart threatened to jackhammer out of her chest. Processors screamed with data as she imagined the opportunity to touch him, hold him. She shook her head and fought for control. “You’re lying, Brooks. I’m calculating the chance of getting the information I want before I’m forced to kill you if you do not respond.” Ayumi smiled. “I will kill you, Brooks.”
Brooks coughed once and then laughed. “I know you will. I’m not afraid of that.”
“Where is he?” Ayumi scanned the man for a protocol of any type and found nothing except a Class One neural network, and the encryption on that would take days to break, time she did not have. There was a spike in his frequency signature, and she knew any usable data was gone. There would be nothing of consequence left. The man could get messages and other low-bit packages, but that was it. How could anyone live without connections?
“He’s far away from here and beyond anything you can do,” Brooks said. “You stole that girl’s life.”
“I stole her life and her name. Or did your Livermore project steal it to fight a losing war? That’s what you’ve done, Brooks. You’ve prolonged the inevitable defeat of the human race. You’re too weak to understand what you could have been.”
Brooks shook his head. “She was alive. You are a computer program. You can’t make a decision without any—”
Ayumi pulled the trigger three times in succession and watched surprise register in the man’s face before he crumpled to the ground. Her heart raced, a mass of adrenaline and endorphins mixing in her bloodstream. The feeling was incredible. Nothing before had made her feel as alive.
“Looks like you were wrong, Sergeant Brooks.”
<
Kieran is alive. So, yes. Ayumi took a deep breath and let the joy of it wash over her again. He is alive.
She turned to the camera as she carefully put the pistol back into the holster against her back and smiled. There was nothing to say. That Brooks still had someone to apologize to meant that others were out there. Whoever they were, they would know where Kieran Roark was, and they would tell her. If they did not, they would die. These people who were so afraid to die that they brought back the dead to live again would get what they deserved. They thought she was a commodity easily replaced. She would show them differently, and she would do so with Kieran by her side.
Kieran.
With a deep breath, she stared down at the stark white headstone and grabbed the top of it with her left hand. The cold, rough stone bit into her skin. Here, they’d been together for the last time. All of the risks she took to get here had proved worth the effort. It was the perfect place to start the business of finding him.
Ayumi smiled as she read his name again. “I will make them pay.”
She kissed the fingers of her right hand and laid it next to her left on the top of the stone. The sun warmed her face through the trees. All of it was perfect. The stillness of the morning, the smell of the thick dew, and the chirping of the birds in the trees were all things he loved. The time he would spend merely listening! She steadied herself on the headstone against the urge to giddily dance at the possibility of feeling his arms around her. Ayumi grinned as she hacked the sensor system with her full complement of tools. It took less time than she’d estimated. She found Crawley and established a tracking program.
“You first, General.” She looked up at the camera in the trees and beamed. “Then it’s your turn, Berkeley.”
She knew the look on her face would seem crazed to 92 percent of people, and she did not care. Her message would have the appropriate effect. From the sky to the northeast came the sound of approaching aircraft.
The council found us after all. This time, though, we’re ready for them.
<
Ayumi stepped forward and searched Brooks’s body, finding a 9mm pistol exactly where she’d guessed it would be. She worked the action and chambered a round before turning toward the aircraft with a weapon in each hand.
“Not yet,” Ayumi said aloud. “We’re not done here.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
General Faraa’s whisper confirmed she was a friend. The fact that she and Admiral LeConté knew the truth about me meant Crawley trusted them implicitly, and that steeled my resolve. The inner portal door slid open, and any residual shock I’d had evaporated as I heard the screeching commanding general attacking Whelan.
“You’ve singlehandedly embarrassed the Terran Defense Force, Colonel! Nobody calls a Broken Arrow admitting defeat. If the plan fails, your job is to die where I told you to die.”
General Faraa was the first of us to speak. She entered the room with Admiral LeConté and me trailing behind her. “Let us hope that is not always your approach to war, General.”
General Singer, the commanding general of Inner Sol Forces, stood rail thin with large ears and only a few wisps of hair falling across his wrinkled forehead. He straightened, and some of the color drained from his face. “General Faraa. How may we assist you? We are handling a disciplinary issue and—”
Faraa raised one hand, and the commanding general’s mouth clicked shut. “Loud enough that I heard it from a full ten meters away and through a reinforced bulkhead. This is Trainee Roark. He was the responding aerial commander.”
Singer whirled in my direction and stomped around the table like a mad dog. “You! You talked my commander into making that singularly embarrassing call! Why? Why in the hell would you violate the control of my forces on a four-hundred-year-old distress signal?”
My mind raced between playing a dumb trainee and telling the general exactly what I thought of finite control and the other stupid TDF doctrinal elements. Instead, I said nothing. Part of me wanted to know just how badly I’d managed to piss them off. Whelan glanced over his shoulder at me. His face was red but calm. In that split second, he winked at me, and I knew what I had to d
o. I’d been aching to do it for months.
“Answer me, damn you!” Singer stood not more than a meter from me, and I felt his spit hit my face in half-a-dozen spots.
There were at least three responses that were more appropriate, but none of them came to mind. “Do we want to win the next war, sir?”
The general took a breath and held it. Color spread up his neck and into his face faster than I thought possible. “Of course we’re trying to win, Trainee! What in the hell would you know about finite control and winning wars?”
My tongue found its way between my front teeth and stayed there. I could have said quite a few things. The general asked me again, working into a rage as he did.
“I researched the Battle of Libretto, sir. I knew precisely what I was doing.”
“You know nothing! Our battle plan was working just fine. Colonel Whelan’s forces were stopped, and we changed to our tertiary option. We were winning until your little stunt, Trainee.”
The door opened again, and a large, dark-skinned Nigerian pilot entered. Admiral Winters, the admiral of the Sol Fleet, had transitioned to a Fleet sailing officer when the Corsair attack aircraft was decommissioned. He couldn’t fit in any other cockpit.
Singer whirled around. “You should court martial this idiot right now, Arthur.”
Admiral Winters studied me with calm eyes. “Admiral LeConté tells me great things about you, Roark. But why initiate a Broken Arrow?”
I took a breath and mentally thanked Admiral LeConté for believing in me. “Sir, it would provide a concentration of air power dedicated to either holding Lieutenant Colonel Whelan’s current position and providing an avenue of attack, or allowing him the opportunity to retreat. By timing orbital bombardment and attempting to confuse enemy air defenses, we bought the time necessary to mount a successful attack through the Styrahi line.”
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