by David Weber
"Understood. Stand by to drop the shield."
Megaira was back up to .43 C when the OKM shield's impenetrable blot disappeared from Alicia's sensors. She stiffened, checking ranges, then relaxed. The dreadnought was over twenty light-minutes astern, and it was her sublight sensors which had reported the shield's passing. Her gravitics still didn't see a thing, and that meant the dreadnought must have engineering problems of her own. Now if she'd just go on having them long enough . . ..
Howell watched his plot replay Issus' destruction from Verdun's sensor records in bitter silence. An alpha-synth. No wonder it had done such a number on them! And it explained the lack of SLAMs, too.
But Issus had gotten a piece of it. A big piece, judging from its subsequent behavior, and he cursed his own caution for not dropping the shield sooner. Yet the critical point was that the alpha-synth's speed had been drastically reduced. Even Procyon could make up velocity on it, now that her drive had been restored, and he had no choice but to do just that.
Pieces fell into place in his brain as the big ship accelerated in pursuit. That had to be the rogue drop commando—only a madwoman would have come after them alone and launched that insane attack down Procyon's throat—so Fleet didn't know a thing. A part of him was tempted to let DeVries, go, trusting to the Fleet's own shoot on sight order to dispose of her. But mad or not, she had the hard sensor data to prove her story; all she had to do was get into com range of any Fleet base or unit and pass it on.
He could not permit that, and so he dispatched his freighters to the alternate rendezvous and went in pursuit. His cruisers and remaining battlecruisers could have overhauled sooner than Procyon, had he let them. He didn't. Lamed though that ship was, God only knew what it could still do, and Procyon could hang close enough to break into the same wormhole space and close to combat range. She still had the weapons to take even an alpha-synth, and if it took time, time was something he had. On this heading, he'd overtake DeVries eleven light-years short of the nearest inhabited star system.
The entire squadron was in pursuit, and its faster units were hanging back. They'd managed to pull out of Procyon's SLAM range before she lumbered back to life, but she'd regain it eventually, and Megaira's drive couldn't be interposed against fire from astern. Which might be just as well, given its current fragility.
"What happens when they get the range on us again?"
"I just hope they're as smart as you are, then."
"To the head, dummy." Alicia managed a weary smile. "I'm coming off the tick, and I've got an appointment with the john."
"Sorry." Alicia swallowed a surge of nausea. "Already in process."
"You mean—?"
the AI apologized,
"Oh, crap," Alicia moaned in a stifled tone. " 'Get your tractors ready, then, because—"
Her voice broke off as biology had its way.
Half an hour later, a pale-faced Alicia sat huddled in her chair. Her uniform was almost clean—Megaira's tractors had caught most of the vomit and whisked it away—but the stink of fear and sickness clung to her, and she scrubbed her face with the heels of her hands as a new and deeper fear rippled within her. Now that the immediate terror of combat had receded, she had time to think . . . and to realize fully why she had done what she had.
She'd lost it. She hadn't panicked, hadn't frozen, hadn't tried to run. Instead, she'd done something worse.
She'd gone berserk. She'd forgotten the objective, the plan, the need to survive, even that Megaira would die with her—forgotten everything but the need to kill . . . and it hadn't been temporary. She'd felt it again the instant tick reaction let her go. Bloodlust trembled within her even now, like black fire awaiting only a puff of air to roar to life once more.
It was madness, and it terrified her, for it was infinitely worse than the madness Tannis had feared, and she had infected Megaira with it. The Fleet had been ordered to kill her; now, she knew, that order was justified. If a drop commando's insanity was to be dreaded, how much more terrible was the madness of an alpha-synth pilot?
"It's a bit late for that," Alicia grated.
"Do you really think it matters a good goddamn whose fault it is?!" She clenched her fists as barely leashed madness stirred, and tears streaked her face.
"Shut up, Megaira! Just shut up!" Alicia hissed. She felt Megaira's hurt and desperate concern, and she shut them out, for Megaira loved her. Megaira would refuse to face the thing she had become. Megaira would protect her, and she was too dangerous to be protected.
Silence hovered in her mind and her breathing was ragged. She still had enough control to end it. She could turn herself in . . . and if Fleet killed her when she tried, perhaps that would be the best solution of all. Yet how long would that control remain? She could feel her old self dying, tiny bits and pieces eaten away by the corrosion at her core, and the horror of her own demolition filled her.
the pain in the Fury's voice was terrible, for she was a being who had never been meant to feel it <—I was so wrong! And because I was, I built a weapon of your hate. Not against your foes, but against you, to bend you to my will at need, and in so doing I have hurt one innocent of any wrong. Once that would not have mattered to me. Now it does. You must not hate yourself for what I have done to you.>
"It doesn't matter who I hate." Alicia slumped back and opened tear-soaked eyes, and her voice was raw and wounded. "Don't you understand even that? It doesn't matter. All that matters is what I've become!"
"Can—" Words caught in her throat. She swallowed and tried again, and they came out small and frightened. "Can you stop me? Make me better?"
Tisiphone replied unflinchingly. her voice turned gentle,
"Hush, Megaira," Alicia whispered. Her eyes closed again—not in terror this time but in gratitude—yet she felt her sister-self's pain and made herself speak gently. "She's right. You know she is; you're part of me. Do you think I'd want to live as that?" She shuddered and shook her head. "But I'm so sorry to do this to you, love. You deserve better, unless . . . Do you think—is our link different enough for you to—?"
tears glittered in the AI's soundless voice,
"Please, Megaira. Don't do that to me," Alicia begged. "Promise you'll at least try! I don't . . . I don't think I can bear knowing you won't if I . . . if I . . ."
"But—"
Alicia bowed her head. The Fury was right, and if she tried to force the AI, she would only twist the time they still had with pain and guilt.
"All right," she whispered. "All right. We've come this far together; we'll go on together."
Megaira's warm silence enfolded her, answering for her, and fragile stillness hovered on the bridge, filled with a strange, bittersweet sense of acceptance. What she was becoming could not be permitted to live, and it would not. That had to be enough, and, somehow, it was.
It was odd, she thought almost dreamily, but she didn't even blame Tisiphone. She would have died long since if not for her, and the Fury's pain was too genuine. If Alicia had become something else, so had Tisiphone, and the bond which had grown between them no longer held room for resentment or hate.
The stillness stretched out until the Fury broke it at last.
"Learned?" Alicia stirred in her chair.
Alicia snapped back to full alertness, driving the residual flicker of madness as deep as she could, and felt Megaira beside her in her mind.
"We already knew that, but why? What can they possibly gain from it?"
For just an instant the name completely failed to register, and then Alicia flinched in disbelief. "The Sector Governor? That—that's crazy!"
"But . . . but how?"
"But the Emperor won't stand for it!" Alicia protested sickly.
"Dear God," Alicia whispered. She licked bloodless lips, trying to grasp the truth, but the sheer magnitude of the crime was numbing.
"Megaira, did you get any of this from Procyon's computers?"
"Yeah." Alicia inhaled deeply. The numbness was passing, and the flame of her madness guttered higher. She ground her heel upon its neck, driving it back down, and shook herself.
"Okay. What do we do with the information?"
"Maybe. He'd believe us, I think, though it's for damned sure no one else will. I mean, who's going to take the unsupported word of a madwoman who talks to Bronze Age demons over that of a sector governor?"
"Yeah, and even if Ferhat believes us, he needs proof. They could never convict on what we can give them, and I doubt even O Branch would sanction a black operation against a sector governor."
"Us," Alicia said grimly.
"Are you saying you can't do it?" Alicia tried to make her voice light. "What happened to all that cheerful egotism when we busted out?"
"So we can't get in?"
Megaira replied unwillingly.
"Oh yes, you do," Alicia said very softly. "The same thing that could have taken out Procyon."
"I know."
/>
Alicia frowned down at her hands and her shoulders hunched against the ice of her own words.
"I know," she whispered.
Chapter Sixty-Four
The black-and-gray uniformed woman looked up as a quiet buzzer purred. A light blinked, and she slipped into her synth-link headset and consulted her computers carefully, then pressed a button.
"Get me the Old Man," she said, and waited a moment. "Admiral, this is Lois Heyter in Tracking. We've got something coming in on the right bearing, but the velocity's wrong. They're still too far out for a solid solution, but it looks like our friend hasn't been able to hold the range open as planned." She listened, then nodded. "Yes, Sir. We'll stay on it."
She went back to her plot, and the close-grouped ships of war began to accelerate through the deep gloom between the stars. There was no great rush. They had hours before their prey dropped sublight—plenty of time to build their interception vectors.
James Howell glared at the enemy's blue dot and muttered venomously to himself.
He'd fired off over half the squadron's missiles, and he might as well have been shooting spitballs! It was maddening, yet he'd given up on telling himself things would have been different if Procyon's cyber-synth had survived to run the tactical net. To be sure, Trafalgar's AI was less capable than the dreadnought's had been, but not even Procyon's could have accomplished much against the alpha-synth's fiendish EW.
He knew that damned ship was badly damaged; the debris trail it had left at AR-12359/J would have proved that, even if its limping acceleration hadn't, yet it refused to die. It kept splitting into multiple targets that bobbed and wove insanely, and then swatted down the missiles that went for the right target source with contemptuous ease. What it might have been doing if it were undamaged hardly bore thinking on.
But its time was running out. His ships would be into extreme energy torpedo range in seventy minutes, and even an alpha-synth's defenses could be saturated with enough of those. If they couldn't, he'd be into beam range in another eighteen and a half minutes, and no point defense could stop massed beam fire, by God!