Robby spoke up. “She didn’t. I put it on.”
Janet ignored him. “You knew damn well how dangerous it was to let the AI reconnect to the Altreian ship through that headband. You didn’t even ask my permission.”
Heather nodded, a movement that showed just how tired she was.
“Would you have given it?” she asked wearily.
“Hell no!”
“Robby did what had to be done.”
Janet clenched her fist, putting all her will into stopping herself from punching Heather in the face. Instead her words dripped with venom.
“Had to be done? You could have killed my child . . . or worse.”
A look of deep sadness filled Heather’s eyes.
“Robby is the most powerful weapon we have. We have to help him unleash his full potential if we’re going to have any chance of stopping the Kasari from returning.”
“My son,” Janet growled, “is not your weapon. He’s my child.”
“I’m not a child,” Robby said, “and it was my decision.”
Janet turned to look at him, jaws tight. “You’re not old enough to make that kind of decision.”
“You did when you were a child.”
“I’m done with this conversation.”
“Mom, you killed your own father.”
Robby’s words knocked the breath out of his mother.
“That was different.”
“Was it? He beat your mom to death and you killed him for it, but you could have dialed 911.”
The images from the night of her thirteenth birthday flooded back into Janet’s mind as if it had just happened.
“No, I couldn’t.”
Robby rose from his chair to face her, defiance shining in his eyes.
“And neither can I. We are who we are.”
With that, he turned, picked up the alien headset, and walked out of the room.
Fighting a storm of emotion, Janet let him go.
She turned back to Heather. “When Mark and Jack get back, I’m taking Robby and we’re leaving.”
Without giving Heather a chance to respond, Janet turned on her heel and strode from the room, her heart heavy like a jagged block of ice.
“When Mark and Jack get back, I’m taking Robby and we’re leaving.”
She’d said it softly, a whispered threat that only someone with Robby’s neural enhancements could have heard from the far end of the hallway. As Robby entered his room and closed the door behind him, he replayed her voice in his mind. Not a threat. It was a vow. And it knocked the wind from him.
Despite his mental exhaustion, Robby sat down on the single bed beneath the window and slipped on the SRT headset that would connect his mind to the supercomputer in New Zealand.
“Eos, I need you to disable the motion sensors outside this house but keep their status green on the control panel.”
Robby felt the AI establish the connection and transfer the required subspace receiver-transmitter coordinates to New Zealand. The results were almost instantaneous.
“It is done.”
“Good. Now program the sensors to come back online in thirty minutes. I’ll be leaving through the window, so I’ll need secure transportation and a concealed route to get to it.”
“I have made the arrangements. The vehicle is on its way. There will be no record of its trip.”
Occasionally, Eos startled even Robby with how fast she could do things.
A detailed satellite view appeared in his mind, the route highlighted.
He heard footsteps coming down the hall toward his room, his mom’s footsteps. She paused outside his door. For several seconds she just stood there, as if making up her mind whether to enter the space and confront him. The way her heart hammered in her chest, he could tell she was upset. She turned and walked away without entering. He wasn’t surprised.
Robby rose from the bed and removed the SRT headset, placing it and its Altreian counterpart in his go bag. He felt the creeping onset of loneliness suck all the warmth from his body. A part of him argued that what he was doing was stupid, that his dad would talk her out of leaving. But he knew his mother. When she made a decision, she rarely changed her mind.
Still, Heather was right and his mom was wrong. Robby was a weapon who had trained his whole life to be important in the fight that was coming. But he couldn’t help others if his mom hauled him off to some safe cubbyhole in the rain forest to wait until she decided he was old enough. Worse, he knew what else this would lead to, a larger rift between his mom and dad. There was no chance that Jack would abandon Mark and Heather when they needed his protection the most, even if he wanted to.
As much as Robby wished they could all stay together, he’d do what needed to be done. Just him and Eos.
Although he didn’t like the thought that he might have to kill someone, he’d been trained for combat by both his dad and his mom. Since he was leaving their protection, he would now be forced to defend himself. Shrugging into his utility vest, Robby checked the Glock 19 compact, verifying there was a round chambered. Then he slid it into its holster pocket, picked up his go bag, climbed up on his bed, and raised the window. There was a small lawn behind the house that had gone to weeds and beyond that a fence with a gate that opened into a narrow alley.
Robby tossed the canvas bag out the window, watched it land ten feet below, and jumped, landing lightly on the ground. Turning to look up at the window one last time, he felt the cool midsummer breeze ruffle his hair. With a sigh, he picked up his bag and walked out through the gate.
Then, picking up a ground-covering jog, he followed his mental map toward a rendezvous with destiny.
CHAPTER 17
It had been a long time since General Dgarra had seen a winter storm such as the blizzard that raged outside the caverns. The storm should have stopped all combat activity and driven the Eadric out of the mountains. Neither had happened, disturbing him deeply. Yet what concerned him more was the sighting of hundreds of Kasari soldiers among the enemy lead elements. That was a first, a direct indication of the importance of this new assault on Dgarra’s lines. Why the Koranthian high command refused to believe this was the enemy’s main effort defied understanding.
Looking at his tactical display, he studied the images of the enemy soldiers. He knew that the Kasari Collective was made up of hundreds of life-forms from the worlds they had assimilated, but these units seemed to be comprised of only two species. The majority were of a similar size to his Koranthian warriors and stood upright, having two legs and four arms. The beings also had strong suggestions of reptilian traits, although how reptiles could endure this cold was beyond him. The other species was larger and covered in thick black hair, loping along on eight thick limbs that ended in deadly looking, clawed hands.
He signaled for the Smythe slave to approach. When she did, he pointed at the display.
“Have you seen these before?”
“They’re the same Kasari beings that attacked us on Earth.”
He had to give her credit for sticking with her story.
“Describe their organization and tactics.”
“All I know is that one of the four-armed guys and two of the gorilla-spiders came through the wormhole gateway and attacked us before we were able to shut the gateway down. They were aggressive and very hard to kill.”
“So how did your people kill them?”
“I don’t know. During the fight, I stepped through a portal into the Kasari starship I told you about. The other human on board engaged its wormhole engines and the starship brought us here.”
Dgarra grunted and waved a hand to dismiss her. But after two steps she turned back toward him.
“There’s one more thing. I got a glimpse through the Kasari gateway. The army waiting on the far side was composed of lots of other alien races. Maybe that means that they use these two races as their shock troops.”
She turned and walked back to her assigned task, helping a large group of slaves off-load ammunition crates fr
om a line of tunnel lorries that would soon be going back to a supply depot along the rails that had carried them here.
Dgarra thought about what she had said. Although he had never gotten solid intelligence on what happened when the Eadric had activated the wormhole gate, he knew that there were now tens of thousands of Kasari at a staging area within the city of Orthei, near where the gateway had been constructed. Even though they acted peacefully to the Eadric, the Kasari were armed with advanced weaponry and had immediately started construction on a number of facilities.
He had little doubt that the Kasari had been prepared for the possibility of opposition when they came through the gateway, and it made sense that they would have sent an elite fighting force to seize and secure the site for follow-on forces. What didn’t make sense was why they would employ special assault forces here, on the front lines of an infantry fight. Unless . . .
What if the troops were here to seize and secure something of great value to the Kasari? Could they want to capture an entrance to the tunnel system that badly? True, it would amount to a beachhead into the Koranthian Empire, but the Eadric forces were already on the verge of achieving that through sheer numbers. So what did the Kasari want here?
The sudden commotion at the distant cavern entrance spun him around. What in the name of the dark gods was happening out there? A small group of warriors ran toward him as the sound of battle erupted behind them.
“General,” the captain in the lead yelled. “The Kasari have infiltrated our lines. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“We’re not going anywhere. You men, form up. Assault formation. Now.”
From the other side of a gun emplacement, he heard the hiss, sizzle, and blast of a disrupter weapon firing repeatedly. The revetment exploded, sending a shower of rock and metal shards in all directions as a thick dust cloud swallowed everything.
Seeing that his warriors were about to fire blindly into the dust and smoke, he yelled his orders.
“Hold fire. Draw blades. With me. We still have warriors in there.”
As Dgarra charged forward into the dust cloud that cut visibility to a body length, he saw the Smythe slave move up beside him. And in her hand was the war-blade he’d allowed her to keep.
The dust from the explosion coated Jennifer’s tongue, clogged her nostrils, and stung her eyes. Nearby, shadows moved, rapidly resolving themselves into two of the gorilla-spiders that had come through the Stephenson Gateway. Seeing her, one of them raised a weapon and fired, but too slowly. Jennifer leaped to the side as something spread and whirled by her. What the hell? A net?
As the second gorilla-spider attacked Dgarra, Jennifer lunged at her attacker, her precisely aimed blow removing the arm that held the weapon. Again, Jennifer spun away, surprised when the thing paused to pick up the weapon with another hand. It didn’t want to kill her.
Good!
She struck, once again removing the arm that held the trapping tool. Sensing movement to her left, Jennifer barely managed to avoid another of the net projectiles. Shit! Now Dgarra’s spider was firing at her. But it gave the general an opening that he exploited, following her lead by cutting off the creature’s weapon arm. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the protection these things were granting her and suffered a severe gash down his left side. He staggered back and the spider leaped toward him.
Jennifer landed atop the spider, knocking it aside as her blade whirled in a figure eight, removing two more arms and then embedding her weapon deeply in a lump that she hoped was the creature’s brainpan. The spider rolled and Jennifer used its imparted momentum to leap free of its body, just as Dgarra darted in to hack at the thing.
Sensing an opening, the other spider closed with Dgarra, delivering a blow that his body armor partially deflected but that launched him into a pile of stony rubble. Jennifer ran to intercept the spider that raced toward the downed general. Where the hell were Dgarra’s other warriors?
The sounds of desperate combat behind her provided the answer.
The spider bunched its legs and jumped, sailing ten feet over her head. It didn’t expect Jennifer to jump that high too. Her blade took it in the belly, a slash that opened the creature from front to rear, drenching her in stinking goo. The spider tumbled to the ground three feet beyond where Dgarra lay. Jennifer landed beside it, slipped on the slick ground, and fell just as another of the net projectiles whistled overhead.
She rolled sideways and came to her feet. Dgarra raised his head, his eyes locking with hers. He pointed something at her and pressed a switch on its side. The shock collar around her neck popped open and fell to the ground. Then Dgarra slumped back and lay still, the device falling from nerveless fingers.
Jennifer dived behind a pile of rubble and waited, her concentration shutting out the distant battle as she focused her hearing on the sounds the remaining gorilla-spider made as it stealthily approached. It stopped on the far side of the ten-foot-high rubble pile that had once been a fortified gun emplacement. Jennifer tightened her concentration until she could hear the sinews bunch beneath its skin.
With the creature having witnessed what she’d done to its partner, she doubted that it would try the same leaping tactic. Sheathing the war-blade, she picked up a head-sized rock and waited. When the thing moved, it moved fast, rounding the rubble pile near where Dgarra’s body lay. As its weapon swung toward her, she struck it with the fifty-pound stone, knocking the spider over backward and sending its weapon spinning away.
Instantly Jennifer launched herself after the weapon, replaying the way these things had fired in her perfect memory. As the spider regained its footing, she raised the weapon and fired, encasing the creature in thin strands that drew tight, drawing the spider to the ground. Jennifer moved to Dgarra, took his blaster pistol from its holster, pointed, and fired. Although the gun punched a fist-sized hole through the creature, it took six more shots before she felt certain that the gorilla-spider was dead. As she’d told Dgarra, very hard to kill.
With the sounds of fighting growing louder, two things were clear.
She was free and it was time to go.
She knelt beside General Dgarra. One leg was twisted unnaturally beneath him and the wound in his side looked bad, but he was still breathing. Jennifer had no doubt that if she left him here, the Kasari would soon put an end to the Koranthian commander.
Cursing herself for her foolishness, Jennifer grunted and hefted the heavy body over her left shoulder. She considered following the rails that led back to the supply depot. What kept her from doing that was the fear that, once the Kasari finished off Dgarra’s warriors, they would do the same thing.
With a hiss of frustration, she turned and jogged down another tunnel that led deep into the heart of the mountain. Where she was going, she had no idea.
This wasn’t brain surgery. Close, but he wasn’t quite touching the brain itself. Raul manipulated the fine tendrils of the stasis field, snipping away the Stephenson artificial eye’s connections to his optic nerve and extracting it, appreciating the way his newly upgraded nanite infusion was reducing the pain from this surgery.
Over the coming days he planned on completing a series of personal upgrades that would make it possible for him to leave the starship and function in the real world, whichever world that might be. The first task had been creating an upgraded version of the nanites. Although he’d been tempted to use the formula for the Kasari nanites that was stored in the data banks, he decided Jennifer was right not to trust them. For all he knew they would connect his brain directly to the Kasari Collective. So he’d designed and tested his own version. Not perfect by a long shot, but a hell of a lot better than the Stephenson nanites.
This right-eye replacement was the second task. He’d created an artificial eyeball that looked like the real thing and that had the ability to see across a broad spectrum, with zoom in and out functionality. He wouldn’t be able to see what was behind him, but he was willing to give that up in order to eliminate the yuck
factor of an eyeball on a stalk. A working prosthetic eyelid would complete that part of his transformation.
Tomorrow he would attach the robotic legs and tie them into his nervous system. The last task would be to remove the translucent skullcap and embed the new subspace communications crystals in his brain. He would never again have to wear the SRT headset to link with the Rho Ship’s neural net whenever he left the command bay. And his new skullcap would match his skin tone, having hair that looked and felt like the real thing.
Returning his attention to the procedure at hand, Raul used the stasis field to place his new eyeball in its socket and surgically link it to the optic nerve. A smile lifted the corners of his lips. When next Jennifer saw him, she was in for one hell of a surprise.
News from the northeastern front wasn’t good. Kasari Group Commander Shalegha studied the tactical reports, watching the video of the failed capture of the human female with growing astonishment. Almost single-handedly she’d killed two of the eight-legged Graath commandos. The speed with which she moved, the ferocity with which she fought, her extraordinary strength . . . all spoke of some special augmentation that had not been observed in other humans.
Shalegha paced back and forth across the command center. The failed capture mission hadn’t been designed to seize and hold ground. The commando team was supposed to hit the Koranthian combat headquarters with sufficient shock to throw the defenders into disarray, enabling the Graath to capture the human and extract her. Not only had they failed to accomplish the primary mission, but the Koranthian warriors had rallied, killing the entire Kasari combat team as they attempted to fight their way back to their cloaked airship.
She didn’t like failure. Didn’t tolerate it. And neither did her superiors. This latest disaster had forced her to reevaluate her plans for the orderly assimilation of the remainder of this planet’s population. She would have to abandon the campaign to convince the recalcitrant minority of the Eadric population that they should voluntarily accept nano-bot transfusions. But victory called for sacrifice.
The Kasari Nexus (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 1) Page 21