As soon as the shuttle disappeared into the low clouds, he turned back to his desk. “Armitran, terminate playback and permanently delete all my personal files.”
The holoscreen over his desk, playing footage of Wyatt and Kallie frolicking in the surf with Shelley and Hastion, disappeared. “Files deleted.”
He stood and stripped out of his boots and uniform with hands that had refused to remain steady since the instant the shuttle pod exploded. Walking out of the house through the lower deck, he made his way across the estate, his trembling legs gaining speed despite the steepening incline. Ever since he returned from the sparse debris field, he’d done nothing but stare at images of those he’d loved and lost. The memories had swarmed over his skin like plasma ghosts with every breath he took, filling his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils and his lungs with prickly fire, and now he itched to finally be free of this physical form that had accumulated so much pain and regret over the course of its existence.
“Armitran, sever cerecom contact, authorization voya kiprin ayera voya.”
“Affirmative. Severing contact.”
He continued striding uphill, seeing the babies’ smiling faces, smelling their sweet skin, feeling their hands wrapped around his fingers. Monica—such a vibrant, unexpected delight—and her mother Cecilia, without whose love he would never have known what he was fighting for in those bleak, early years of the resistance. Raia and Lstel, who’d gone against everything they were taught by their mother to rescue him. Draeda, who’d died without even knowing why.
And now Hastion and Shelley…
So many he’d loved.
Too many he’d failed.
The trees gave way to a sharp, grassy incline and he broke into a sprint, tears streaming down his face as he imagined his skin falling away from his bones, and along with it, the pain he could no longer bear. When he reached the cliff’s crumbling edge, he flew over and was free.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When it came time to climb the shuttle ramp, Shelley found herself in the grip of unexpected dread and stopped abruptly enough that Hastion bumped into her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that leaving now was a horrible mistake.
“Something’s wrong,” she told him, turning to look back in the direction of the house. They were departing from the shuttle pad they’d landed on that first day, so the building was out of sight behind the rise. Not being able to see it made Shelley feel panicky and desperate.
“Shelley-Belle, the shuttle pod is safe,” he said with a sympathetic look.
“This has nothing to do with the shuttle,” she said impatiently. And it didn’t, even after she’d seen the one carrying her children blown to bits. “I just…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Something just feels very, very wrong.”
At that moment, Shauss and Tiber popped out of a flare bubble at the base of the ramp. Tiber wore a look of concern, but Shauss just looked like his usual arrogant, suspicious self.
“Hastion, what in the name of all the Powers are you doing?” he demanded without preamble.
“I’m sure Jasmine told you we’re dedicating the twins on Ryola.”
“She did, and I find it difficult to believe that you’d abandon the minister in his darkest hour.”
Hastion shrugged. “The minister is…occupied by more pressing concerns at the moment.”
“What could be more pressing than the dedication of his young?” Shauss asked incredulously.
“He has a sector summit to prepare for,” Hastion replied, his voice heavy with irony.
“A sector summit!”
The feeling in Shelley’s chest sharpened. Shauss was absolutely right. Why was Cecine letting them go without a word?
She looked at Hastion. “Something’s wrong. He loves the twins. He loves Monica.”
“I thought so too. But he appears to have locked his grief away and carried on.” He shrugged again. “Sometimes that’s all a male can do in the moment.”
Although she wanted nothing more than to go after her babies, she was almost shaking with the conviction that she needed to remain here, that Cecine needed her. She wished she could use her cerecom to talk to Hastion but all she had was her eyes.
“I can’t leave him like this. You’ll have to go without me.” She glanced at Shauss and Tiber, who were both watching her. “I’ll…talk to him. He probably just needs some time or…something.”
Hastion looked torn but she nodded her encouragement.
“Go ahead,” Shauss said. “We’ll look after your mates.”
When he still hesitated, she kissed Hastion hard on the lips and said, “Go. You’re wasting time.”
He nodded and then ducked into the shuttle while the three of them moved outside the pad’s perimeter to watch him take off. The speed at which he left the surface took Shelley’s breath away and she said a little prayer that he’d return to her safely.
“I must say, you seem much improved since I saw you this morning,” Tiber commented, still observing her closely.
“I took a nap.” She turned and walked away. “We need to get back to the house.”
They were just mounting the steps to the main entrance when Empran spoke to her.
“Shelley, don’t ask questions, just do as I say. Tell Lieutenant Shauss you’re frightened for Minister Cecine. Tell him to contact him immediately.”
Shelley stiffened. “Something’s wrong. Contact Cecine, Shauss.”
He frowned. “What do you mean, something’s wrong?”
“NOW, Shelley!”
“Oh God, just do it!” Shelley cried. “Please!”
He gave a sharp nod and Shelley was startled to hear him in her head. “Shauss to Minister Cecine.”
“Minister Cecine has severed cerecom contact,” Armitran said.
Tiber’s eyes widened. “Armitran, restore the minister’s cerecom link and put him in a protective flare on my authorization.”
“Affirmative.”
“Is he alive?”
Shelley gasped and Shauss’s eyes narrowed on her.
“Affirmative.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Cecine severed cerecom contact. Males generally only do that when being contacted could endanger themselves or others—or when they wish to end their own lives,” Tiber said grimly.
“Oh my God.”
“Armitran, flare us to him.” Shauss grabbed her arm and the world disappeared for a few seconds. When it reappeared, they were standing among the jagged rocks along the seashore. They looked around and didn’t see him. “Armitran, where is Cecine?”
“Minister Cecine is nineteen feet directly overhead.”
Shelley looked up and gasped. Cecine was suspended in a sparkling blue flare field, naked and flat on his back with his arms out to his sides. He must have jumped off the cliff above them.
“Cecine,” she whispered, shattered. Nineteen feet. Jesus. If Empran had contacted her a second later, or if Shauss had hesitated a fraction of a second longer… “Thank you, Empran. Thank you, thank you, thank you…”
“I had to do something,” Empran said in a hollow tone. Shelley could practically feel her shock and grief. “I’ve flared Hastion aboard to hasten our departure. When he fails to return to the controls, the server will pilot the shuttle safely. I’m severing communication now.”
“Thank you, Empran!”
This time there was no reply, and Shelley took a deep, shaky breath, terrified for Cecine but relieved that communications were severed so she no longer had to worry about someone putting a stop to the search.
“I’ve temporarily relieved the minister of command and notified the council,” Tiber said.
He and Shauss both looked almost as shaken as Shelley felt.
“Thank the Powers Armitran caught him in stasis,” Shauss said. “He’d have hit a flare field with the same force as hitting the ground.”
“I did not activate the stasis field,” Armitran said. “It was in place before cerecom cont
act was restored.”
Shauss frowned. “Who activated the field?”
“I do not know. There is no record of its being activated.”
He and Tiber exchanged an intense look and then Shauss’s gaze zeroed in on her. Before he could speak, a body fell out of the sky behind him and bounced onto the sand with a grunt.
It was Pony Boy.
“Oh Jesus,” she said, rushing forward as Shauss and Tiber whirled around. How far had he fallen?
She dropped to her knees beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Holligan, are you all right? Can you hear me?”
He’d had the breath knocked out of him at the very least. He stared at her with bulging lavender eyes for a few seconds, writhing and scratching at the sand, before sucking in a huge draft of air.
“Son of a pestilence-ridden bitch,” he shouted before gasping for a few more breaths. “I’m going to kill her!”
“Easy, Holligan.” Tiber had dropped to his knees beside him too. “Are you injured?”
“I’m fine—no thanks to Empran,” he added bitterly.
“Holligan, what in Peserin’s hell are you doing here?” Shauss demanded, standing there with his fists on his hips. “Who are you going to kill?”
Holligan struggled to a sitting position, shaking sand out of his cotton-candy-striped hair. “Empran! She flared me off the ship and dispatched me twenty feet in the air.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s gone insane.”
“Why didn’t you call the deactivation code?”
“I did! She must have changed it.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Try telling Empran that.” He frowned and leaned back on his hands, looking up as if only now realizing what he’d seen overhead. “Is that the minister?”
“It is.” Shauss focused on Shelley. “Are you in communication with Empran?”
“No.” When his scowl deepened, she added, “Not anymore.”
He blinked slowly. “What in the name of all the Powers is going on? Armitran is unable to establish communication with Empran or anyone aboard the Heptoral and you know something about it.”
Shelley sighed. “Let’s get Cecine back to the house and I’ll tell you everything.”
After Armitran flared them all back to Cecine’s large suite of rooms, the blue bubble holding him dissipated, allowing him to sink gently to the floor. A shudder ran through him, and then he coughed and blinked, looking around at their faces in momentary confusion.
It wasn’t hard to see the instant he realized what had happened.
“Peserin’s hell.” Rolling over, he rose unsteadily to his feet and staggered toward the open door, but then he bounced back as if he’d run into an invisible wall. His chest heaving, he turned, heedless of his nudity, and leveled a forbidding look at Tiber. “Remove the field, Doctor. That’s an order.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Tiber said gently, “but at the moment you have no authority to give me orders. Let’s—”
“Don’t do this to me, Tiber. I can no longer tolerate the pain of this existence.”
“I can’t allow you to leave behind loved ones, sir.”
Bellowing like a wounded bear, Cecine struck out, sweeping a row of what looked like tribal masks off a shelf, and Shelley flinched as they shattered on the wood floor.
Tiber held up his hands. “Minister, please be—”
Cecine charged him, plowing into his chest with a shoulder and taking him down. Shelley screamed Cecine’s name, tears spilling down her cheeks, but before he could do Tiber any real damage, he went limp. Tiber pushed him off, rolled him to his back and got to his knees.
“Peserin damn you all,” Cecine ground out, twitching all over, obviously trying to overcome whatever force was holding him in place.
Shelley was absolutely paralyzed by the sight. She’d never felt so helpless or ineffectual in her life.
“Please don’t fight, sir,” Tiber said softly, stroking his hair away from his red, damp face. “We want nothing more than to help you.”
Strong arms slid around Shelley, supporting her, and she leaned gratefully into a warm, hard chest. It was only after Tiber had administered a sedative and Cecine slipped into unconsciousness that she looked up and realized Shauss was the one holding her.
For once his black eyes looked soft and concerned, though no less penetrating, and she tightened but didn’t jerk away from him.
“Talk to me, Shelley,” he said quietly. “If the computer’s gone rogue, I need to inform Kellen. Empran must be deactivated before innocent lives are lost.”
Shelley shook her head. “She’s no danger to anyone.”
“You have no idea how dangerous Empran is. When a computer’s accumulated knowledge and experience engender sapience, the computer becomes an exponentially more useful tool. But if it develops more advanced personality traits, instincts and emotions, the computer becomes a potential menace to all it was designed to serve.”
“You mean like the HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey.”
“Exactly. A half-dozen times in the last hundred years, primary servers have made that developmental leap, and they’ve invariably killed to protect themselves. The last time, a ship’s server spaced the entire crew of ninety-four.”
“Oh my God.”
“Now you begin to understand. Since then we’ve rigorously monitored server sapience and instituted fail-safe protocols for deactivating rogue computers and bringing backups online. Empran has managed to circumvent all of these measures, Shelley. There is nothing to stop it from slaughtering everyone aboard the Heptoral or attacking other ships, or even entire planets. This planet. Your planet. Empran is free to use all the ship’s weapon systems at will, and Earth would be utterly defenseless.”
Shelley’s heart thudded rapidly and her breath was thick in her lungs. Hastion. Oh God, what had she sent him into? “She wouldn’t do that.”
“Empran is not a she, Shelley. It’s a bloodless, lifeless computer whose only instinct at this point is for self-preservation. It’s akin to an animal, or an infant—all it knows is what it wants, and it will do anything it can to get it. We need to dispatch another ship to rescue the crew and take Empran out.”
“Shauss, all she wants is for Monica to live!” She believed that. She had to believe it.
Shauss let go of her and took a step back as if he’d been bitten. “Monica is dead,” he said harshly, lines of pain etching his face.
Every ounce of fear of him drained away. He loved Monica.
“I have reason to believe she’s not,” Shelley told him as gently as she could. When he and Tiber exchanged disturbed glances, she said, “Please, just hear me out.”
As she explained the situation, all three males’ eyes grew wider.
“Empran told me Monica was alive and we’d been ordered to go after her,” Holligan finally said. “I knew we hadn’t received any such orders or I’d have heard it directly from the commander. That’s when I tried to shut her down manually through the core access and she flared me off the ship.”
“And she didn’t space you, did she?” Shelley said pointedly.
“She dispatched me from a flare in midair! I could have broken my neck.”
Shelley snorted. “You’re fine, Pony Boy. Not even a sprained ankle.”
“She was angry, Shelley. Computers aren’t supposed to get angry.”
“I’d be angry too if you wouldn’t listen to me and were trying to kill me.”
When he just glared at her, she had to fight back a grin.
Shauss wasn’t amused. “We still need to send a ship after them. If you and Empran are correct, they might need some muscle backing them up. The Heptoral is running on a skeleton crew and all her combat squads are on leave. If you’re wrong…”
“Fine, send a ship, but please, just give them the time they need to find the truth. Empran knows the risk she’s taking, Shauss. She’s doing it for Monica and the twins, not herself.”
&
nbsp; He deliberated for a long moment and then said, “I’ll talk to Kellen. I know him—if he believes there’s any chance at all that Monica lives, he’ll think twice before firing. But if he detects any signs that Empran has overridden its imperative to protect the lives of the crew, he won’t hesitate to take it out.”
Cecine stared at a blank spot on the shadowed wall, too hollow with pain and humiliation to even curse himself.
How could any male fail so profoundly in a single lifetime? How could he possibly have risen to the rank of minister? For Peserin’s sake, he couldn’t even end his own life without failing in spectacular style—what had ever made him or anyone else believe he could successfully lead his people?
“Cecine.”
He started at the sound of Shelley’s soft voice behind him. Why was she here? He’d failed her worse than any other, manipulating her and risking her life to fulfill his own selfish desires, and ultimately costing her something she considered infinitely more precious—the lives of her children.
The very thought of them tore into his chest like the claws of a vicious beast and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to see something, anything, but their trusting faces. They’d trusted him…
“I know you’re awake.”
“Please leave,” he squeezed out hoarsely. She deserved to see him like this, naked, broken and in agony, but he couldn’t bear it. He’d rather she see him dead, as he was sure she would.
“Sorry, not happening,” she said flatly.
He tightened with annoyance. “Fine. I’ll go.”
Still facing away from her, he tossed back the blanket and pushed himself to sitting with an involuntary groan. Every muscle in his body ached like he’d sparred with an entire squad of warriors, and his skin was hypersensitive—the few grains of sand on the tile underfoot felt as though they would leave bruises, and he hadn’t even stood yet.
“Tiber said you’d be pretty sore from the fall, or rather the sudden stop in stasis, and sensitive from the stasis field.”
Bracing himself, he started to rise and bit back a cry at the pain radiating from his soles.
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