by Scott Baron
Sarah squinted a moment in concentration, then relaxed her brow and took a deep breath.
“What are you doing, Sarah?” Freya asked.
“Hang on, kiddo. Let her do her thing,” Daisy replied.
Sarah focused and breathed, slowing her respirations as she focused her mind. Without warning, her eyes fluttered as she slid to the deck.
“Shit, I was afraid that might happen,” Daisy said.
“What did I do?” Freya asked, freaking out.
“Nothing, Freya. She was cracking the seal on her own. By the look of it, I think she was successful.”
“She can do that?”
“She was always better than me at the whole meditation thing, and I’ve been running through the new techniques I learned from Fatima with her since she’s woken up. So, yeah. She can do that, it seems.”
Sarah’s eyes fluttered as she slowly sat up.
“Wasn’t expecting that,” she grumbled, brushing herself off as she got to her feet.
“You feel different?” Daisy asked.
“I-I don’t know.”
Daisy threw a ceramisteel mug at her head.
Without so much as flinching, Sarah snatched it from the air with her new nanite-constructed hand.
“Well,” Daisy said with a chuckle. “That answers that. Congrats, Sis, you’re ready to go it alone. At least for a recon run. Though I do still think it’ll be best if we leapfrog and regroup every day or so. Even with your new embedded skills, I don’t know just how well you’ll do out in the field, though I’m pretty confident now, truth be told.”
“Vote of semi-confidence accepted and appreciated,” Sarah said, laughing. “Okay, Freya, drop me closer to the active areas, then get Daisy off to Colorado. We’ve both got a lot to do.”
Freya’s onboard fabrication facilities had been working pretty much non-stop since they had departed the icy waters of Lake Tahoe as she prepared for the next phases of the mission––whatever those would wind up being. Fortunately, multi-tasking was as normal to her as breathing was to a human.
While she always had new projects in the works, she seemed particularly enthused to be working on her new one churning away in the depths of her fabrication and design labs as she hopped a quick, arcing flight to Colorado Springs.
“Drop me in town, just past the terminus,” Daisy instructed. “I know you’re as stealthy as a cat burglar––”
“Or a ninja!”
“Ugh, always ninjas. She is so your kid.”
“Or a ninja,” Daisy agreed with a smile. “But Joshua’s facilities are massively protected. Maybe even powerful enough to pick you up on one of his sensors, somehow. Better I go in on foot, while you stay clear of the area.”
“I understand. I’ll stay back. Maybe I’ll fly a quick reccy overhead while you’re at it.”
“But don’t get scanned.”
“Do you really think I’d do that?” she asked with a sigh, just like an irritated teen.
“Intentionally? No. But there’s gear under this mountain that nobody knows about. Not even the records you nicked from Dark Side. So just be careful, okay?”
“Okay.”
Freya dropped to a hover near the loop tube terminus, then quickly whipped up into the sky as soon as Daisy was clear of her airlock.
“Just the two of us again, eh, Sis?”
Yep. Like old times, Daisy said as she began the trek toward the regional monorail station’s doors. Do you ever get jealous of the other you? I mean, I know she is you, but it’s gotta be kind of mind-blowing having yourself talking to you and doing stuff.
“It’s weird, sure. But I’m glad that I’m alive. Sure, I’m jealous that she has a body and I don’t, but I can’t blame her for it, and I certainly can’t hold a grudge.”
Big of you, Sis.
“Nah, just looking out for number one. Both versions of her, that is.”
Daisy quickly descended into the monorail station, heading right for the tracks she and her team would arrive on relatively soon.
Looks clear.
“Power’s off, though. And there’s some debris on the track.”
The power’s easy enough, she said, remotely tapping into the system’s controls from her wireless tablet. There, it’s functional on this end, though we’ll still need to get the Denver end of the connection back online. Still, no big deal, I think, but that chunk of concrete–– She looked at the fallen piece of debris on the track. It had to weigh at least a half-ton.
“You know you could always try the power whip,” Sarah suggested.
Daisy looked at the band on her wrist.
It hasn’t been working for me. It powers up, but won’t function no matter how much I focus.
Daisy raised her arm and gently let her will reach out to the device. She could feel its presence, but it wouldn’t react.
See?
“Well, keep thinking on it. There’s got to be a simple explanation why this kind doesn’t work but you could make the others fire up no problem.”
We’ll figure it out eventually. For now, let’s get up to the base and make sure things are copacetic.
She double-timed it up the bypass road to the spot she and her team had originally arrived at. Just as before, the horde of infected cyborgs thronged at the massive stone entrance to NORAD.
“Looks the same, Daze.”
I want to take a look inside the outbuilding just the same. Don’t want any rude surprises for our team sneaking up from behind.
Like a cat burglar––or ninja––Daisy quietly crept through the brush to the perimeter of the guard station and attached outbuilding. So far as she could tell, all of the fleshless cyborgs were entirely engrossed with their attempts to break into the massively-fortified base, one micrometer of door at a time.
She carefully slunk inside, quietly closing the door behind her. Blade at the ready, she scanned the room.
Clear.
“Looks like this place hasn’t been touched in a few hundred years, Daze.”
Yep. Just like we found it the first time, she agreed as she surveyed the room.
Everything was indeed just like it had been.
Okay, let’s get back to the monorail terminus and figure out how we’re gonna move that debris.
She headed through the door, then stopped and retraced her steps.
Hang on. Where’s the sticky-note?
Daisy looked all around, but there was no note to be seen anywhere.
I wonder––
She walked over to the small desk nearby and pulled open the topmost drawer. Inside were several long dried-out pads of sticky notes, their adhesive evaporated to dust many decades prior.
Huh.
“It was a reasonable thought, though, Sis.”
The soft crinkle of sealed plastic caught her fingers’ attention as she shuffled through the drawer’s contents one last time.
“Fuck me,” she gasped, pulling out a lone, sealed packet. Inside, the adhesive was still fresh.
“No fucking way. Are you serious?”
I know, Daisy replied, digging a pen from her pack. Sarah, can you try to write this while I do? I can’t have it look like my writing.
“Sure, I can try. But you know I can’t make your limbs do anything.”
No, but if you try while I try to let you try, maybe it’ll look different enough when we try.
“Worth a go, I guess,” Sarah answered. “And try not to say try so often.”
I’ll try.
“Dork.”
Daisy smiled, then set to work.
This is so weird, she quietly exclaimed as she pulled the fresh contents from the packet and jotted down a message on the topmost sticky note with a mix between her and Sarah’s writing. Don’t forget to check the refrigerator, she wrote, then stuck the note to the doorframe, exactly where she found it previously. The writing was a perfect match.
Good enough. Now, about that stupid monorail track.
Daisy carefully snuck
away from the horde of cyborgs milling about outside of NORAD and hiked back to the subterranean transit terminus. She spent a bit of time and studied the annoying problem before her.
The block of concrete had dislodged from the ceiling of the tunnel and fallen on the track, blocking it from allowing the safe arrival of any incoming cars from Denver.
She cleared her mind and focused, willing the massively powerful wrist gauntlet to send out a beam and move the debris. Yet again, it would not work.
“Sonofabitch!” she yelled in frustration, kicking a chunk of concrete, which, in turn, made her foot ache.
The power whip reacted, extending a few inches before retracting like a wet noodle into a hungry diner’s mouth.
“Okay, that was different.”
“You think yelling makes this kind work?”
“I don’t know. It seemed to. Didn’t expect that.”
She raised her arm and aimed the device at the block of debris.
“Out!” she yelled.
No reaction.
“Go! Hard!”
Nothing.
“Oh, come on. Wrap, you motherfucker!”
The beam slightly extended once more, then slid back into the device.
“Seems to like swearing,” Sarah joked.
“I don’t know, Sis. It feels like it wants to work, but I can’t quite tap in to the connection. The other one was designed to work with Chithiid. Maybe their physiology is just much more compatible or something.”
“In the meantime, I think we may have to rely on ye olde principals of leverage to move that thing.”
Daisy spotted the long piece of steel bar Sarah had obviously been referencing.
“This is going to suck,” she said, then hoisted it over her shoulder and climbed onto the track.
Twenty minutes of hard labor later, the massive block finally slid free, slowly walked clear of the track by the power of a lever and fulcrum. Daisy wiped the sweat from her brow and downed two electrolyte pouches before making her way back to the surface.
“Freya, I’m done here. How about you come pick up this tired old woman and get her out of here?” Daisy asked over her comms.
“On my way,” Freya replied. “And you’re not old.”
“I’m starting to feel like it,” Daisy joked, rolling her sore shoulders.
Wasn’t expecting quite that much of a workout today. Maybe a little hike, kicking some cyborg ass––
“Manual labor’s not your thing, eh?”
I’m starting to regret giving my one functional power whip to Tamara.
“Nah, that was worth it. You saw how she lit up when you gave it to her.”
Well, yeah. But that’s still in the future.
“But the past.”
Obviously. I’m just saying, it would have been nice to have a working whip to have moved that thing. Would have taken twenty seconds, not twenty minutes.
Daisy leaned forward and stretched her lower back as the sweat evaporated from her body in the fresh air.
Two minutes later, her deadly ship dropped down in front of Daisy, opening its airlock doors as it hovered just above the ground. She quickly hopped aboard.
“I’m in. Take us to Denver, will ya? I need to power up the monorail from that end before my team gets there.”
“Okay, Daisy,” Freya chirped, her mood particularly high.
“What’s up, kiddo? You seem in a good mood.”
“Nothing. Just playing around with some ideas is all.”
“She’s up to something, Daze.”
Yeah, but she’s a growing kid. Gotta let her have some space to experiment and play.
“Of course. But unlike a normal kid, her experiments aren’t drugs and boys. More like reactors and warp cores.”
Daisy chuckled. Of course, Sarah was right, but so was she. Freya was maturing, and fast, and letting her have the freedom to come into her own without too much parental prodding was the way to go, human or massively smart AI. She just hoped there wouldn’t be any kind of AI puberty drama.
Chapter Sixteen
It was hot in Arizona.
Not crazy desert hot, though it was definitely a desert, but still hot enough to be quite uncomfortable for most people.
Sarah, with her newly-modified body, was most certainly not most people. Still, she was a bit warm, especially given the makeshift cloak she was using to camouflage her presence.
Before embarking on her mission, she had read over the casually dictated debrief of Finn’s various adventures, including his Arizona mission, and had gleaned few details of use from it. They arrived, they ran, they lost one of the comms units, they escaped.
Record-keeping was not his strong suit.
“Couldn’t have given me a little more to go on, could ya, Finn?” she lamented as she lay under cover in a partially shaded overhang, silently monitoring the Chithiid work forces stripping the city a mere block away.
The pulse rifle at her side was an instrument of last resort. Her goal was to protect Finn’s team, staying out of sight as she did so. It sounded like an easy enough job, but as she stalked closer to the area where she believed he and his team had burst forth from the subterranean tunnel network, she found herself somewhat ill at ease.
“Get a grip, Sarah,” she said to herself. “This is cake. Just sit back and keep an eye on Finn and his gang, then retrieve the small comms link they dropped. According to his report, this should be easy,” she mumbled to herself, then slowly pulled her canteen from her hip and took a drink.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as she sensed danger. The enhanced awareness Freya had given her during her reconstruction were still new, and her reactions were slowed somewhat, not because she didn’t sense danger, but because the sensation itself surprised her into a second of inaction as she assessed the new feeling.
“What the––?”
She felt her relationship with the ground suddenly change as a powerful hand yanked her up from behind.
“What kind of thing is this?” the muscular Chithiid said as he studied the mechanically modified human in his grasp. “I think the Ra’az would like to have a look at you,” he said, scrutinizing her composite arm.
Sarah, though by no means fluent in Chithiid, realized she could understand the gist of what the towering alien was saying, thanks to Freya’s neuro-stim implant, no doubt. While she was fascinated by the realization she knew a new language, and was likewise enthralled in her first up-close and personal observation of Chithiid physiology, the imminent danger of the situation was not lost on her.
She kicked out hard, landing a blow square on the alien’s jaw as she pushed back and broke free from his grasp.
“Obnoxious little thing!” he growled, rubbing his chin.
With two of his arms, he swung looping punches, which Sarah easily avoided. What she didn’t expect was him also picking up a piece of steel debris with another arm, which he swung at her as the punches flew past.
Sarah realized her oversight a fraction of a second before her second chance at life would be cut short, her right arm flashing up to block the blow faster than any human limb could hope to move. The steel impacted it with crackling force, breaking it into a near ninety-degree angle, while sending her body flying into a crumbling slab of concrete.
She hit the ground, dazed, shaking the cobwebs from her head, along with the dust from her eyes.
The Chithiid seemed somewhat amazed the puny human had survived the impact, a look of confusion on his face as he strode toward her to finish the job.
“Sturdier than the other mutants in this city,” he mused as he swung his improvised weapon again.
Sarah sensed it before she saw it, reading the positioning of the alien’s body, his shoulder and foot placement telegraphing his next move. She dove to the side, rolling clear of the swinging piece of metal, then hopping to her feet.
Something felt odd in her body. A strange tingle, as if a part of her that had been dormant was suddenly waki
ng. Something that was waking up, and was pissed off to boot.
The Chithiid had just started to move toward her when her broken nanite-constructed arm vibrated and snapped back into shape, good as new. Maybe better, even.
Sarah realized what she had sensed. Her nanites had connected with her on a subconscious level, much like when she unlocked the encapsulated neuro-stim upload. They knew what she wanted, and they had some ideas of their own about how to help achieve those goals.
Sarah smiled a bloody grin and lunged to meet the attacking alien.
Though several feet taller than she was, and with four arms to boot, the poor Chithiid was frightfully out of his league.
The metal arced toward his smaller opponent, but was deftly snatched from his hand and tossed aside by the strange, dark matte-gray hand that moved faster than any human should be capable of. A flash of panic crossed his face as he realized just how deep the shit he had strode into was.
In sewage terms, it was over his head, and he was about to drown in it.
Sarah launched a counterattack, her blows raining down in a flurry, the new arm hammering home with bone-crushing force. The Chithiid drew a deep breath and tried to call out for help, but before he could utter so much as a syllable, Sarah’s fist shifted as she lashed out with all her might.
“Oh, shit,” she gasped when she realized what she had done.
The alien’s lifeless body slid to the ground, pulling free of the bloody spike Sarah’s nanite hand and forearm had become. She watched in amazement as the solid weapon of a limb quickly shifted back to its normal form.
She wiggled her bloody fingers in admiration.
“Whoa. Now that was unexpected,” she said in quiet awe. “Thanks, Freya.”
The shock wore off quickly as she remembered the precarious nature of her situation and quickly slid lower, making sure the other Chithiid working not so far away hadn’t seen anything.
The fight had been quick, it had been brutal, and most importantly, it had been just far enough behind the crumbling debris to have been out of the work team’s line of sight. Unfortunately, the dead alien had been working with a partner, who had come looking for his missing friend.