She glanced up at a humanoid drone. When she cautiously expanded her telepathic gift, she registered the presence of various cybernetic technologies buried below the purely biological parts. All drones shared the same traits. Hayley studied him a moment more then asked him, “What’s your name?”
“Basilisk,” he answered. “But you may call me Bas.”
“Nobody followed us,” Hayley murmured, still reeling from the loss of Vengeance and desperately wanting to cling to any possibility that Ven had survived. But if he hadn’t followed or sent anyone after them, what chance could there be any of the Nuallan AIs or Ven had made it through that battle?
“No,” Bas answered. “No one followed us because no one knew we landed on Nualla or took you and your friends. We cloaked our presence there. No one will find us.”
Hayley gasped, and Bas gave her a strange look. But if he’d masked his presence on Nualla, maybe Ven didn’t know she’d been kidnapped. Maybe he was alive after all.
“Why are we here?” she asked instead, hoping her captor wouldn’t press her about her startled reaction. She would never betray how much she loved Vengeance in case Bas went after him, too.
Bas’s lips twitched as he stared at the building the girls were being brought to. “Because you’re enhanced telepaths. Special telepaths. And we need you.”
“For what?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Hayley.”
“Maybe because you kidnapped us and brought us here,” she snapped.
Bas stopped by the door and grinned at her. “Well, Hayley. You’ll find out soon enough why.”
He pulled the door open, and after blinking for a few moments as her eyes adjusted, the interior of the building didn’t seem nearly as foreboding as the exterior. A large room on her right appeared to be a cafeteria, and the open doors on her left revealed small bedrooms with neatly made beds and a single dresser.
Hayley’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t understand. It’s another dormitory.”
Bas nodded and tilted his head toward her. “And you, little girl, have a particularly strong gift. I think I’ll choose you to be my new link.”
“What?” Hayley whispered, but the AI’s mind was already there, pushing her own thoughts and fears and desires away to make room for the vastness of his own intellect and abilities. Hayley screamed and covered her ears as if she could somehow block him from invading her mind, but he pushed on, inundating her mind with a seemingly endless stream of information until, finally, Hayley fell to the ground and passed out.
Chapter Five
Twenty-one years later
A piercing wail broke through Liv’s tumultuous sleep and burrowed deep into her brain. Its sharp tones ricocheted off the back of her skull and flashed down every nerve ending, forcing her upright before she’d gained full consciousness—let alone basic motor controls. Her forehead smacked into her bunk’s ceiling with a hard thump.
“Damn it,” she muttered, groping for the release panel.
A second alarm throbbed against her eardrums then receded before the room was plunged into silence. Liv slammed her palm against the control trigger, and her narrow sleeping platform slid out of its alcove with a soft whir. The hangover of interrupted sleep finally faded, and she rolled out of the bed before it retreated into the wall. While she’d never heard the Hail Mary alarms in her six months aboard the warship Vengeance, she knew with a terrible certainty that these were the dreaded warning alarms that sounded when an AI was in distress.
“Vengeance, report,” she demanded. “This is Journeyman Engineer Liv Hawthorne. State the nature of the emergency.”
Only another blast from the alarm answered her.
“Vengeance? Vengeance, report!” she tried again.
Fear’s cold breath made its way down her back in the form of a drawn-out shiver. Her heart pounding and body shaking with the effects of adrenalin, she jammed her feet into her boots and waved the door open. Cool air brushed her bare legs, reminding her that she hadn’t stopped to pull on her uniform, but if Vengeance was in trouble, it didn’t matter who saw her in the tank top and sleep shorts she wore. Her lack of uniform and pale legs were the least of her worries.
If Vengeance was in distress, her clothes would be the least of anyone’s worries.
Outside in the corridor, other crew members ran toward their posts, many of whom also bore the signs of having their sleep disrupted: disheveled hair, lack of uniform, bare feet. By their expressions, they knew no more than she did about the reason for the alarm or why Vengeance wasn’t responding. As she darted around other crew members on her way to the nearest manual interface, she debated a possible suicidal maneuver.
Vengeance might be non-responsive at the moment, but she had a faster, more direct way to assess his condition.
But connecting with a Warship of the Spire would immediately betray her gift… and her past.
The thought had barely formed when her telepathic gift unfolded, reaching out to Vengeance. Liv bit her lip and concentrated on reeling it back in, burying it deeply once more.
Only something as serious as a complete disconnect could render Vengeance unable to communicate with his crew. A heavy lump settled in her stomach, but she reminded herself that Vengeance would still be fine even if that were the case. His primary link, Renee, and the secondary telepaths would protect Vengeance from the ravages of sensory deprivation—effectively keeping him sane if the worst had occurred and it was a complete disconnect which had severed him from his feeds and the rest of the Spire hive-mind.
Sweat beaded at her temples, and her head throbbed. Gray specks floated in her vision for a few heartbeats before her sight cleared. After a few more deep breaths calmed her, the tight coil her stomach had become finally unwound.
Logic assured her that the few seconds her telepathy had been active hadn’t been enough to give her away. No, she was still safe. She hadn’t touched either Vengeance or his telepaths. Her secret remained undiscovered.
And yet, she was worried, deeply worried, about the welfare of the AI and had instinctively reached for him, not out of duty, but because of a genuine concern for her AI.
Damn fool. You almost allowed emotion to overwhelm you, she mentally scolded herself. And logic is the only thing keeping your ass in one piece and free.
Emotions. Stupid disastrous things. She didn’t make friends or trust easily given her history, and yet by some strange quirk of fate, she’d found herself serving aboard the warship Vengeance, one of the most feared of all AIs. And the AI she should’ve been avoiding the most.
She’d convinced herself she could remain aloof and distant, but it was impossible not to care about his fate. Worse, he seemed to have taken a genuine interest in her career, even though she was certain he knew nothing of her past.
“Talk about fraternizing with the enemy,” she mumbled as she darted around the next corner.
In her rush, she hadn’t heard another crew member approaching down the opposite hallway and clipped him in the shoulder. He was smaller and slammed into the wall before bouncing off and landing on the floor in a heap.
“Sorry,” Liv hastily breathed then released a sigh of relief. At least it was only an ensign she’d knocked on his ass. Better an ensign than an officer.
“Watch it.” The ensign picked himself up and glowered at her before resuming his own sprint down the hallway.
Nobody had forgotten Vengeance’s Hail Mary sirens.
Liv took a deep breath then picked up her pace again, cutting a hard left at the next fork while cursing the original designers for not having more manual control interfaces in the engineering compartment of the ship.
But her destination was finally in sight. There were already two other journeymen-level engineers at the console, and the image looking back at them belonged to Master Engineer Jason Goodwin. Good. He was competent and would be able to help Ven if he were really in distress.
“The lifts are still down, and so are aerial tran
sports,” Goodwin said. “You’ll both be running a lot… Get going.”
The other two journeyman engineers took off running, and Goodwin’s image now looked out at her. “Olivia, is that you?”
She winced at the use of her full name. It was a bad sign if her supervisor wasn’t using nicknames. “Do we know what’s wrong?” she asked.
“No,” he answered. “We can only assume it’s a disconnect. Vengeance is an older model and due for upgrades. His telepaths will be linked with him, but most ship-wide communications are still down, so I can’t confirm what the exact issue is without help.”
“Yes, sir. What do you need?”
“You’re the best runner we have. I’m getting faulty relay signals from multiple locations. The areas around Level 39, sections 15a, 17, 18, and 20 are the worst. Reports coming in show electrical impulses are making it up the nerve line until that level. There may have been an overload that damaged conduits in those areas. Check every relay, neuron sequencer, biogel conduit, nerve cluster, and switch sensor between here and Level 39. Find out how far Vengeance’s disconnect extends. For all we know, it could be complete. Find me answers and find them fast.”
Goodwin looked over his shoulder and nodded to another person off screen. Liv couldn’t see who else was in the room with him, and she hadn’t heard whatever message had been relayed, but when he glanced back at her, his expression was pinched. “I just received word that we still haven’t been able to raise command on the comm, and bulkhead doors are closed between some levels. Having to override them will slow you down even more, so get moving. I’ll see what I can do from this end. Goodwin out.”
The screen darkened into standby, and she took off at a jog.
Liv paced herself. Thirty-nine levels was a hell of a lot of ground to cover, and she didn’t know if she’d run into any help along the way. She had to assume the worst-case scenario and pretend she was on her own with the massive moon-sized warship.
As she ran, she plotted the fastest route to Level 39. The hydro-gro zone ran a third of the warship’s length and stretched up the height of five levels. She could circumvent several bulkheads by first navigating the gardens and climbing a fruit tree to reach one of the upper floor balconies. She wasn’t above breaking into one of the officer’s spacious rooms either.
Decision made, she increased her speed, her boots pounding against the synthetic tiles.
When she reached the gardens, they were eerily devoid of life. Silent, empty, and yet, seemingly watchful.
“You’re letting your imagination win out again, Hawthorne,” she muttered. “Pull yourself together, woman.”
But her trek was taking too long. She tried to reassure herself that Vengeance would be fine, but with each passing minute, her telepathy threatened to override reason and survival instincts and merge with his primary core.
The simulated breeze blew cool air across her hot, damp cheeks. She halted and doubled over to catch her breath. Her legs like rubber, her lungs burning, and her brain fired up with adrenaline, she pressed her back against a pear tree’s trunk for a few seconds to try to calm her thoughts. The last thing she needed was for her telepathic ‘gift’ to rear its head and screw her life up worse than it already was. With a pained grunt, she pushed herself into motion again.
Oh, stop being so foolish. He’s three millennia old with at least fifteen telepaths serving him. He’s fine. I’m the one who’s in serious trouble if anyone finds out I’m hiding aboard this ship.
Ahead of her, the path curved around a small, tranquil lake, the area artfully landscaped, with no luxury forgotten. This part of the garden was unfamiliar to her, likely far beyond her journeyman status clearance. She faltered as a bubble rose to the surface, breaking the calm of the water. A painful memory suddenly swelled within her, sending aching ripples through her mind, and Liv stumbled over her feet.
She caught herself before falling and pushed the memory back into the corner of her mind where it belonged.
As she cleared a blind turn in the path, she found herself in the middle of a well-manicured clearing, surrounded on all sides by neatly trimmed fruit trees. Liv had the inane urge to wipe her boots off before walking across the perfectly trimmed green. A stone fountain in the likeness of a robed woman stood in the center of the lawn, her face peering out of her hood as if she were watching something move beyond the hedges lining the clearing. Liv watched the hedges, too, and gradually realized the movement was caused by a maintenance drudge.
And it was still functioning.
Liv froze as the six-foot maintenance drudge moved a bench with surprising agility as it worked.
Maintenance drudges caught in a loop shouldn’t have been able to function that well. If the drudge wasn’t getting commands from Vengeance, it would be more likely to trip over the bench, rather than work on repairs to the garden. For the first time, Liv’s fear about Vengeance’s wellbeing turned to suspicion. There was something highly unusual about his “emergency.”
The drudge had its back to her, seemingly unaware of her presence. She narrowed her eyes and ordered, “Maintenance bot, commence emergency override protocol by command of Journeymen Engineer Olivia Hawthorne, Guild member authority. Prepare to assist. Acknowledge.”
The drudge stopped his work as he assimilated her order. Lights running along his shoulders flared to life. Now that the robot was moving out from behind the foliage screen provided by the trees and hedges, he was easier to see.
A blood red glow emanated from his shoulders.
Red.
Not the mellow blue of a maintenance bot. This was no drudge.
As he stood up—apparently, he’d been kneeling while he worked—he stretched up to his full twelve feet.
Shit. Twelve feet. Red lights. She’d just issued commands to a sentinel.
She hated sentinels.
But Vengeance’s sentinels were so far above her in rank that she never interacted with them. Even if they hadn’t outranked her, she would’ve avoided them if possible.
The sentinel trained his weapons on her.
Liv felt like a small child again. She couldn’t move. All she could do was listen as his weapons powered up, humming in a quiet, deceptively soothing way. She doubted she’d have time to use her telepathy to neutralize the sentinel for the few moments it would take her to run out of his range.
The soft glow of laser sights painted her body in misty, crimson beams of light.
After all she’d survived as a girl, she was still destined to die at the hands of an AI. And not just any AI.
Vengeance was about to kill her.
Chapter Six
Liv closed her eyes and waited for the onslaught of plasma cannon fire to rip through her body. When it didn’t come, she dared to peek at the sentinel again.
“Journeyman Engineer Olivia Hawthorne, is that the best you can do?”
His deep, pleasant voice washed over her, and she jerked like she’d been slapped.
“Were you honestly going to stand there and let me shoot you?” the familiar voice asked, his soothing tone at odds with the outward appearance of the sentinel’s body.
“Um...” Liv managed. How could she possibly explain her sudden fear and inability to act?
“If you can’t differentiate between my drudge and sentinel units, your record of education is inadequate, with numerous holes and misleading recommendations,” Vengeance continued.
“But, I thought you were… You’re not...” Liv stuttered, grappling with the reality of his deception.
“Yes?” he asked.
“You’re not in any distress,” she stammered then immediately felt like an idiot for pointing out the obvious.
“No.” He tilted his head in an almost bird-like manner, obviously studying her, which made her squirm beneath the sentinel’s gaze.
“It’s a surprise drill, isn’t it?” Another stupid thing to say. Of course it was. Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner? Instead, she’d immediately panicked and
jumped to the conclusion that the worst had happened, that they… that she… was about to lose Vengeance forever.
Despite her overwhelming need to keep her past a secret and honor her promise to her sisters to hide her real identity, she couldn’t cut herself off from the sole source of her only happy childhood memories.
“Captain Welner wished to test crew response times, which are down 5.89% overall,” Vengeance reported. His sentinel straightened, perhaps finally sensing how nervous having him that close made her. “You were doing remarkably well, though. Up 3.59% from your last observed performance.”
Liv stared at the toes of her boots and shrugged off the compliment, even though it wasn’t really a compliment. He was only reporting facts. “I try to be useful.”
“Unfortunately,” Vengeance added, “had this not been a drill and you’d actually encountered a malfunctioning sentinel, you would have died a swift death when you had alternate means of escape.” He raised one massive, thin-fingered hand and pointed it over her shoulder.
Liv glanced behind her at the fountain and statue, but she wasn’t exactly sure what Vengeance wanted her to see.
“You had a three-second window to throw yourself behind the fountain while my weapons were priming. From there, you could have escaped around the shrubs. My sensors would still have been able to track you, but if you ran quickly, you had a 72% chance of escaping into another part of the garden, thereby increasing the likelihood that a malfunctioning sentinel would fixate on another target. It would be as likely to target a leaf blowing in the breeze as anything else. This was covered in first-year training and again in your orientation packages. Perhaps it would benefit you to read through yours again.”
Liv bit her lip to keep herself from speaking too quickly and recklessly. She had been distracted: First by her fear for his safety, and then, by the unexpected presence of a sentinel. But if she had a weakness, it was his fault.
Vengeance (Warships of the Spire Book 1) Page 3