Vengeance (Warships of the Spire Book 1)

by Lisa Blackwood

  Ven sighed and ran his fingers through his dark brown hair. “I don’t even act like myself around her. I feel like I turn into a robot, and I’m old enough to remember a time when some people still made that assumption about AIs like me.”

  Renee rose from her seat and kissed the top of his head. “She makes you nervous. That’s normal, and the more comfortable you both become around one another, the more you’ll be yourself. Now go to your own room. I’m tired.”

  Ven smiled up at her and clasped his hand over hers. “What am I going to do without you?”

  “Same thing you’ve done for three thousand years, Ven,” Renee answered. “You’ll find a new link and a new friend. And maybe, someone even better than me.”

  Ven shook his head. “Impossible.”

  Renee smiled back at him, but Ven recognized that expression, that look that told him she was up to something. “Not impossible, Vengeance. In fact, if I have my way, you might end up with the link you’ve always wanted and deserved.”

  “Not this again,” Ven groaned.

  Renee laughed and shrugged before tugging on her robe again and nodding toward the door. “Is it so terrible I want you to find a telepath you’re one hundred percent compatible with? You never know. Your future link might be the one.”

  Ven stood but before he left, he shrugged back at her and said, “It’s been so long since a telepath became an AI that I don’t have any hope it will ever happen for me. I’ll consider myself lucky if I can ever find a link to live up to you.”

  As the door slid closed behind him, he thought he heard her say, “You shouldn’t lose hope.”

  He stared at the closed door for a few seconds before deciding he wasn’t taking the bait. Whatever Renee was up to now was nonsense. He was sure it was nothing more than another ploy on her part to convince him to find a new link, or worse, another lover.

  And he had no intention of doing either anytime soon, especially since love had only ever proved to be a useless emotion, one that had nearly destroyed them both.

  Liv lay awake on her platform, staring into the blackness of her room as she attempted to work through the only plan she had for saving Amelia: She’d have to use her telepathy—and hope Amelia was willing to use hers as well—to deceive the guards and steal a ship. She’d seen how well Amelia could pilot and would rely on her old friend to get them to safety.

  Which meant she’d be leaving Vengeance for good.

  Liv turned onto her side and stared into the blackness from a different direction, but it didn’t offer her a different perspective or the courage to get up and do it. She closed her eyes and thought of her evening with Ven as he’d awkwardly asked about her childhood and training to become an engineer and she’d just as awkwardly lied about both.

  She couldn’t remember him ever being so unsure of himself, so fumbling in his words and actions. He’d even clumsily knocked over her bottle of water like he was nervous around her. And of course, she’d sat there thinking how adorable the whole thing was.

  Liv sighed and rubbed her eyes, sitting up slowly as she resolved to get on with her plan. Clearly, Ven’s interest in her would eventually force her to leave him anyway, so it wasn’t like her early departure was that big a deal. She wished Renee hadn’t decided to retire though. She hated the thought of more loss for Ven, more heartache, more goodbyes.

  She slipped her boots on and grabbed her jacket as she quietly snuck into the hallway, hoping to reach her destination before Vengeance could stop her. The last thing she needed was to get captured before she could free Amelia.

  The monitors along the hallway taunted her as she stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and kept her eyes straight ahead. She was shooting for calm and unaffected but suspected she was failing miserably. She’d made it to the deck below when she heard his voice.

  “Liv? Isn’t it the middle of your sleep cycle? Is everything all right?”

  She froze, unable to face him, or run, or even speak.

  “Olivia?” he pressed.

  Damn it, woman, speak!

  “Ven,” she breathed. She turned around slowly and immediately realized that was a mistake. His drone watched her, concerned rather than suspicious, and took a step closer. Ven’s eyes darted above her head and his expression shifted.

  The male crewmembers’ quarters were ahead of her.

  “Oh,” he breathed back. “You’ve never shown an interest in any of the crewmembers before.”

  “Ven,” she protested, “it’s not…”

  It’s a good cover story. Don’t correct him.

  Liv bit her lip and stared at the tips of her boots, but she still noticed the way his posture stiffened as he backed away from her.

  “My apologies, Journeyman Engineer Hawthorne. Although you should ensure you still get adequate rest. In your line of work, there’s no room for errors.”

  Liv nodded but couldn’t look at him. Her entire face burned, and she imagined she’d turned crimson by now. And yet, she didn’t correct him.

  Ven turned on his heels and headed back toward wherever he’d come from. Liv waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps before resuming her mission to save her former best friend’s life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Apparently, sneaking around a Spire warship was a lot easier when the AI who controlled the ship thought one of his crew was sleeping with another crewmember and didn’t want to witness it. A quick probe of an access terminal using her telepathy had confirmed that Vengeance had temporarily removed her bio-signature from his internal scanners, effectively ignoring her.

  Poor Vengeance. He’d been so upset that he’d suspended her locator until morning. While that had given her an advantage to reach Amelia undetected, it wasn’t foolproof. As soon as one of his sentinel or drudge units tagged her with their sensors, her cover would be blown.

  He would learn about her duplicity soon enough anyway. There would be sentinels stationed in the brig and no way to hide her presence there. But she had a plan for that, too. Her fingers tightened on the grip of the big Separator—an ion-torch on steroids. It was one of her favorite tools for dealing with stubborn pieces of technologies that didn’t want to come out of their housings willingly.

  When cranked up to full power, the Separator could cut through almost any material in moments—even the armor-covered exoskeletons that protected the sentinels’ delicate internal mechanisms. She wasn’t exactly happy about having to get so close to one of Ven’s ground assault units, but if she didn’t disable them, her plan to save Amelia would be over before either of them could even make it out of the brig.

  As she neared the prison, she paused one corridor over to assess the sentinels. Fortunately, there were only two: one outside in the hallway and the other inside watching the prisoner.

  Liv aimed at the closest sentinel just as he was turning toward her with his weapons powering up, but she struck first. The Separator lived up to its name as the energy beam burned through the sentinel’s armor and bit deeper, tearing into the more fragile workings underneath.

  The sentinel flailed for a moment, his weapons misfiring, then the entire twelve-foot behemoth crashed to the floor. She darted forward; every second counted. The sentinel possessed some self-repair abilities, so it might be able to recover enough functions to continue the fight.

  The second sentinel stormed out of the brig, his weapons trained in her direction. Liv raised the Separator to target it, but she knew she’d be seconds too late. This sentinel already had his weapons locked on her.

  But he didn’t fire. Stunned, she just stood there.

  “Liv? What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, Ven. But the pirate doesn’t get to live.”

  As much as it hurt her to harm Vengeance physically, she couldn’t let him think she would betray him intentionally. This way, he could think she’d suffered a moment of bad judgment in her quest for revenge. She fired at the second sentinel, and like the first, it collapsed beneat
h the onslaught of the Separator.

  Vengeance had just allowed her to take out two of his sentinels instead of harming her. But he had thousands more and was even now rolling out three dozen toward her position. She could feel them coming online.

  It was time to move.

  “Amelia, you’d better be ready to run,” Liv instructed.

  “What the hell are you up to, traitor?”

  “I hadn’t betrayed anyone until now,” Liv countered. “But to save you, I just betrayed my warship, so get your ass up and be ready to run as soon as I get there.”

  Liv ran down the corridor and jumped over the two sentinels. The first one she’d shot tried to grab her, but his depth perception was crapping out on him, and he missed by a good three feet. She continued deeper into the brig. Turning a corner, she ran right through one of Vengeance’s hologram projections.

  The energy was warm against her exposed skin, and she gasped and spun around to face him.

  “Liv, why are you doing this?” he asked. There was so much concern, so much fear in his voice, that she almost changed her mind.

  “She needs to die for what she’s done,” Liv answered, her own voice shaky and uncertain. She was so distraught about betraying Vengeance that her bio-signs were likely all over the place anyway. He wouldn’t be able to tell if she was lying, suffering from a sudden fit of rage, or maybe both.

  “Amelia, you’re going to have to club me over the head and make it look convincing. The only way we’re getting off this ship is if Vengeance thinks you got the upper hand and have taken me hostage.”

  “You’re crazier than me,” Amelia said. “But don’t worry. I have no problem making it look convincing.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you don’t,” Liv replied bitterly.

  “Liv, stop,” Vengeance begged. “I’ll drag the truth out of the pirate. Once I do, I’ll share it with you. You have my word. Please don’t do this. If you do, I’ll have to arrest you as well.”

  “Oh, Ven,” she whispered. “I’ve already destroyed my career anyway. And I may never find the pirates who killed my family… this is the closest I may ever get to justice for them. I’m so sorry.”

  Liv twisted around again and targeted Amelia’s prison cell. The clear material of the door and walls disintegrated under the Separator’s assault.

  “Liv, wait!” Ven shouted. “My sentinels will be here soon. Let one of them take care of this for you.”

  Shocked, she glanced at the hologram behind her, his expression panicked and desperate. Ven had just offered to break the law for her so he could save her.

  Her resolve faltered as she gaped at his hologram, but the Separator was suddenly ripped out of her hands, and Amelia’s voice filled her mind. “You said to make it look real. Hope this feels real enough.”

  The flat side of the Separator smacked into the side of Liv’s head, and she reeled back, but Amelia didn’t let her fall. She grabbed Liv’s shirt and pulled her closer, pressing something hard and cold against the side of her face.

  Liv’s ears rang and her vision flickered as the brig swirled around her. She thought Vengeance yelled something, but it was all too confusing. Strong, powerful fingers closed in her hair, jerking at it painfully in an attempt to get Liv steady on her feet.

  “Get up,” Amelia ordered. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

  Liv staggered but didn’t fall. It seemed as if something terrible had just happened, and if she didn’t obey Amelia now, something even worse would follow. But she couldn’t quite remember what. She blinked at a shimmery image in front of her then it all came back: Amelia’s capture, Liv’s betrayal of her warship, and Ven’s desperate attempt to rescue her from her own stupidity.

  The blade of a knife pressed against her throat, and Liv’s adrenaline spiked again as she realized Amelia had somehow grabbed her utility knife.

  “This is fake aggression, right?” Liv asked. If she were acting, she was doing a damn good job.

  Amelia shoved her forward, straight through another of Vengeance’s holograms. Liv stumbled over one of the sentinels she’d taken out earlier and almost had a knife slice through her throat as Amelia reached down to free one of the sentinel’s smaller cannons.

  “Harper,” Ven’s hologram pleaded, “let’s negotiate. What do you want in exchange for the release of your prisoner?”

  “Shut up,” Amelia hissed. “You’re all the same. You think you own this woman? You can just purchase her life from me?” The muzzle of the cannon Amelia had just retrieved from the sentinel pressed into the small of Liv’s back.

  Ven’s hologram held up his hands and shook his head. “No. I own no one. But when a hostage is taken, exchanging something for their freedom is common, isn’t it? You want to escape. Let Olivia go, and I’ll—”

  “I said shut up!” Amelia yelled.

  Ven pressed his lips together, but Liv heard the heavy metallic clanking of the sentinels as they turned the final corner before the brig.

  “Stop!” Amelia shouted. “The sentinels go back or I’ll shoot her now!” She continued to back slowly down the hall toward the hangar bay, pulling Liv with her.

  “Okay,” Ven quickly agreed. “You’re clearly a skilled pilot. Let her go, and you have my word I won’t personally pursue you.”

  “Your word?” Amelia scoffed. “What does the word of an AI mean to me? You’re a bunch of sick bastards who shouldn’t exist.”

  Ven’s forehead creased in obvious confusion, but Amelia shoved the muzzle of the small cannon harder into Liv’s back so he didn’t argue with her or ask her about her accusations. But his hologram also followed them down the hall toward the hangar.

  As if anticipating Amelia’s next command, he held up his hands again and said, “This is just a hologram. It can’t physically stop you. I just want to be able to talk to you.”

  The weight of the cannon suddenly lifted from her back and a blast fired toward Ven’s hologram, causing the image to briefly shatter into tiny prisms of brilliant light. The wall behind the hologram splintered under the impact, and as debris clanged to the floor, Amelia hurriedly told Liv, “Run before he sends the sentinels anyway.”

  Liv twisted on her heels, but ever since her mind had cleared enough to think somewhat straight, she’d been questioning the wisdom of attempting to rescue her friend from a Warship of the Spire, especially one like Vengeance. He was a legend, an instrumental player in securing the relative peace the Spire had known for almost two thousand years. How had she convinced herself they’d be able to escape him?

  Surprisingly, Vengeance’s hologram didn’t reappear as they ran toward the hangar bay. With his transit engines still offline, Amelia might actually have a chance of losing Vengeance out in deep space.

  As they approached the doors to the hangar bay, Liv finally realized why Ven’s hologram hadn’t returned. Sentinels hurried toward them from the opposing side corridors, and from the hall behind them, she could sense more warrior drones closing in. It was almost like…

  Liv gasped and grabbed Amelia’s arm. “We’re being herded to the hangar bay. Vengeance is waiting for us there.”

  Amelia rolled her eyes at her and snapped, “You think?”

  “What do we do?”

  A large blast door lifted, and Liv darted underneath it while it was still rising. As she’d expected, there were dozens of sentinels and medical units inside the hangar.

  Amelia pressed the cannon’s muzzle firmly into Liv’s back again as she looked around the room. She snickered and asked, “Are you sure you and your warship aren’t sleeping together? He seems awfully protective of you.”

  Liv groaned and had to remind herself not to roll her eyes right back at Amelia. “Does now really seem like a good time to be making jokes?”

  If it were possible to mentally shrug, she imagined Amelia would have just shrugged at her. “Looks like we’re about to die so we might as well go out laughing. See those medical units over there?”

  Liv glanced over
at them and studied them in more detail. Ven had sent a full medic trauma unit.

  “Holy shit,” Liv murmured in Amelia’s mind.

  “Yeah,” Amelia agreed. “I think your secret admirer is planning to take me out in a hail of fire then patch you back together. What difference does it make to him if he has to add a few cybernetic parts? You’ll have something in common with him then.”

  Amelia might be right. It looked like Vengeance had relocated his entire medical deck to the hangar bay. Spire medical science was capable of repairing most injuries as long as there was brain function left.

  “Um, I think I’d rather pass on becoming a cyborg,” Liv decided.

  “I don’t know. It’s probably not all bad. Ask for bigger breasts,” Amelia teased.

  “Shut up,” Liv sighed.

  “Don’t look now, but did you notice that transport closest to the bay door?”

  “Free my engineer and I’ll let you live.” Liv bit her lip as Ven’s voice echoed off the walls of the hangar. Concentrating on two conversations at once was terribly difficult, but she was pretty sure she knew which ship Amelia was referring to. “Yeah.”

  “Use your telepathy to get its engines and navigation online. I’ll do weapon systems and infiltrate the control systems for the bay doors. Vengeance won’t know what hit him.”

  “Amelia,” Liv protested, “I said I’d help you escape. I never said I’d hurt him.”

  “That’s why I’m taking care of the weapon systems and you aren’t. Now link your telepathy with mine so it’ll look like only one telepath was involved. That way, if this fails as spectacularly as I think it will, he’ll blame it on me, and you might get to crawl away without bionic breasts. Power up the engines.”

  There was no way she was letting Amelia hurt Vengeance, but they did need to escape. Liv took a deep breath and closed her eyes, releasing the tight hold on her telepathy so that it could unfurl and interweave with her childhood friend’s. Together, they targeted the transport ship, and its engines and weapon systems buzzed to life. Both had been designed to merge seamlessly with a powerful mind, and she and Amelia had been bred to push beyond the limits of other telepaths.