Vengeance (Warships of the Spire Book 1)

by Lisa Blackwood

  They stared at each other in silence until heavy treads striking the deck announced the arrival of reinforcements. When five more sentinels fell in beside the first, her original guard finally spoke. “Will you accompany my sentinels to Medical? Your arm is in need of treatment.”

  Liv nodded wordlessly. She would go to Medical and get her arm treated, but afterward, thanks to Renee’s last act, she would have to make a choice and she would have to make it now, which meant not only leaving Vengeance but hiding from the entire Spire.

  Chapter Twenty

  Liv slowly rotated her shoulder as the doctor who’d patched it put his supplies away then turned on his heels to attend to other patients. She’d just put her shirt back on when she noticed movement in the doorway. Ven’s drone cleared his throat and picked up an empty intradermal injector on the table by the door.

  “Everything’s all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she replied, tugging nervously at the hemline of her shirt. “Renee?”

  Ven lifted a shoulder and glanced up at her. “The doctors and my medical units are doing everything they can. Our link is severed, so there’s not much I can do to assess the extent of Renee’s brain damage. I hate feeling so useless.”

  “You’re not useless, Ven,” Liv hurriedly assured him. “If she can be stabilized, maybe you can even reestablish your link.”

  “Maybe,” he said, but he sounded as unconvinced as she felt. “I, um… I need to give you something.”

  “Okay,” she breathed.

  “No, I mean…” he stammered again and ran his fingers through his hair. The short brown messy spikes begged her to smooth them down. She clenched her fingers into tight fists to distract herself from the overwhelming urge to touch him.

  “I have to give you administrative clearance with a biometric key since you’re the only telepath aboard,” he explained. “And there’s only one way to do that.”

  “Oh,” she whispered.

  Ven stepped into the room and pushed the panel on the wall to close the door. “I need you, Olivia. You’re all I have left.”

  There was so much pain in his voice, in those simple words, that she dug her nails deeper into her palms so she could focus on this physical pain. It was a far lighter burden than the emotional pain of seeing him so distraught, so heartbroken and helpless.

  Liv released her fingers slowly and sat back on the table. “Where will it be implanted?”

  “Your arm,” he answered. “Once it’s implanted, we’ll have to go down to my primary core to activate it.”

  “All right,” she agreed nervously, pushing her sleeve up her left arm so the tiny biometric key could be implanted.

  Ven reached into his pocket and produced an intradermal injector, much like the one the doctor had used to anesthetize her shoulder, only this one contained the microscopic device that would give her access to Ven’s primary core.

  He pressed the injector to her forearm, and a brief stinging pain forced her jaw to tighten, but it passed quickly, leaving only a small red mark on her forearm. She ran her fingers over it, but she couldn’t feel the biometric key. She hadn’t really expected to.

  Voices in the corridor outside surprised her, and she shot Ven a questioning look because she recognized them. Captain Welner and Master Engineer Goodwin were outside.

  “They’re attempting to assess if I suffered sensory disconnect while in transit and if there’s any damage to my primary core,” he explained.

  “They think you might go rogue,” Liv said.

  Ven lifted an eyebrow at her as if to say, “What do you expect?” If he had suffered a complete sensory disconnect, he would likely have permanent damage to his primary core—the AI equivalent of going crazy.

  “We need to activate this then,” Liv said, holding up her arm with the biometric key. “Reassure everyone you’re sane and can get us to Teutorigos where you can find a new link-level telepath.”

  Ven looked her over quickly, his expression shifting slightly as if her continued refusal to serve him still hurt and shamed him. “Right,” he agreed.

  His palm slapped the panel to open the door, and she stood beside him, but this time, she didn’t attempt to hold his hand or offer him any sort of hope she might change her mind. How could she?

  The best she could offer him now was the truth. But even the truth would have to wait.

  As they wove through the tangled hallways toward the deck that stored his primary core, she broke the silence by asking him, “What is the endgame protocol?”

  Ven never slowed down. “It’s a new protocol, dating back just over twenty years. When an AI’s telepaths are killed, endgame protocol is a set of orders that senior staff can issue to the AI to isolate the intelligence to the primary core. All ship functions are then rerouted to the crew. If the AI refuses to surrender control, the endgame protocol triggers a kill code buried deep in the AI’s primary core.”

  “And you’re just telling me this now?” She stopped walking and gaped at his back.

  He made it six feet before realizing she had no intention of continuing until he talked to her. Ven sighed and turned around, running his fingers through his hair again in that sexy, disheveled way. “What else is the crew supposed to do? If I’m unable to operate properly, they risk death. And right now, as far as they know, all my telepaths are either dead or dying.”

  “So our only option is to cause you to self-terminate?” Liv yelled.

  “Sh!” he hissed. He looked over her head before lowering his voice to tell her, “Look, I’m honoring Renee’s last request. We’ll get the biometric key activated, and I’ll tell the crew you’re a low-level telepath and we should be able to get to Teutorigos safely. We may be grounded for a while until I’m declared fit for duty. Replacing so many telepaths and finding a link-level telepath can be time-consuming. But the endgame protocol will only be activated as a last resort.”

  “But, Ven…” she tried again, but again, he stopped her.

  “Olivia, once the biometric key is activated, I’ll go into lockdown while my core assimilates the update that you’re my acting telepath. You will then have sole command over me, and any orders Welner or the senior staff issues will need to be confirmed by you. But I need to be sure you can handle this. If you run, you’ll be endangering the entire crew.”

  Could she handle it? He wasn’t asking if she had the ability to function as his telepath, but if she had the ability to overcome whatever fears and obstacles had prevented her from becoming a link in the past.

  And, truthfully, she wasn’t at all sure she could. But she couldn’t condemn the entire crew if he were attacked again, or if he himself became a rogue. And she couldn’t condemn him to that fate.

  She met his eyes, those beautiful chocolate brown eyes, and nodded. “I can do this,” she bluffed.

  Ven studied her for a few seconds then nodded. “We’re almost there.”

  As they turned another corner, she found herself in a hallway lined with sentinels, their weapons already trained on the entryway in case any threat emerged. At the end of the hall stood a thick, impenetrable door, behind which lay the complex neural network that housed the personality she’d once loved and had come to love again.

  She was standing before the essence of Vengeance.

  He stopped in front of the door and glanced nervously down at her. “Renee was the last person to gain entry into my primary core.”

  “Oh,” she whispered. But what else could she say? She was honored but terrified at the same time. And as complex as her own emotions were at that moment, she could tell his emotions were just as mixed.

  Three bulkheads retracted and a final aperture door folded back, allowing them to step inside the room where a translucent barrier separated her from his primary core. But she could see it, and its presence transfixed her, freezing her where she stood.

  His mind bathed her in golden light as a complex net of neural relays, bio-nodes, and synthetic synapses flashed in shades of y
ellows and reds, lining stark white feathery appendages that shifted in the air as if moved by some invisible current. One of the feathery, white tendrils disengaged from a port in the ceiling and waved in front of the clear barrier.

  “Approach the barrier,” his drone instructed. “Hold your arm out so I can scan the key.”

  “Okay,” Liv agreed. She inched her way closer to the barrier and slowly held her forearm out toward the tendril that waved in anticipation of their contact. Beneath her skin, golden light swirled from the biometric key as it merged with the pleasant warmth of Ven’s mind. For a brief moment, his consciousness touched hers, a link being established between them, but it passed as quickly as it had formed. The feathery tendril retracted, recoiling to join with the rest of the neural network, and his drone sighed behind her.

  “We’re finished,” he announced. “Thank you for trusting me, Liv.”

  Liv held her arm to her chest and tried to smile at him, but he gestured her forward where the aperture stood open. Together, they marched back into the hallway. As soon as she was out of the room, the portal slid closed, and the bulkheads snapped into place.

  “I’m going to announce the lockdown and the update,” he told her as he settled cross-legged on the floor and braced his back against the wall. “However, my drone will lose consciousness and go into his own form of standby mode. Don’t be afraid when that happens. It’s normal.”

  “Oh,” Liv said as she blinked down at the drone.

  There was a hum and crackle of static that told Liv the communication system had taken substantial damage, but it cleared and Ven’s voice boomed across the ship. “All crew, prepare to assume control of vital systems. Spire AI VEN-0115-343 preparing to update primary memory core. Migrating system controls now.”

  The terminals came online all over the ship, giving the crew access to all systems. Her fellow crewmembers would be tripping over each other in an attempt to stabilize systems and assess damage as well as Ven’s sanity. If he’d told them he needed to assimilate a latent telepath who had been aboard the whole time as his acting telepath, who would have believed him? And they didn’t have time to waste trying to prove their story. The rogues could come back at any time.

  “Controls migrated. Primary core update initializing,” he announced. “Primary core going offline now.”

  His drone slumped over, and her heart raced even though he’d just warned her this would happen, but she kept returning to the thought that he looked dead. This update couldn’t end soon enough. All along the corridor, the sentinels went into standby mode, their weapons lowering, those long cords around their heads stilling, and the rows of optical sensors along the faceplates darkened. After a two second delay, the warning lights running along their shoulders pulsed back to life, but instead of the steady amber glow she was accustomed to, they now flashed between bright white and dark red.

  At the opposite end of the hall, sharp pops and crackles were accompanied by the sparks from crewmembers’ separators as they attempted to break through the secondary bulkhead and gain entry into the corridor that led to Ven’s primary core.

  That hadn’t taken long.

  But they weren’t the only ones with a separator. She dug through a pile of supplies she’d spotted earlier when one of the sentinels had been bringing it in. Ven had likely foreseen this possibility.

  She hoisted the straps onto her shoulders and adjusted the tool’s substantial weight then took a deep breath and stood up straighter. “This is Journeyman Engineer Liv Hawthorne, requesting sentinel,” she paused to glance at his manufacturing number on his breastplate, “VEN-0115-343-2965 to cycle up and prepare to receive orders.”

  With a soft hum, the sentinel transitioned from standby to weapons hot. “Request denied. Invalid personnel security clearance for this area. You have ten seconds to remove yourself immediately or be neutralized.”

  Liv gasped as the weapons pointed at her, but she held her ground.

  “Nine seconds,” Ven counted down.

  She slowly extended her forearm so that the sentinel could scan the biometric key, still faintly glowing beneath her skin.

  The sentinel’s optical sensors locked onto the key, and a flash of warm red light scanned it. “Security code authentic. Sentinel VEN-0115-343-2965 acknowledges Journeyman Engineer Liv Hawthorne’s authority.”

  “Okay,” she sighed, the tension in her back slowly easing. “We have work to do.”

  Ven still hadn’t finished his diagnostics, or he would have acknowledged the biometric key instead of the sentinel. Damn it. Since sentinels were designed to function separately from an AI when necessary, which was exceedingly rare, they had rudimentary cognitive functions and could follow basic commands. But the finer points of reasoning, like ethics and morality, were lost on them.

  “There are members of your crew on the other side of that bulkhead,” Liv informed him. “They intend to terminate your commanding AI, who they think has gone rogue. He hasn’t. I am acting on the last orders and wishes of Primary Link Renee. I am here to protect Spire AI VEN-0115-343 from destruction. You and the other sentinels will aid me in my mission. You will not harm any member of this crew unless they represent an immediate threat to myself, Spire AI VEN-0115-343, or to your own functionality. Do you understand?”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “Wake the others.”

  As the other sentinels cycled up, their weapons came on line, targeting her and then just as quickly swinging around to face to the threat currently cutting through the bulkhead door. Liv stalked down the corridor, allowing each sentinel to scan her forearm and acknowledge her command. As she reached the end, she stayed clear of the hot sparks raining from the top of the door and studied how much progress the crewmembers had been able to make in such a short amount of time.

  Whoever was on the other side had managed only one vertical cut about her height. They still had a long way to go before cutting an opening through the dense material.

  She estimated that Ven would be back online long before the crew managed to cut through the bulkhead.

  Fools.

  Perhaps desperation had caused them to act without thinking through their actions, but when confronted with a rogue AI, neutralizing it by accessing its primary core was a suicide mission. They should have ordered all personnel to life-pods, overloaded the critical systems, planted explosives along the way, then detonated them once all crewmembers were safely out of the blast radius.

  But Liv wasn’t going to stand around and do nothing while the crew further compromised the defenses around Ven’s primary core. Not to mention, every second the crew continued to cut through the bulkhead, the greater the likelihood that the sentinels would retaliate.

  She slapped the control panel on the wall and ordered it to open. The locking mechanisms slid out of place, and with a shudder and deep groan, the door slid back into its recess. She braced her feet apart and lifted the separator’s heavy severing nozzle. A quick adjustment set the nozzle from a narrow dispersal pattern into a more panoramic spray of carnage. She hoped, of course, she wouldn’t actually have to use it, but the crewmembers on the other side needed to know she meant to defend Vengeance with her life… and theirs, if necessary.

  “Back away,” she warned the two startled engineers kneeling in front of her.

  The military personnel who’d accompanied the engineers pointed their weapons at her. The commanding officer cautioned, “Ma’am, put the tool down and come into the hallway.”

  She quickly looked over his uniform. A major. This day kept getting better and better.

  “Can’t do that,” she answered. “You are the one in a restricted area, and you need to take your men and these engineers back to Welner. I’m not letting you hurt Vengeance.”

  The major tried to look over her head into the hallway behind her. “If I don’t have clearance here, there’s no way in hell you do.”

  “I have clearance,” she responded and quickly flicked her arm over to show
him the biometric key.

  “Goddamn it,” he muttered.

  “I’m acting on behalf of Link Renee,” Liv continued, ignoring the major’s exasperation. But Ven had to be back online soon. She only needed to buy him a few more seconds. “He isn’t rogue, and he transited safely. He needs time to assess damage and begin repairs, and I will protect him at all costs.”

  A soldier in the hallway shifted, the noise drawing the suspicions of the sentinels who crowded past her. Liv couldn’t see around them, but a clicking sound made her heart jump into her throat.

  “Hold your fire!” the major shouted.

  More sentinels poured into the corridor, and a familiar battle-scarred unit pushed Liv gently against the wall, standing protectively in front of her.

  “Ven?” she asked softly. “Are you all right? No, of course you’re not… not after everything…” She ran out of words and let the sentence die.

  She instinctively reached up to the sentinel’s dented breastplate and let her hand rest there then stared at it as if it had acted on its own and she didn’t know how to remove it. Her cheeks warmed, and she tried to pull it away, but the sentinel caught her arm first, flipping it over so that the biometric key was exposed. Instead of scanning it, he ran his fingers over it gently, slowly, and asked her in that deep, rich, sexy tone, “Vengeance acknowledges Acting Telepath Olivia Hawthorne’s command authority. How may I serve you?”

  A light squeak escaped her throat as she gaped at him. It wasn’t everyday so much power was dumped in her lap.

  Soft but strong fingers touched her arm, and the sentinel released his grip on her. Liv blinked up at the man who held her now, and he smiled at her, that crooked, seductive grin. “Come on,” Ven’s drone told her. “We need to explain what’s going on to the crew before they mutiny.”

  “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  Ven shrugged. “Welner’s insisting I surrender control to him.”