Vengeance (Warships of the Spire Book 1)

by Lisa Blackwood

  She didn’t want him to die for her. Why would he even say such a thing? And why did he say “will” instead of “would?” She’d been so focused on her own misery, she almost didn’t understand why his last words were so much harder to understand.

  But that understanding came with a swiftly dawning horror. She was pushing him out of link while they were still in transit. He sorted through protocols with lightning fast efficiency, seeking the ones that would oversee a Spire AI’s self-termination.

  He planned to sacrifice himself for her and his crew so he wouldn’t turn rogue when she severed his link. Frozen in horror, she watched as he began transferring control systems over to his senior staff.

  No.

  No.

  “Vengeance, stop!” Liv’s mind cleared, the pain of old memories banished by a new fear, one that was more powerful than anything Basilisk had done to her.

  She couldn’t let him destroy himself. She couldn’t lose him.

  Her telepathy lashed out, tangling with his mind, slowing then stopping him from his own destruction. She dragged his mind closer to hers, sharing with him everything she once was and had become. Liv took command of his transit drives and triggered an emergency dropout just to be safe.

  “What do you think you were doing?” she screamed once he was deeply linked with her again.

  “You were fighting the link,” he told her as if that explained everything.

  “I know. I’m sorry. But you were just going to—”

  “I had no choice. You suffered so much, and I couldn’t hurt you more. But I couldn’t risk my crew either.”

  “Couldn’t hurt me more?” Her thoughts screamed toward him, spearing deep into his mind. “I’d rather suffer two hundred thousand years of a rogue’s violation than lose you!”

  Somewhere in the real world, a drone’s strong arms enfolded her in their reassuring embrace. She accepted and absorbed everything he offered, both the mental and physical comfort.

  She pulled Vengeance’s love around herself like a security blanket. The pain would never go away completely. It would always be there, waiting. But its power over her had diminished, and she would never allow it to control her again.

  “Liv, you’ll never have to do this again. Once we’re back on Teutorigos, I’ll stop dragging my feet and pick a new link. You can stay on as my most cherished engineer and never have to link with an AI again.”

  Thanks to their connection through the link, she could feel his conviction, as well as how much he dreaded hunting for a new link. But he would do it for her, to save her from further pain and to give her a safe place where she could heal in her own time. He knew the Spire Triumvirate would want her for study and may even attempt to force her back into service, but he wasn’t giving her up to them.

  On the heels of that revelation, she grasped another surprising thought. If it came down to it, he would make sure she had the opportunity to escape.

  “Vengeance, there’s only one problem with your reasoning. I could never stay away from you. Didn’t I already tell you that?”

  “We may not have a choice,” he protested, but she had no intention of listening to his insistence that she save herself at his expense.

  “And I’m pretty damn sure I couldn’t sit back and watch as another telepath became your link. I mean, hell, Ven, what if you ended up liking her more than me?”

  “Impossible,” he objected before realizing what she was actually offering.

  Ven’s drone loosened his hold and stepped back from her, a shocked expression on his face as he struggled to comprehend what she was willing to give up for him.

  “Olivia…”

  “It’s okay, Ven. It’s what I was always meant to be, isn’t it?”

  “A long time ago, but so much has changed. Your freedom…”

  “It’s overrated,” she said aloud, surprising the crew. “So what do you say, Ven? Will you accept me as your new link?”

  Ven squinted at her, the corners of his lips twitching with a smile he tried to hide. “Depends. Does becoming my link mean nights like last night can’t happen again?”

  “Sex over safety? You really do think just like a man.”

  Ven laughed and kissed the top of her head, and warmth and love and peace flowed through her, a gift from her beloved AI.

  “Merge fully with me,” Liv ordered. “When I merged with Citadel’s telepaths, I felt Basilisk near, and we have some business with him that needs to be dealt with. This ends today.”

  “Spire AI VEN-0115-343 acknowledges Hayley-016’s order.” Humor flashed through Vengeance’s primary core at her sudden bravado.

  Liv smiled up at his drone, determined to give them both what they needed most right now: revenge. “Then let’s go kick some ass.”

  Liv reached deeper, her mind merging more fully with Vengeance. His powerful mind enveloped her mortal one in a protective shield, melding their intellects and strengths to become one. Together, they estimated the distance to Basilisk’s location and analyzed the data Citadel had shared about the attack while in hive-sync.

  As soon as they determined their best plan of attack, they reentered transit to pursue the rogue that had nearly killed her, the AI who had nearly killed them both.

  As they exited transit, they found themselves directly behind an enemy warship.

  Her birth stamp marked her as the Arrow’s Flight. A telepathic scan confirmed she’d been corrupted. Liv and Ven launched the first wave of warheads, the type the crew fondly called asteroid breakers. While the heavy-payload bombs raced toward the ship, they targeted Arrow’s Flight with fusion and pulse cannon fire to weaken her shields, allowing the warheads to pass through.

  As their bombs latched on to the rogue’s hull, they targeted another ship, the Reckoning—an AI who’d recently turned rogue like Arrow’s Flight. But something about this ship caught Liv’s attention and jarred her out of link with Vengeance.

  She used her telepathy to scan the ship again to confirm what she’d picked up before.

  “Vengeance, Reckoning still has his crew on board. We have to help them.”

  “Yeah,” Vengeance agreed aloud. “I’m also detecting life signs on the dread hunter-class warship Farseer. Citadel can handle him, but I’m more concerned about Reckoning. He’s clawing at my neural guards, trying to initiate hive-sync with me. This is a new tactic, and I’m not sure what he’s hoping to accomplish.”

  “There’s something wrong here,” Liv murmured.

  “They’re rogues,” Vengeance said as he targeted another enemy. “There’s a lot wrong here.”

  The other rogues broke away from Citadel as they realized Vengeance was posing a greater threat.

  “Yeah, but I’ve seen rogues corrupt AIs before, and this is different. As a child, I once saw Basilisk convert another AI. It took days before the AI fully succumbed and joined them, and there was substantial damage to both the AI’s physical body and his neural pathways. Even after he’d been converted, it took several more days until he was able to get underway under his own power. These new rogues barely have a scratch on them and they still haven’t killed their crews. It’s like they turned rogue without a fight or any kind of struggle.”

  “How does a rogue convert another AI?” Vengeance asked as he combined fire with Citadel in an attempt to take out Farseer’s transit drives.

  “They cripple the ship. And once they board, the space battle becomes a ground fight as the Spire AI fights alongside his or her crew in an attempt to repel the invaders. But the enemy sentinels are controlled by AIs that were once Spire, so they know all the places to hit to inflict damage, like life support. But like I said, it normally takes days before the rogues manage to breach the vault containing an AI’s primary core. They must have an expedited method now.”

  “I think I know,” Vengeance said. “Malicious synthesis delivered during routine hive-sync. If the rogue could pass for one of us by mimicking his or her old Spire signature, then a true Spire AI wouldn�
��t know they were about to hive-sync with a rogue. By the time they figured it out, it might be too late to stop the proliferation of foreign code in the primary core, especially if they suddenly came under physical attack as well.”

  “Shit,” Liv growled. “I think they learned that from us.”

  “Us?”

  “The Nuallan telepaths. That’s too close to how we killed Agrona when we escaped. While in active link, I followed her own neural pathways back to her primary core, and once inside her defenses, I was able to destroy Agrona by unraveling and terminally corrupting her own code.”

  “Remind me never to piss you off,” Ven joked.

  Liv was about to chastise him for joking about anything right now with so many lives at stake when the hull shook under her feet. Her attention swung back to the battle, where Vengeance was fending off three rogues while trying to shield the heavily damaged Citadel from further harm.

  “You’re taking a pounding, Ven.”

  “I’m fine,” Vengeance told her, sounding far too happy to be in a fight for his life.

  Warships, she thought. Rogue or sane, they were all crazy.

  “I heard that,” he teased. “But if you have something in mind, I could use the help taking out Reckoning. His crew is putting up a good fight, but he just took down life-support.”

  Liv narrowed her focus on Reckoning. “I do have something in mind, but I’ll have to drop out of link with you for the rest of the battle. Don’t go merging with any other AIs while I’m away.”

  Suddenly, Vengeance was no longer a steady presence in her mind, and an odd emptiness replaced Ven’s mental touch. It lasted for a few seconds while she remembered how to exist solely in her own skin. As the sensation of complete solitude passed, she narrowed her telepathic gift onto Reckoning. He was one of Vengeance’s contemporaries, almost as big and robust as her own AI. And he was still trying to initiate hive-sync with Vengeance, which left him wide open for Liv.

  “Hello,” she whispered into the chaos of his unshielded mind.

  “You’re not an AI,” he whispered back. “Who are you?”

  “Your savior. I’m here to end your pain.” With a sharply focused will, she launched her mental spear deep into the brain of her enemy. As it burrowed into his mind, she expanded her telepathy in all directions, tearing and shredding and picking the AI apart. In the physical world, the AI’s shields collapsed, and Vengeance took advantage of his sudden weakness to take out his main drives before he could escape.

  “That still counts as my kill,” Liv told Ven.

  Vengeance laughed in her mind. “I helped. I get half-credit. Any chance you can do that with Arrow’s Flight and Farseer?”

  “Sure, if you’re willing to admit you can’t do this without me.”

  Ven grinned and silently told her, “I’ve always been willing to admit I need you.”

  Liv smiled and was about to focus her attention on Arrow’s Flight when a disturbing presence, the most disturbing she’d ever encountered, creeped into her consciousness, dragging its nails down her spine and making her shiver violently. “They’re going to have to wait, Ven. Basilisk just found me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Liv wanted to back away from him, even though he wasn’t physically close to her. But every nightmare of her past had emerged with Basilisk and stalked her, reminding her that she was weak, helpless, a scared little child.

  And she was completely and utterly alone.

  She was no longer standing on the deck of a powerful warship but in the small bedroom she’d shared with Amelia, the stark white walls completely unadorned. She stared at the blankness of it and wished her mind could resemble that wall: blank, pure, whole. Basilisk was still there—he was always there—and reprimanded her, trying to force her to believe she was special and should appreciate his attention to her.

  She ignored him.

  And that always pissed him off.

  He lashed out at her, and a physical pain stormed through her head, causing her to squeeze her eyes closed as she clutched desperately at her scalp, trying to exorcise the demon that lived there now. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, and from somewhere far away, perhaps another planet or even a different galaxy, she heard his voice—his gentle, loving, soothing voice.

  “Liv,” he said again, his own terror and fear causing her stomach to lurch like a ship caught in a black hole’s gravity well.

  But that wasn’t her name.

  “Liv!” he called again. “Olivia, please answer me!”

  Olivia… She knew that name. Memories returned, washing away the old nightmares. She opened her eyes and touched her cheek. They were damp. She stepped back again and bumped into someone, whose arms immediately wrapped around her. His lips pressed against her ear as he whispered, “I’ll free you, Hayley. I failed you once. I won’t fail you again.”

  “Vengeance,” she whispered. I failed you once. Liv wiped hastily at her cheeks and shook her head. “This bastard is mine.”

  She refocused her telepathy and searched for him, filtering out the battle and the other rogues. “Basilisk, I know you’re out there, and I know you want me. So here I am, asshole.”

  Silence. But from the void, a slow, steady hum emerged until her mind crashed into the cold, harsh, hateful consciousness of the AI she remembered so well. The warship emerged from behind a moon and cruised toward them, and his mind probed hers as she held him in her grasp.

  “Hayley,” he cooed. “My clever little Hayley. We could have been invincible.”

  “Invincible?” she scoffed. “You’re clearly more insane than I thought.”

  A sinister sense of humor filtered through the link she shared with him, and she shuddered but forced him to hold onto their connection. “But I no longer need you, little girl. As it turns out, you’re replaceable. Disposable.”

  Liv gasped as she sensed the presence of captive telepaths aboard Basilisk. But it wasn’t only their despair she felt. One brave telepath fought her way free from Basilisk’s mind long enough to share his plan with Liv. Her victory was short-lived, though. A sentinel’s plasma cannon exterminated the other woman while they were still merged.

  “He has telepaths,” Liv cried as she reeled from the woman’s death. “Take him out before he can—”

  But they were too late. Space rippled around the other ship, light stretching and flowing strangely before Basilisk slipped into transit and was gone.

  “Vengeance, we have to go after Basilisk!” Liv insisted.

  “We can’t. Citadel and the colony still need our help.”

  “Basilisk is going to use the archive node to proliferate the rogues’ malicious code to the rest of the hive-mind,” Liv said. “If he succeeds, every AI in the Spire will turn rogue!”

  “I’m updating Citadel now,” Vengeance said as he hive-synced with the other ship. Emotion bled along the link, and Liv realized the two warships were old friends.

  And Ven knew he was leaving him to die.

  “Citadel says Brenna will arrive momentarily. Together, they stand a chance of finishing off the two remaining rogues.” Vengeance’s emotions flashed through her mind as he merged more firmly with her, preparing for another transit.

  But this time, their link didn’t alarm her. It reminded her of returning home.

  The journey through transit took four hours, which seemed surprisingly fast given that she anticipated her lifelong struggle against Basilisk to end in either his death or hers. Even with moderate battle damage, Vengeance was a Spire warship in his prime. He’d quickly caught up to Bas, but weapons systems didn’t work in transit, which meant killing Bas would be up to her.

  “Liv, don’t overtax yourself,” Ven’s drone cautioned. “As soon as we’re out of transit, we can take him out together.”

  Liv glanced up at him and took a deep breath. “I just want this to be over.”

  “I know. And it will be soon. We’re on approach to Teutorigos. As soon as Basilisk drops out of transit, force h
is shields to drop, and I’ll blast the shit out of him.”

  Being this close to Teutorigos reminded her that even if she survived, her future was uncertain because the Spire may not allow her to walk away, even as Ven’s new link. The Triumvirate would demand she reveal the location of her sisters, the surviving Nuallan telepaths who wanted nothing more than anonymity.

  “Liv, I’ll stand by you,” Ven promised. “No matter what happens.”

  She lifted a shoulder at him because she couldn’t worry about the Triumvirate when Basilisk still loomed before them.

  The rogue dropped out of transit, and Vengeance quickly followed him. Basilisk was already exchanging fire with several other Spire warships. As much as she wanted to kill Bas herself, she was surprised the other Spire ships hadn’t blown him away as soon as he dropped into normal space.

  “The other ships don’t want to hurt the telepaths,” Ven explained as he studied the energy web in the center of the bridge.

  Weapons fire from the Spire ships penetrated Basilisk’s shields, but Ven was right—the Spire ships were choosing their targets carefully so they wouldn’t kill the kidnapped telepaths. Vengeance joined them, landing a crippling plasma blast to Basilisk’s transit drives. There would be no escape for the rogue this time.

  Still, something seemed off to Liv. This was a suicide mission, and Bas, though obviously insane, was still motivated by self-preservation. Otherwise, he would have never bothered to steal telepaths. Liv’s own telepathy bridged the distance between them and connected with the chaos of Bas’s mind again.

  She remembered her past experiences vividly, and she easily recognized he was attempting to hide something from her.

  “There’s nowhere to go, Bas. Your transit drive is destroyed, and you’re surrounded. Tell me what you’re hiding, and I’ll kill you quickly so you won’t suffer.”

  Five drillers carrying Spire sentinels had attached themselves to Bas’s hull and would soon infiltrate the rogue warship.

  Rogues had never been able to convert sentinels as the embedded firmware made them incorruptible. They could only become rogue if their commanding AI did too.