by White, Gwynn
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 beneath 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.
Liv reluctantly acknowledged what she’d been hiding all her adult life. She was a weapon, a canon for her warship to call upon when needed. They were lethal because they’d been designed just like the warship itself, and given Amelia’s hatred of all AIs, Vengeance could be in danger.
His human-form drone burst into the hangar bay from a side corridor just as the transport’s engines and weapon systems came online.
Liv’s mind instinctively sought out the drone’s and she cried, “Ven, get down!”
Her warning must have reached him over the noise of the transport’s engines because his drone ducked behind the nearest sentinel moments before the transport’s weapons came online and opened fire on his sentinels.
The deafening noise momentarily stunned Liv. Three sentinels charged out from behind the transport’s landing struts and Liv dove at the other woman, tackling her to the ground moments before weapons fire streaked over their heads. Amelia grabbed her arm and physically dragged her up the gangplank and into the transport. Behind them, the gangplank closed and locked just before the nearest sentinels were able scramble inside after them.
“Come on,” Amelia said. “Time to get out of here. Your boyfriend apparently wants you back pretty badly.”
The rapid, sustained sound of weapons fire against the ship’s hull continued as the flashing lights of the hangar bay’s blast doors indicated they were opening.
An energy shield across the opening would prevent depressurization, but with all the weapons fire exchanged between the sentinels and the transport, there was no telling if it would hit something integral.
Amelia pushed Liv toward the left cockpit seat then collapsed into the seat on the right. With a few mental commands, the transport’s engines surged, lifting the ship a few feet off the deck. Amelia pivoted to face the hangar bay door. Several sentinels and Vengeance’s drone blocked the way.
And a shocked drone stared back at her.
“Damn, he’s annoying,” Amelia muttered as she targeted the drone.
“No!” Liv screamed, merging more firmly with the ship’s controls. The transport rushed forward out of the hangar bay before Amelia could target the drone again. A crunch of metal and an unsettling grating from the underbelly of the ship told her she’d either clipped a couple of the sentinel units, or they’d attempted to latch onto the transport.
“Who taught you how to fly?” Amelia growled. “You better not have damaged my new ship. The shields weren’t even up yet.”
As the transport ship dove into the darkness of space, Liv put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.
They’d done it. She’d helped her childhood friend escape. But at what cost to her own life? And at what cost to Ven’s?
* * *
It took a lot to shock a 3125-year-old AI, but Vengeance was shocked deep down to his primary core. The pirate was an unsanctioned telepath. He’d never known such a thing to happen before because people weren’t born with telepathic gifts. And, worse, she’d been able to hide her telepathy from him.
How was that even possible?
But as much as Harper’s telepathy puzzled him, it was nothing compared to his discovery that she wasn’t the only one.
Liv was also a telepath. A powerful telepath.
In the micro-second it had taken him to understand Liv had been hiding her telepathy, he’d also realized she’d never been a prisoner. She didn’t have a vendetta against the pirate. Liv had been working with the other woman the entire time.
The pain of betrayal had snapped through his primary core, triggering other unhealthy emotions that threatened to further compromise his ability to reason. But those feeling
s battled with his need to protect Liv, no matter what. He had no idea what had compelled her to help Harper in the first place, but she was clearly conflicted. Her bio-signs had assured him that she wasn’t under any significant physical duress, but she’d seemed trapped between competing worlds.
But somehow, Olivia Hawthorne, his journeyman engineer, had kept her telepathy a secret for over six months. Even most link-level telepaths lacked the control required to keep a gift that strong hidden. Up until now, he would have insisted it was impossible.
And it was impossible for normal telepaths.
But what if some of the enhanced Nuallan telepaths had actually survived the attack? After all, Liv and Harper were the right age.
His primary core sparked with an eagerness to track and hunt. He’d lost two more of his sentinels as the women escaped, but they’d managed to damage the transport—not enough that the damage put Liv in danger, but enough that they’d have to dock with a station and attend to the repairs. It would give him the time he needed.
Once he had his own drives back online, he’d find the two telepaths and turn over the pirate to Spire command. She could become someone else’s problem.
As for Liv, she was his, and he had no intention of giving her to anyone. He told himself it was mostly because he needed answers, but it seemed AIs weren’t much better at lying to themselves than they were at lying to others. She’d betrayed him to help the pirate, but she’d also warned him that Harper was about to fire at his drone. Surely that meant something?
Once he separated Liv from the influence of the pirate, he’d be able to learn the truth. He’d storm all her defenses until she confessed everything to him—and he wouldn’t have to harm one cell in her body to do it.
More importantly, as soon as he had her back on board, he could find out if she were not only a survivor from Nualla but if she’d once been his intended link. He might have purged his memories of the girl, but maybe he hadn’t lost her after all.
And if he were right, he sure as hell wasn’t going to lose her again.