Lasher pulled on Haas' hair to raise his chin. “It never occurred to you that this was strange behavior from the man using the Phalanx as leverage over an Exile? Norris was the one who hid them in the first place. Why would he need to find the Baroness if he already knew where she was?”
Whatever process turned the wheels of Haas’ mind made a connection he hadn’t seen earlier. “I thought he was in this for the tech. Then, all he cared about was finding her. I assumed she knew something he needed for the work. Kenner must have found a way to kill Norris and take his place through the cypher.”
Lasher slammed the hood back onto Haas’ head, grateful that he didn’t have to listen to any more rambling. “Can you wake her up?”
Zakan, the leader of the Dreadmarr team nodded, pulling the hood from the Fallen woman’s head. Another trooper administered an injection while he went to work in his HUD. She woke with a start, her breathing coming in fits from staring at her reflection in the visors of true Dreadmarr helmets.
“I can’t move,” Jazz said.
“Sedative to make you not hurt from your injury.” Zakan watched as his fellow troopers checked her bindings, just in case she found a way to make herself dangerous through the nerve blocks.
“Do you know who I am?” Lasher asked.
“Orin Lashra. You’re the mutt this whole dust up is about.”
“Do you know who Vidar Anaxis is?”
Jazz sucked in air through her teeth, trying to clear her head from the Dreadmarr sedative. “Now you’re getting specific. I can’t betray my client. We might be the black sheep of the family, but we still have our honor.”
“I can make you talk,” Lasher said.
“No, you can’t.”
“The Cypher-net is burned,” Lasher told her. “If we kill you here and now, you’re done.”
“Doesn’t change anything,” Jazz said meekly.
Lasher sat down in front of her. “Even if your client is dead?”
Her demeanor changed. She went from defiant to deflated in a heartbeat. “Norris? Damn. How long?”
“Most likely after Singh took me to Halikos.”
“That explains a lot. Have you ever worked with one of us?”
Zakan and his team hissed, a sound made more sinister through the digital reverb from their helmet's external speakers. They readied their weapons, giving themselves ample outlets for their hatred to churn into violence toward her for making a comparison to legitimate Dreadmarr soldiers.
“My bond is my word is my life. This is how the Fallen Dreadmarr make our way. If we're near a system close to a Palladium Hotel, there will most likely be a cloned body for me to slip into. Get me one and I'll help you get Kenner, seeing as that's who probably did Norris in.”
Lasher aimed a finger at her. “The woman you fought in the lab burned the cypher sites. Dreadmarr raided the Palladium hotels with the hidden labs, including the bodies they had on hand. Besides, why would you help us?”
“If Kenner stole Norris' shell, then he brought me to Halikos under false pretenses. He most likely planned to throw you back in that chamber, and plug me into an ICOM. He needs to pay for that.”
“What does he want with you?” Lasher asked.
“I helped Norris hide the Phalanx. If Kenner is actually Anaxis, then he's looking for the Baroness, which means he's already found their ship. He needs her to unlock it. Go ahead. Ask them what that means,” Jazz said, nodding to the Dreadmarr team.
Zakan hissed again. His patience with this conversation was wearing thin. “It means they have already cyborg soldiers from the ship. But if he gets the Baroness ...” His words trailed off, making the other members of his team uncomfortable.
“What?” Fluff asked, like a child desperate to know the answer to some joke he wasn't meant to hear.
“They have a weapon that would make them stronger. Only the Baroness can wake it.”
The renegade AI turned person was experiencing more pain as the conversation went on. She neither hid it nor asked for relief. “Get me into another body or repair this one. I can bring you to her.”
Lasher pulled Zakan aside, choosing to speak to him away from the prisoners. Fluff remained next to Jazz, certain that his person would fill him in on all the details minus the boring bits from whatever they were hashing out now.
“Does that hurt?” Fluff asked.
Jazz cocked her head to the side, trying to find the optimal angle from which to flash her most effective sneer his way. “You're a smart computer, what do you think?”
“I think an AI should have known better than to download into a person. I mean if you're going to go full on meat suit, why not go for something bigger and tougher, like a Rhusk or better yet, a dragon!”
“There's no such thing.”
“We met one on Doseidos,” Fluff said as though it were the most natural thing in the galaxy. “I think his name was Franklin. He ate a bunch of Dreadmarr and those Black Cypher types you Fallen hang out with.”
“Sure,” Jazz said with a measure of disbelief.
“So, here's our counter offer,” Lasher said as the group returned. “You tell us where the Baroness is, and Zakan will take you to his Rook leader, who'll then decide what to do with you. Seeing as he wants to kill you right now, I think it's a fair deal.”
“Counter counter offer,” Jazz quipped. “Put me in a body that's not wrecked and I'll wreck this Exile poser warlord for you. Win, win.”
“I'm not negotiating.” Lasher said through grated teeth. “Give us the location or he sticks a knife through your face.”
“Hey there. Hi. Do you remember me?”
“Fluffy something. Lasher's pet murder machine,” Haas said.
“It's Fluff, not Fluffy, and only my friends call me that. You can call me Doom-Snuggle.”
“I won't call you that. It's...”
“Go ahead, Dad. Say something you'll regret.” Fluff said, the menace in his voice was all too clear behind glistening duradium teeth.
“What do you want, Doom-Snuggle?” Haas asked.
“That's more like it. I want to know what you meant when you said that stuff about me being a one of a kind.”
“Look, we've been following you ever since you went active on Tythian. Your record across multiple combat zones is astounding. The original RIM-IVs were one of our best sellers, but they never rose to your level of combat effectiveness. Someone built you to outperform one of our best performers.” Haas seemed to drift into a tangle of thoughts before asking Fluff his own question. “My question to you is, who built you and how did they get around the System Psychosis problem?”
Fluff turned away, accessing memory files across a span of years. He was a gift, forgotten and tucked away under a tarp on a ship. His most cherished moment was the day that Lasher had turned him on, giving him the most precious gift any bot could get. Choice. “I was commissioned by a Princess on Maldinon, years ago. She gave me to a Marshals Templar as a thank you for saving her life.”
“Oh.” Haas said. He turned a few shades of pink, his face succumbing to fear, transitioning to an ashen white. The captured CEO was sweating.
Fluff stalked around the prisoner as though he were a goat tied out to tempt a tiger. “You don't get to ‘oh’ and go silent. I want the truth, meat stick. If you keep up the vague and mysterious act, I'm going to start at your toes and work my way north!”
Haas had been through enough torture for one day. He was a businessman, not a hardened soldier. He was happy to take any road to avoid more hardship. “I heard the rumors about her. She was a powerful psychic. It was why that marshal was dispatched to protect her. She talked about things that made little sense at the time, but were wild enough that people wanted her dead for it. During that time she'd hired handfuls of the best techs and engineers in the galaxy. It seems that one of the things she had built was you.”
“What kind of things did she know?” Fluff asked.
“She knew where all the big companies got t
he versa-tech from. And she knew what the System Psychosis was and how we beat it.”
Fluff was a predator on a trail. He saw the guilt running off of Haas' face in rivulets of sweat. It was an easy path to follow. “You sent people to kill her.”
“We couldn't have our trade secrets exposed,” Haas said. “She wouldn't shut up about it. Still, not my finest moment.”
“You keep skirting the subject. What did she know?”
“That we produced versa-tech with technology we didn't understand from an ancient civilization so old they disappeared before mankind discovered fire. The material we recovered from their ruins also corrupted any AI attached to the system. We had to quarantine an entire planet after the machines killed most of a research and development team there. It was Norris' access to the Exo's that saved our research. They found AIs, like Jazz over there, that used cypher-tech to download into similarly equipped human bodies. That was where we got our start. By combining a cypher-module with Exo phase technology, we created a brain architecture that pulsed their system operations according to a broken rhythm, frequency hopping in and out of phase so the corrupting code couldn't touch it. The corresponding patterns also moved at a processing speed we thought was previously impossible.”
“You lost me at Exo,” Fluff said as though he had a bad taste in his mouth.
“Your brain runs along a path the ancient alien code can't corrupt, made possible by Exo tech.”
“So this fairy princess out psyched your psychics and found all this out and used it to build me? Why?”
Haas looked off toward the open cargo bay, pulling his memories back as he longed to be unshackled and outside, even if the environment was foreign to him. “She was present during a showing of our gen one, two, and threes. When she touched one of the mechs, she left. We never knew why. When she built you, we figured turnabout was fair play and we stole her design for generation four. We just didn't take it as far as she had.”
“So mom got me in the divorce and you went ahead and produced more me's, only not as good. Thanks, Dad!” Fluff barked.
The Doom Cat whirled from behind the restrained CEO, slapping the bag over his head. He bounded toward Lasher, who was working out next steps with their Dreadmarr allies.
“Orin! Hi. Did we find out what we're going to do with the armless robot lady? Is Zakan going to come with us? Are we going with him? If you're planning on running Haas out of an airlock, can we do it in atmosphere so we scare him more than once? Can I help? Um... Hi.”
Madame Tarot had joined Lasher and Zakan to work out the details concerning the renegade Dreadmarr. They stared at Fluff in utter amazement as the bot muttered his entire batch of questions in less than ten seconds.
“Are you pretending to care about what we're saying so we'll care enough to ask what you've been up to over there with Haas?” Lasher asked.
“It's only polite.”
“What's going on?” Lasher asked.
“I convinced Mr. Fancy Pants to tell me something he didn't want to tell me without him actually telling me, but he told me anyway.”
“That's very telling,” Zakan said, flatly.
“Ha! I see what you did there!”
Lasher interrupted. “Fluff, did you bite him?”
“No! But I threatened to. He got the point.”
“I see what you did there. What did he tell you?”
The Doom Cat walked around the group, circling like a restless jungle cat. “You know how Koda has all this incredible military tech, including the RIM line, because they solved the System Psychosis issue?”
“I do.” Lasher's voice took on an interested tone.
“I know how they did it.”
The entire Dreadmarr team walked over to join them. Lasher didn't seem worried that they hear whatever tidbit Fluff was about to regurgitate at them. “Don't keep us in suspense, Fluff. Cough it up.”
“Nice cat reference! Okay. So we have Lady Disarm over there who's a Fallen Dreadmarr. You guys hate them because they're AIs that downloaded into cypher-mods in actual bodies. They basically, stole your buddy's ride, dooming them on whatever Exo ship they were stuck on.”
Zakan nodded. “This is correct.”
The panther-mech continued to stalk and talk. “Haas used that tech and the phase stuff to create a brain that couldn't be corrupted by the ancient alien versa gods. My mom touched an early model RIM bot to get a psychic vibe, and then for some reason created me. Haas found out that mom got me in the divorce and spawned a bunch of mini-me's that were nowhere near as good, but still turned a profit. He then sent assassins to kill mom and that's where Hylaeus came into the picture before you stole me out of my life of slavery to what I am now, which is hundreds of kilos of free range awesome!”
The collected group stood in total awe of the retelling, looking to each other for some hint or bit of code that would piece together the panther ramblings into a coherent map leading to an explanation.
Lasher was first to remember that even when he was at his most chaotic, Fluffang Doom-Snuggle was still a robot. “Fluff, playback the audio of the conversation between you and Haas.”
Zakan nodded as he listened. “This makes sense. Not all of us who come from Exodus fleet are from same fleet. Others have made contact with many strange things in the black. These ancient places is known to us.”
“Do you understand what Haas is talking about?” Lasher asked the Dreadmarr.
“I do,” Jazz said, throwing her thoughts into the growing pile of conjecture.
Lasher waved his hand for her to continue. “Looking to make yourself useful?”
“Figure it might buy me some consideration. I’ve been working with Norris a long time. I went on a few of these missions. They started from places like Mylos and Neroba in the CORAL. Eventually teams were sent into the frontier. One doc, a professor named Ngyuen, found the material that makes versa-tech work at this ancient city ruin. It didn’t go well for his team. They brought back samples and eventually, Norris hired the Fallen to ask if we could reign in the psychotic AI’s that were killing everyone. We worked it out.”
“Yet another reason to kill it now.” Zakan said, his helmet speakers making it difficult to gauge his tone.
Tarot placed her hand on Zakan’s shoulder. “While I would normally agree with you, this might present an opportunity.”
“We kept it alive for what it knows. Now we have the answers and it won't take us to Baroness, we should kill it. Leaving it alive is dangerous. Nyx would know how to be careful with it. We should bring it to Nyx or kill it now.”
Madame Tarot nodded her agreement. “I have a plan. Let's get both Father and Mother on the line so I can fill everyone in at once. Lasher, do we have a way to get by the mercs and into Kabran City?”
“We do. When it's time for us to get into the city, we've been given the key.”
Twenty-Five
Mara knelt beside Lasher. He was lurking below the crest of the hill, giving him enough room to see over it without exposing himself. The tall swaying grasses of the Kesthi Steppe were making a gentle rustle in the breeze coming over them. “You have the look of a man that’s come home.”
Lasher had his hand outstretched in the grass, pulling some of it to his nose. He faced the marshal with the grasses across his lip like a mustache.
“Oh, that’s a look.” Mara said. Her smile faded when she saw his eyes. His normal grey were replaced with the red haloed yellow, a sure sign he was soaked in the Crucible. He’d formed a deep connection to the world after the conspirators killed his mother. Somewhere in the depths of the planet, an anonymous force was feeding him power in the Crucible, allowing him to accomplish far more than a normal Marshals Templar. The elder Tyth called them the Old Ones, others the Sacred Winds. Whatever it was, it had latched onto Orin’s anger and continued to push him through everything he’d survived to now.
“You’re on my tail.”
Mara jumped back. “Damn it, Fluff? Were you always able t
o do that?”
The Doom Cat dropped his camouflage, returning his outer shell to something she wouldn’t have missed when she walked up. He was scanning the plain below them, most likely feeding images and scans to Lasher’s cyberoptic lenses. “Yes, but it was always more fun to have people see me coming. Their expressions were priceless. I have pics. Wanna see?”
Mara grimaced. “Another time?”
“Yeah! Mind on the job at hand. Got it. We’ll check out some vids over marshmallows,” Fluff said.
“What is a marshmallow?”
“Nope. When this is over, you will discover the magic that is the mallow. Until then, we have things to hunt.” Fluff's voice dropped at the end, grating the last few words like some monster chewing the final bit of taste from the flesh in its teeth.
“There. He’s coming.” Lasher said.
The sky was overcast, grey enough to stave off the heat of the day while not being threatening enough for rain. On one side of their view was Kabran City. Once a trading hub for Tyth and off worlders alike, the legions of troops surrounding it seemed to darken the jewel of the Kesthi Steppe. The inner city was ringed by an energy field. The surrounding neighborhoods were covered in fighting as local Tyth tribes clashed with the forces of the CORAL’s largest mercenary force, the Transgalactic Activities Corps.
Sweeping his view across the steppe, a lone rider had appeared on the horizon at the crest of the rolling foothills. His red cloak fluttered in the breeze, exposing scarred armor astride a gold trimmed black horse. His lance was held in the stirrup, a pennant with a winged lion flapped in time with his cloak. The red brush atop his helmet was brilliant against the sun riding low over the landscape.
“Was it worth it? Whatever you had to pay to become this, right now, was it worth it?” Mara asked.
The Sentinel: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Hunter's Moon Book 3) Page 30