by C. Gockel
Sixty said, “If you have access to Shinar’s public ether but not the team—”
Volka’s ears came forward again.
Jerome met Sixty’s eyes. “Someone’s got a very effective, targeted, military-grade jammer in there.” He opened a suitcase and began rummaging through it. “I’ve got something for this. Just didn’t think we’d need it at a hospital.”
On Volka’s shoulder, Carl began attacking his whiskers with such force he tumbled over, somersaulting in midair. Falling to her heels, Volka caught him with a gasp. He squeaked frantically, paws on his nose, and his necklace crackled, but it must have just been within the jammer’s range because there was so much static whatever he said aloud was unintelligible. Still, Volka heard him telepathically clear as the clink of crystal.
She looked up at Sixty in alarm. “You have to go down there!”
Across the bridge, Jerome said, “No. Just give me a minute—”
In her mind, Carl repeated, “Send in 6T9! Send in 6T9!”
Cradling the faintly squeaking Carl, Volka explained to Jerome, “But I hear Carl saying so in my mind.”
“I don’t think 6T9 going in there is a good idea,” Jerome replied, attaching a black, metal, fist-sized cube to his tablet.
Her face flushed. He didn’t believe her—Volka looked up at Sixty. “Sixty, tell him that I’m a little telepathic, Carl is very telepathic, and jammers can’t keep him from—”
“Not you I doubt,” Jerome grunted, fingers dancing over the black metal box. “But unless the admiral gives specific orders, I’m not sending anyone in.”
More words poured into Volka’s head. Words she knew but not in an order that made any sense. Her stomach fell. Gazing down at Carl, she bit her lip. “Oh…Carl.” She bent to touch her nose to his.
“What’s wrong?” Sixty asked, sitting on his heels.
“He’s speaking gibberish.” Was it a side effect of whatever was “in his whiskers”?
At her words, Jerome rushed toward Volka. Falling to his heels, he put a hand on her shoulder. “What gibberish?”
Volka was briefly distracted by Sixty. His head tic had returned. Her brow furrowed. But he grunted, “I’m fine.”
Jerome’s hand fell. “Volka?”
Sixty’s head righted, and Volka swallowed. “What Carl is saying doesn’t make sense.” She was very worried about the little werfle. The same gibberish words kept replaying over and over.
“You have to tell me!” Jerome insisted.
“Volka,” Sixty said gently. “It could be a cipher—”
She stared at him blankly.
“A code,” Sixty explained. “What exactly is Carl saying?”
Volka gulped, closed her eyes, and tried to catch the words from where they seemed to begin. “The moon is ice shadow…on grass beseech subtract plain…inform superb…blaze.” Her ears went sideways. “He just says that over and over.”
Carl whimpered.
A snap above made her look up. Jerome was extracting a small chip from his neural port. Handing it to Sixty, he said, “Admiral wants you in there, and for me to give you this cipher and weapons.”
Sixty’s neural port was covered by synth skin. Taking the chip gingerly, he pulled it down, revealing the gleam of his metal skull. Plugging it in, his head jerked back infinitesimally.
Jerome said, “You won’t be able to use the ether, but you will be able to transmit the cipher with Morse Code in bursts of sound or flashing light.” A furrow appeared in his brow. “Do you have a light?”
Smoothing his skin back in place, Sixty flashed his eyes. “Yes.”
Nodding half to himself, Jerome rose and went over to one of the suitcases. He pulled out a stunner pistol and a holster. Handing those to Sixty, he retrieved a very short, blunt stun rifle with a heavy charge capacity. Jerome stared down at the weapon. “Only a stunner, but I guess you can’t use anything more.”
Sixty couldn’t use phasers. Phasers could kill.
Sixty buckled the holster for the pistol at his hip. Taking the rifle, he slipped the strap over his shoulder. And then he hesitated and looked down at Volka, not quite meeting her gaze, his body inhumanly still.
Time was of the essence, and yet Sixty seemed to have become a statue. What was wrong? It came to her mind that she might know. Gently setting Carl down, she stood. “I know you’re beta testing, and the bruises and Carl’s broken tail scares you, but you saved us, and the fix to your Q-comm, so it doesn’t go offline with a head tap anymore, was completely worth it.”
He met her gaze for the briefest moment, and then he was a blur. The next thing she knew, his lips were on hers. Despite the speed, the kiss wasn’t too hard or too soft; it was perfect. She froze in shock, but there was warmth spreading from her lips to her core and all the way to her toes. She found herself leaning in. Her hand drifted up his chest to where there was no heart, but a barely perceptible reverberation, and heat…and then she realized what she was doing, where she was doing it, and she remembered lives were at risk. Putting her hand on his chest, falling to her heels, breathless, and slightly dizzy, she pushed him away—or rather, herself away from him.
His lips parted—there was a furrow in his brow. The confusion on his face was probably reflected on hers. “You’ll come back,” she whispered.
His expression hardened. He straightened, looking like the robot he was. He could be hurt, robot or not, maybe not in the same way as a human, but she knew his pain didn’t feel less real.
“If you don’t come back, I’ll come get you,” she added, her voice a hiss.
One of Sixty’s eyebrows shot up. Head turning to the side, voice in his General mode, he said, “Corporal, you will give her weapons now.”
“Yes, sir,” Jerome replied.
Sixty’s eyes shifted to hers, and he hopped backward out of Sundancer without even glancing, the thump of his body much louder than the Marines or even James. Running to the edge and peering down, she briefly saw the top of Sixty’s head, and then he was gone, just a memory of warmth and electricity in her lips.
What exactly had just happened?
What exactly had just happened?
6T9 asked himself that as he sprinted between the fire team on the roof to the doorway on the north western corner. He’d updated his programming so that he couldn’t accidentally hurt a human or sentient being—that had gone well. He wasn’t as angelic as Volka once believed him to be, but he wouldn’t injure someone accidentally ever again. He’d already had a successful test. He hadn’t decked Jerome when he’d touched Volka—although his head tic had returned. That had been annoying—but his slight, simple change of code had worked. Punching Jerome would have been grossly inappropriate.
… And then Volka had said that whatever mistakes he’d made getting his Q-comm installed properly were worth it, and then his vision had gone white, and the next thing he’d known, when his sensors had come online, his lips were on hers.
Which was wrong. There was no agreement between them. Sex ‘bots were strict about consent—well, when it came to physical contact of a sexual nature. Sex ‘bots could solicit sex verbally repeatedly, and they could touch lightly and flirtatiously. It was a balance for his manufacturers between potential lawsuits and potentially lost profits—being forward paid. Regardless, the kiss was something he never would have done a day and a half ago. It was something he couldn’t have done. He might have emotionally hurt her. He grimaced. His code change had not been complete—he’d only stopped his ability to physically harm a human or sentient being. He’d have to revise that, but now he was at the rooftop door atop a darkened stairwell, and he had to focus.
The darkness was odd. A hospital’s thoroughfares should never be completely dark—which meant someone had turned off the lights and the emergency lighting. Fortunately, he had better-than-human night vision and lights in his eyes if he absolutely needed them. He was holding his rifle at the ready, but slipped it behind his back and then headed down the metal steps. Even
in the lighter gravity, his greater mass made his footsteps thunder and echo in the cramped space. The stairwell was colder than appropriate room temperature, but his sensory receptors on his lips and where Volka’s hand had touched his chest were still warm.
A light flashed on the steps ahead of him, and he thought of the brilliant white light he’d seen just before the kiss. He saw it again, reached the landing…
…and his sensors went offline as heat hot enough to melt synth skin and metal bones missed his neck by centimeters. The heat told him it was phaser fire. Behind him, a woman screamed, but 6T9’s eyes snapped to an orange light meters away down a dark corridor. In less than a millisecond, he realized he was seeing a phaser pistol primed and ready to shoot. If he’d had his rifle ready, he could have fired… The phaser discharged, but it missed 6T9.
“Get down!” James shouted somewhere off in the dark.
6T9 obeyed, diving and taking shelter behind a shadow. His Q-comm fired, belatedly informing him that the flashing lights he’d seen earlier had been a warning delivered in Morse Code—6T9 had been too consumed with thoughts of Volka to notice—his sex ‘bot programming warring with his current situation. His circuits darkened and looked to the source of the scream he’d seen earlier. His jaw dropped. A woman in gray-blue scrubs was slumped against the wall. He didn’t need to check to see if she was dead; her chest was smoldering, and her eyes and mouth were frozen in a look of horror. His Q-comm hummed, putting the situation together. Her scream, her gasp—that was what the shooter had aimed at—possibly thinking she was the source of the footsteps on the stairs and thinking she had been the one James had been trying to communicate with.
6T9 could have saved her if his rifle had been in front of him at the ready, but he’d slung it over his shoulder…because…he growled as his Q-comm delivered the answer to that query. He’d put his rifle behind him because of his recent code update. An accidental headshot in the dark in a situation he didn’t understand could have been deadly.
But his inaction had been deadly. His circuits dimmed. His body chilled. Phaser fire from the corridor lit the woman’s body. He stared at her for a moment, taking in a short-bobbed haircut and delicate features, a body whip slender, fragile for a human, a product of Shinar’s lower gravity. He’d killed her with inaction. In attempting to be more angelic, he’d done irreparable harm. Because…His Q-comm fired. He could ruminate on how exactly he’d just failed and other people might die from his angst later.
Cursing, he reversed his update. His vision went white for a millisecond, and then he swung his rifle in front of his body.
He peered around the corner of his protective shadow—a heavy metal door, he realized, half blasted from its hinges—in the direction the phaser fire had come from. More fire lit the corridor again, and he saw it was a cellblock. The Marines, Noa, and James were flattened in door alcoves returning fire with their stunners. He saw two bodies on the floor, halfway between the team and their enemies, one in Fleet armor, one in scrubs. The Fleet Marine had an arm around the one in scrubs, an intimate-looking embrace. Near the bodies was a woman also in scrubs. She sat against a door, only partially protected by an alcove, knees pulled to her chest, hand pressed to her mouth. A nurse? A doctor? A friend of the woman he’d let die?
6T9’s lip curled in rage. Static surged beneath his skin, and he wasn’t sure if he was angry more with himself or with the men with phasers in a hospital. His Q-comm flashed. James, Noa, and the others were in much more precarious situations. The alcoves they were in were not deeper than twenty-one centimeters. He didn’t rush out to save them though; instead, his Q-comm hummed.
A human woman cried, “Agnes? It hurts.” The echo of her voice identified her as the civilian in scrubs lying on the floor. Again, he stayed frozen in place, his Q-comm, his regained ability to hurt, holding him back from his sex ‘bot desire to help.
“Stay down, Celia, stay down, sweetie,” the woman cowering in the alcove, who must have been Agnes, whispered. “I’m still here.” And then Agnes lied. “It will be all right.”
How many times had 6T9 said similar words to Eliza?
Phaser fire lit the cellblock. Agnes cried out, this time in obvious pain. Was she paying for the tiny kindness of the lie she’d just told?
6T9’s jaw ground and his skin heated. He was so angry it was making his body hot, and he felt like his whole body should be shining. He jerked from his defensive crouch, almost got up and rushed down the hall, but his Q-comm sparked. If he got injured, Volka would come down here and collect his bits and pieces, all the while lying to his broken, disassembled parts, that everything would be “all right”—probably as phaser fire shot around her. Cursing, he banged his rifle butt against the floor in rapid taps he hoped the team could hear, encoding the warning, “Cover your eyes.” Masochism settings on high, he stepped into the doorway, pistol upraised. He saw the faint light of a phaser ready to shoot come from behind the shadow of the open door. He didn’t back down. Instead, he turned on the lights in his eyes to full brightness—enough to temporarily blind human, cybernetic, or robotic eyes.
The man holding the pistol grunted in shock and pain, and plasma fire shot over 6T9’s head. Diving forward, 6T9 aimed at the man’s cry. He belly flopped on the floor, masochism settings making him grin at the shock of it. More phaser fire erupted from his unseen assailants, and for an instant he saw a chink in their defenses. He rolled, rifle extended, and shot at the centi-high gap between the open door and the floor. He heard a curse, and a man hopping in place. Taking that slight opportunity 6T9 had given them, the Marines rushed the open door the phaser fire had been coming from, but 6T9’s attention was focused on the civilian woman cowering in the alcove—the fallen woman had called her “Agnes.” As the Marines ran past her, Agnes came forward, one of her arms clutched to her side. Grabbing the hand of the injured civilian on the floor, she pulled her toward the door alcove she’d been sheltering in. 6T9 blinked. Agnes tapped a panel beside the door, and it began to open. The Marines, still scuffling, were oblivious. But of course Agnes could open the doors if she worked here. His Q-comm sparked. Agnes might have escaped into a cell at any time, but hadn’t…maybe because she needed to rescue Celia?
He heard something whistle overhead from the direction of the scuffle, something that went plink, plink, plink down the hallway in the direction he’d just come. “Grenade!” James shouted. 6T9’s Q-comm sparked. The door the enemy had been firing behind slammed shut…and 6T9 got up. He grabbed the downed Marine and “Celia” and shouted at Agnes, “Back,” barreling into her before she could reply or react, his feet slipping on something wet on the floor.
The door slammed shut behind him. In the hallway, there was a boom that 6T9 felt in his feet and in the fingers holding Celia by her scrubs and the Marine by a rifle strap. The boom set off an internal sensor, alerting 6T9 to dangerous auditory levels. His own auditory apparatus lost the ability to hear, but he could see. He was in a small, tidy cell. There was a tiny window high in the wall directly ahead. There was a man sitting on a cot, with his knees drawn to his chest, just to 6T9’s left. Agnes was backing toward the man, wide-eyed gaze fixated on 6T9. Her scrubs were embroidered with the name: Dr. Tran. By Agnes’s and the cell’s occupant’s high foreheads and slender bodies, he could tell that they were both Shinar natives. Agnes appeared to be in her late forties, with long, black hair graying at the temples pulled back into a soft knot at the back of her neck, faint crow’s feet at the edge of her eyes, and smile lines. Those visual cues meant nothing. The Shinar didn’t believe in surgery for strictly cosmetic sake, but like most of the rest of the Republic, they believed in life extension and used telomerase inhibitors and repair nanos.
6T9’s attention flicked to the man. He looked similar in age, though his hair was a softer brown. The man’s mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. And then sound did come. “Dr. Agnes? Are you all right?” the man asked, and 6T9 realized that maybe the reason he’d thought his hearing
was damaged was just that the three conscious members of the cell had been in shocked silence.
Dr. Agnes didn’t look at the man, but she held out a hand toward him. “It’s all right, Joseph.”
Speaking of the unconscious…6T9 was still holding the Marine and Celia. He set them down gently. If the Marine was alive, his or her suit was seeing to life support, so 6T9 quickly turned his focus to Celia—and for the first time realized the nature of her injury. Her forearm was missing, but more than that, it had been cybernetic—there were a few dangling nerve filaments protruding from where it had been ripped from her upper arm. Usually, phaser fire sealed exposed vessels by melting flesh, but in this case, the cybernetics had torn away, ripping the brachial artery in the process. The only reason she was likely still alive was because she’d fallen on her stomach and been pressed down by the Marine in the heat of fire. Her weight, and the weight of the Marine’s arm, heavy with armor, had helped seal the artery. But as 6T9 kneeled beside her, he knew she’d lost a lot of blood. Her body temperature was too low; her pulse was rapid and weak.
“She needs to go to a hospital. They both do,” Agnes—Dr. Tran—said, kneeling on the other side of Celia. 6T9 hadn’t noticed her approach.
“No argument from me there,” 6T9 said, ripping off the bottom of his shirt and tying it around the woman’s arm to keep the artery from reopening.
“There are other ways for you to meet your aims,” Dr. Agnes said suddenly, her voice insistent.
“What?” said 6T9, head jerking as the ethernet came on. He connected with Jerome’s tablet. Lights in the room flickered on. Outside, one of the Marines whooped.
Agnes looked up nervously.
And then the connection died. Outside there was a curse.
Focusing on him again, Agnes said, “I know that the current prime minister and the Parliament are hospitalizing people unfairly, but this violence isn’t the way.”
6T9 blinked.
Behind him, an encoded tap came from the door. “6T9, are you all right?”