Woven

by Elle E. Ire

  Creeping forward, I lean around the next bend in the corridor, internally signaling VC1 to map everything I see and pass it on to Alex’s data storage. From there he can update our schematics and transfer it to our waiting backup ships.

  Two guards dressed in Jacks’s forest green uniforms flank a single metal door embedded in the rock face. They’re both armed, one with a laser pistol, the other with one of those electrowhips used in the earlier stage performance. A faint shiver of need ripples through me, the last remnants of the pleasure drug reminding me of what that whip can do when applied in just the right way.

  I shake it off. If the guard here hits me with his whip, it isn’t going to feel good.

  “Vick, you okay?” Kelly’s voice comes over my internal comm. Of course she felt that touch of lust.

  “Fine,” I subvocalize back. “Going in. Don’t distract me.”

  “Right. Sorry.” She sounds apologetic but not hurt. Good. She’s a professional. A professional in a personal relationship with me that goes beyond most couples’ connections, but she tries not to let that interfere with our jobs. Much.

  I draw my pistol from my back holster. The first shot from my specially silenced weapon takes down the righthand guard. The other gets off one crack of that damn whip, but it bounces right off my tactical bodysuit’s slick, protective material. He’s used to targets with lots of exposed skin to take the full brunt of the electrical charge, not someone like me.

  I could engage in some witty banter about the wisdom of bringing a whip to a gunfight, but we’re short on time, so I take him out with a second shot. Five steps bring me to the door and the locking mechanism embedded in the rock wall beside it. I press my palm against the smooth metal plate, giving VC1 easy access. Three whirs and a click and the door slides aside, whining and grating on its track. The sound bounces off the tunnel walls and ceiling, echoing into the distance.

  Shit. Think anyone heard that?

  This area of the installation is not heavily inhabited.

  Well, one can hope.

  I have to step over the corpses of the guards to get inside. A small twinge of guilt makes me swallow hard before proceeding, but I brush it off fast. They chose to work for a slaver. I have little pity for their fate.

  The second I cross the threshold my locator bracelet’s light switches from yellow to red, not flashing, but holding steadily on that foreboding color. I’m where I’m not supposed to be. If I hadn’t transferred its data to our quarters and scrambled the signals it sends, a horde of security would be descending upon my current location.

  The door slides shut behind me, crunching stray bits of stone as it moves, the sound setting my teeth on edge. Lights come on in the new space, illuminating bank after bank of control consoles. I cock my head, listening, but there’s no thrumming of generators, no vibrations through the stone floor, just the faint hum of large amounts of functional technology.

  Tonight’s luck might be changing.

  “The generators are on the surface,” I announce out loud, not quite making it a question.

  “So it would appear,” VC1 responds from a speaker in the corner that she must have disconnected from the installation’s PA system. There are old-fashioned, rusted, heavily damaged speakers hanging in corners throughout the mining tunnels—remnants of the former purpose of the place. Given their condition, I’m surprised they function at all.

  “Many do not,” VC1 adds, tapping into my thoughts. “But Jacks reconnected the system for his own use. It is only activated for emergency drills.”

  Something tells me it’s going to be activated very soon.

  I stride to the closest bank of controls, none of which make any sense to me, but with VC1 looking through my eyes, I’m certain she’ll know what everything does. I place both palms flat on the console’s surface. The tingle of energy rushing down both arms might be my imagination, but when the lights on the controls grow brighter, I know it’s not.

  Turning around, I lean back against the equipment and wait. No alarms sound, but I’ve got my weapon trained on the room’s only entrance. There are no other tunnels leading from here. If security comes calling, I’ll be well and truly trapped.

  “Don’t trip anything,” I mutter under my breath.

  “Really, you should have more faith,” VC1 says through the speaker. “I am a sentient computer manipulating a much less sophisticated piece of technology. This is… what do you call it? Child’s play.”

  A few more minutes pass. I’m getting antsy, despite VC1’s reassurances, when she says, “Done. As we hoped, the generators themselves are on the surface, making it much easier for the strike team to permanently disable them. I have inserted a remnant of myself in this system. This way, when you are ready, I can turn the shields off for a brief time to make them even more vulnerable to laser fire.”

  I frown. VC1’s got a lot of pieces in a lot of places. One at Dr. Peg Alkins’s secret cloning base, several in the Storm’s Girard Moon Base installation, and who knows how many more? How far can she go before she overextends herself?

  I am capable of self-replication, in many ways not unlike this clone of yourself. There is no need for concern, she says in my head as I move for the door.

  Not for the first time, I’m glad she’s on our side.

  I will always be on your side, she says. Perhaps not always on the Storm’s, but certainly on yours. Whenever I am allowed to be.

  Huh. Definitely something to think about later.

  Besides, there are other greater issues to consider. Such as, once the shields are off, you will have a very limited window in which to act before the existing life support dissipates.

  Yeah, I figured that. The shields don’t only protect the slavers’ base. They hold in the breathable air, the minimal heat. Everything.

  She returns the base’s schematic to my heads-up display while I scan, then slip into the exterior corridor. A big red X marks the other large cavern where she detects greater numbers of lifeforms and maximum-security protocols in place. Slave quarters.

  I pause to collect the electrowhip from one of the dead guards. It’s an intriguing weapon, safe to use in almost any environment, with a good reach. After coiling it, I loop it over my left shoulder.

  “Alex,” I say, triggering my comm. “Let the strike team know it’s almost go time. I’m going to confirm the slaves’ primary location and then have VC1 take the shields down.” I pass one of those breather containers in their wooden boxes along the tunnel walls. Various stages of rot have worn the slats away, revealing the plastic-wrapped emergency equipment inside. These must also be holdovers from the mining operation that built this place. “Make sure the three of you have on Storm-issued breathing gear. I don’t trust Jacks’s ancient crap.”

  Not to mention there are insufficient numbers of them, VC1 chimes in.

  Um, what?

  Jacks has not deemed it worthwhile to provide protective gear for the base’s entire population. There are approximately enough for himself, his staff, and his guests.

  But not the slaves.

  Precisely.

  Despite their value as commodities, they are infinitely replaceable. Disposable humans.

  And I worry about my own humanity.

  Don’t you think that would have been a good thing to mention sooner?

  VC1 huffs. An honest to goodness huff. From an AI. That was not an area you asked me to investigate, and I had other tasks. Now that I am part of the security system, I can affirm that the majority of the breathers are nonfunctional, the functional ones having been moved closer to staff and guest quarters. The rest are—how do you say it?—for show.

  “Alex, new plan. As soon as you alert the orbital team, I want you, Lyle, and Kelly to gather as many breathers from the guest areas as you three can carry.” I transmit the schematic with the X on it to his console. “Tell Kelly to change into pants and running shoes. Meet me at the marked location, but approach with caution. I may need backup when everythin
g goes to shit.” Which it will. That’s a given. “Approximate ETA—five minutes, so move fast. Leave everything except your weapons and emergency gear.”

  “Got it,” Alex replies, a little harried. Good. I need him to feel the urgency.

  I pick up my pace, moving just slowly enough so I can check my corners, but the extra caution doesn’t stop the body hurtling out of the next darkened corridor to collide with my torso and take me down, hard.

  Chapter 16: Kelly—To the Rescue

  Vick is under attack.

  IT OCCURS to me, even while I run with the rest of Alpha Team toward Vick’s location, duffels, satchels, and purses stuffed with breather masks bouncing on our backs and hips, that I should wonder how I can read Vick from this distance. After all, I can’t pick up her emotions from across Girard Moon Base. Our empathic bond doesn’t reach that far. And yet she’s coming in crystal clear to me.

  And she’s in trouble.

  I know the stronger emotions carry longer distances. I also know that softer materials like dirt and rock allow more to seep through them than, say, Girard’s steel walls. And there aren’t a lot of doors here—tunnels wind in endless directions, all interconnected and most of them open to one another. That might explain it.

  I have no more time to speculate as we skid around yet another corner, Lyle’s momentum slamming him into the rock wall on the turn, and spot Vick kneeling on the stone walkway, straddling a male figure dressed in clothing similar to her own. It takes a second, but then it clicks—the man is the Secretary of the Treasury’s assistant from the banquet. I notice other details. Vick’s got one of those electrowhips over her shoulder. I wonder where she collected that. “Who are you?” Vick demands of her captive. “What outfit are you with?”

  There’s tension behind that question. If it’s the Sunfires, we have bigger problems. It took a while, but they finally figured out Vick survived the crash on Elektra4. Well, she didn’t really, and I still have nightmares about her painful, if brief, demise. They just don’t know she’s a clone. Regardless, we don’t need the additional complications.

  The “assistant” points one sprawled hand in the direction of Lyle and Alex, both with their weapons trained on him. “If you don’t mind,” he says, “you’ve got me. And there’s a particularly sharp rock digging into my spine. May I sit up while I explain?”

  Cultured accent, British origins maybe? Polite, articulate speech.

  Definitely not a Sunfire.

  Vick eases back and up, rising to her feet. One hand moves to wrap around her rib cage, her face twisted into a grimace. I frown. “You okay?”

  “Our friend here cracked one of my ribs. Talk,” she growls in the assistant’s direction.

  “I’m part of OWL.”

  Oh. Right. Of course he is.

  OWL stands for One World League, the protection agency employed by members of the One World government on Earth. My parents use them whenever my mother attends a large public function. They’re not mercs, not exactly, since they only work for Earth’s politicians, meaning they only serve the greater good, or so they’d like the populace to believe at least. Some politicians are more good than others.

  “Then we’re on the same side,” Alex ventures.

  Vick shoots him a look. He shuts up.

  Our captured OWL bobs his head in an almost real owl-like manner. “I figured as much, judging from the catsuit.”

  The cat and the owl. Oh, we’re just full of metaphors tonight. I’m betting VC1 is having a field day with the images in Vick’s head. Vick flushes an embarrassed pink that fades as fast as it forms—the AI at work, no doubt.

  “You can call me Robert. I’m here to put a stop to this operation.”

  “No. You’re not. You’re here to get back the Secretary of the Treasury’s daughter.”

  Robert stares at Vick, eyebrows touching his hairline. “Good intel,” he says, then nods over at the rest of us. “Bad form. That thundering herd approach of yours is going to bring the entire security squad down on us.”

  It’s our turn to blush, all three of us. “Kelly said you were in trouble.” Lyle rubs the toe of his boot on the stone floor.

  Vick glares. “In it and out of it. I appreciate having backup, but I can take care of myself, you know.” She shakes her head. “But he’s right. We need to move before they find us.”

  As if on cue, pounding bootsteps race toward our location. We duck into the shadows of a branch-off tunnel. Vick pulls Robert back against her until we’re all out of sight. A team of six guards in forest green runs past us, heading in the direction of the guest quarters.

  They know where we came from. They don’t know where we went.

  When their footfalls fade to silence, we step back into the center of the tunnel. Vick releases Robert, allowing him to stand on his own. “It won’t take them long to figure out we aren’t in our guest suite,” she says.

  Robert shakes his head. “And you’ve made my assignment much, much harder. I need to locate the slave quarters, free Secretary Hothart’s daughter, and get out of here.”

  “You mean get the daughter and the Secretary out of here. Oh, and by the way, your boss has gone for an evening stroll. We passed her heading away from the suites. Why the fuck would you bring someone that important on a mission like this?” Vick hands him a pistol she must have confiscated during their struggle.

  “Bloody moronic piss sipper,” the OWL mutters.

  I fight down a smile at the colorfulness. It puts Vick’s simple “fucks” to shame. Then again, blunt and to the point suits Vick better.

  “I didn’t,” he continues. “She stowed away on my transport, and by the time I realized she’d done so, I was already in orbit. We had to scrap my plans of going in as a buyer and reorganize ourselves as a team or abort the entire proceeding. I feared Jacks might sell Cynthia if we waited any longer, and we would never find her.”

  None of us can find an argument for that.

  “We’re wasting precious time,” Robert adds. He sets off at a brisk pace down the corridor.

  Vick clears her throat. “You’re going the wrong way.”

  Robert stops, pivots, and places his hands on his hips. “And how would you know that?”

  Vick’s eyes unfocus for maybe a second. I’m thinking no one else noticed until I catch Alex’s knowing smile.

  Well, good. Both he and Lyle are learning to read Vick better. And they accept her for who she is.

  Robert’s comm beeps in the small pouch on his utility belt. He frowns, withdraws it, and stares in silence at the screen. “Base schematics?”

  Vick nods.

  “The X is where Jacks keeps the slaves?”

  Vick nods again.

  Robert locks his startled gaze on her calm one. “How did you get such detailed information? We’ve been trying ever since we discovered who had taken Cynthia. Who the hell are you people?”

  Vick smirks, gesturing at the three of us with a sweep of her arm. “They’re Alpha Team, the best damn unit in the Fighting Storm. Me? According to the precious chickenshit government you serve, I’m either dead or don’t qualify as ‘people.’ But you probably know me as VC1.”

  Chapter 17: Vick—Contingency Plan

  I am pressed for time.

  KELLY SHOOTS me a look at the “chickenshit” remark, but then sighs in resignation. I shouldn’t have said that, but, her mother aside, she knows I’m right.

  To be fair, I get why there’s an issue. I’ve died enough times, one of which they don’t even know about, that my breathing status can be confusing. The “human” part, though. That just pisses me off and reveals them for the cowards they are. Earth doesn’t want to contradict the Moon’s autonomous government. And the Moon has decided I’m a machine.

  Granted, that’s in large part because in an official court hearing, I said so myself, but that’s beside the point. I did it to save Kelly. Kelly was saved.

  Now I want my fucking life back.

  Alpha Team tr
ails Robert through the tunnels. He holds his comm-map in his outstretched hand, the rest of us with weapons at the ready to cover him, except for Kelly of course. Her pistol remains holstered. She handles killing devices only when it’s essential, and even then, it’s like she’s holding a dead rat by its tail. More than a few times, I catch Robert casting surreptitious glances back at me, his gaze calculating and openly curious, but my glare turns him around. I’m a team member, not a tourist attraction.

  Twice, Lyle and I draw on a servant and have to jerk our gun arms up to avoid firing. Both times, the slave-servant skitters back the way she came, disappearing into the darkness, but not apparently raising any kind of alarm. Word will be quietly spreading that there’s a strike team onsite, and that’s good. I want the slaves to be ready to fight their oppressors.

  This walking is taking a toll on my broken rib, each step jarring the bones together. Can you do something about the pain?

  My entire left side goes numb, the nerve endings cut off from my brain’s sensory system.

  Okay, then.

  We take a few more turns without incident, then pause at the sound of quiet conversation and the general noises associated with large groups of people. At the next archway, we stop and peer into a cavern about the same size as Jacks’s makeshift banquet hall.

  The slave quarters aren’t as bad as they could be—a wide, open space with rows of beds, each with a small standing cabinet for hanging clothing and a footlocker for storing a small number of personal items like toiletries and such. A few side tunnels similar to our own lead away at different angles, and I detect water running from some of them, so, likely showers and bathrooms.

  There must be about fifty cots altogether, narrow spaces between them allowing for controlled movement. Most are occupied, their owners curled into fetal positions, blankets pulled over their heads, thin pillows pressed to their ears to block out the overhead lighting and sounds from their neighbors. A handful are empty, probably belonging to the ones currently “on duty.”