“I came here to kill Osla,” a woman said, her words a distillation of anger and authority. “Deliver him to me, or I will burn this ship, and Luna afterward.”
CARA WINS A LITTLE
STELLAR DATE: 3.23.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Near-Luna, MSS Amplified Solution
REGION: Luna, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Cara stood in the passageway, her heart pounding, and nearly shrieked when Felix’s voice crossed her Link.
Sliding away from the command deck door, Cara tried to stay within earshot. She couldn’t make out the words, but tones in each voice as they made excuses to the angry woman were easy enough to monitor.
Cara asked.
Felix said, sounding hurt.
Felix’s connection registered a sense of alarm.
he asked.
Cara said.
Felix asked.
Cara said.
Cara said.
Felix made a worried sound.
The name sank in. Camaris.
The AI who killed her father.
Cara said.
Felix said, anxiety in his voice. < She tried to peel Vesta like an orange three months ago.>
Cara’s mind raced.
Cara said.
Cara took a deep breath.
Felix said.
She raised the scatter rifle and walked quietly back down the corridor toward the command deck. Voices grew in volume, becoming more distinct, until she plainly heard Harrin whining again.
“We didn’t plan on Osla running for the airlock,” he said. “For all we know, he’s still outside the ship. It seems very unlikely that Cara Sykes could have reached him in time. Even if she did, he’d be a vegetable.”
“If he is dead,” Camaris said, “are you ready to take control of the Andersonians? I need to know that every contingency has been mitigated.”
“I’m ready,” Harrin said. “My Humanity First liaisons are spread throughout the Collective, from the lowest workers’ council to their ruling body. All it will take is a single utterance from me, and they will fall under your control.”
“And the standing army?” Camaris asked.
“Just give the word.”
“Look,” Jentry said, sounding angry to be left out. “If you think he can run a group of people like the Anderson Collective, spread throughout Sol—in the vacuum left by a strong leader like Osla—you need to reassess your plan. Harrin has the charisma of a wet plas bag. There are at least four senators who will rise up in contest, and then any opportunity to deploy that army will be lost in the in-fighting. You won’t have an army of terrorists spread through Sol, you’ll have four different groups ready to get swallowed by their local governments.”
“What do you say to that, Harrin?” Camaris asked.
Harrin’s voice was cold, sounding like a man possessed by a demon. “Nothing will stand in my way, and once the Collective has risen to its true power on Luna, we’ll take our army to High Terra and lock all Earth forces in their own gravity well. Then, the Marsians will fall.”
Cara wanted to groan. The man could cause trouble, but it would take millions of troops to occupy High Terra, let alone blockade Earth.
“You sound very sure of yourself,” Camaris said.
“That’s because I am.”
“Then make it so,” the AI said.
Harrin gave a small chuckle. “I already have. A recorded message has just gone out to the Andersonian Council, with the added verification of Osla’s death. They are executing their attack protocols now. New Austin is about to fall.”
Cara widened her eyes, immediately jumping to the public newsfeeds on her Link. Sure enough, there were scattered reports of attacks on government facilities, but nothing that would look like a coordinated strike yet.
she said.
He responded quickly.
A wave of anger made Cara’s face hot. Of course this all came back to the central mystery of Felix.
he said. Then,
Cara said.
Cara adjusted her grip on the scatter rifle. Her hands were sweaty. she said.
Switching the weapon off safe, she stepped around the edge of the door and took in the scene o
n the command deck.
Jentry, Amanda, and Pedro were still wearing their combat armor. Pedro was sitting at the communications station, while Amanda stood at the edge of the holotank. Jentry stood behind the captain’s seat, his posture hinting that he was afraid to actually sit down and take ownership of the Amplified Solution.
Randall Harrin stood in the middle of the room, face flushed with the power of his speech, and probably drunk on the chaos he had supposedly just unleashed.
Jack was strapped to a chair at one of the crew consoles, ankles bound together and mouth covered with a plas strip. He looked like he’d been crying.
To one side of the captain’s station, dressed in white armor that emphasized her crimson skin and round, black eyes, Camaris the Psion SAI held court. She was the focus of the room. Her posture was a veiled threat to everyone present.
Silver blades extended from her forearms, and two pistols hung on her breastplate, with longer-barreled weapons at her hips. Cara guessed they were some kind of handheld grenade launcher.
A missile launcher hung from her shoulder, extending past the back of her head like a medieval broadsword.
Camaris swung her head as Cara stepped into the doorway, her black eyes like a shark’s.
Cara didn’t hesitate. With the scatter gun at her shoulder, she squeezed the trigger first on the SAI, and then four more times throughout the room until the weapon gave her an overheat warning. Cara dumped it and slid back around the edge of the door. With her back against the bulkhead, she pulled two pulse grenades off her bandolier and tossed them through the doorway.
She counted one bounce on the grenades, and then a roaring yell grew louder in the doorway. Pedro appeared in the opening, clothes smoking and face raw from the scatter rifle’s flash burns.
He caught sight of Cara and turned, providing a broad target. She shot him in the chest with her pulse pistol, and the force knocked him back. He stumbled, arms wide. Cara shot him again, taking another step backward from the door.
As she expected, Jentry slipped around the edge and got a shot off with his pistol. Cara ducked, flattening against the inside wall, and fired two shots at Jentry and another at Pedro.
The big man stumbled. Pedro tried to raise his pistol and failed. He finally went down, landing flat on his back.
Cara tossed another grenade, bouncing it off the outside wall of the corridor so that it rolled into the command deck. The flash exploded just seconds after it crossed the threshold.
Harrin shouted something unintelligible, and Amanda answered, “Go, then!” but no one came through the door.
Cara had them pinned, but was equally trapped by the doorway. If she tried to enter again, she’d be an easy target.
There was no sound from Jentry as the command deck went quiet. Then the click of measured footsteps grew louder.
Camaris appeared in the doorway.
The SAI moved stiffly, as if she wasn’t used to the constraints of a physical form. Cara didn’t hesitate. She fired three shots with her pulse pistol, stepping backward, then reholstered the pistol and raised her rifle.
Camaris absorbed the pulse blasts in the face and chest. The armor weathered the first two shots easily, while the third gashed her cheek open from the bottom of her black eye to her jawline. Blood ran down her neck to the white armor.
“We’ve met before, Cara Sykes,” Camaris said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Cara aimed at Camaris’s neck with two three-round bursts.
Now Camaris moved with smooth precision, shifting to the side to avoid each attack. She smiled with her lips closed, staring unblinkingly at Cara.
“You were smaller then. I tore a hole in the side of your father’s ship and entered. I ripped Lyssa from the weak vessel that trapped her. You watched me free her.”
Time slowed. Cara felt herself back in that moment, staring into her dad’s eyes as the light left them, a mech standing over him with Lyssa’s physical seed hanging from a claw.
A wordless shout escaped Cara’s lips. She fired on Camaris’s face until the rifle ran dry, clicking in her hands.
The crimson woman stood in the middle of the corridor, bleeding from her face and neck, having dodged the assault. She brought her fists to her chest, and two blades extended from the forearms of her armor. She brought her arms down in a fighting stance, still smiling with her dead eyes.
Cara dropped the empty rifle.
Behind Camaris, Senator Harrin appeared in the command deck doorway. He looked from Cara to Camaris, and then to Pedro on the floor.
“Where are you going, Senator?” Camaris asked, not moving her head.
“I’m leaving in one of the escape craft. My people will pick me up on Luna. The attack on the New Austin City Hall is under way. We’ll have control in less than an hour. I want to be there for the newsfeeds.”
“You wouldn’t be running away from me, would you?” Camaris sounded like she was chastising a pet.
“There’s nothing for me to do here, and you aren’t coming to Luna. So I’m leaving.”
“You’re afraid Cara Sykes is going to defeat me.”
“As far as I heard, she just ran out of bullets.”
“Then why don’t you stay? I’ll be so lonely without you.”
As they bickered, Cara ran through her available weapons. She had three grenades in her bandolier, the pulse pistol, and the small projectile pistol she’d gotten at the symposium. Neither seemed terribly effective against Camaris’s armor and ability to dodge. She wished she had the missile launcher hanging across the SAI’s back.
The fact that Camaris was trying to menace her with knives meant she knew Cara had few options. While Cara was wearing the kinetic deflection shipsuit, she wasn’t interested in testing its effectiveness against an opponent who probably out-massed her. Even if a knife couldn’t easily penetrate the suit, Camaris could still hit hard enough to turn Cara’s guts into jelly or easily break some bones.
Cara didn’t have any serious armament, but she did still have the command codes for the ship. Drawing up the quickest, dirtiest flight plan she could think of, she dumped the commands into the secondary astrogation system. She immediately received a status warning that the engine would need two minutes to execute a full burn.
A lot could happen in two minutes.
“I’m leaving,” Harrin said. “I don’t have another frame I can hop into like you do. You aren’t really here.”
“Oh, I’m here,” Camaris said. “I’m very present.” She squeezed her hands into fists, rotating her blades, and stepped toward Cara.
As soon as Camaris moved, Cara turned and ran. She executed another maintenance sequence, identifying Camaris as an internal threat to the ship, and a cabinet ahead of her opened, releasing two rolling drones with articulated arms and spot welders. The drones waved their arms as Cara charged toward them, then located Camaris and rolled past Cara.
The clash of metal filled the corridor. Cara glanced back to see Camaris slicing the second drone in two before she disappeared behind the curve of the hab ring.
Controlling her breathing as the sprint wore on, Cara checked the engine control sequence. She had thirty seconds. If she didn’t reach the airlock and get into the shuttle before then, she would need to find something to grab onto and lock her magboots to the deck, otherwise she’d end up smashed on a bulkhead by a fifty-g thrust.
The airlock appeared ahead of her. Cara thought she heard Camaris’s boots pounding the deck behind her, but she didn’t look back. She reached the airlock and caught a safety handle, swinging herself inside to slap the lock control. Just as the door closed, she grabbed two pulse grenades and tossed them into the corridor.
The door sealed. Camaris’s face filled the access window, her black eyes staring straight into Cara.
The grenades exploded, filling the small window with blue-tinged light that blotted out the SAI’s face. Cara fell back against the outside door, reaching for the lock control. She sl
apped the button. Instead of a confirmation tone, the airlock’s control system gave a complaining alarm.
Turning, Cara tapped the control display. If Camaris hadn’t been wounded by the grenades, she was going to cut her way through the door any second now.
The ship’s engine countdown was at twenty seconds.
The airlock was in a safety lockdown for exterior connection release.
What the hell?
Two heavy clicks reverberated through the airlock, and Cara realized the shuttle had disconnected. She immediately sent a connection request to the shuttle’s comm system, and Osla answered groggily.
He chuckled.
He was right.
A dent appeared in the inside airlock door from one of Camaris’s fists.
Pulling herself into a nearby jumpseat, Cara wrapped the harness over one arm. As she was reaching for the second shoulder strap, the Amplified Solution’s engine came online.
A second dent warped the wall of the airlock door.
Cara locked her magboots to the deck and executed her flight plan.
The Amplified Solution went into an override burn and jumped out of its parking orbit. Cara gritted her teeth as the g-forces dragged her toward the back of the airlock, and she monitored through the environmental control system as bio-signs blinked out in the rest of the ship.
“Sorry, Jack,” Cara said.
Camaris had stopped attacking the door. Cara struggled to swallow under the pressure crushing her against the jumpseat, then closed her eyes to wait for the next maneuver in the flight plan.
The engine cut out. For a heartbeat, Cara floated weightlessly in her harness, her arms drifting limp.
Then the attitude thrusters activated, flipping the ship around in a rapid rotation, and the main engine initiated a second full burn.
Anyone who hadn’t been smashed in the first burn would find themselves flattened against the opposite wall of whatever room they were in.
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