Alien AI's Marine (Warriors of the Lathar Book 14)

by Mina Carter

  Jay grabbed her hand and looked directly at Miisan.

  “Okay. I’m going to need you clear a path for us to the shuttlebay and guide us through,” he said, his voice ringing with authority. “Can you do that?”

  The AI’s attention snapped back to him and she appeared to get herself together. It was a more emotional response than Keris would have expected from an AI, but given the presence of the B’Kaar aboard, she could understand it. AIs might not die in precisely the same way as biologicals, but they were still aware enough to fear it.

  “Yes, I can. Follow the lights. I can’t go with you but I’ll route you through.”

  With that she disappeared, only to appear again near the rear door of the hangar. It was opposite the one they’d entered. The two of them hurried toward her.

  “I need to take you through the back corridors,” she said as the door opened ahead of them to reveal a cargo lift. Jay nodded, herding Keris through it. Her legs didn’t want to obey her initially, but she dug down and got it together. She could do this… she refused to disappoint him.

  “That works,” he said. “And we need weapons. Can’t go back to the rooms, not if they know about us. Dammit,” he hissed as the door shut before the AI could answer. “I don’t think she heard us.”

  Panic threatened to overwhelm Keris. Without Miisan, how would they get out of here? Her breathing shortened and she clutched at his arm to steady herself.

  “Jay…” she choked out. “The B’Kaar know where we are… Something is wrong with this body. There must be gas or something.”

  He shook his head and turned her to face him, looking down at her intently. “There’s nothing wrong with you, sweetheart. Look at me,” he lifted her chin with strong fingers. “Yeah, you’re fine…”

  “I can’t be!” she wailed. “My respiratory system is failing and my heart is in overdrive.”

  He cut off her words with a gentle kiss, pulling her up against him. She went rigid, wondering what he was doing, but then the soft brush of his lips over hers triggered a cascade of memories and she relaxed against him with a soft moan.

  He eased away, smiling against her lips. “Sensory overload, that’s all. You were panicking.”

  She blinked and looked up at him curiously. “The treatment for a human panicking is a kiss?”

  He chuckled, his blue-green eyes glinting as the floor lights flashed when they went by. “Not exactly. I just took the opportunity. You’re not like other humans, and you’re never going to be. I figured if I could get you to focus on something, the overload would pass.”

  “That’s… actually quite sensible,” she admitted, feeling a lot calmer. “Thank you.”

  Then she frowned.

  “As long as you don’t go kissing other women when they panic.”

  He smiled and eased himself away from her as the lift slowed. “Don’t worry, sweet stuff, I only have eyes for you. You good now?”

  She nodded, an icy calm settling over her as she focused, filtering through the input she was receiving from this new body. She’d been so concerned with the abilities she’d lost that she hadn’t stopped to think about what she could do. What she should pay attention to and what she didn’t need to, shoving it to the background. This body was biological, yes, but it was a machine like any other. She just had to learn to operate it.

  “Okay good. Stay behind me, okay?”

  Pulling her to the side, he tucked her in behind him as the doors opened. Tension vibrated through his large frame as he checked the corridor ahead. Even for an abandoned base, it looked rough. The air was still, undisturbed, and a thin layer of dust billowed up as they walked.

  Being protected felt odd. She was so used to being the one who did the protecting, but in this body, she couldn’t protect anyone—not herself and not Jay. But settled against his side, hearing the steady beat of his heart, she couldn’t find it in herself to mourn the loss of her old body.

  “Shiiit,” he breathed. “All we need now are killer clowns.”

  She arched her eyebrow as they walked quickly down the corridor, the lights illuminating ahead of them and going out when they’d passed. “Killer clowns? Clowns appear to be an entirely human phenomenon. The likelihood of us running into them all the way out here is so remote as to be impossible. It would require—”

  He pulled her to him and cut her off with a hard kiss. “Did anyone ever tell you the Lathar are way too fucking literal?”

  She clung to him for a moment, savoring the sense of closeness. While yes, this body was a machine and she could ignore some of the information it fed her, she was also quickly becoming aware that it worked better when she gave in to some of its demands. Staying close to Jay and physical contact was soothing, feeding something she didn’t understand deep inside.

  “You may have mentioned it to Seren a time or two,” she admitted with a small smile and then nodded ahead where the lights were beginning to flash faster. “I think that’s our signal to keep moving.”

  Jay chuckled, looking down at her. “That’s AIs for you, so fucking impatient.”

  “I am not impatient!” she exclaimed as they continued, her hand in his as they started to jog. Still chuckling, he didn’t reply.

  It didn’t take them long to reach a shuttlebay. Unlike the one they’d arrived in or the one that currently housed the B’Kaar ship, this one was much smaller, with only two landing pads and a ventral access door. Lights raced across the floor to the nearest shuttle, its door already lifting up on the side to allow them access.

  Her steps faltered for a second. The ship was a class she’d never seen before, all sleek lines and dangerous curves. It was beautiful, utterly beautiful.

  “Please tell me you can fly this damn thing,” Jay said, shoving her ahead of him into the cramped confines of the small ship. “I can barely fly a human ship, and one thing’s for sure… this thing ain’t human!”

  Amusement rolled through her and she shot him a smile over her shoulder. “AI, remember? I can fly anything the Lathar ever made.”

  “I sure hope so, doll,” Jay muttered, not sure if she heard him as he dropped into the copilot’s seat next to her.

  She already had her hands over the pilot’s console, the screens in front of them flaring to life. Since he’d been captured, he’d seen a lot of high-level alien tech, to the point it no longer surprised him.

  This did.

  Instead of the usual holographic touchscreen interfaces, the screens lit brightly, a light appearing in front of them both like an eye and washing over his face.

  “Wait… what the fuck was that?” he hissed, trying to turn his head, only to see Keris being scanned in the same way.

  “Jevenar variant Lathar,” a disembodied voice announced before Keris’s screen altered itself. “Compatible. Reconfiguring systems.”

  He looked at his, where the light was still flashing. Then it announced, “Variant unknown. Defaulting to standard system configuration.”

  “It doesn’t know what I am?” he asked in surprise as the copilot’s panel appeared in front of him.

  “Seems not,” Keris replied, bringing the shuttle’s engines online with swift, sure movements. “Looks like an advanced adaptive control system designed to operate with each individual’s genetic strengths and weaknesses. I suspect that for variants like the Lathar or the Navarr, the lighting and audio alters for their visual and auditory spectrums.”

  “This is… fucking awesome.” He looked around him with awe. “Why aren’t the rest of the Lathar using this?”

  “It’s Cabal tech. It’s light years ahead of the empire even now. I’d heard whispers and rumors of it, but those were years ago, when I was first activated.”

  He leaned through the display in front of him and blew the dust off the bulkhead just under the main windscreen in front of them. “Yeah, looks like it’s old. So why didn’t they share it?”

  She shrugged. “The cabal were a myth, no one was sure they existed. The stories said they wer
e there in the shadows, hiding and altering events through history. But if they released something like this? Everyone would know they were there.”

  “Ahh, like the Illuminati. We had them on Earth, centuries ago.” He nodded in understanding as he sat back. Although he could read about sixty percent of the screen in front of him, it still wasn’t enough to do more than get in Keris’s way if he tried to help. Frustration rolled through him. He didn’t like to be helpless or feel like he wasn’t pulling his weight. It was totally against everything he stood for.

  The shuttle lifted off the pad as the doors in the middle of the floor opened. Space vacuum sucked the air out of the room in a hard rush, a loose panel in the wall opposite flapping.

  “Can you contact the Izal’vias?” he asked. “We could do with some backup here.”

  She shook her head, using the maneuvering thrusters to bring them into position. “I’d need to access the base’s communications array to do that. The B’Kaar would register that and be able to trace us. I don’t think announcing our departure is a good idea.”

  “Fuck no,” Jay breathed. “Let’s keep these assholes in the dark as long as possible.”

  “There is only a problem with power in some areas of the base and they have onboard lighting on their kasi—” She paused and looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You weren’t talking about illumination. Were you?”

  Jay chuckled. “You’re learning, sweetheart.”

  She grumbled under her breath, which only made his smile broader. “Okay, some coordinates are laid in.” Her frown deepened as she flipped between screens. “Looks like the last place this shuttle arrived from.”

  “Does it matter?” he asked. “Just get us the fuck out of here and we’ll figure out the rest later.”

  “Yes, sir!” she quipped, throwing him a sassy look and a small salute. He didn’t want to know where she’d picked that up from. “When I drop us out of here, we’re going to have to haul ass and run for it. It might get a little bumpy.” She cast a pointed glance at the harness on his seat.

  “Got it, boss, safety first.” He winked as he slid into it. “Did we get Miisan on board as well?”

  His petite companion’s beautiful face creased in concentration for a moment, the screens changing in front of her faster than he could register. Downloading into a physical body might have hampered her some, but it was easy to see she’d retained a lot of abilities from her nonorganic origins.

  “No. I can’t find her in the shuttle’s computer core.”

  “Could she be hiding?”

  They were almost over the ventral doors now, the darkness of space visible between them and the widening deck.

  Keris slid him a sideways look, one eyebrow raised. It was a universal look between men and women, one he’d been treated to on more than a few occasions before.

  “I take it the answer is no?”

  “This thing’s storage is the size of…” she waved her hand dismissively. “I can’t find the human word but it’s small. Not large enough to hold—”

  Because he was looking directly at her, the door they’d entered through was visible in the wrap-around screen behind her, so Jay spotted the first B’Kaar just as the lights on the alien warrior’s suit illuminated.

  “Gogogogo!” he bellowed, ducking his head as the cyberwarriors spilled into the room and started firing.

  Keris ducked, her face tight with concentration as the shuttle took hits. The next instant they fell from the base. He gasped, instinctively tucking his hands around the straps of his harness as the force of the thrust jerked his ass from his seat.

  “Hold on!” she yelled over the sound of warning klaxons as she rolled the shuttle.

  He got scattered images as they went into high-g maneuvers, slamming him this way and that in the seat. Stars whizzed past the viewscreen as did suited B’Kaar warriors, their canon arrays flaring as they fired.

  “Jay, talk to me,” Keris ordered, her voice sharp. “I need you to activate that screen and tell me what numbers you see. Now!”

  “What? Why?” he asked, already waving his hands at the screen as Keris turned the shuttle and gunned the engines.

  “I need real-time vectors,” she said as they slewed to the side. A nasty volley of cannon fire peppered space where they’d just been. “This isn’t a combat shuttle. There’s no way it can stand up to B’Kaar fire for long. I need to find a jump vector for the cabal’s portal system.”

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” he said as rows of numbers filled the screen in front of him. He started to read them off quickly. “What am I looking for? Wouldn’t the shuttle computer be better for this?”

  “It’s maxed out running the systems and there’s no computer better than a biological brain,” she told him shortly. He could hear the strain in her voice, but she was calm. Deadly calm. Pride filled him. She’d come so far. “I need anything that’s lit up in blue.”

  His eyes narrowed as he focused down onto the numbers in blue, reeling them off as they appeared.

  “Calculating vectors… please wait…” the shuttle said, and Jay bit back his growl. All this alien tech and they still got a “please hold”? All that was missing was the crappy music.

  Another screen flicked up on his right side and he didn’t need to be a genius to work out what it was warning him about.

  “We got a lock on our tail, sweet stuff,” he warned. “So whatever you’re going to do, do it now!”

  “Jumping,” she replied, hitting a button in front of her.

  The stars in front of them disappeared as the portal unfurled in a blossom of blue light before swallowing them whole into blackness.

  17

  “I’ve never been on an alien planet before.”

  Keris turned and looked over her shoulder at Jay as they climbed the path up the side of the mountain pass. The portal had spit them out in orbit of a s’tria class planet, and a quick scan had revealed an old Latharian science station in one of the mountain ranges.

  They were on their way there now, the shuttle hidden in a nearby cave. Alloy in the rocks of these mountains would conceal its signature if the B’Kaar caught up with them. Perhaps long enough for help to get here.

  “Surely you have?” she asked as they approached the top of the pass. “That colony wasn’t on Earth…”

  He waved dismissively. “Yeah, but that was still a human planet. This isn’t.”

  “Well… no. I guess not.” She shrugged. He had a point. She’d found him on the D’Corr ship and since being picked up from the colony, they’d been aboard a succession of different vessels. They hadn’t even made planetfall in their search for the AI, an ion storm keeping them in orbit and then Nyek’s message coming through before they could land. “Is it everything you expected it to be?”

  He chuckled as they reached the rise. “Looks a bit like Wales.”

  She blinked. “Wales?”

  “It’s a small country on Earth,” he replied. “Spent some time there as a kid. In a tent. It rained a lot.”

  “Sounds charming.”

  “Yeah, that’s one way to describe it.”

  The outpost came into sight in front of them. Keris kept an eye out for any automated defenses as they walked toward it. But the single-level building seemed long abandoned, nothing moving as they approached the entrance.

  It was slightly ajar. Jay pulled the blaster he’d purloined from the shuttle’s small weapons cache, a hand out to move Keris behind him.

  “I don’t think anyone is home.”

  She shook her head. “None of the automated defenses are active and I didn’t get an answer when I pinged it from the shuttle. But the core should still be viable. If we can spool up the generators, I can get a message out to the Izal’vias.”

  He nodded, checking inside the door for predators before setting his shoulder against it and shoving it open wider. He stepped through and held his hand out for her, to help her step over the bulkhead.

  “I could have squee
zed through the gap,” she told him, flashing him a wide smile as she slipped past him into the semi darkness. Dust motes danced in the air as Jay swept his torch around, and there was an odd smell. Something had died in here, but by the smell of it, a long time ago. She hoped anyway.

  “There is a great difference between could have and should have,” he told her, taking point to light their path.

  She kept behind him as they made their way through the small building. There was no telling what could have gotten in here with the door open, and she didn’t fancy coming face to face with any of the local predators. Particularly when she had no idea what they might be.

  One thing was reassuring, though. The presence of an outpost here ensured that this was not a Krin planet nor one anywhere near their territory.

  And, it was kind of cute how protective Jay was being. She was used to being the first one through any door thanks to her mechanical build, but not anymore. Any chance he got, Jay put himself between her and any possible danger.

  “How long do you think this place has been abandoned?” he asked, staying by the door as they reached the control room. There was only one way in and out, so he guarded their backs—a marine through and through. She’d downloaded most of the human database just to check what one was. Jay was practically the definition.

  She smiled as she initiated the startup procedures. This was not exactly how she expected their relationship to go, on the run together from murderous B’Kaar.

  Her thoughts stuttered as the systems flared to life. When had she started to think in terms of relationships? All she’d been focused on for so long was becoming biological, but now she realized it was far more than that. She’d wanted to become biological to be with Jay. She… she loved him.