Zee hadn’t taken off after the other crushers—he remained protectively close to Casmir. But Tristan was poised to charge with the others.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“Help me with the financial stuff. You’re a numbers guy, right?”
Judging by the longing way he looked toward the battle, Tristan still considered himself first and foremost a combat guy.
“I’m going to need help in here.” Casmir could already see a plethora of displays and computer equipment that would have daunted even an analyst from Royal Intelligence.
Tristan hesitated, especially when a weapon fired, and one of the crushers flew backward from what appeared to be the nearly indestructible tank. But he finally nodded and ran inside.
“Knock if you want in,” Casmir yelled to everyone else.
They were too busy to glance back. Asger cursed, pain leaking into his words. He was already injured, and if that was some corrosive acid making its way into the gap in his armor…
Casmir forced himself to trust that the men and the crushers could handle themselves, and closed the doors. And locked them. They were buying him time. He would put it to the best use that he could.
“I’m not sure how long we’ll have.” Casmir waved for Tristan to follow him to the multiple desks and wall of displays.
They were showing footage from the war in System Lion and business news and market updates from all of the systems. The war reports riveted Casmir for a few seconds, especially since a couple seemed to be tactical displays from ships’ computers rather than information being filtered through the media. They looked like real-time reports, but he knew that wasn’t possible.
“I’m not sure I can be of use in here.” Tristan, who’d faced countless killer robots, looked daunted as he scanned the displays, text and numbers scrolling down some of them.
“If I can get in, you can help me sift through everything.” Casmir plugged his cable into the first port he found and used his access to find Dubashi’s personal files.
“I’m not that good at sifting. At reading.”
“Aren’t you training to be a real-estate mogul?”
“Not by reading. There are lectures.” Despite the booms coming from beyond the door, Tristan looked embarrassed as he shrugged and avoided Casmir’s glance. “I’m a slow reader,” he mumbled.
“With numbers too? Or just letters?”
“I’m not bad with numbers.”
“Let me see if I can find his financial records. I got a tip that he might have some problems in that area. I need you to interpret them while I… I’m not sure yet, but I’m going to see if I can crash that meeting without actually walking in there.”
“Walking in behind your crushers might not be suicidal.”
“But that tends to start a battle.” Casmir tapped at his tablet furiously, again lamenting how much slower it was than his chip, but he was gaining familiarity with the network now. The same access he’d had to acquire for Dubashi’s door got him into his secure financial reports. “I want to stop a battle.”
Tristan glanced at Zee. “Are you sure? I think Sultan Shayban would be pleased if you destroyed Dubashi’s entire base—and him too. He has a bloodthirsty side.”
“I don’t.” Casmir didn’t explain that even destroying the robots here bothered him. “Here’s some recent financial data. I’d have to do more work to gain access to his bank accounts, but it looks like he’s recording everything in his books.” He put the data he’d found on one of the displays, ticking boxes for graphs and charts in case that helped Tristan.
Barely glancing at the information himself, he switched his attention to finding the conference room Dubashi was using on the network. He hoped the meeting was still going on. It seemed possible that Dubashi, realizing an enemy was invading his base and destroying his robots, would have ended it early to go deal with the problem. He might even now be leading some huge army to his office…
“Huh,” Tristan muttered.
Casmir, experiencing a huh of his own, didn’t look over. He’d found the only conference room with the computers powered up and online. Remembering the security camera he’d seen in the hangar, he flagged it and went hunting for access to the cameras for the entire base. Was there one in that conference room?
“If this is right, he’s in the red,” Tristan said. “For his personal accounts and his business account, at least his main one, the one he appears to be using to fund the war. He has plenty of assets—asteroids, refineries, mining ships, and a whole bunch of warships he must have purchased for the blockade—but those aren’t the kinds of things one can easily find buyers for or sell off quickly. His cash flow is severely limited right now. Not at all sufficient for his current demands. Damn, do you know how much it costs to pay mercenaries? And there are… are those bribes?”
As Tristan continued to mutter to himself about what he was discovering, Casmir found the software running all of the cameras in the base and surfed around until he located one in the conference room. He put it up on one of the displays. It gave a view of a massive wood table with numerous men and a few women sitting around it, all wearing combat armor or galaxy suits in a mishmash of colors and patterns. It was clear these were independent operators and not members of a single team.
Casmir’s breath caught as he recognized the familiar black armor of Rache’s mercenary company. The person wearing it was leaning against a wall instead of sitting, and he looked about Casmir’s height. Rache, then.
But where was Kim? And for that matter, why hadn’t Rache brought more of his men?
Was Kim hunting for Scholar Sunflyer and the theoretical bioweapon? By herself? Casmir’s heart shriveled at the idea. As competent as she was, she shouldn’t be alone in this place. What if she was locked up and being forced to work on some vile project? Why had Rache left her? Had Kim assumed she would be able to communicate with Casmir? Damn the lack of a wireless network.
What if Dubashi was with Kim at that very moment? Casmir didn’t see him sitting at the table.
Further, several of the people spoke to each other and gestured agitatedly. Impatiently. Because Dubashi hadn’t arrived yet? Or because he’d left them to deal with the intruders? Casmir grimaced and glanced at the door, but whatever trouble was going on outside it, Asger and Bjarke and the crushers were handling it. So far.
“I need sound,” Casmir whispered.
He wanted to hear what the people in that meeting were saying, and even more, he wanted to be able to talk to them.
As he was tinkering, Dubashi walked into the conference room. The conversations around the table halted, all eyes turning toward him.
A display above the one that Casmir had requisitioned flashed, and he jerked his gaze away, envisioning Dubashi playing some seizure-causing light show. But it was just a report coming up, brighter than what had been an empty backdrop of stars. Before he could read the report, it shifted back to stars, this time with ships flying toward the camera.
The other displays in the row showed footage from the war, and at first, Casmir thought this was another recording sent from System Lion, but he recognized those ships. The Osprey, the Eagle, and was that Prince Jorg’s Chivalrous?
A banner displayed an alert, warning that the ships were coming and would arrive in two hours. Maybe that was why the people in that meeting were agitated. Did they know?
Casmir reached up to rub his neck and clunked his fingers against his helmet. He pushed it back, trusting Asger and Bjarke to warn him if the office was about to be overrun. He rubbed his neck and shook his head and wished he could rub his aching brain. They were about to be in the middle of a war zone. He couldn’t imagine Jorg was coming for the meeting. Dubashi was sure to defend his base… or order his new mercenary allies to help.
“But will they help? Mercenaries expect to get paid.” Casmir looked over at Tristan, caught him moving his lips as he read something.
Tristan swiped at a display, pulling up new columns o
f numbers.
“Can you make me a report showing that he’s in financial trouble and can’t pay those mercenaries?” Casmir asked. “Something very simple that could be interpreted at a glance.”
“I… should be able to. Yes. I am an expert at simple.”
“Good. I’m going to see if I can impose myself on that meeting.”
Dubashi had started pacing, lifting his arms, and talking. Making his pitch.
Casmir didn’t have sound yet, but he could guess at what the man was saying, what he was promising. If he didn’t figure out how to impose himself quickly, those mercenaries would rush back to their ships in a fervor and sail off to attack the incoming Kingdom fleet.
The two robots wrestled Kim toward the reclining chair surrounded by hooks and dangling sensors, unbreakable metal straps gleaming on the arm and leg rests. She fought, kicking and yelling her frustration, but her metal assailants were as strong as Zee. She systematically ran through all the escapes she knew, escapes that worked well against humans with weaknesses in the joints and the ability to feel pain, but she couldn’t break their mechanical grips. Panic made her desperate and even less effective, but it was so hard to tamp it down.
What would Casmir do? He was never the strongest in the room, so he rarely tried a physical fight. He would talk to the damn robots. Would that work?
“Wait,” she panted, glancing back and groaning at how close she was to ending up in that chair. “You need me. Dubashi needs me. The rockets aren’t loaded right now. This uploading of the consciousness might not work. Or—” another argument struck her, one that was actually true, “—it’ll take too long! Isn’t the Kingdom fleet on your doorstep?”
The robots slammed her into the chair. One tore her hood off as a metal strap snapped around her left wrist. She managed to keep her legs from settling into the leg rests, instead kicking out and clubbing one of the robots in the torso. She’d broken boards and bones with those kicks, but the five-hundred-pound robot did not budge. It pushed her legs down while the other pressed a hand against her chest.
“Your Highness,” a groggy voice said.
General Kalb. She’d woken up and escaped from the lab.
Kim doubted she would have any more luck pleading her case with the officer, not after tricking her and knocking her out, but she raised her voice to try. “General, you don’t have time to do this to me if you want me to help you with the rockets.”
“Shut her up,” Kalb growled to the robots. Then she lowered her voice. Speaking on the comm? To Dubashi?
Despite Kim’s ongoing struggles, the robots got her fully snapped into the chair. One pressed her head against the rest, and a cool band with a viscous layer of some cool slick material slithered across her forehead like a snake. It snapped into place, and she could no longer lift her head.
She wanted to be defiant and brave, but tears of fear pricked at her eyes. Nobody except Rache knew she was here, and he was in that damn meeting, trying to get this asshole of a prince to pay him to assassinate Jager. Screw him and his cursed obsession.
And she was just as frustrated that she hadn’t arranged to meet up with Casmir before she’d gotten in here. But how could she have guessed there wouldn’t be a wireless network anywhere in the whole base and that they wouldn’t be able to communicate?
What she could have done was accept Casmir’s offer of the crushers. It had been foolish to come here with only Rache as backup. He was more unpredictable than Zee.
“She took a bunch of containers out of the rockets,” Kalb said. “She said they were a salt solution, but they had to be the completed virus. She wouldn’t have cared about removing them if not. Sunflyer completed them weeks ago, and we never knew. We’ve been sitting here on this.”
Kim could hear the muted tones of Dubashi’s voice, now that she was no longer struggling—no longer could struggle—but not the words.
“I’m not touching them,” Kalb said. “You come down here and do it yourself. Or convince her to deal with it. But I wouldn’t trust her to, even with a gun at her back. I’ve got her strapped in that chair right now. How long does that transfer take? Could we ensure the android version would be any more likely to comply?”
Kim curled her fingers around the edges of the arm rests, tightening them painfully as she imagined being an android, just like her mother. An android who could no longer taste coffee, enjoy the warmth of the sun on her skin, kiss David… She didn’t even know if she’d liked that, but she liked him and wanted another chance. He would never kiss an android.
“How long do we have?” Kalb asked quietly, responding to some new comment. After a moment, she said, “Can the base stand up to them?”
Kim wished she could hear the answer. Or maybe she didn’t want to know.
The tears threatened to fall as she imagined being strapped in here as Jorg’s fleet dropped its bombs and destroyed the moon, and her along with it. Killed by friendly fire, her body blown out into the vacuum of space. Who would even know that she’d died here?
31
Acid ate into Asger’s wounded shoulder as he smashed his pertundo down onto the armored tank again and again, lightning streaking from his nearly indestructible blade. Unfortunately, the tank was just as indestructible. What was this thing made from?
The acid it kept spraying did not eat away its own hull. Meanwhile, alarms flashed on Asger’s helmet display, warning him that his armor was in danger of being compromised. Further compromised. Already, it felt like a hole had burned all the way through the front of his shoulder to the other side.
One of the crushers leaped onto the top of the tank, trying to find some panel to rip off. He almost grabbed the hole that was spewing the acid vapor.
Asger clambered closer to the spot and swung his blade at the hole. Maybe that was a weakness.
The blade clanged off the armored hull, not small enough to connect with the delivery mechanism inside. He shifted his position and the shaft of the long weapon in his hands. Instead of trying to cut, he drove the long tip of the pertundo into the hole.
Metal crunched as it sank in with satisfying give. He rammed it in as deeply as he could, then twisted, hoping the thing’s computer brain was back there.
Smoke wafted from the hole around the pertundo’s shaft. Not acid vapor this time but genuine smoke.
Something pushed up on his pertundo, startling him. The crushers were working together to heave the tank over in the tunnel. Asger yanked out his weapon before it was torn out of his hands.
“Look out!” he warned, since his father wasn’t in sight. Was he attacking the tank on the other side?
The crushers lifted, then pushed, and the nose of the tank cleared the ceiling—one gun bent as it scraped along the surface. The vehicle tipped over to land on its back, studded treads whirring uselessly as it lay like an upside-down turtle.
Asger spotted his father on the other side of the tank. He’d gotten out of the way, but he would have been pinned if he hadn’t been paying attention.
He gave Asger a curt nod through the smoke. Asger nodded back. The crushers fell upon the less sturdy underside of the tank, like scavenger birds tearing apart some hapless roadkill.
His father glanced down the hallway, looking the way they had come, checking for more threats. He must not have seen anything because he climbed past the crushers and joined Asger. They walked back to the big metal doors that Casmir and Tristan had disappeared behind. Asger’s shoulder throbbed with each step, or maybe with each heartbeat.
He leaned against one of the doors and waited, expecting another attack to come. Whatever Casmir planned to do, it was a foregone conclusion that Dubashi would try to stop him.
After watching the carrion-crushers finish demolishing the tank, as if they were tearing off pieces to recycle for some other purpose, his father leaned beside him against the other door. Asger considered knocking and asking to be let in, but there was nothing he would be able to do when it came to hacking networks. This was hi
s place. Guarding the door and hoping Casmir could work magic. And that it was a type of magic that would turn the war in the Kingdom’s favor, so that Asger would be allowed to go home.
As seconds passed, and the crushers settled, Asger looked over at his stone-faced father. Was he homesick after more than a year away? Or had Odin long since stopped seeming like home to him? It had been so long since they’d both been home on the family estate together. Asger decided he would prefer to stay in town at the knights’ barracks if they were both on Odin at the same time. Even now, he wished he were here with someone else. Qin.
Was she back on the Dragon worrying about him? He knew she’d wanted to come.
Asger caught his father looking over at him. Judging him, no doubt. Wondering why he wasn’t a better fighter, a better knight, a better son.
“William?” His father pushed back his faceplate and wiped sweat from his brow. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around more when you were growing up.”
Asger felt his jaw hit the deck—or at least the bottom of his helmet. That was the last thing he’d expected. He couldn’t remember his father ever apologizing to him.
“You know my father was a knight, too, a great war hero in the Lunar Riots. He wasn’t around much when I was growing up. Because he was so important, he was trusted and called on to go off-planet frequently. Whenever he was around, he instructed me on combat and quizzed me on the Code and the Kingdom’s history. He always seemed to keep testing me until I got one wrong, and then he’d let me know I needed to study harder. The Asgers have always been great knights and protectors, and I was expected to be one too. I got frustrated with trying to measure up to his standards and—you’ll find this surprising—developed a sarcastic streak.”
A biting streak, Asger would have called it. He’d felt its bite often.
“My superiors didn’t appreciate it any more than my father did, if you can imagine. I dug myself a hole that I had to work hard to climb out of. By the time you came along, I’d earned some respect, though it never seemed like enough. I felt I had to prove myself over and over again. Because my father was extraordinary, and his father was extraordinary, I couldn’t be anything less. And I…” He looked away. “I couldn’t have a son that was anything less.”
Planet Killer (Star Kingdom Book 6) Page 45
