Bianca D'Arc

by King of Clubs

  “I love you, Charlemagne.” She stole his thunder, but he didn’t mind. He hadn’t dared hope that she returned the deep feelings he could no longer deny.

  “I love you too, Lila. I never thought…”

  She reached up and silenced his words with the sweetest kiss he’d ever known. When she pulled back, he wanted to follow, but the tears in her eyes halted him.

  “Don’t cry, sweetheart. You are the most important thing in my life. I just wanted you to know, in case…”

  “Don’t say it. You will succeed.” She squeezed his hands, smiling now, though her eyes were still watery. “If you think you’re getting away from me now, you’d better think again. Now do it, Chip, before I lose my nerve. Become what you were always meant to be.”

  Her faith in him was what gave him the courage to open himself up to the computer that had somehow sprouted a personality and consciousness.

  “I’m ready, Maddie,” he said aloud, knowing the station would hear. He sat back in the chair and tried his best to be receptive, opening all the ports on his implant. One of his hands clenched the armrest of the chair, the other held tightly to the miracle of a woman at his side. Without her, he wouldn’t even attempt this. But to save her, and everyone else on the station, he had to at least try.

  Then it began. A pulsating white haze of light and sound. A cacophony of the senses that made no noise, but sounded through his being with the hum of organized, streamlined thought. Data in its purest form. Programs to monitor the data and control the lifeblood of the station itself.

  A buzzing began in his brain, followed by pain as the brain itself rerouted neurons to form biomechanical synapses around the existing connections with the hardware of the implant. Blinding pain made him shut his eyes and clench his hands. All he felt was pain, but then Lila was there.

  She held tight to his hand, grounding him to his body while his brain adapted at flash point speed. His mind was merging with the computer, his brain expanding to become one with the implant in a way he’d never even dreamed was possible before today. He merged with the station, accepting the heavy responsibility of the node that was so important to their defense.

  As it settled into space in the folds of his brain—the unused portions of his mind that had a nearly infinite capacity for data storage and computation faster than any computer—he realized quite a few things. The first of which was that the pirates didn’t have nearly as strong a hold on C&C as they pretended. The second was that the node wasn’t all that taxing.

  He could do more.

  “Chip?” Lila’s voice came to him from far away, but he could feel her warmth, her hand in his. He opened his eyes and found her beautiful face at his side.

  “This is… pretty amazing, Lila.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. You were right. I’ve got the node.”

  “They’re through the bulkhead in Core Section Five,” she reported needlessly. He already knew.

  “It’s okay. There’s nothing there they can use. In fact…” Chip sent out a flicker of thought, opening the blast doors the pirates had bypassed by cutting through the bulkhead. That opened the route between the cornered pirates and a fresh platoon of station police who had finally fought their way past Delta Epsilon and into the heart of Core Section Five.

  “You did that?” Lila asked, watching the screen wall where the video from that corridor was still streaming live.

  “Yep.” He sent out commands to doors and other systems all over the station to make things easier for the police. He also unlocked all the police stations and freed the thirty percent of station cops who had been trapped inside.

  The tide was turning fast.

  Then the pirate fleet jumped into the area, dangerously close to the station. The bastards had microjumped inside the system—something law abiding pilots wouldn’t ordinarily do.

  Lila reached out her free hand to switch the view on the wall screen. She brought up a schematic representation of the station and the space around it. Every ship was mapped, represented by a realistic image of its hull type and size, along with known capabilities and an estimate of its firepower. The friendlies were in green. The pirates in red. Neutral or unknown ships were yellow.

  Julian, in the captured pirate ship, moved to intercept, as did the other fighters. A few of the civilian vessels that had been docked at the station also joined the defense, but it wasn’t going to be enough. There were a lot more red marked ships on that screen than green.

  “I have long-range scan capabilities,” Maddie interjected in his expanded mind. Their connection was closer now. It almost felt like Lila talking to him. His internal senses perceived Maddie as a separate being, just like him.

  “Wow.” He couldn’t help being a little in awe of his new, much larger internal vision of reality. Maddie didn’t seem to know how to reply and he took himself to task. “What can you pick up? Help was supposed to be on the way. We just have to hold off until they get here.”

  “I don’t see any other ships, friendly or otherwise, in-system.”

  That wasn’t good news. He needed to contact Winters, or whoever was manning the war room, scrambling whatever vessels they could scrounge. Faster than thought, he sent out the message. It was answered a beat later by the computer that had apparently been waiting for him to ping it.

  The return message was a download of statistics and data that only he could decipher given the top secret codes in his implant. Only now, he didn’t have to run the data consciously through his implant. It was available instantaneously. There was no distinction between him and his implant now. No separateness. They were one and the same, just as Lila had foreseen.

  “They’re sending a battle group our way, but it won’t be here soon enough,” Chip reported aloud so Lila could hear. “We’ve got to think of something else.”

  “If you can contact Winters through the com nodes…” Lila referred to the communications satellites and installations set up through the galaxy. “And insert yourself into the station control systems…” He thought he knew where she was going and started to send out feeler pings to some of the ships in the area. “Might you be able to influence or even take over some of those enemy ships?”

  “I’m on it.” He redoubled his efforts.

  It was a huge stretch, but easier than he would have guessed. He chose the closest of the enemy ships. It was already engaging one of the fighters. Julian was making his way over from the far side of the station, but the engines on the pirate ship he’d commandeered had been cold. He was limited to in-system drives until the flight engines warmed up. The pilot of the fighter was good, but he was seriously outgunned. All he had going for him was his smaller size and better maneuverability. That, and his unconventional flying skills kept him alive to make repeated strikes at the enemy.

  Chip tried a head on approach to the enemy ship’s computer first, but was rebuffed. It was armored against intrusion into its weapons and navigation systems. He’d have to find a backdoor if this was going to work at all.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead as he examined the ship’s systems. A thought occurred to him when he realized he was alone in this inquiry. Maddie was either bound to the station somehow, or hadn’t wanted to join him, but he needed her help. He quickly retracted his queries to the ship’s computer and went back to Maddie on the station.

  “Has the station dock ever housed any of the enemy ships? If so, do you still have the pass codes for the maintenance systems?” he asked her quickly.

  By way of reply, she shunted a list of codes and their corresponding ship identification data to him. In the blink of an eye, he was able to go back to the ship, using the maintenance codes that had never been changed and gain access to the maintenance systems. From there, it was an easy jaunt through the computer to the drives section. Weapons were still protected, but he could at least knock out their propulsion and maneuverability, stranding them dead in the water, so to speak.

  Before waiti
ng to see how his commands worked on the first ship, his mind raced to the next and the next, shutting them down one by one. As the pirate fleet began to lose power, Chip began to feel the strain. It was too much. Finally, too much for his meager human brain to handle. But he had to stop the pirates. He had to stop every ship he could so the small group of defenders stood a chance.

  “It’s working!” Lila said excitedly. “The pirate ships are stopping in their tracks.”

  “I can’t keep this up much longer,” he warned, feeling the strain.

  She squeezed his hand. “I believe in you.” Her simple statement gave him the strength he needed to expand beyond the burden of one comparatively simple node and out, into the surrounding space. Expanding his mind beyond what it had been even a moment before. Beyond the implant. Beyond the brain itself. He became more than either one, stronger for both of them merging into one, much more powerful entity.

  One by one, he took control of the pirate ships. One by one, he disabled their drives and locked the pirates out of their own systems. He didn’t have to drop one to go on to the next. He could handle them all at once. It took all his effort. All his concentration, but he was doing it.

  He blocked out everything but the ships surrounding the station. He lost track of his own body there for a few minutes, but when it was finally over and he’d done all he could to help the few ships that were on their side, he retracted his influence, leaving the vast majority of the pirate ships drifting in space without power. They wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. And they certainly wouldn’t be hurting anyone with all their bays locked down tight and their weapons without power.

  He shook his head as he came back to himself, suddenly aware that he was alone in the office.

  Chapter Eleven

  “What the—”

  Rifle fire from the bar answered his question. He stumbled to his feet, feeling uncertain in his own skin after the mental trip he’d been on. But there was no time to waste. He grabbed one of the pulse rifles he’d brought in with him and stumbled toward the door. He hit it running, his feet sluggish as they remembered how to walk.

  He took in the scene in two blinks of his Enhanced vision. Lila was pinned down behind a barricade of blast-proof tables. Smart girl, turning the tables on their sides for protection from the attachers who streamed in through the destroyed door of the bar. A few pirates led the way, but those who followed behind the more seasoned fighters really got Chip’s attention. It was a small part of the group of saboteurs they’d been watching in the bar for the past few weeks, led by Jim Beezus.

  A quick query to Maddie told Chip that she was dealing with Bjornson, who still held C&C, as best she could. It was up to Chip to stop Beezus, but two against a good dozen attackers wasn’t the greatest odds.

  “Give it up now, girlie, and I won’t hurt you too bad,” Beezus sneered from behind the cover of the pirates. He was a coward, letting the real fighters stand between him and an untrained girl with a handgun.

  Chip’s first shot took out the pirate in front of Beezus. His second winged the fat bastard who dove for cover behind a table. Chip was on the move, but his body was sluggish after the tumult of what had just happened in his brain. He dropped behind a booth, taking heavy fire. Luckily, all the furniture in the bar had been designed to take fire, for just such an occasion.

  Lila was across the room, firing well placed shots that kept the pirates at bay, but she was pinned down just like him. He wanted to get in front of her. He wanted to shield her with his own body. To protect her and kill anyone or anything that threatened her safety. If something happened to Lila, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. Every last one of them would die at his hands.

  His anger found an outlet when a bot trundled into the middle of the fray. The cleaning machine had no idea a firefight was in progress. It only knew it was scheduled to clean now and it would work around any obstacles in its path.

  A flicker of thought sent the bot into the obstacles. Into the pirates, caustic chemicals spraying from all its nozzles at full strength. The pirates shrank back from the chemical spray. The little bot pushed them back and took the focus off of Lila for a precious moment. Chip sent more instructions to all the bots in the storage area. They came out in force at Chip’s command, spraying, grasping and threatening the pirates with mops, brooms, squeegees and whatever else came to hand.

  Chip would’ve laughed at their reaction when the mechanized army stormed out of the storage area and turned on the pirates, if the situation hadn’t been so dire. He took the moments while the pirates were distracted to make his way over to Lila, still returning fire. He took out another three of the bastards while crossing the room and Lila got off a few shots that took out two of them, to her credit.

  “Lila!” Chip pushed her behind the bar while he took her position, closer to the edge, behind the overturned tables.

  “The bots are kicking butt,” she commented, watching the ongoing battle that had bought them precious time.

  Chip laughed as he downed another pirate. Beezus was nowhere in sight and Chip had the sneaking suspicion he’d slithered out the door to lick his wounds outside while others did the fighting.

  The remaining pirates kept up the battle with the bots, rendering most of them useless, but the barrier of soaps and chemicals had made things slippery and somewhat caustic in the space that separated the attackers from their quarry. Chip queried the station, hoping Maddie could tell him where Bezzus had flown.

  What he found when he reached Maddie was something he hadn’t expected. She’d apparently taken a lesson from his command of the bots and had decided to directly intervene in the ongoing battles all over the station. Everywhere there was gunfire, Maddie was directing mechanical systems to aid the station’s defenders. He was surprised to realize she hadn’t thought of doing that until she’d seen his smaller scale battle in the bar. Score one for the good guys.

  As he’d thought, Beezus was outside, waiting for the pirates to fight the battle for him.

  “I’ve got an escape hatch behind the bar,” he told Lila so that only she could hear. He scanned the camera feeds installed along that particular escape route before giving the computer the signal to pop the hatch. Before, that kind of thing would have taken a considerable part of his concentration. Now, it was a mere afterthought compared to the kind of computing power he’d exerted over the pirate ships. “Do you see it?” he asked, knowing the secret doorway would be open only an inch or so.

  “I see it,” she replied over the ongoing gunfire.

  “Go. The path is clear. Follow the passageway to the cupboard at the end. It’s inside the vid store on the adjoining concourse. The owner is holed up inside. He’s a vet and he’s armed. I’ve already sent the signal to tell him we’re using the passageway. He knows you’ll be there. He’ll protect you. Just wait in the cupboard for me to join you. You’ll be safe there. It’s armored.”

  “I won’t leave without you,” she protested. While he appreciated the sentiment, her safety was more important to him at the moment than his own.

  “You have to go, Lila. I’ll cover your retreat.” He spared her a glance and was caught by the sparkling emotion in her eyes. Time slowed. “I love you, Lila. Please go. I need you to be safe. I’ll join you as soon as I can. Do it for me, sweetheart?”

  Her expression changed, morphing from fear and stubbornness into something like wonder, joy and resignation all mixed into one. “I love you too, Charles Quartain and you’d better come for me. I won’t be truly safe until you’re with me, do you understand?”

  He leaned in to press a quick, hard kiss to her lips, trying to say everything that was in his heart in that single motion. He tore himself away from her seductive mouth and fired off a few shots to let the pirates know he was still there and still ready to kill anyone who stepped out from cover. He looked at Lila as she positioned herself inside the small opening under the bar. She fit easily in the small space. It would be a squeeze for him,
but he’d do it. Just as soon as he killed the bastards gunning for them.

  He’d be freer to act if he knew she was out of the line of fire, in as safe a place as he could find in this situation. His gaze held hers for a timeless moment before she disappeared down the passageway. Thank goodness. She’d be safe in there as long as he could cover her retreat.

  But Chip intended to do more than simply cover it. He was going to go on the attack and he vowed not to quit until the last of the bastards who’d dared assault them in his own establishment was dead or down for the count. Only then would he be satisfied that no one would follow them to that secure, reinforced cupboard on the adjoining concourse.

  That goal in mind, Chip set his hastily formulated plan in motion. The bots were recalled in favor of something much bigger. A huge bang followed by repeated booms from outside the bar started. That would be the securecarts Chip had commandeered from down the concourse, ramming pirates and saboteurs who stood outside the bar, looking in. Quite a few of them had been caught off guard and were either bleeding or dead, run over by the heavy carts.

  Anything that could be programmed into motion was on the move out in the corridor and inside the bar. Blenders became projectiles and utter chaos reigned as Chip took every advantage to gun down the rest of the pirates while his electronic minions distracted them. He knocked every last one of them out of the fight and when it was all over, he stalked through the bar, one thought on his mind.

  If Beezus wasn’t already dead, he soon would be. No longer would he threaten Lila. Chip wouldn’t even let him breathe the same air—or any air for that matter. Until Beezus was dead, Chip would not rest easy.

  As it turned out, Beezus was pinned under a securecart and rather than give up when Chip demanded he surrender so he could be prosecuted and put to death with the other saboteurs according to station law, he wanted to fight. The fat bastard took a few shots at Chip, one of which grazed his shoulder, but Chip didn’t notice. He gunned Beezus down like the dog he was. It was to the man’s credit, Chip thought, that he went down fighting. At least he had some courage to go with that pea-sized, avaricious brain.