Perilous Waif (Alice Long Book 1)

by E. William Brown

  After that I was closing in on the vehicle bay, and suddenly there were bots everywhere. I covered everything with smoke and darted in among them, luring the ones with guns into shooting at each other while I took out the ones with more dangerous weapons.

  Everything blurred together into one long dance of carnage. Duck between a cannon bot’s legs, shoot out a grenadier’s brain. Grab a machine gun bot by one arm and toss it into a group of spider bots. Dive over an improvised barricade, and toss out a strobe grenade to fool the mines into going off. A constant flurry of misdirection, to keep my brain-dead enemies confused and distracted while I killed them off one by one.

  The vehicle bay had gravity, which made things a little harder. Grenade fragments and the occasional ricochet gradually shredded my suit, and sometimes one got through. I caught the edge of a plasma flamer’s blast, and had to block out the pain of charred skin and muscle all over my left side. There was nerve gas in the air now, and a virulent nanoplague that attacked my exposed flesh.

  But there were only seventeen bots left in the vehicle bay, and the fabricators weren’t running anymore.

  I grabbed a heavy mass driver from one of the larger bots, jumped into the air, and opened fire on the big cargo loaders that were guarding their master. Each shot sent me flying backwards, but that just made it harder for them to tell where I was. I used my field and what was left of my suit’s thrusters to spin in midair, firing each shot in a different direction, sending myself careening wildly around the huge room while I blew apart the last of the bots.

  Then I discarded it, and dropped lightly to the deck. The smoke was starting to thin now, as the air purifiers strained to clear the cavernous room. But that was fine. All that was left was my target.

  I stalked through the litter of sparking, smoking bot wrecks towards him. I could see the moment when he spotted me, and raised his pistol with shaking hands.

  I shot it out of his grip.

  He cried out, and backed away. He was saying something, but I didn’t care. I grabbed him by the front of his suit, and slammed him against the bulkhead.

  “Why?”

  “Surely you understand that I will not answer any-”

  I punched him in the gut. He doubled over, wheezing.

  The sight made the pain ease a little, so I did it again.

  “Please!” He gasped. “I surrender!”

  “I don’t care.” I hit him again. “Did you let Emla surrender?” And again. “Did she get any mercy?” A kick this time. “I don’t think so!”

  I hit him until my hands were red with blood, and I realized that he’d finally stopped screaming. Then I fell to my knees, and cried.

  I was vaguely aware of friendly IFF signals surrounding me, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t until I heard Lina’s voice that I finally stirred.

  “Alice? Alice! Oh shit, what happened to you? I thought you were just going to sneak to the breaker box and back.”

  “He killed Emla,” I sniffed, trying to hold back a fresh round of tears. “She trusted me to keep her safe, and then she died right in front of me. I… I kind of lost it.”

  “Oh, Alice. I’m so sorry.”

  She hugged me. I buried my face against the breastplate of her body armor, and just let myself feel safe for a moment. Suddenly I was very tired.

  But I had responsibilities.

  “Can we check the body?” I asked. “It looked really bad to me, but maybe…”

  I couldn’t say it. I knew it was wishful thinking. But Lina nodded.

  “Of course. But what about you, Alice? With those burns I should be rushing you to medbay.”

  I was pretty messed up, alright. I’d lost a lot of blood, and the flamer had cooked me pretty well. My organic parts were mostly offline, and my power levels were dropping fast. Damage control takes a lot of energy, apparently.

  “Can I recharge off your suit? My medical stuff says I’ll be stable in a few minutes as long as I don’t run out of power.”

  “Of course you can, Alice. Here, see if this works.”

  She picked me up in her arms, with my unburnt right side against her breastplate. I reached around with my good hand, and plugged my charging port into one of the outlets on the side of her armor’s backpack. She had a big nuke pack in there, so I could draw plenty of power without slowing her down.

  “There you go,” she said. “Give me a locator mark?”

  I sent her a waypoint for the spot where I’d left Ash guarding Emla’s body, and she set out for the nearest lift shaft.

  Unlike me, Lina hadn’t been wandering around the ship alone. There were six big warbots escorting us, armored wedge shapes with a mass driver protruding from the front and a profusion of point defense lasers and smoke dispensers around their sides. Dozens of insect-sized sensor bots surrounded them in a cloud, scouting ahead of us and checking every corner to make sure we didn’t walk into an ambush. A pair of bots that were basically big floating shields flanked Lina, ready to interpose themselves between us and any danger that might appear.

  “You’ve got a lot of firepower here,” I commented. “I’m surprised you needed my help.”

  “I’m an engineer, not a marine,” she explained, looking embarrassed. “I do alright, but I can’t fight the way you do, Alice. Um, what happened to your bots, anyway?”

  “I left Smoke and Ash to guard Emla. They aren’t really built for fighting bots.”

  “No, I mean your security team.”

  She took in my blank look, and cursed.

  “You didn’t have one, did you? Fuck! Alice, I thought you’d grabbed some warbots to run escort like everyone else. Don’t tell me you went after that breaker with just your little dragons?”

  “I, um, actually, I left them guarding my spacesuit.”

  “What!? Are you nuts?”

  “I’ve got a really good stealth suite,” I told her. “I got in and out just fine. I guess I should have kept running instead of stopping to put my suit back on.”

  “Alice!” She stared at me, more shocked than I’d ever seen her. “Ma’am, please don’t do things like that. I wasn’t asking you to risk your life. That’s what bots are for.”

  “It needed to be done, Lina. I don’t have access to the armories, and if I’d waited for help there would have been a lot more enemy bots to deal with. I bet they’ve already done some damage.”

  “They cut the fuel lines for Fusion Four, and knocked out two sets of maneuvering thrusters,” she admitted.

  “See? There wasn’t time to wait.”

  We reached Emla’s body then. Ash was crouched protectively over it, watching the corridor suspiciously. But there must have been another fight here, before all the bots got recalled to try to stop me. His wings were full of holes, from bullets and flying shrapnel, and one of his forelegs looked like he’d dipped it in acid. His status display said it was all repairable, but he’d need a few days in his base station to get back to normal.

  Smoke hadn’t been so lucky. He must have gotten hit by a big mass driver or something. There were pieces of his little body strew all over the corridor. His upper torso, where his bot brain had been, was completely gone.

  I bit my lip, and tried to remind myself that he was just a bot. I had his personality settings, so once I had some money I could buy another one just like him.

  It didn’t help.

  Lina knelt to look at Emla’s broken body, and I held my breath. Hoping against hope.

  A sensor bot detached from her backpack, and floated down to examine the exposed AI core at close range. Lina frowned.

  “Well, the good news is I don’t think her copy protection tripped. I’m picking up trace power from her internal monitoring systems, and there’s no heat residue like you’d see from a self-destruct charge.”

  I gasped. “She’s still in there? Does that mean she’ll get better? Or, well, we can fix her, right?”

  She shook her head. “With all that damage to her housing we’re going to have to be real
ly careful just to get her out of that body and into a carrying case. But her I/O port is toast, and these cheap AI cores don’t have any real self-repair capability. The damage isn’t going to heal, and we can’t go in to fix it without tripping her copy protection. Normally I’d say take her back to the manufacturer and let them fix it, but if she’s one of Dusty’s rescues it isn’t going to be that easy.”

  I bit my lip. “She was supposed to be scrapped. Would they have records of that?”

  “Probably. She’s from one of those colonies where the androids are slaves, right? They usually keep close track of their property, and the access codes to unlock her aren’t going to be available anywhere else.”

  My face fell. “Oh.”

  “But hey, we don’t have to figure this out right now,” she went on hurriedly. “I’ll get her stored away in a few minutes here, and then she’ll be safe for as long as it takes to come up with a solution. I’m sure you creative genius types can think of something.”

  “Alright. Thank you, Lina. When I saw the cracks in her casing, I thought for sure she was gone.”

  I watched while a pair of damage control bots deftly cut Emla’s AI core free from the mangled body. Another bot fabricated a custom carrying case on the spot, and Lina carefully snugged the AI core into a hollow in the packing foam. Then she sealed the case, and handed it to me.

  “There, all set. Now, let’s get you to medbay.”

  I was still worried about Emla, but at least now I had hope. I cradled the case against my aching chest, and tried to convince myself things would work out. You can store AI cores for years. Decades, even. Dusty might know someone who could steal the release codes, or I could learn how and do it myself.

  We were halfway there before I thought to wonder how the battle was going. I could feel the ship’s mass drivers firing steadily, but we didn’t seem to be taking damage anymore. Were we winning?

  I checked the external view, and found that most of the enemy drones had been wiped out. We had more than a hundred drones of our own flying in a defensive formation around the Square Deal, and the enemy ship was leaking air and reaction mass.

  What caught me by surprise was the presence of a third ship. It was six hundred meters long, with the armored flanks and top and bottom turrets of a light warship. Its mass drivers were pounding away at the enemy in coordinated salvoes with our own fire, and there were hundreds of drones just starting an attack run on the enemy ship.

  Well, so much for them.

  “Do you know who the other ship is?” I asked Lina.

  She smiled. “Yeah, that’s the Scarlet Fury, one of Hidden Dragon’s ships. The captain must have asked them to follow us out of port, just in case somebody tried something.”

  “Oh. Then this isn’t just pirates?”

  “Pirates don’t mess with the Square Deal, ma’am. We’ve got way more firepower than their usual prey, and the captain has a lot of connections.”

  That made sense. So this was probably the yakuza again? They were being kind of reckless if they wanted to get Naoko back alive, but maybe they’d decided to just silence her instead.

  Wait a minute.

  “Lina, why are you suddenly calling me ‘ma’am’? I’m just Alice.”

  “Because we’re still in a combat situation, and I finally figured out what a badass you are. If anything goes wrong I’ve got your back, but you’re in charge unless Thomas says different.”

  I flushed. “Oh. Um, thanks.”

  The acknowledgement felt a lot better than I expected. Like scratching an itch that had been bothering me for so long I’d gotten used to it. Maybe I was supposed to have someone to lead?

  Yeah, that felt right. Someone to lead, and protect. Just thinking about it warmed my heart. Was that why I’d let Emla imprint on me?

  I hadn’t protected her very well, had I? I’d have to do better than that, from now on.

  There was a whole squad of warbots guarding the armored hatch that led into medical. Lina’s escorts peeled off to join the guard force as we passed through the hatch, and the heavy mass of armor slid shut behind us with a muffled thunk. It was a good twenty cems thick, and so was the bulkhead around it. No stray bots were going to get past that.

  Dr. Misra was on us before we’d gone three steps. He led Lina to a treatment room, and had her lay me down on the padded exam table while he fussed over me.

  “What were you thinking, fighting all those bots by yourself?” He said. “You’re lucky to be alive. I hope you’ve managed to tame your immune system.”

  “Mostly. Um, I’m regenerating, but my damage control wants a power feed and about ten liters of medical feedstock.”

  I let the medbay computer connect to my medical interface, and he pulled up a holographic display of my status. Wow, his screen looked a lot worse than the virtual display I was looking at. It showed my failed kidneys, half-cooked liver, scorched lungs and unsteady heartbeat in the red of critical injuries instead of the amber of minor impairments. No wonder he looked so worried.

  He studied the display for a moment, and shook his head.

  “In the future I suggest you leave the heroics to our security team, Miss Long. This is going to take hours to repair. You do realize the weapon that struck your shoulder would have easily penetrated your skull?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s why I didn’t let it hit me there, sir.”

  He threw his hands up. “Combat morphs! Idiots, the lot of you. Very well, let’s get you put back together before you find another excuse to get shot at. According to this your system will accept fabricated cells now, so at least I can do something for you. Please set your implants to prep for immediate surgery, Miss Long.”

  “What are you going to do, sir?”

  “I’ll need to remove all this destroyed tissue, and provide healthy replacement cells for your repair system to integrate. At least the holes in your subdermal armor will make the surgery easier.”

  The idea of being cut open made me a little queasy, even if it would help me heal faster. But the virtual display in the back of my head was saying I’d need a week to heal on my own, and that would be worse. I’d just have to tough it out.

  “Yes, sir.” I sighed, and reached for my spacesuit’s seal.

  “No, no, let the bots do that,” he objected. “No need to embarrass yourself. Just relax, girl. When you wake up you’ll feel much better.”

  Oh, right. Normal people get to sleep through surgery, don’t they?

  Apparently Mom was too paranoid to let my medical suite actually knock me out when it went into surgery prep. Instead my muscles relaxed and my brain went to sleep, but the rest of me was still online. Was I supposed to be watching the doctor, to make sure he didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to? I could see decently well even with my eyes closed, but that didn’t mean I wanted to watch the surgery bots cut me open.

  Ugh. Creepy.

  They peeled what was left of my suit off first, of course. Then some of the robot arms cleaned me, while others plugged me in. A tube down my throat gave me a steady flow of feedstock to fuel my repairs, and… hey! What were they doing down there? Ow!

  Oh, right. Waste removal. How embarrassing. I really, really didn’t want to be watching this.

  Then the laser scalpels went to work, deftly cutting little holes here and there so the manipulator limbs could get at the damaged tissue underneath. Every time they reached inside me I had to hold back a horde of attack nanites that wanted to descend on the intruders and devour them. My new field emitters itched to rip the surgery bay apart, and the part of my mind that had carried me through the fight was now busy plotting ways to escape.

  Was this why I had to be awake? If I actually got knocked out somehow, was my body going to go into some wild fight-or-flight frenzy? It sure felt like it.

  I reminded myself that this was for my own good, and suppressed the urges. I needed to distract myself somehow, but the milliseconds ticked by so slowly.

  Eventually the sur
gical arms finished extracting the ruined remains of my left kidney, and started to slip a replacement into place. That made me wonder where it had come from. It takes a few days to fabricate replacement organs, doesn’t it? Was this some kind of generic thing?

  I tasted it carefully as a horde of little tools and microbots connected it to my blood vessels. No, it was made of real cells, and they had my genes. If I focused I could feel my immune system carefully inspecting every cell looking for hidden dangers, but everything was exactly right. It was just like the kidney it had replaced, at least at the organic level.

  Dr. Misra must have grown a set of spare organs for me after my first exam, just in case. Should I feel happy that he was prepared to take good care of me? Or nervous, that he thought serious injuries were likely enough to make that worth the bother?

  That debate occupied my attention for a few thousand milliseconds. Finally I decided to go with happy. I’d already gotten into one scrape, and I could easily have gotten shot by one of the trolls. So it made sense to be prepared.

  The surgery bots replaced my other kidney, and part of my liver. Then they carefully rebuilt my burned side, and closed up the bullet holes. They even replaced the flesh I’d torn off my fingers, and laid down pink new skin over all my injuries. I could have done without the microbots flying around inside my lungs, replacing dead cells one by one. But I had to admit, they got the job done.

  It was a huge relief when it was finally over. A swarm of microbots scrubbed every trace of debris from my skin and then retreated, leaving an attendant bot to levitate me onto a floating bed. It carefully tucked me in under a warm sheet, and I sighed in relief. I felt so much better now. No more pain to ignore, and I’d be back on my feet soon. I just need to rest for a bit first.

  I woke to the realization that there was someone watching me.

  For a few milliseconds I was confused, until I realized that I’d dozed off. I was lying in a bed in one of the medbay recovery rooms now. My pinkie was still plugged in to a power cable, and the feeding tube and… other tube, were still there. But three hours had gone by, and my repair system had pretty much finished integrating the replacement parts. My power cells were fully charged, and my damaged armor was starting to grow back. No excuse to ignore a visitor, then.