Perilous Waif (Alice Long Book 1)

by E. William Brown

  My own active camouflage was still in perfect shape, and while my rocket hammer was a little battered by now I’d come prepared for that. I slapped fresh cover plates over the rocket nozzle and the business end of the hammer, and led my sadly reduced party towards the lift shaft.

  There were no alarms as we dove invisibly down the empty shaft. No marines or warbots, either. Nothing but an empty shaft all the way down to the ship’s bottom deck, just inside the hull.

  The airlocks would all have alarms, of course, and I certainly wasn’t going to be punching a hole in the ship’s hull. The armor there was a meter thick, and pretty much impervious to anything I could hit it with. But one of the smaller turrets that housed the ship’s secondary batteries was located not far from the lift, and this one had been completely wrecked during the battle.

  Another rough hyperspace transition wrenched the ship about as we descended. This one wasn’t nearly as bad, since the potential barrier between the Gamma and Beta layers isn’t as high as the one you have to breach to get into the Delta layer. But even so, I heard a lot of ominous groaning from the ship.

  “Akio, have your people evacuated the center of the ship?” I asked.

  “Mostly. Why?”

  “Because I need to take that self-destruct bomb out of play before Yamashida realizes he’s lost, or he might use it. I’m not sure how much damage my demo charge is going to do to the ship, but all things considered I’d rather play it safe.”

  “Fair point. Everyone critical is already at a safe distance, but I’ll see if we can get the rest of the techs out. They’re starting to open the hangar doors now, so he’s probably gotten to the pinnace.”

  “No problem. They’ll need at least a couple of minutes to get ready to launch.”

  Sure enough, there was a sealed hatch with a lit vacuum warning not far from the lift. I threw a deflector barrier across the corridor, and hit the override so I could open it. My team slipped through, with the barrier preventing any air from escaping, and Emla closed the hatch behind us. From there it was a matter of moments to find our way through the broken wreckage of the turret and out onto the hull.

  It was kind of eerie out there. Long radiator panels glowed cherry red as they struggled to dump the heat of battle, their light casting long shadows across the hull. Another secondary battery loomed up beyond a long row of point defense lasers, its armored bulk as big as a house. Overhead a sprinkling of stars lit the sky, looking deceptively normal.

  But this was the Beta Layer. Those stars were made of antimatter, just like everything else here. The ship was still leaking streamers of air and fuel from its many wounds, and I could see the harsh glare of radiation as the leakage touched the tenuous antimatter gas that made up the interstellar medium here. If the ship encountered a dust mote while we were out here that glow would instantly turn into a flash of gamma rays hot enough to flash-fry me.

  Better not waste time, then.

  I pushed off, and sent myself drifting along a meter or so above the ship’s hull. In easy range of my field if I needed to change course, but it would be better if I didn’t. Yamashida’s people would be watching for trouble, and my manipulator field might show up on a sensor somewhere.

  Emla pushed off behind me, dragging the gunbot along with her. We drifted lazily past the secondary turret, and up a long armored slope to the base of one of the main mass driver turrets. There we changed course, circling the massive bulk of the turret and heading off towards the bow of the ship.

  Two hundred meters away, a giant hatch finished sliding open. Bright light shone out of the chasm beneath it. Were we too late? Were they going to launch before we could get there?

  Finally we reached the edge of the opening. I touched the hull with one hand, and brought myself to a stop. Then I eased forward, and peeked over the edge.

  There was the ship I was looking for. Seventy meters long, with easily six times the volume of the Speedy Exit. We were at the aft end of the escape ship, with a clear view of its main drive and most of its belly.

  Sure enough, my sensors confirmed what I’d guessed from the pictures. It was built for speed and stealth rather than combat, and despite its size it didn’t have more than a couple of cems of armor. Not only that, the only weapon that could bear on me from this angle was a lone point defense laser mounted in a lightweight turret that was designed for fast rotation instead of durability.

  By the time Emla and the gunbot arrived next to me I had my fire plan all worked out. A single bolt from the gunbot’s particle beam reduced that laser turret to an expanding cloud of wreckage. Then I was zipping across the intervening space with my hammer in my hands.

  I brought it town on the remains of the turret once, twice, three times, tripping the rocket for a burst of power with each blow. The massive hammer head sank deep into the broken machinery, smashing the thin armor around the edges and punching a hole half a meter deep into the guts of the shuttle. I dropped a plasma grenade into the hole, and backed off.

  The detonation blew a much bigger hole in the shuttle’s belly. A gout of plasma washed over me, but with the endless vacuum of space all around it dissipated too fast to cause me any harm. I darted back in to lob a second plasma grenade into the crater, and then took another look. Was that the insides of a hyperspace converter I was looking at? It sure was.

  I carved a deep hole into the machinery with my laser, and dropped my last plasma grenade into it. This time there was a secondary explosion, and a concussion that ripped a massive hole in the side of the ship.

  Emla and the gunbot hadn’t been idle while I was playing. They’d shot up all three of the ship’s fusion rockets with their particle beam cannons, blowing holes in the rocket nozzles and wrecking the emitters for the deflector fields that protected them from superheated exhaust during operation. I rejoined them with a wide grin on my face.

  “So much for that escape plan,” I said.

  “Yeah, he’s not going anywhere in that,” Emla giggled. “Now what?”

  “Well, just to make sure he doesn’t take out his frustrations on everyone else…”

  I sent a message to my counterparts guarding the demo charge. They all unloaded from their bots, merging back into me in a dizzying rush of data integration. Then my little bomb went off, and the whole middle of the ship blew apart in an enormous ball of fire.

  I cycled my shields to full overload just as the wave front hit, and held us to the hull as the whole frigate bucked and shook. Then it was over. The fireball dissipated into the depths of space, and I saw that the frigate had broken in half. Well, what was left of it. About fifty or sixty meters of the middle of the ship was completely gone.

  “That. Was. Awesome!” Emla enthused. “Can we do it again?”

  “That was my last bomb, silly. Come on, we’re done with fighting for now.”

  I wasn’t sure if Yamashida had survived getting his escape ship wrecked or not, but it didn’t really matter. He was out of options. Sleeping Dragon’s warships would catch up with us soon, and what was left of his frigate was in no condition to fight. They’d be boarding him in half an hour.

  Maybe Kavin would be with them?

  A guy who didn’t come with a family of backstabbing schemers eager to drag me into their problems. Yeah, and he’d have his own army with him, so I wouldn’t have to do all the fighting. That sounded pretty good right now.

  Epilogue

  Being safely back in my own cabin was heaven.

  Emla and I had spent the better part of an hour in the bath, helping each other wash and then just relaxing in the big tub. The water jets felt so good I never wanted to move again. I just floated in the hot water, and let my thoughts drift.

  Kavin really had been with the boarding party. He’d stormed that frigate with a battalion of mercenaries at his back, and I was pretty sure that leading boarding actions wasn’t his usual job. When Akio and I had contacted them he’d made sure he was in the first group to reach the security room, even though th
ere was another platoon that was closer.

  He’d tried to play it cool, and act like I was such a badass that no one was worried about me. But the first thing he’d done when he walked into the control room was hug me, and he hadn’t wanted to let go. Then he’d hugged Lina, who he’d apparently met once or twice, and fussed over her just the same as if she’d been human.

  I smiled. He just might be a keeper. But his job would make it hard to spend enough time together to be sure of that, and there was Akio to consider.

  It had been hate at first sight between those two, of course. Fortunately the yakuza lord still didn’t have a body, or there might have been a fight. I had to suppress a giggle at that thought. Emla had been kind of surprised that they didn’t like each other, but I wasn’t.

  Lina had thought it was hilarious.

  Looks like you’ve got your pick, she’d told me over a private com channel. You should just sit back and let them try to impress you. Which one do you think will do a better job?

  Tough call, I’d admitted. Akio is rich and powerful, and he did sacrifice himself to let me and Emla get away from his uncle’s ambush. But it’s his fault Yamashida was able to pull that off in the first place, and he loses a lot of points for being a jerk who thinks techs don’t really matter.

  What about Kavin?

  Bonus points for riding to the rescue, and treating you right. He’s coming from behind, but he’s going to have a much better army when all is said and done. What’s the saying about mercenaries? Gold can’t always get you good soldiers, but good soldiers can always get you gold.

  You just like the idea of your boyfriend being in charge of a bunch of guys with guns.

  Maybe. Is there something wrong with that?

  You won’t hear me complaining. I’m just glad you’re going to give him a chance. You’ll keep him on his toes.

  Heh. I probably would, at that. Maybe I could arrange another date before everyone went their separate ways again? Not that there was anywhere to go out here in the middle of nowhere, but a chance to talk would be nice.

  Emla’s touch drew me from my thoughts. She floated up next to me, letting her hand rest on my belly while she kissed my cheek.

  I turned to face her, and the next kiss landed on my lips. I giggled.

  “Did you need some attention, Emla?”

  “I just wanted to be touching you. You’re the most awesome mistress ever. You know that, right?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are we going to have more fights like that? Because I had a blast. I could really get addicted to kicking butt with you.”

  I chuckled. “It was kind of fun, wasn’t it? Although I’m a little conflicted about knowing I had to kill a bunch of hapless dog girls. It’s not their fault they were mind controlled.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not really programmed to care about the moral stuff. I guess that’s supposed to be your job, since you’re in charge. Just promise you aren’t going to start moping around being all guilt-ridden or something.”

  “Good goddess, no. That would be retarded. I did the best I could in the middle of a complete mess, and I think I handled things pretty well. But next time I’m going to make sure I have more options.”

  “Going to make me some pack sisters?” She asked.

  “Not just yet. Making people is a big responsibility, Emla, and it’s not something I’ll ever do casually. I need to really think about where I’m going with my life before I consider something like that. But there are other things I can do to make sure we’re prepared for unexpected problems. I just need to talk to Hope again when we get back to the wreck.”

  If there was anything I felt guilty about in this whole situation, it was the fact that I couldn’t take Hope with me. But her core personality was built into every computing node in the Emperor’s Hope, and there was no way to remove it. She could make copies of herself, but the original would still be trapped on a wrecked battleship drifting through the Delta Layer. The only way to rescue her would be to repair the ship, and that was a project so far beyond my resources that it was laughable to even think about it.

  Fortunately, it wasn’t an urgent problem. Even without power her long-term data storage was good for hundreds of years, so no matter how long I was gone she’d still be here when I came back. She could go back into hibernation to wait for me, or I could sneak her a supply of tritium and let her try to get a self-repair effort going once everyone left. Either way, I just needed to make sure that someday I’d be in a position to come back and help her.

  In the meantime, between my suit computer and my own internal data storage I had room to copy off all sorts of interesting things from her design database. Personal equipment. Warbots. AI programs that were decades ahead of anything you could find in the Outer Sphere, and plans for half a dozen amazing technological breakthroughs.

  Assuming I dared build any of it.

  I’d had to brief Kavin and his officers on the situation while they secured the frigate, so I couldn’t entirely hide my bots. I’d done my best to make it sound like they were fakes, part of a psychological warfare scheme the captain had cooked up to confuse the opposition. Sleeping Dragon apparently had a pretty low opinion of the inugami, and most of their officers seemed willing to assume that we’d just outsmarted them. But I was sure Kavin suspected there was more going on than that.

  Akio had to know who I was. He’d been researching the Mirai, the Emperor’s Hope and me all at the same time, and that was before I escaped into the wreck and showed up a few hours later with a bunch of Mirai warbots. He was keeping quiet about it so far, but I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop there.

  I wasn’t sure what the Masu-kai would make of my heritage. On the one hand, I was an authentic princess with the same bloodline his family was so proud of, which would make me an ideal prospect for a political marriage. But on the other hand, would even the Masu-kai dare admit to that openly?

  I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure what the lords of the Polytechnic Swarm would do if they heard a rumor that Princess Susan Long’s daughter was alive and well in the Outer Sphere, but I suspected it wouldn’t be pretty. Their idea of a small expeditionary force would be a couple of battleships the size of the Emperor’s Hope, along with a few dozen cruisers and thousands of smaller ships. No navy in the sector would be more than a speed bump to a force like that, and they had no qualms at all about murdering anyone who got in their way.

  It was a long way to the Inner Sphere, though, and thanks to disinformation services like the one the foxgirls used the datanet was always full of crazy rumors. The Masu-kai techs and marines who’d seen my bots weren’t going to be giving interviews to news services, and neither were Kavin’s mercenaries. This one incident probably wouldn’t attract any attention, as long as neither of my prospective boyfriends decided to sell me out.

  Or Lina. Which meant trusting her whole pack, including Chief Benson.

  Or Strange Loop Sleuth. I understood now why it had thought I might be a useful ally someday. But how had it known? Would it be equally obvious to the rest of the transhuman AIs? How long would it be before one of them noticed my existence, and decided to point it out to my enemies? If I got involved in their arguments that would be an obvious way to get rid of me.

  Or the captain. Naoko had imprinted on him, so I had to assume she told him everything she knew. Assuming he hadn’t figured it out on his own. I really needed to get better at blending in. What good did it do me to have all these fancy mods that made me look human to medical scanners, if I kept giving myself away whenever there was a crisis?

  I resolved to be a lot more careful about letting people see me doing impossible things from now on. But the list of people I already had to trust was getting uncomfortably long.

  A ping from the datanet drew me from my thoughts. I sighed, stretched, and reluctantly started to climb out of the bath.

  “I was starting to think you were going to take a nap there,” Emla said.

/>   “I was just thinking,” I said. “But the captain wants to see me now. You can stay here if you want, though.”

  She ignored the offer, and moved to help me up. “Hey, I’m not the one who wrecked all her muscles trying to move faster than a speeding bullet. Can you even walk without your armor?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got some artificial muscle fiber that held up a lot better than the organic stuff. I’m just going to be kind of weak and clumsy until my regeneration finishes working. Would you mind helping me dress?”

  “I’m here to help, Alice.”

  She fussed over me a little as I dried myself off, and pulled on the spare spacesuit that was still hanging in my closet. I didn’t mind. It was nice to know there was someone I could count on, no matter what.

  Having her insist on following me all the way up to the captain’s office was a little embarrassing, but at least she didn’t make it obvious that I was leaning on her. She just rested her arm comfortably around my waist, and held me up with her field.

  “Ah, there’s our wayward cabin girl. Have a seat, Alice. How are you doing?”

  Emla settled me in one of the comfy chairs in front of Captain Sokol’s desk, and then moved back to stand behind me. The captain gave her a thoughtful look, but didn’t comment on her presence.

  “I’m really worn out, sir, but my damage control says I’ll be fine by morning. I didn’t get hurt, really. Just a lot of wear and tear, and some radiation.”

  One of his eyebrows went up a bit. “Radiation? Well, I suppose that comes of playing with nuclear weapons. Not a large dose, I hope?”

  “I, um, actually most of it was when I had to use the fuel core from a warbot’s nuke pack as a club. Between that and the holdout bomb I got kind of toasty, but I’m built to handle it.”

  He massaged his forehead wearily. “Alice, I realize you are more durable than the average person, but do keep in mind that the medbay is there for a reason.”

  “Yes, sir. I was going to stop by in the morning for a checkup. I just didn’t want to be in the way while the doctor might have patients who actually need help. Besides, I think we both know why I’m nervous about getting scanned too often.”