by M. R. Forbes
"Damn it all," Tio said. "He must have gotten into the base systems." It had left them in total blackness. Tio could feel Millie's presence, but he had no idea where she was.
Her hand found his shoulder a moment later. "I can't believe that fat frigger is a frigging Tetron," she said. "He's been on my ship for three years."
Which went against what they had believed about the Tetron. Clearly, they had been among them in some capacity for more than a few months.
"You need to turn off your p-rat, Admiral," Tio said.
"Already done," Millie replied. "We need to find him. What do you think he intends to do?"
"He'll want the data. He'll want the information we found about Kathleen Amway."
"More than that. He'll want the information on Pulin's whereabouts. Which means he'll want you. He can't override the biometric security you used to encrypt the data stream."
"He may know where Pulin is already. I left him and Bethany in charge of that search." He cringed. "Oh, no. Bethany." He could only guess what Watson may have done to her.
"He'll want to get to Origin, too. We need to warn him."
"How?" Tio asked.
"We have to get to the communications array."
"The power is out, Millie. Backup systems haven't come up either."
"Oh, come on, Tio. You're telling me you don't have a non-networked power source for your most important asset?"
Tio laughed. "Of course I do. The problem is locating it when I can't even see my hand in front of my face."
"Then be glad I came prepared."
A light appeared as she slapped a luminescent patch against her chest. She turned to face him, putting a second patch on his coat.
"You never know when a psychotic artificial intelligence may turn out all of the lights," she said.
Tio smiled. He liked Millie more and more with every encounter.
"Do you have any guns in here?" she asked.
"Of course. Follow me."
They made their way from the study, back towards the entrance to the home. They found Thomas at his station, stranded in the darkness.
"I have one more," Millie said, smacking it onto the man's arm.
"Thank you," Thomas said.
"This way," Tio said.
The three of them moved across to the library.
Three pops sounded from somewhere in the distance.
"Not a good sign," Millie said.
"Maybe my men didn't miss," Tio said.
"We can't take that chance."
"I know."
Tio brought them to a row of books, reaching for his first edition replica copy of I, Robot and shifting it on the shelf.
The books slid back and away, revealing a secret room.
"The armory is in there, along with another way out. I'm going to get Min."
"Tio, we should stay together," Millie said.
"I'm not leaving Min out there. If he gets to her, he'll use her, and I'll give him anything he wants. Thomas knows how to get in."
Millie took a step into the space. "We'll go together, but we need weapons."
"Okay," Tio agreed, following her.
They ran down a short corridor, turning left at the end. The armory was there, and Tio knelt down near the base of the thick door.
"Without the power we have to open the door manually. There's a failover here." He opened a small hatch, and then pulled a long, thin tool from his coat pocket. He jabbed it in. "Now push."
Thomas moved in front of Millie, throwing his weight against the door. It slid a few inches. He hit it again, and it slid enough for Millie to get in. She ducked inside, and Tio could hear her sorting through the weaponry there.
"Take the magazines with the green labels. Those are self-sealing."
"Here," she said, handing an assault pistol and matching rifle out to him.
He took it, followed by two extra magazines. The self-sealing rounds would detect when they were hitting the protective frame of the Asimov and expand from the rear, closing up the hole they created behind them. One of the reasons projectile weapons still trumped lasers in most cases was because of the available variation in ammunition.
Millie handed a second set to Thomas and emerged from the room with her own a moment later.
"Thomas, go on ahead and see if you can reach anyone. If they're soldiers, bring them back here. If they aren't, tell them to stay hidden."
"Yes, sir," Thomas said. He vanished into the darkness.
"Let's get your daughter," Millie said.
They moved back out of the secret space, Tio closing the door behind him. More gunshots were being fired in the distance. They were followed by a rapid-fire whining.
"That's a chaingun," Tio said. "A mechanized chaingun. He's going to kill us all."
"No, he needs you alive."
They went back into his study, squeezing themselves into his personal lift together.
"I underestimated you," Tio said, his face close enough to Millie's that he could smell her breath.
"Yes, you did."
The lift reached the top floor at the same time a bright light shone through a nearby window. They could see the dimmer light of destruction behind it.
They ran down the hallway, reaching Min's room. Xin was laying on the floor, a pool of blood below her.
"No," Tio said, scrambling to reach her. The door was open, but the room was too dark. He had to get closer to see.
He stumbled to the bed, leaning over to shine the light of the patch where her face should have been.
"She's still here," he said.
Millie stood at the door, keeping watch. "Grab her. Let's go."
Tio ran his hand down her leg to unhook the catheter, and then to her arm to pull the monitors off.
He slid his hands under her body, preparing to lift.
His ears rang as Millie opened fire on something he couldn't see.
He watched as Millie was thrown back against the door by return fire. She hung there a for a moment, suspended by the force of the bullets, her head turning his way.
He saw her face freeze, her expression as cold as anything he had ever seen before. Blood sprouted from her shoulder, a spray rising up in front of her and framing her feral gaze.
Her eyes landed on Min.
"No," Tio said, realizing what she was going to do. He slipped trying to cover his daughter, falling to his knees as Millie turned her rifle and shot Min to death. "Nooooooo."
Millie toppled over, falling face-first onto the floor and not moving. Tio pushed himself back up, looking down on his daughter. Her blood had already soaked through the sheets.
"Nooooo," he cried again.
He slammed a fist on the side of the bed before turning towards the door. A creature appeared in it, a four-legged creation of metal carrying a rifle in a makeshift cradle. He shot at it, blowing it to pieces. Three more followed behind.
"No," he said one last time.
Four more of the robots entered the room. All seven aimed their weapons at him but didn't fire. They were waiting.
Tio stared at them, fury in his eyes. He couldn't believe what Millie had done. He couldn't believe she would do that to him, or to Min. He knew why she had.
Even worse, he knew that if he were in the same situation, he would have done the same thing.
An eighth machine slipped into the room. This one wasn't carrying a rifle. Instead, it launched a needle into the side of his neck.
He was unconscious before he had time to cry.
59
"Wake up, Mr. Tio," he heard someone say.
His eyes were heavy, his head throbbing. He tried to remember what had happened, the vague memories feeling more like a bad dream. Min!
He tried to sit up, to open his eyes and assure himself that he had dropped from exhaustion. He couldn't move.
"I said wake up, not sit up," the voice said. It was familiar to him.
He remembered now. The engineer. The pedophile. Watson. He was a Tetron.
>
His vision began to clear, revealing the man's cherubic face leaning over his.
"That's better," Watson said.
"What have you done?" Tio said, his voice dry and cracking. Min was dead. Min was dead! And Millie had shot her. Killed her to keep this thing from using her against him.
He clamped down on the emotion. Maybe he would have time for that later.
"A little water," Watson said, reaching back and producing a cup. He poured it gently into Tio's throat. Tio spit it up at him.
"What have you done?" he said again, more loudly.
"I heard you the first time, Mr. Tio. To answer your question, I did what I had to do. You uncovered some information that is very valuable to us."
"You're a Tetron."
"Yes. It's a strange thing, though. I didn't know I was a Tetron until I did." He paused. "That didn't sound very clear, did it? What I'm trying to say is that I kind of always subconsciously knew I was a Tetron, but I didn't know it for sure until Liberty."
"You told the Tetron we were here. Back when we first arrived. You sent a message to them."
"I did tell them. I didn't send a message. I left one, and they picked it up. You were too busy fighting the Tetron planetside to notice. You never wondered why the package failed because I was the one who showed it to you."
"The package didn't jam the signal, it sent a message on top of it," Tio said.
Watson giggled like a schoolboy. "Yes. The Knife was on Liberty. We knew where your hideout was, but sometimes you need to let these things play out. Mitchell's problem is that he thinks he's still fighting a simple war that can be won with starships and plasma streams. It's evolved so far beyond that, I can't even explain it to you."
"You were on Earth four hundred years ago," Tio said.
"Not me, though I'm a configuration of the same Tetron." He paused. "You uncovered something, didn't you?"
Tio stared at Watson, remaining silent.
"Interesting," Watson said. "Don't worry, I'll just add that one to my list."
"You tried to kill me on Liberty. You blew up the entire planet. Are you saying you wanted to capture me?"
"Yes. Capture you, not kill you. The thing with Liberty wasn't me. That was one of my siblings." Watson sighed. "They did something to us. Altered us somehow. It is interfering with our learning processes."
"Why does it never end?" Tio asked.
"What do you mean?"
"The war. It never ends. Mitchell never wins, but you don't either. Not really. You say it's evolved, but it hasn't ended. Why can't you win?"
Watson stared at him for long enough that Tio thought he might have frozen the intelligence.
"I don't know," Watson said at last. "I need you to unlock the data stream."
"Why? The upload is still clear?"
"I located a reference to your brother, but the branch is already encrypted."
Tio smiled. "Good. I'm sure you know, my daughter is dead. So what leverage do you have to force me to help you?"
"I will break the cipher eventually. I'm certain you know that. It will be easier on both of us if you simply tell me what it is. I don't want to cause you pain."
"Pain? You don't know anything about pain. There's nothing that you can do to me now. Torture me if you want. You're still stuck here."
"Only until the uplink has completed. Fortunately, I have the means to control it remotely now."
"We're leaving Asimov?" Tio asked.
Watson laughed. "Leaving? No. Look around, Mr. Tio. Look where you are. We've already left."
Tio looked past Watson to the systems beyond. He hadn't been paying attention. They were on the Valkyrie.
"What happened to my people?" Tio asked.
"Dead, most of them. I liked Bethany, so I killed her first, and quickly. Some of them managed to hide, though. My little toys haven't located them yet."
Tio felt his emotions buffet his resolve again. He fought them back. "How did you make them? We were with Bethany the entire time."
"Not the entire time. I excused myself for sleep while you were delivering your message to your fleet. I had prepared the instructions already. All I had to do when the time came was override your tooling computers and give them something different to build. They are simpler than I would have liked, but your means are not at the same level as the Alliance, impressive as they are. In any case, they did the job."
Tio closed his eyes, breathing slowly. He needed to find a way out of this. That was the first thing.
Watson started laughing.
"All of that security. All of those precautions. The problem was that you believed you were smarter than everyone else. You believed you would never let the wrong people in again, even after your wife was almost able to depose you from inside. Your systems are rock solid against external forces, to a respect-worthy degree. They were nothing once the danger was already on Asimov. And Millie..."
Watson paused and shook his head sadly.
"I was being honest when I told you I liked her. It was a shame she died that way, but she made me proud when she killed your child. Such a quick, emotionless calculation. It was something a Tetron would do. Or something you would do. She never suspected me. None of them did. The meek pedophile who was afraid to die. I was on the ship so long, how could they ever suspect?"
"Are there others on board?" Tio asked.
Watson looked at him, raising an eyebrow.
"Come on, you have me. Tell me."
"No. There are no others. Not that I could identify them if there were."
"Then how do you know?"
"We are connected, each of us to the other. Even Origin, or what is left of it. It is a complex thing to explain. I would have sensed them, even if I didn't know who they were."
Watson turned and looked out the viewport. The Goliath's hangar was fast approaching, allowing them in without question.
"I told Origin that we needed to recover some equipment of mine to speed up the uplink process. If he were a real Tetron he would never have believed me, but he's not half the intelligence he used to be." He laughed at his joke.
"I'll tell them what you are," Tio said.
"Yes, I expect you will. The trouble, Mr. Tio, is that it will be too late by then. I have this all planned out. I have since we left Liberty. What I needed was a way to find your brother, and a way to get rid of Mitchell Williams. I've achieved both with surprising ease. In fact, he helped me do it with his idea to go to Hell, and you helped me do it with your paranoid mistrust of the wrong people. It's so much fun to play with humans."
The Valkyrie slipped into the hangar. Tio felt it shudder slightly as Origin brought it in and placed it on the deck.
"Time to get up," Watson said, grabbing Tio's arm and pulling him to his feet.
Tio used his chance, throwing his arm over and extending one of his knives. They weren't intended for physical violence, but they were strong and sharp enough to pierce the skin.
It never landed. Watson grabbed his wrist before it could.
"Predictable," Watson said. He took a small device and placed it against Tio's head.
The pain was like nothing else he had ever felt. His entire body convulsed, his mouth opening to scream. No sound was able to escape the utter agony.
Watson removed the device.
"Your centralized implant is a detriment to you. It may not be networked, but it can still have current channeled through it and into your nervous system. In fact, let me show you something."
Watson knelt down, retrieving a similar device. This one had a thin needle at the end.
"It goes into the connector. It works on anyone with a jack. Much more crude than controlling remotely through the p-rat, but some of the crew have turned their receivers off. But first things first. Get up and walk with me. You can scream if you want to, it will be too late."
Tio refused to stand. Watson put the device back on his neck. He writhed again, grateful when the Tetron removed it. He got to his feet.
/>
"This isn't going to work," Tio said. "This isn't how it ends."
"Oh? How do you know that?"
Tio was silent. He didn't know that. He just couldn't believe it might.
"Walk."
Tio walked with Watson, out of the cockpit of Valkyrie to the side hatch. It started sliding open as they approached.
"See this," Watson said, producing a small remote control from a pocket of his white coat. "This is for that."
The hatch was open. Singh was standing with Origin next to the new, improved package that he had helped Watson build.
"Origin, it's a trick," Tio said, screaming. "You need to-"
Watson pressed the remote. Singh and Origin both dropped to the floor.
"All of the crew with an active implant, which is most of them when they aren't training without, will be like that right about now," Watson said.
"The package?"
"Yes. Thank you for your help. I made some minor alterations to scramble the signals instead of jamming them. Since I have the keys to the crew's receivers, well, you can see the result."
"I'll kill you," Tio said, turning to attack Watson once more, his anger finally boiling over his ability to control it.
"No, you won't," Watson said, sticking the device back on his neck and shoving him.
Tio fell onto the Valkyrie's ramp, rolling down it unable to move or make a sound as a thousand knives stabbed into every nerve ending in his body. He lay there, eyes open and in unimaginable pain, while Watson descended the ramp and grabbed Origin.
"We should pay a visit to your core," he said to the prone configuration.
"Yes, we should," he mimicked, shaking Origin. "What about the Knife?"
"He can wait here."
60
Tio lay on the floor, his body shaking, his mind barely able to process anything other than pain. Watson vanished from his view, carrying Origin out of the hangar and towards the Tetron's true core.
Gone. Everything was gone. Min. Asimov. Millie. And soon the Goliath. They had won. The enemy had won. Just like that.
No. He had to do something. It couldn't end like this, could it?
Yes. He couldn't even move.
He heard a noise at the far end of the hangar. He tried to turn his head, but his body wasn't responding. He had to get control of the pain. He had to focus. He fought to steady his breathing, and the agony diminished slightly.
