by Terry Mixon
He’d insisted that she come out of her cabin and eat in the crew’s mess. She had to admit the noisy compartment felt good. The crew seemed pleased to see her.
The compartment held an equal mixture of Pentagaran Royal Fleet personnel, scientists, and Terran Fleet crew. She wasn’t quite sure how to interpret the Pentagarans’ stares. Most seemed to be watching her with interest, but a few had a hint of fear or distrust in their gazes.
Probably because of what she’d become. Rumors had swirled wildly after the assassination attempt. What she’d overheard—and with her enhanced hearing, she’d heard a lot—varied from the fantastical to versions that were almost correct. The nature of her “injuries” was out in the open now, the cover story destroyed by a recording from the Parliament building security systems that someone had leaked.
She had to admit she’d watched it several times, shocked at the sheer speed and lethality of her counterattack. Her face hadn’t looked like one of the Pale Ones as she fought. Her expression was serene, as though she were dancing. Frankly, that terrified her. She hadn’t been in control. Her implants had made her a backseat driver.
Kelsey now understood exactly how the rebels had perverted the implants during the Fall. They’d overwritten the code that dictated when the implants could make the body act. They’d removed the human host from the control loop.
That was what woke her screaming in the dark.
It took a nudge from Talbot to bring her back to the moment. She should’ve refused the second piece of pie, but to her shame, she was still hungry. Her fork started efficiently moving it to her mouth. “What makes you think this pie isn’t going straight to my thighs? I can’t ever remember gorging like this. I’m a pig.”
“Your metabolism is jacked up into overdrive. You have artificial muscles, and other things, that your body is powering. Your real muscles probably have to work hard to keep up. Think about how much energy you must’ve used during that fight. You were terrific, by the way.”
She felt her face coloring as a chill ran down her spine. “It was kind of freaky. Once the fighting started, my body began moving on autopilot. I decided to fight and my implants took control. I was like a horrified spectator while my hands were crushing flesh and snapping bones.”
“I’m not going to tell you that it’s okay,” he said flatly. “You weren’t trained for anything like that. I’m sure it was horrible for you, but you did what needed doing. You saved the day. In the end, that’s what matters. You were very brave.”
Embarrassed even further, she decided to change the subject. “I wish I could find out more about my condition, but no one alive can give me the briefing that an Imperial marine would’ve gotten in basic training.” She finished the pie and set the fork down resolutely. “I might have a listing of some of the enhancements, but I don’t have an owner’s manual.”
Talbot took a sip of his beer. “I bet you do. You just have to figure out how to access the help files. Maybe junior can help figure it out.”
He meant Carl Owlet. She wished she had a beer. All Lily allowed her now was water.
“He’s still trying to figure out how to say “hello world” in the old Empire programming language. Whatever that means.” She hunched down in her chair and sulked. “I’m never going to figure this out.”
“Doctor Stone is a fine physician, but she has one notable flaw. She’s too cautious. You need to explore your boundaries. You need to start pushing yourself. Learning your new limits.”
“Right. Then I’ll rip someone’s arm off.”
“Don’t fall into that mental trap,” he said evenly. “Combat is not losing control. You stopped men determined to kill you. That’s a good thing.” He pushed his plate back. “Doctor Stone has one other failing. She’s not here. Come down to marine country with me and we’ll do some off-the-books experimentation.”
Kelsey tried to judge if he was being serious. He certainly seemed to be. “Is that safe?”
“Nothing in this world is safe, kid. Look, you have old Empire combat implants inside you. You need the marines to help you figure them out safely. We also need to have an idea of what your capabilities are. We can teach you and learn from you at the same time.”
“I’m a little short to be a marine. And I’m lousy at doing what people tell me to do. You can ask Jared. Or my father.”
The marine NCO grinned. “I’m not suggesting you enlist. Think of it as being an honorary marine.”
“I’m not sure that Jared would appreciate me doing this. I want to. I really do, but I don’t want to screw up again.”
Talbot finished his beer and stood. “Then it’s a good thing I already got his approval. And Lieutenant Reese. They both think this is a good idea, if you’re agreeable.”
“Yes,” she said without needing to think. “Hell, yes.”
“Then let’s go get started.”
The walk down to marine country showcased the terrible damage Athena had taken in battle. Fire had scarred and burned the bulkheads in so many places. The damage became worse the further aft they went. It made her sick. It made her feel guilty.
She didn’t say anything. After the talk Jared had given her, she knew that she just had to keep those feelings to herself.
The damage in marine country was mostly gone. Two of the marines were painting a bulkhead while others packed various pieces of equipment.
Lieutenant Reese came out of his office with a duffel bag. He set it down when he saw her and came directly over. He smiled and held out his hand. “Princess Kelsey. It’s good to see you up and about. Congratulations on your stellar performance the other day. You did us proud.”
She hesitated at taking the hand he offered. “I don’t think you want me shaking your hand. You might need it later.”
“I’m a marine. They pay me to be unspeakably brave.” He kept his hand extended.
Kelsey’s memory of ripping the walking support out of the plascrete was at the forefront of her thoughts. And the way she’d broken bones and killed during the ambush. She took a breath and shook his hand.
He didn’t release her hand. “That wasn’t very convincing. I promise I’ll scream like a little girl if you hurt me.”
“If you pull some kind of prank on me, I’m probably going to hurt you by accident.”
“I’m an officer and a gentleman. I leave the pranking to the men and women under my command. Come on. You need to stop being so hesitant.”
She gave him a firmer handshake. And then one with even more strength when he shook his head.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, her heart racing.
“To give you confidence. You need to stop being afraid you’ll hurt us. Forget the implants and shake my hand like you’ve done all your life.”
Kelsey gave up and prayed the governors worked like Twelve had said.
“Now we’re talking!” Reese said.
She snatched her hand back as soon as he released it. “This is going to be hard. I’ve decided to take Senior Sergeant Talbot up on his offer to help train me.”
“Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. We’re packing up, but I can have anything you need brought out.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, why are you painting the bulkhead? You’re leaving Athena. Probably forever.”
“Marine country will be shipshape before we leave. If any marine ever returns, they’ll find everything in order. It’s our way.” He turned to Talbot. “What do you have in mind?”
“Nothing too exciting, I think. Right now, she doesn’t even know many of her capabilities. I’m hoping she can figure out how to interface with her equipment.”
The officer nodded. “Good idea. Use the gym. We haven’t started packing it yet.”
“Thank you, sir.” Talbot gestured for Kelsey to go to one of the compartments she’d never been in before.
Workout machines filled one side of the large compartment and padded mats the other. One corner held free weights that had been scattered at some
point in the battle. She could almost see the sweating men grunting under the heavy weights.
“Do you want me to work out?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Why don’t we sit on the mats? You’ve interfaced with old Empire equipment before, so I’d like you to tell me about it while we relax.”
Kelsey knelt on the pads, sitting back on her heels. The protective mats were thinner than she’d expected. It probably hurt to fall on them.
She relaxed and told him about how she’d seen the old Empire machine’s schematics when she wanted to know more about it. How she’d used her eyes and ears much less adeptly. How she’d seemingly known where to shoot with the unfamiliar pistol.
“Honestly, it was more like something happened to me rather than me making it happen,” she added when she was done.
Talbot sat in front of her with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap. He looked very comfortable in the position. She wondered if he meditated.
“So, you saw or felt the old Empire computer in your head when you tried to sense it. Did you see yourself?”
She shook her head.
“Try to sense yourself the same way. One would think the interface would be similar. Why make things more complicated than they need to be?”
Seeing herself seemed ludicrous, but she closed her eyes and tried. It felt like she looked in every direction, but always away from herself.
“I’m not sensing anything. It’s like I’m floating in the void and looking all around, but I can’t see myself.”
“What does your body look like in your mind?”
She tried to imagine she was looking at herself and suddenly became aware of something. A presence similar to Twelve, but much more subdued. She cracked her eyelid, but Talbot wasn’t holding anything.
Hello?
The presence didn’t respond.
Kelsey imagined she was standing in front of it and reached out an imaginary hand to touch it. There was a hesitation and then it opened before her.
Or perhaps inside her was a better way to think of it, because she became aware of the interface in her head. Not as an intelligence, but as a piece of hardware. Like when she looked at Twelve, though it didn’t give her much detail at all. No model numbers or specifics about the parts themselves.
She tried to drill down into the components and received a short response. Access denied. Information classified at GAMMA level.
So the implants could respond. She just didn’t know the right way to get meaningful information. Or no one existed who could clear her to know it.
She opened her eyes. “I can sense the implants in my head, but they don’t talk the way Twelve does. I can’t see the details about the hardware because it’s classified.”
“Makes sense. See if you can get system statuses.”
Kelsey closed her eyes again. She knew she didn’t need to, but it felt more comfortable. Status?
A flood of information washed over her. It felt like she was looking at every part of her body at the same time. It was like a hundred people trying to tell her different things all at once.
She willed it to stop and it did, without her verbalizing the words.
“You okay?”
She realized she had her hands over her ears. She brought them back to her lap and opened her eyes. “I think everything tried to give me a status at the same time. It was crazy.”
“Start small and general. It takes a lot of experience to take in every aspect of something at a glance. You have to work up to that and be familiar with all the details before they make sense. Maybe the pharmacology unit. It’s one piece of hardware.”
Kelsey imagined her body as a hollow drawing and focused her attention on the pharmacology unit. She didn’t know what it looked like, but she suddenly knew how many drugs it had, what their names were, and that the reservoirs were mostly full.
She had no idea what any of the drugs did. She focused on one by name and her implants provided more detail. It was a painkiller. There were general guidelines on how it was used, but she could see the pharmacology unit itself made the determination to use it and in what dosage.
Kelsey wanted to see which ones she could dispense and the list of drugs changed. A pair of them jumped out at her. Both had unpronounceable names, but the list grouped them together under a much shorter name: panther.
One drug in the combo sped up the transmission speed of her nerves. The other did something similar to the cognitive areas of her brain, somehow working in conjunction with her implants. They must be the drugs she’d used during combat. She was surprised they affected her nerves and brain rather than her muscles.
Thinking about her muscles brought them to the forefront of her mind and she became aware of them. She saw that she could control how much strength she used, and that they had limits imposed on them. It dawned on her that those were her strength governors. The same ones Twelve turned on for her. The ones that had disengaged during the fight. Her implants had engaged them again.
If that was her normal strength, then she had a lot of room to go up. It looked like a bar graph when she envisioned it. Normal human strength was green and occupied about a tenth of the left side. That was ridiculous.
“This thing is lying to me.”
Talbot raised an eyebrow. “What did it say?”
“It says that I’m only using ten percent of my available strength. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a small woman, but I can’t believe that much stronger with these artificial muscles.”
“You did rip a support out of the floor.”
She gave him a slow nod. “True, but that’s more raw strength than the Pale Ones exhibited. Someone could rip arms out with that kind of strength. The Pale Ones never did that.”
“They wanted us alive. That would impose some limits when fighting. Your systems must have something similar.”
“Thank God.”
He rose to his feet. “We happen to have some weight machines. Let’s see if you can manually control how much strength you use.”
“I don’t want to break anything.”
“If you break it, we can fix it. Sit in the leg press and we’ll bump the weight up to see if you can master moving it without breaking things.”
Kelsey sat in the machine and let him adjust the part she pushed her feet against. The stack of weights looked very intimidating.
He slid a small rod under just a few of the weights. “We’ll start with a very light load. Well within the reach of even a small lady like yourself. Go ahead.”
She pushed them up a few times and they did feel pretty light.
Talbot stopped her and added more. He kept doing that until she had trouble lifting them. “Okay, what I want you to do now is move the limits you’re imposing on your strength until you can lift this easily, but not too easily. It’ll give you a feel for how to fine tune your control.”
After a moment, she figured out how to nudge the limits on her legs up a little. A second bar appeared for her legs. This time the weights were easy to move. Too easy. She nudged the limits on her legs down until it felt more natural.
They did that a few more times and he surprised her by resetting the weights back to the first setting. “Now, keep your strength settings high and press. Try not to overpower it. Focus on control. You know you can move it, so try to make it smooth and easy.”
It took her several tries before she stopped making them bounce. Having the limits higher than her normal strength felt strange, but she was able to move the weights and keep control.
“I did it!”
“You did. Good job. That’s the kind of thing you need to work on. Bumping the limits and manipulating things gently until you have total confidence in your fine motor skills no matter how much strength you’re using.”
She cocked her head and gave him an assessing look. “How did you know to try that?”
He grinned. “My drill instructor in basic training made us throw eggs at one another. Technically, to one
another. If we kept them intact as we opened the distance between ourselves, we continued competing. If we broke the egg, we had to do pushups while we watched the rest. The winning pair got to do something special. The reward varied. It taught us to exercise some control.”
“I’d have never imagined that in a million years. Okay, I’ll find other things to practice on. And I’m starting to get hungry again.”
“Then we’ll go back for a snack. I imagine the harder you work out, the hungrier you’ll get. Before we go, I want to see something.” He moved the weight selection rod to the highest mark. “I want to see you lift this.”
Kelsey raised her limits on the legs twice and the weights moved a little. She raised them a third time and pressed the entire mass of metal up. Her indicators said she was only at one third of her capacity.
“We’re going to need more weights.”
“For anything serious, we’ll use free weights and squats. Don’t worry. Those are tougher. Come on. Snack time.”
She followed him out thinking about how much her world had changed. She doubted she’d ever get used to it.
Chapter Ten
The trip took even longer than Jared had expected. By the time Athena flipped to the next system and made its way to Courageous, more than five days had passed. His beautiful ship was broken and it tore at him that it would never be whole again.
The word from Pentagar on the way out was very sparse. News of the attack was now in the public domain, but no one had any idea who was behind it. There was a lot of speculation, though. Everything from crackpot theories involving the Pale Ones to old Empire rebel holdouts in the mountains.
He was certain that every law enforcement agency on the planet was digging for leads, and he was just as curious as everyone else who might’ve been behind the attack, but other than the fact that it had almost killed him and the Princess, it was really none of their business. Perhaps by the time they finished working on Courageous, the Pentagarans would have some information.
A trio of Pentagaran warships escorted them out to the flip point. Not Mace, though. Commodore Sanders and the Royal Family had changed their focus to the trouble in their own back yard. One of the ships would wait on the Pentagaran side of the flip point.
