Scavenger: A.I.: (Sand Divers, Book Two)

by Timothy C. Ward

  HE APPEARS REMARKABLY HEALTHY. SEVEN POUNDS, FOUR OUNCES. VITALS WITHIN ACCEPTABLE RANGE. NOW, BEAR WITH ME, YOU NEED STITCHES.

  Star closed her eyes, counting seconds as she knew the pain would run its course, and then she’d be whole again, her son within her grasp and…she needed to get well soon. Problems were on their way. Threats to her baby.

  His name was not Fish. Something happened in the tunnels between Fort Pope and the hospital. He stopped speaking to her. If I stayed there and focused harder on his memories…but it didn’t matter. That chance had passed. Maybe it could come again. For now, she had a new son. Singer’s surgery on her vagina made thinking of a name oddly difficult. She didn’t want to pick sonofabitchbastardthathurts. Arthur. Like her uncle, one of the lords who’d died defending Springston from a brigand raid when she was eight. “Arthur it is. Singer, meet Arthur.”

  FINE YOUNG BOY YOU ARE, ARTHUR. STRONG, TOO, LIKE YOUR MOTHER.

  “That he is,” said a man with a thick accent from the open doorway. She couldn’t determine if his smile beheld friendliness or deception.

  Singer raised a finger at the man. A red dot appeared where the man’s dark chest hair protruded from the collar of his pale blue over shirt. DO NOT MOVE. The man didn’t, aside from losing his smile. IDENTIFY YOURSELF.

  “Doctor Hannu. Rush sent me.”

  “Rush?” Star gasped. He found a doctor?

  “He’s been captured.” He pointed to a shelf cut into the wall and the drawers below. “Blankets and cloths in there to wrap your newborn and clean up.” He looked back at Singer as he sidestepped to the drawers. “Please. We can’t delay. They’re not far behind me.”

  Star wanted his help and the blankets for her baby. If Rush really was captured, Doctor Hannu may be her only chance at finding him. But she hated letting her guard down in case his cover was a lie.

  The doctor set a heavy blanket and folded white rags on the table beside her bed and lifted one of the rags. “I need to dry him off first. May I?”

  He didn’t appear to have any weapons. At this proximity, he could try and strangle her or snap her neck. Star tensed, ready, but his slow movement remained peaceful. He draped the rag over her son’s back and smeared the blood and amniotic fluid over the baby’s soft sin. She cooperated as he used three rags to dry and clean her baby, then gave her a rag to dry her forehead and another to dab between her legs. When he finished, he unfolded the blanket over her as her son nursed, then took the dirty rags to the bathroom set off in the corner of the room.

  Singer walked to her side and leaned over, pulling the feed tube from the slot in his collar. DRINK.

  She did, relishing the liquid strength.

  The doctor returned with an urgent pace. “Now we go,” he said. “Singer will carry you.”

  Brown-red swaths stained his shirt but no trace marred his fingers. She’d watched him towel her son off. His hands had been well covered.

  How’d he clean so well without water?

  Soreness and exhaustion would make moving harder now than before her son was born. She took a closer look at the doctor’s palm as he reached to wedge his hand behind her back. Washed clean. Her heartbeat quickened.

  “Come on.” He began lifting her back while Singer steadied her with a hand on her collarbone. The pressure of his fingers on her muscle glided from help into pain. And force. His fingers gripped and restrained as she fought to pull back. She whipped around to Doctor Hannu reach in and scoop his hand under her son. He elbowed her in the chest and yanked her baby free.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled.

  Singer wrapped an arm around her stomach and lifted her feet off the floor. Doctor Hannu backed up, smiling, as her son began crying.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Stenson. This wasn’t part of our original plan, but your amniotic fluids and this precious hybrid child will make The Gov very pleased. Pleased enough, maybe.” He paused at the door to the bathroom. “To possibly spare yours and your husband’s lives.”

  She pounded on Singer’s forearms, hurting her soft flesh against his solid metal. “No!” She hadn’t had five minutes with her child and already she was thrust into grief over his loss. “Please. You can’t.” Her voice broke as tears blurred her sight. “Arthur!”

  She thrust her head back into Singer’s face shield, accomplishing only a flare of pain in her skull. His hold tightened, restricting her breath.

  Doctor Hannu’s blue shirt bled black from a point in its center, washing over him and raining down over his face into a powered dive suit with visor and DL on his hip. He smiled and waved her to follow his gentle stride to the exit, nonplussed by the wailing baby tucked in his arm.

  Her hits and kicks failed to alter Singer’s gait as he carried her into the reception area and out of the maternity ward.

  In the exit lobby, Doctor Hannu straddled a motorcycle hovering through the whir and expulsion of air from three vents at front, middle, and rear. Reflective black shielding covered the two seated bike. A basket grew out of the base of the steering bars and he set Arthur inside. The bike dipped a few inches under his weight before rising back to its height four feet in the air.

  Singer halted beside the bike, opened up, and forced Star inside his exoskeleton. His bruising grip threatened to break bones so she relented. The chest cavity locked her in and the clear helmet face locked into the collar. Her visor synced with Singer’s mainframe with a chime and the activation of icons on the outline of her visor—icons her visor could not access. Singer climbed on the hoverbike, wrapped an arm around Hannu, and they took off into the tunnel. The small engine whirred as their headlight tracked their rapid ascent.

  Star licked the thick plastic of the helmet face, hoping her nanos would transfer and regain her control of the Poseidon, but nothing happened. Her nano connection had been dulled. She was ineffective. Confined. Lost.

  “Singer. What’s happened to you? Rush left you to protect me. Don’t disobey your owner.”

  “Hello, Star,” came Warren’s voice through the helmet’s inner speakers. Star’s stomach dropped. “I missed you. Knew I’d catch you somehow, but oh how perfect things all worked out. My hope is you’ll cooperate when we let you see Rush.”

  62 – Star

  How’d you get here?

  She had outrun W’s advance while inside Singer. He must have made it out with Cool’s group, especially if Doctor Hannu brought him. The maze in which they’d fought these last few days made Star tired. “What do you want, W?”

  “Oh sweet thing, you and your husband have already given me so much. If you’re feeling an added guilt of generosity, you could take your imprisonment and experimental status with a smile and a thank you.”

  “I’ll take no—”

  “`Cause if you do, I’ll consider letting you see your boy. Over time, you might earn enough trust to be with him daily.”

  Star tried forming fists, but Singer stopped her fingers and locked her arms from swaying or her back from thrusting. Even her legs failed to move the concrete weight of Singer’s suit. Pain forced her to quit fighting.

  “Now, now. This doesn’t have to be so bad. I want you to have a chance to raise your son. He is incredibly special to our plans, and having a stable family influence will be invaluable to his development.”

  Star thought their shanty and the many scares of night sand spills had been bad. Now her only way of raising her second son would be at the service of a lunatic computer?

  Rush? What have we done?

  She’d failed in too many ways.

  “We’re taking you to the surface. You, Rush, and your son, the first born of Danvar. From him will spread a new religion and hope for a radical new future. You can be a part of that, or you can show even the tiniest fraction of rebellion when you are presented to the crowd. That would be fine, too. We’ll kill you and show the example of what we expect toward anyone who dares stand in the way of the progress and thriving survival your newborn represents.”

  Th
ere it was, the place where she’d have to defeat W once and for all. Now she just had to figure out how. And if you’d like to help, Rush, don’t be shy.

  “Star?”

  Rush? It was. It had to be. How?

  “Star? Where are you? Where am I? It’s dark. I’m cold.”

  Star concentrated on his voice. The connection was a hair too thin to pluck from the jungle between them. I need plasma. I can save us with one more flare.

  “Star, you’re being strangely quiet,” W said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “About?”

  “How you outsmarted me.” Playing into his confidence could help hide her getting what she needed.

  “Yes, well,” W said, chuckling, “it’s not your fault. Others helped. I evolved. There were more of me than you. And that’s kind of my point, you don’t need to take this change in direction as personal. We’re different beings. We can help each other.”

  “Could I become like you?” She didn’t know where this was going but it sounded good in her head. “Can you do that?”

  Their progress through the tunnel hit an incline that tilted her back on the bike. Singer reached her hand out to hold onto Doctor Hannu.

  “We can look into that…in time,” W said.

  “Is The Gov going to be there for the presentation?” she asked.

  W paused. “Why do you ask?”

  “I just can’t believe you’d want to work with him when you just said my defeat wasn’t personal. We’re just different beings. Why team up with anything that far beneath you? Sounds like a setup for ruin.”

  “Star, you still there?”

  Yeah. She strained to maintain her grip on his thoughts while thinking about what to say to W.

  “Warren’s memories show him using the same tactic of divide and conquer,” W said. “The Gov has far more to offer. You’re one misstep too risky to bother keeping alive. Your disappearance could just as easily be described as death in childbirth, a mother’s sacrifice for our new savior.”

  “Where are you going?” Rush asked.

  Not sure. Near top of building. W is talking about showing us off to a crowd on the surface, along with our son.

  “Our son?”

  Arthur. I lost Fish days ago. I guess he wanted to let his younger brother get the next chance.

  “Arthur…like your uncle.”

  Yeah.

  “Oh, I’m moving, too.”

  Star relayed to Rush what W had said since popping into her helmet. They banked right and dropped through a hole in the roof. Arthur cried. Star clenched and twisted, but Singer’s statue pose didn’t budge an inch. They cut through an open doorway into a hall and shot past closed doors to one at the end that opened at their arrival.

  “Good thinking getting between W and The Gov, though I bet it was only a short time before they planned to betray each other anyway.”

  The hoverbike entered the top floor office, soaring over chairs as it headed for the window with the beach. The wall of sand parted upon entry into a vertical cylinder. She slid backward as the hoverbike tipped upright. Singer held on and they rose toward a distant circle of sunlight.

  So what do we do? I have no nanos to help outside the prison Singer has me in. I have no way of spreading the nanos in my saliva and blood.

  “I’m masked, too. We’ll think of something. Cool is still out there in the submarine I made. Not sure yet when to have him create a distraction, or if we save his surprise for our rescue. I’m almost at the top of the tunnel. Let me see what it’s like up here. I’ll think of something.”

  Star hoped so. Giving birth to Arthur had worn her flat, and while her head held elation at her son’s life, the terror of their separation shrouded her imagination. If she could somehow get out of Singer, or regain control of his mainframe, she’d make W, The Gov, and anyone else threatening her family pay dearly.

  She arrived into daylight surrounded by a crowd of sand dwellers and their eruption of cheers. Doctor Hannu flew over their skyward stretched hands. Their jumping created a sea of bare hands dusted by the earth they fled from.

  Rush stood on the bow of a large, multi-hulled sarfer. Brigands armed with AKs waited close enough to apparently not warrant him being tied up. Rush had an old style dive suit with a light blue ker tied to cover nose to jaw. His visor was down and his suit powered.

  Why would they put you in a suit?

  “W said I’d be shot before I could try anything. Something about how it looks and our last chance to play for the team.”

  And I’m stuck in a Poseidon I can’t control.

  Doctor Hannu slowed to hover on the starboard side of Rush’s sarfer and touched down as brigands with faces concealed by goggles and blue kers walked over to meet them. Their hands shifted on their AKs as their attention focused on Singer and his dismounting of the bike. He opened up at the chest and unbuckled down the front of his arms and legs. The brigands backed up.

  Doctor Hannu motioned her to come with. His grasp on Arthur compelled her to follow. She stepped out of Singer, glad to be free of his prison. It turned around and folded into a briefcase next to a stack of folded sails. Star turned to Doctor Hannu walking toward Rush. Star watched her baby’s head resting in the doctor’s arm. Arthur had her black hair but Rush’s waves.

  And my nanos. Doctor Hannu had wiped Arthur down, but he couldn’t have wiped them all off. In that realization, a film of power radiated over Arthur’s skin, concentrated at the roots of his hair. As she thought about how what he’d fed on had come from her body, nanos woke and linked between them. She could move him as easily as her own body. But his muscles. His reflexes, they wouldn’t be much threat to an adult’s strength and reaction time. Still, Arthur could spread her nanos to someone or thing she could control.

  Doctor Hannu stopped beside Rush, close enough that Star wondered if Rush would deck him and take his son, but before Rush moved the doctor lifted Arthur like a trophy before the crowd. Their cheer thundered as the wave of their hands stirred into a frenzy.

  Ideas came with glorious clarity. Get ready, she told Rush, then stirred the milk in Arthur’s belly until it sprayed from his mouth. Milky white rain splashed the front rows of the crowd below.

  “Oh…” Doctor Hannu brought Arthur closer to his body.

  Star noticed the reflective blue inside the phlegm on Hannu’s hands and wrists. She’d nailed him, too. Now, she had to focus. Spread. Conquer.

  The guard behind Rush raised a pistol.

  “Rush, behind you!” she shouted.

  He spun as the pistol discharged a loud crack into the open air.

  Rush ducked, cross punched the brigand in the stomach and jammed his other hand into the gun hand’s wrist. Crack. Another shot off mark.

  As she moved toward him, chaos swept from the sarfer’s deck to the crowd below.

  One of the front row recipients of her son’s vomit convulsed and rammed palms into her eyes. The people behind her shoved backward. The crowd hushed, amplifying the woman’s hissing and squealing.

  “She’s possessed!” one said, pointing at the woman buckling to her knees in the sand.

  “The Ancients have blessed her!” another said then, lifting his hand toward his face, said, “I touched her. I feel it. Power from the Ancients!”

  The first speaker backed away from the faithful one. “Stay away! Only demons live down there.”

  One of the AK-armed guards shot Doctor Hannu in the knee, then reached in for Arthur as more guards entered the scuffle. One caught Rush by his suit and yanked him backward.

  Below, Faithful spun his blessed hand into a backhand slap too quick for Speaker to dodge. The slap connected with his cheek and sent him into a cradle of arms behind him. “Ancients bless!”

  A new hiss whipped out of the young man in the front row. “It burns cold!” The young man’s eyes lit with deep amber fires.

  “Bless me!” Faithful shouted, then lunged to wrap his arms around the boy
.

  Amber eyes brushed back Faithful’s cloak and bit deep into his hairy wrist. Blood spray coated the neck of the Amber eyes’ tan tunic. Faithful screamed and yanked his arm free, clutching it as he stumbled back and fell. The crowd had backed up enough to let him fall untouched.

  Star hadn’t commanded Amber eyes to bite. Her nanos grew in small patches but were still fighting for control. Amber eyes was an unliving. Did I do that?

  The guard who shot the doctor landed a hook punch into another’s jaw. He emerged with Arthur in his arm, carrying the baby toward her. “Star, here!”

  His voice. Dixon?

  Her boy’s tiny hands clutched at air as he flew beyond the grip of the two guards and their late attempts to snatch him. Star snatched her son from his freefall and secured him to her stomach, muffling his cry as she planted her weight on one foot and side kicked the nearest armed guard. Her gut kick expelled a gasp and knocked the guard into the sarfer’s wall. Star twisted and snapped a kick into the guard’s cheekbone. His head snapped right, his AK dropped, and his body slumped to a pile against the wall. Her crotch wailed with pain, but her son was safe, and she nearly free.

  Hands gripped the edge of the boat.

  Star’s nanos were close by. Amber eyes. She bent to pick up the AK as others barked rounds. Between their rapid bursts, screams echoed out from the crowd. Star grabbed the AK, unsure how she’d manage accurate shots while holding Arthur. The sarfer’s stern had crates and stacks of extra sails. Star crouched as she crept over and placed Arthur in the cradle of a folded sail and slid it toward a crate to conceal him from the rest of the boat.

  A firm edge punched her kidney, vaulting her headlong onto the pile of sails. A hissing sound escaped the lightweight body scrambling up her back. The AK under her dug into her ribs. She screamed through the nanos she felt in the attacker’s face. His progress halted, his weight lifting. His voice shrill. She spun her hand into a neck chop that choked off Amber eyes’ voice. She grabbed his tunic’s front and yanked him to the deck.

  Near where he landed was the metal briefcase Singer had turned into.