“Untoward?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, you know. I mean, more than the usual. He’s an odd fellow, that one, as it is.”
“Huh.” He sniffed. “What is that even like, being in his head?”
She took a moment. “Lots of loud symphonic music. Heavy on the brass and cymbals.”
“Really?”
She shrugged.
Erick pursed his lips, suddenly feeling like an uncultured simpleton who needed to expand his musical tastes.
“He’s on his way over,” Rylea said. “He’ll link with us in about a half-hour. I suggest you get some more rest, if you can. We both know you’ll want to sleep with one eye open while he’s here.”
He winced, both because she was right, and for the realization that he had just been thinking the same.
---
Erick found a bunk in the back and lay down, though he couldn’t stop his mind from racing. At least he was putting on a show of giving Rylea some privacy so that he wasn’t apparently shouting his murderous rage into her mind. Sorry, he thought, realizing she could probably still hear him. But if she was listening, she had the good grace not to respond.
Time ticked on. Eventually he rose and rejoined her in the front of the shuttle, at the controls. She was sitting in the pilot’s chair with her feet up on the console.
“You look comfortable,” he said. “Know how to work everything up here?”
“Sure. Check it out.” She blinked and the screen changed over to tactical, showing a red blip approaching. That would be Cyclops, he realized. With another blink, she changed the screen to rear cams. Another, and the zoom factor increased, showing his shuttle slowing on its approach.
Erick let out a low whistle. “Been practicing?”
She shrugged. “It’s starting to feel natural. Like when I let myself out of my cell, or when I started the shuttle up for us.”
“You did all that with your mind?” He sat beside her and looked her in the eye. “How are you feeling? Still feel… I mean, you know…”
“Like myself?”
He nodded.
“I think so.” She gazed into space on the screen. “I don’t feel like someone else, anyway. But maybe like more of myself. Like I didn’t really know who I was before, and now I’m starting to settle in my own skin.”
A moment passed. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
She gave him a quizzical look. “You are, aren’t you? Don’t be. It’s not a burden. I’m not sick or something, I’m not a victim anymore. Maybe what they did to me was wrong, but it’s a funny thing. If they took power away from me for a little bit—kidnapping me, locking me up, making me ill—they only gave me more in the long run.”
Erick wondered at her words. Was she not upset with the men who had done this to her? Was this her way of coping, maybe—rejecting the idea that anything was “done to her?”
She sniffed. “Here he comes.”
The shuttle lurched a bit, then gently corrected. A readout on the console showed successful linkage.
“Nice of you to let board,” Cyclops said, strolling through the airlock. Erick frowned. Cyclops returned his look with a grin. “Good to see you landed on your feet, boy.”
“He has a powerful ally,” Rylea said.
Cyclops gave her an appraising look. “See you’ve taken to your new abilities like a fish to water. That’s good, girl. You’re going to need them.”
She squinted and took a step toward him. “Who is he? I see a face, but I do not know it.”
“Best if we all sit down and talk through it, rather than you trying to put the pieces together from whatever is rattling around in here.” He pointed at his skull, chuckling at himself. “Not sure I’d trust my own thought processes these days.”
They sat down behind the console. Cyclops pulled out a flask and offered to share, which Erick and Rylea declined. He shrugged and threw it back for a long swig, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Erick wondered, for about the hundredth time, how the man had gotten those scars.
Ask me about it another time, Rylea said in his mind.
He lurched a little, but managed not to shoot her a look.
“So,” Cyclops said, “Rylea. What all have you pieced together so far?”
“I was kidnapped from my parent’s hab on Mars. You took the Spacegull so you could keep an eye on Wally, must have figured he would come after me. Not sure how you knew that. Doesn’t matter, he’s gone. Erick was a casualty of being Wally’s friend, now mine.”
Erick winced at her words. So, that’s why Rome had conscripted the ship in the first place? I’m sorry, a quiet voice said inside.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Cyclops said, waving. “None of that matters. I mean tell me know you know about yourself now.”
She frowned, but went on. “I was shot up halfway to the moon on Prophet. High literally out of my mind for weeks. I don’t know how they… they must have had us all on constant med-watch, probably on a bunch of life-support equipment to keep us going. I’m sure we were all given more than the fatal amount.”
Erick felt sick to his stomach.
Cyclops nodded. “Good, good. You say there were others. How many?”
“I don’t know. I was high, like I said. More than I can explain. But I was aware of other bodies, at first, and then, later… other minds.”
“You could hear them?”
“Yeah. It’s sort of like that. Like I can sense them. And they could sense me. Like we were all there together.”
Cyclops nodded more vigorously, his eyes wide with wonder. “What a perfect communion you must have had, you and your sisters all there in that place for the first time!”
“It wasn’t like that,” she spat. “It wasn’t… there was nothing perfect about it. It was dark, and cold, a prison of the mind. But you could hear everyone screaming with you in unison. It was hell.”
This was followed by a moment a silence, during which Erick tried very hard to restrain his murderous thoughts toward Cyclops.
“Tell me about how you got away,” Cyclops said.
“That’s my part,” Erick said through gritted teeth. “Wally convinced me. We flew in under pretense of making a medical supplies run. Snuck in with credentials we’d procured on the black market.”
“Bet that wasn’t cheap,” Cyclops said with a smirk.
“It wasn’t—especially on a Rome conscript salary. Anyway, she was high as a kite when we got to her, completely out of her mind, and, luckily for us, barely conscious. So getting her out wasn’t too difficult; we smuggled her with the supplies. It was knowing what to do with her after that was the trouble.”
Cyclops pursed his lips. “You had no Prophet, did you?”
Erick shook his head.
“You made her go cold turkey?” A hint of alarm came into his voice.
“We didn’t have a choice. Anyway, we didn’t know anything about the purpose of your little project, now, did we? All we knew was we had to get her away from you.”
Cyclops stood and collected himself. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “I assure you, I had nothing to do with Rylea’s abduction or experimentation.” He turned to face her. “See for yourself, girl.”
She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them again, frowning.
“He’s telling the truth,” she said. “At least, as far as I can tell.”
Cyclops shrugged. “Told you.”
“Alright.” Rylea crossed her arms in front of her. “Your turn. Sing, Cyclops.”
He smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter 9
Back on the ship, Gavin waited for his moment to get Kepple alone. It came when Kepple excused himself to go lay down. He visited the toilet first, during which time Gavin slipped into his quarters and positioned himself beside the door. The man didn’t see him until he had come in, dimmed the lights, and crawled under his covers.
“Agent Dolridge!” He sat up, all his muscles tensing, and brought his hands together. G
avin smiled and showed him his comm—in his hand.
“No good, Kepple. I’m a free agent at the moment, pun definitely intended. You and I need to clear the air a little bit more if I’m going to be working for you.” He rested his hand gently on the blasting pistol at his hip.
Kepple seemed to resign himself to the situation. “What is it you want to know?”
Gavin pocketed the comm. “On Merchant Station, our contact let slip that she’d been put in place to keep tabs on Empire agents. Agent Van shut it down pretty quick, seemed to think she had some sort of a duty to keep me out of it. I want to know why.”
Kepple shrugged. “Is that all? Why, that’s nothing. Really, nothing you need to concern yourself with. Nothing compared to what we’re doing now, what we’re up against.”
“All the same, I’d like to know more. I have my reasons. So, tell me. Who are these Empire agents you’ve been watching?”
He frowned. “Come on, you’re going to act surprised to learn the Empire maintains an intelligence force, and that we run counterintelligence on them? What did you think had happened since the days of the Sons and the Blade—that we’re all just penpals now?”
Gavin’s blood went cold. “Are you saying the Sons of Jupiter are active—or active again, same as your fledgling Blade force?”
He sighed. “No, not… I’m just saying, that’s all just normal procedure. It doesn’t have anything to do with the—”
A beep from the comm in the wall console interrupted him. “Kepple, Sir?” It was Agent Bryan. “Request that you come to bridge immediately, if able.”
Kepple rose to his feet, throwing the covers back on his bunk and slipping into his shoes. “Duty calls, Dolridge. Coming with?”
Gavin grunted and followed him out.
---
The bridge was tense.
Gavin stood in the back for a moment, letting the feeling of a Fleet bridge come back to him. He’d spent most of his XO commission under a haze of booze, but there had been a few years, back in the beginning, when he had loved it. Before Sarah had been taken from him.
He knew the sights and sounds of a bridge crew on the brink of battle.
“Sitrep,” Kepple said.
A junior officer spun around to report. “Long-range scans have picked up an unidentified entity moving out-system, Sir. Movement and energy sig are anomalous, could be our query.”
“On-screen.” A tactical readout showed row after row of datasets. “Smith, you’ll need to put this into plain words for me. I’m a plain man.”
“Sir.” The officer huddled over his console, pulling up one of the datasets. Gavin squinted to read it on the screen. He thought he recognized energy readings, only they were modulating far more quickly than readings from any ship engine construction he knew of. “These are the engine signatures of the entity. They seem to be rotating positions within the engine as it moves through space. I’ve never seen anything like it, Sir.”
“Why would they do that?” Kepple muttered.
“They’re like geese,” Gavin realized aloud. Kepple and his officers turned to look at him. He kept his gaze on the screen. “The readouts aren’t signatures modulating within one engine. They’re multiple engines, multiple crafts, and they’re constantly refreshing their formation for optimal efficiency and longevity. The way a pack of geese rotates the leaders out as it flies. Sir.” He glanced at Kepple. “I think it’s our boys.”
Kepple nodded. “Alright. Flint, I want a full armory. Get everything loaded and ready. Smith, any more specific idea of where they’re headed?”
He swiped at his console. “Current trajectory will take them to Pluto, Sir.”
“That’s them, or I’m a dead man.”
“That’s them, and you will be anyway,” Gavin muttered.
“Corrant, plot an intercept. ETA?”
The helmsman entered bearings and waited for calculations to complete. “One hour, Sir.”
Kepple opened a comm channel. “Agents Van and Bryan, please join me in the conference room.” He glanced at Gavin as he strode off the bridge. “Dolridge, with me.”
Gavin followed, wondering what he had gotten himself into.
---
“Why are they heading for Pluto?” Bryan asked. His voice was pitched just a little higher. Gavin shifted uneasily in his seat. Nothing made him feel nervous more than other nervous men. He despised it.
“We don’t know for sure,” Kepple said, “but we have to assume it’s no coincidence that it’s making way for the Council’s home base.”
“You think they’re coming from the Empire?” Van asked.
Kepple tilted his head. “It’s a possibility, yes. Their programming would have had to have been altered, and we have reason to believe that would take years of reverse engineering, but they have been missing for some time. It’s possible Empire forces have been sitting on them.”
“But you said they were in transit through the black market,” Gavin said. “Geta-4, right? And why would they chew up the Earth armada if they’d been requisitioned by Empire forces?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense.”
Kepple spread out his hands. “Could be a ruse.”
“Pretty costly ruse.”
“You’ve seen this weapon in action, Agent Dolridge. You wouldn’t say it’s worth the loss of a fleet of ships, if that’s what it took to put on the field?”
Gavin fell silent. It was worth more than a fleet of ships. It was the loss of the men he couldn’t reconcile himself with. And why bother with the charade, anyway, if it had been the Empire? Who had they been trying to impress, or hoodwink? “I don’t think we know all the players,” he grumbled.
Van and Kepple shared a look.
Gavin cursed. “Oh, this is rich. It wasn’t the fleet, and you know it, don’t you? Just tell me. Sons of Jupiter, wasn’t it?”
Kepple sighed through his nose.
“Sir!” Van glared at Kepple. Gavin noticed her hands had disappeared beneath the table. He reached down and pulled his blasting pistol in the blink of an eye.
“Shoot me and you’re dead, Van,” he said through gritted teeth.
She glanced down.
“Let’s all calm down,” Kepple said in the tone of a tired father. “Agent Van, reholster your weapon. Agent Dolridge, please do the same.” He glanced at Van. “He was going to have to find out sooner or later, anyway.”
Dolridge put his gun away and leaned back, crossing his arms. Keppler cleared his throat.
“The Sons of Jupiter did slink away, same as the Kuiper Blade, back when you left the service.”
“But they’ve slinked back?”
Keppler shrugged. “We believe it’s a more nuanced situation than that, much like our situation here. So far our intelligence suggests a rebooting, rather than a revealing, of the Sons. Of course, The Arms of the Sons has continued openly recruiting for years—that never stopped—but we think they have only recently resumed their original purpose of passing agents up into the True Sons.”
Gavin swallowed his bile. For years of his life he had fought tooth and nail against the Sons of Jupiter, the Empire’s ultra-elite and very secretive black ops force. Part intelligence, part assassins, they had proved a worthy opponent when it came to body counts. When it came to honor, Gavin would sooner spit in the wind than acknowledge them his equals.
“And you believe the Sons to have been in possession of the drones, and to have unleashed them on the Empire—why? A coup?”
“That’s our best guess at this time. Empire politics have been in a state of instability ever since the last Fleet War, you must know this. Caste divides and corruption among the bureaucracy have only grown since the stalemate between the Blade and the Sons. Conditions toward their old hegemony have not been favorable.”
“Hm.” Gavin hadn’t bothered keeping up with Empire politics. He’d never seen the need to, seeing as he wasn’t a citizen of the Empire. “And you think you know it was the Sons, why?”
&
nbsp; “Oh, no. We know we know.” Kepple looked smug. “We have a callsign placed at Ceres right before the time of the massacre there. Too important of one to be a coincidence.” He looked at the others. Van and Bryan nodded. Gavin splayed out his fingers, waiting.
“God-maker.”
The hairs on Gavin’s arms stood on end.
Chapter 10
Moses, Lucas decided, was one useful AI.
Not only had he succeeded in retaining a model of Hive’s interface; he had succeeded in creating a backdoor for them to hack in and plant whatever code alterations Ada and Caspar came up with.
“Well,” Lucas said, “that’s brilliant! Now we know how to get in, we just need to know what it is we plan to do inside.” He looked at Ada and Caspar, waiting.
“We’re going to plant these,” Caspar said. She held up a console device.
“Screens?” Lucas asked.
She shot him a withering look, then swiped at the console and pulled up a wall of code. “No, but nice guess. Have a look at these.”
He took the console and stared at line after line of micro-chain transactions, pursing his lips. “Bank statement?”
“Close. Inevitable as death and taxes, right? Well, this isn’t taxes, but it’s related to the other one.”
“Ah!” He thumbed down, gazing at the screen. “Prescriptions!”
Caspar nodded. “And other various medical protocols and commands. We think, after having a look at what Moses shared with us, that Hive’s basic operating system is modeled after nanobot AIs. So we had a look at the doctor’s nanobot programs.”
Ada quietly cleared her throat.
“Right,” Caspar said, grudgingly. “Ada’s idea. Mostly.”
Lucas’ eyebrows shot to his hairline. He’d heard a lot of things come from Lieutenant Caspar’s mouth, but this was the first time humility had been among them. It was also the first time she hadn’t just called Ada “that pirate.”
“Alright.” He set the console down on the table. “So, what? We tell Hive how to mend scars and treat the common cold?”
The Star Wizard: Starship Fairfax Book 4 - The Kuiper Chronicles Page 5
