Heart of Iron

by Ashley Poston

  “All right, and if we can’t find an empty memory core, loot everything you can. Let’s make this trip worth it. The more dangerous it looks, the better.”

  Talle chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I’ll stay back on the ship with Jax, then, in case we need to break and run.”

  “That might be for the best,” replied the captain, glancing up at the schematics of the Tsarina on the starshield one last time. Her hair blazed like sunshine. “Everyone should keep your wits about you. May the stars keep you steady.”

  “And the iron keep you safe,” they echoed, and dispersed, leaving Jax alone in the cockpit again.

  He turned back to the starshield, tapping his fingers impatiently on the armrest as he studied the drifting ship.

  Something wasn’t right, and it made him feel things he would rather keep locked up, his father’s voice telling him in that slow and confident cadence, Stalo ban ach van’en. Stars are not afraid.

  Screw the stars—he was terrified.

  He heard the captain stop Ana in the hallway. He paused, about to summon the grapplers to hook onto the Tsarina, and listened. “You’re staying with Jax to monitor the radio frequencies.”

  “I’m what? Captain, you can’t do that!”

  “We had an agreement. I’m leading this mission, and I tell you what we do.”

  “I’m not staying!” She stomped her foot. Jax winced. “I’m your best shot! You can’t honestly want me to stay? Get Riggs to stay! I need to go—Di, tell her I need to go.”

  “He’s staying, too,” the captain informed them. “There might be something on the Tsarina that could compromise you, Di.”

  “I understand,” D09 replied.

  “Understand?” Ana raged. Angry Ana was a meteor who left craters in her wake. “Bullshit! Nothing can compromise Di! And I suck at radio chatter—I need to go, Captain. You can’t stop me—”

  “Can’t?” Siege’s voice cut like a knife.

  Oh, she can, Jax thought, slowly turning back around in his chair so he could say that he hadn’t been there to witness Siege plunging her hand into Ana’s rib cage and ripping out her still-beating heart. Even with his back turned, the changing color of the captain’s hair, from yellow to fiery orange, snuck in from the hallway and cast a shine over the starshield.

  That was her super-angry color.

  “Ana. You are staying.” Then, with thinly controlled rage, Siege left to go meet the rest of the crew in the cargo bay.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jax watched Ana take a seat in the communications chair, staring out at the starshield with a defeated look, as he prepared the grapplers.

  Obviously Siege was right to keep Ana on the ship, but it wasn’t to monitor radio frequencies. Ana was being reckless. She wasn’t thinking straight. When you cared for something too much, you tended to do impulsive things.

  . . . Such as sneak into an Ironblood garden to steal coordinates to a ship that might be a seven-year-old death trap just waiting to be sprung.

  Ana turned to him. “Jax, is there another way onto the ship?”

  “Ana,” D09 warned.

  “No, we should be going,” she snapped. “We’re the only ones who know what to look for. Jax, you know this ship better than anyone. Is there another way onto the Tsarina?”

  He hesitated, because he couldn’t lie, and Ana knew that with a vicious certainty.

  “There is, isn’t there?” she went on. “I can see it on your face.”

  On his face? That was funny, when desperation was written in the crease of her eyebrows and the downward slant of her bow lips. If there wasn’t a fix for Di on that ship, he wondered who she would be without him.

  For a moment, he wished he could read Ana’s stars just so he would know.

  I’m going to regret this, he thought, tugging nervously at his gloves.

  “I . . . would probably check where the emergency air locks are on the Tsarina—left side, by the way—and jump from one of ours onto the other ship. It’s tricky, and I’d never attempt it, but if I wanted to get on the Tsarina, that’s how I’d do it.” He whipped around in his chair to her. “At least try to hit an air lock on the other ship and not splatter your brains all over it, okay? I don’t want your death on my conscience.”

  She smiled, and he hated how much he loved it. “Thank you!” Springing out of the communications chair, she rushed toward him.

  “No, no, no, no!” he cried, flinging out his arms to stop her.

  She stopped herself mere inches from him and eased back sheepishly. “Sorry, I forgot you don’t like being touched.”

  “Not that I don’t love you,” he replied tightly.

  “I owe you. This is going to be a breeze!”

  “A breeze?” D09 asked. “How hard a breeze—”

  She pulled him out of the cockpit with her but not before he caught Di’s moonlit eyes and knew that the stubborn Metal hadn’t done what he’d advised.

  Di quickly looked away and let Ana pull him out of the cockpit. He breathed out a sigh of relief. Too close.

  She’d come much, much too close.

  A holo-screen blipped up in the corner of the console, and he turned to inspect it. Which would have been D09’s job. Of course he was stuck doing all the grunt work. He frowned at the console. It was a signal—from a long way off. A ship? No, it couldn’t be. It didn’t have the right permissions. And the frequency wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen before. It made every program on the ship blitz.

  And if it pinged the Dossier, then it also pinged—

  “Ak’va,” he cursed, turning back to the scans of the Tsarina.

  And like fireworks bursting across the schematics, from one room to the next, blinking on like a long-slumbering monster, the ship awoke.

  D09

  The Tsarina was a Class-4 Armada retired thirty-four years ago for private use, but it did not show its age. On its side, in royal purple, was the Rasovant family crest, a nine-tentacled octopus.

  There had been only a 10.4 percent chance the ship would be here. But he should have known, as with everything else Ana touched, probability did not matter.

  Still, the advice Jax had given him resounded in his head. Humans were emotional creatures, so he must say something in case the Tsarina did not hold what they would come to find.

  “Jax, we’re at the emergency chute,” Ana said into the comm-link as she rubbed her melted pendant. For good luck. It was the only thing she had kept from the escape pod where Siege found them. He could not recall a moment when she was without it. “Jax?”

  The link was quiet.

  “Is he responding to you?” she asked Di.

  He shook his head. “I believe the comm-links have gone dark due to magnetic interference from the moon.”

  “Perfect.” She put on her helmet and was reaching for the latch to open the air lock when he stopped her.

  “Ana,” he said, “I wish to talk to you for a moment.”

  “Now? Di, whatever it is, you can wait until we get back.”

  “No, it must be now.”

  “All right Di, what is it?” She turned back to him as the Dossier rotated into position. There was a soft whoosh as Jax deployed the ship’s grapplers, puncturing the side of the Tsarina, and proceeded to reel the ship in.

  In the red emergency light, he could see the impatient set of Ana’s mouth. She was always one to leap first, ask questions later. She never looked back. He hoped she never would.

  He said, “I need you to promise me that if this ship has nothing, you will let me go.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Di—”

  “I am a tool built of metal parts,” he interrupted. “I can be cloned, reprogrammed, and dismantled, and it will not change my core functions. I am not unique. When you lose me, you will find another. Promise me. Please,” he added, because it was always the word Ana used when she wanted to get her way.

  Her thick black eyebrows furrowed as she shrank away from him. “No.”

  �
��Ana—”

  “You don’t think you’re worth saving?” Her voice grew louder with every word. “Because you aren’t flesh and blood? Is that it?”

  “No, I am merely saying that if you lose me, you will find another—”

  “I’ll never find another you, Di.”

  “Please, Ana.”

  She did not understand, and she needed to. But the look on her face through the clear helmet shield, the mix of hurt and pain and something he could not identify—a look that sent a spike through his programming, fraying the glitch, feeding it—made him want—no. He did not want. Could not want.

  But he did.

  He wanted so badly to exist a little longer beside her. But if he could not be fixed, perhaps on the Tsarina he could learn how to say good-bye.

  “You are more than the sum of your parts, D09, and I’m going to save you,” she said, and reached for the latch to open the emergency air lock.

  Ana

  The universe roared in, sucking the oxygen out of the air lock in a puff of frozen white. The door popped open and tore away so fast, it looked as though it disappeared completely.

  Space itself ripped Ana and Di out of the air lock, grabbing them by their very molecules. They shot toward the fleetship across the fifty-yard expanse. The access port grew larger by the moment.

  They were coming in too fast. She’d miscalculated the gravitational fields between the two ships.

  Improvise.

  Drawing her pistol out of its holster under her arm, she shot the latch off the Tsarina’s emergency air lock. Di grabbed her by the waist and spun around just in time for his back to slam against the round door.

  It crumpled inward and gave way into the starship.

  The buffer of artificial gravity slowed them, so when Di hit the floor, Ana on top of him, it was like falling from ten feet instead of a thousand. Pain still spiked through her backbone and shoulders and knocked the breath right out of her.

  An emergency cover slid over the open access port.

  She coughed, rolling onto her knees, and clawed off her helmet to suck in a lungful of breath. The ship’s air tasted stale, as though it hadn’t been recycled for a while. That was a good sign. Abandoned, like Jax said.

  Di got to his feet first.

  “Thanks for that,” she gasped, taking his hand to help her up. She pressed the keypad to open the door to the small maintenance air lock they’d landed in and stepped into a corridor. “See? This is why we make such a good—”

  The halogen lights overhead flickered on, humming.

  “I thought Jax said the ship was running on emergency power,” she muttered.

  “Perhaps there is an internal generator belowdecks.”

  “Fancy.”

  The halogen lights popped on one at a time, illuminating the long corridor. It was white, lined with silver doors glowing with red keypads. Locked. At first glance, the ship looked immaculate, but there was a thin layer of dust on the tiled floor, showing their boot prints as they traveled down the corridor.

  “Where do you think we should start looking?” she asked, testing the nearest keypad. She punched in a random number, and it beeped red.

  ACCESS DENIED.

  “Hey, do you think you can override these locks?” When he didn’t answer, she glanced over her shoulder. “Di?”

  He cocked his head, as if hearing something.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Slowly, his eyes slid toward the door in front of her, and he reached for his gun. Instinctively, she did too—

  The door slid up, revealing a silvery figure, too tall and too thin to be human. It looked like Di, from the slats around its mouth to its polished chrome body—new. But Metals hadn’t been in production for twenty years. After the Plague, the Adviser stopped manufacturing them.

  “Halt,” it said, voice deep and melodic—like a bell. “Put your weapon away, brother.”

  Ana took an involuntary step back. Its eyes were red. “Brother? Di, does it know you?”

  “It should not,” Di replied.

  “And why are its eyes red?”

  The red-eyed Metal answered instead. “You are not welcome here.” Then it aimed its Metroid at Ana’s head.

  In alarm, Ana grabbed the Metal by its wrist and shoved its aim toward the ceiling. It fired, and a light burst above them.

  The Metal turned its blazing red eyes to her.

  A chill curved down her spine.

  She twisted the android’s wrist to dislodge the weapon. But it wouldn’t let go. Instead, she slammed her foot up, connecting with the Metal’s jaw. It released its gun, falling back into the room it came from. Fuses hissed from its neck.

  Ana quickly disarmed the weapon and threw it down the hallway. Her hands were shaking. “Jax said there weren’t any active Metals—why are there active Metals? And why are they attacking us?”

  “I am unsure.”

  The red-eyed Metal righted itself. “You are an intruder.”

  “We’re only here for some answers!” She drew her Metroid and flicked off the safety. She aimed it at the Metal. “I mean it—I don’t want to hurt you. You’re not HIVE’d, so what are you?”

  “Ana, I do not think it will help us,” said Di.

  The red-eyed Metal lurched forward to attack.

  She squeezed the trigger. One shot bit into the Metal’s right shoulder, then one into the left, but bullets didn’t stop it. She gritted her teeth and turned her aim toward its chest. To its memory core.

  Her aim shook.

  The red-eyed Metal reached for her throat.

  Count your bullets, Siege had said. Remember where they land.

  In a blink, Di grabbed the Metal by the arm. He twisted the Metal around, its back pressed against his chest, and jammed his hand into the center of its body—like he had done in Nevaeh.

  But when Di pulled his hand out, it was empty, knotted with stray wires.

  No memory core.

  Without warning, the Metal hammered its elbow into Di’s face, sending him stumbling back against the wall. Ana aimed her pistol. But if she shot now, she could hit Di, too.

  Damn it!

  Di dodged as the Metal’s fist sailed past his cheek and sank into the wall. He planted his hand on the side of the Metal’s head and spun it under his arm into a headlock. The Metal didn’t even have a chance to parley before Di gripped it by its jaw and ripped its head clean off. Wires and fuses sparked, spilling out of its neck.

  The Metal twitched once. Twice. Di let go, and it fell prone at his feet.

  The cold dread in her stomach numbed her. “Why’d it call you ‘brother’? How did it call you brother? If it doesn’t have a memory core, then . . .”

  “Without memory cores, Metals cannot function, so it is safe to assume it was a puppet,” he replied, testing the joints in his jaw where the Metal had punched him. “The signal that was controlling it is coming from the bridge.”

  “The bridge? But the ship was dormant when Jax scanned it,” Ana said as Di began to go down the corridor toward the bridge. She followed, shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Perhaps the signal is not from the ship but outside interference.”

  “Outside? Like someone took control of the ship the moment we boarded?”

  “Yes,” Di replied, and tried to access the next door down.

  The keypad blinked red.

  “Like a program. A sentient program like the HIVE?”

  “I am unsure, Ana,” he said shortly, and tried another combination of numbers to hack it. The keypad blinked red again.

  “Or did Rasovant create something to protect this ship? Or what if this is why the ship was never fou—”

  Di whirled around to her. “I am unsure, Ana,” he repeated. His eyes burned brightly, wedging her words in her throat. She’d never seen him look so frightening before.

  Gunshots echoed down the hallway.

  She gasped. “Di—Di, the crew!” She turned around to hurry back do
wn the corridor, but he caught her by the arm.

  “We must find the bridge and disable the program.”

  “But what if it’s more Metals? What if they’re attacking the crew—”

  “Then they will keep attacking unless we find the bridge and disable the program that is controlling them.”

  Another round of gunfire pierced the quiet, a staccato, sharp tune. Her heart tore, but Di was right. “Okay. Lead the way.”

  As if on cue, the door Di had been trying to enter slid open.

  They glanced at each other, and with a silent agreement they went through. It led down another hallway, and up a lift to the next level, and down another long and white corridor. Each one seemed longer than the last, but that was only because of the anxiety that began to creep into her shoulders, bunching the muscles around her neck.

  The Tsarina could easily fit five Dossiers. At full capacity, the ship could house two, maybe three hundred people. She’d never been on a ship this big.

  “I don’t like this—we have to go back to the crew,” Ana said. “We have to—”

  “Keep moving,” he interrupted, shooting the keypad to the door at the end of the way. The door popped open.

  She stopped him by the arm before they moved on. “Why’re you being so short, Di? What’s wrong?”

  Before he could answer, a door behind them slid open and a Metal stepped out, eyes blazing red. It cocked its Metroid. Aimed. She reached reached for her holster, but Di lurched forward, hand outstretched, and slammed it clean through the Metal’s skull.

  She winced.

  He unraveled the wires from his fingers as the Metal sank, slowly, to the floor. Then Di shifted his gaze back to her, and the way he looked—moonlit eyes bright, unyielding, curled a sliver of fear up her spine. Because his gaze was cold. And calculated.

  “I do not mean to offend,” he finally said. “I simply want to survive this.”

  She swallowed the knot in her throat, along with her fear. “Me too.” They made their way to the lift to the top deck, where the bridge was located, and closed themselves inside. “Are you getting the feeling we’re being herded?”