by Sara King
“I didn’t kill Quad!” Anna shrieked, horrified that he wasn’t listening to her.
“But you intended to,” Dobie retorted. “After you installed a macro that forced me to parrot whatever you wanted me to say back at you.”
Anna looked up at Dobie. Out of all of the visions of her death, he was the only one that hadn’t, for some reason or another, murdered her. Sometimes he had defected before she died, and sometimes he had simply stood there and watched as someone else did the deed, but he had never once pulled the trigger. Anna was a bit stunned. Did it take a robot not to get angry enough at her to try and kill her?
Before she knew what she was doing, Anna lunged up and wrapped her arms around Dobie’s waist. For the first time in her life, she cried. No-holds-barred, didn’t-care-who-saw, broke down and cried. Past, present, future—it was still so vivid and raw in her mind that she wasn’t quite sure she wasn’t even then hallucinating as she clung to her robot and bawled.
For long minutes, Doberman just stood there as she hugged him. Then, reluctantly, he put his arms around her and squeezed back. Sniffling uncontrollably, Anna sobbed herself out, then eventually opened her eyes and stared at the wall where the bloody book-end had splattered her own blood and brain matter across the polymer surface.
“Only reason I’m standing here,” Anna said, “was because I knew exactly how long it would take for me to activate the kill program I’d given you. I knew that I use you as a crutch, and that I’d go for you before I went for anything else, and I used that knowledge to grab a club and beat myself to death with it, instead of even trying to talk to my other self. I didn’t even try, Dobie, because I knew she would use the extra time to kill me.” Anna swallowed. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Some would say a lot,” Doberman said.
Anna ignored the quip, too distraught to care. “Most people kill their first person on the battlefield, with a gun or grenade or something. It’s usually some nameless guy shipped in from some other planet, with different clothes, odd skin, and a language that sounds strange, if it can even be understood at all.”
“The personal mechanics of war has become increasingly distanced with each advance of technology,” Doberman agreed. “Targets have become merely a moving heat-signature from orbit.”
“First person I ever killed,” Anna managed, “was myself.”
“Many would say you accomplished that a long time ago,” Doberman said softly.
Nobody likes a beast. Anna swallowed and pulled back far enough to look up at him. “What do you think?”
Doberman was silent for some time. Finally, he said, “I think this still doesn’t change the fact you tried to turn me into an automaton.”
“I knew you’d put in a backup,” Anna sniffled. “I just needed a couple canned responses so I could get the little dweeb to cooperate.”
“So you could kill him.”
Anna grimaced, remembering the times she’d tried to trap Quad and, in response, he had liquefied her or exploded her brain with tech she couldn’t even begin to contemplate. “I’ve had a change of heart.”
“You mean Quad scared the crap out of you,” Doberman said.
Anna swallowed, but said nothing.
Several minutes passed, then Dobie said, “I realize the awkwardness of my timing, but as you were out, there was an emergency all-personnel call for a meeting in the Tear, which I would assume had something to do with the challenge Colonel Bagham Steele just made to your sister over the open waves. Shall I tell them you’re busy?”
Anna looked down at Dead-Anna and swallowed. “No. I need to get out of here. If I don’t get some fresh air, I think I’m gonna puke.”
“As you wish, Anna. We should leave in the next half hour if we intend to arrive ten minutes late, as per your standing request.”
Anna nodded, but her eyes were still fixed on the coagulated blood staining the rug around her own corpse’s head. If she’d tried to talk, if she’d tried to negotiate, she would be dead. She remembered dozens of others who had tried to talk, tried to negotiate. She remembered having Dobie kill them.
“Dobie,” Anna said softly, “I won’t do it again.”
“Do what, Anna?” Doberman asked.
“Change your programming,” Anna said. “I won’t do it again.”
Doberman seemed to consider that. Then, “I would appreciate that, Anna.”
She sniffled, still fixated on her own corpse. “Dobie?” she asked.
“Yes, Anna?” Dobie asked.
“We need to do something with that corpse.”
CHAPTER 41: Anna’s First Assassination
12th of June, 3006
Over the Tear
Honor, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
“Listen, skeenk,” Tatiana said, glaring at the boob-flashing strumpet. “I said I was flying. Just because I had to use the bathroom doesn’t mean you get to jump in there and take over my shit.”
“You took over half an hour,” the skeenk replied from the badass Evil Emperor captain’s chair. She didn’t even bother to look up at Tatiana, watching, instead, the viewfinder as if it contained visual gold. She was actually leaning back with one naked, freshly-shaved porcelain leg crossed over the other, both arms splayed to either side in the totally dominating pose of someone who felt she actually owned the vehicle she was in. In a tone that said the woman really hadn’t given a shit where Tatiana had wandered off to, she said, “I figured you were busy.”
In truth, Tatiana had fallen asleep, but they didn’t need to know that. She walked up and slapped the back of the girl’s red head. “Mine. Git.”
The harlot let out a startled sound and Honor stuttered under her inexperienced care. Tatiana used the moment to grab her by the front of her straining tanktop and yank her mostly-naked ass out of her chair. Sitting down in the pre-warmed seat, Tatiana immediately took the ship off the half-dozen autopilots that the tart had put into place in her absence.
“Newbie,” Tatiana snorted. “You had to use autopilot?” She snorted. “Seriously, where’s your dignity?”
At the same time she spoke, a wing happened to clip the top of a tree, and the ship shuddered.
“Huh,” Tatiana said, correcting their course as both Milar and the skeenk screamed and reached for something to hold onto. “Weird. I thought we had another hundred feet…” She squinted at the altimeter, forcing it to line up properly in her vision, then laughed. “No, wait. I was seeing an extra zero!”
“That’s it,” Milar rumbled, grabbing Tatiana and wrenching her away from the controls. Miss Skeenk quickly ducked in behind her, taking up the console like her life depended upon it.
“You suck,” Tatiana muttered, though she didn’t try to fight him. She’d discovered a long time ago that trying to fight Milar when Milar wanted to hold onto her was kind of like trying to arm-wrestle a Nephyr.
In the background, Miss Skeenk said, “Seriously, what kind of drugs is she on?”
“The kind to keep her from killing everyone in a half-mile radius,” Milar muttered.
The skeenk turned to frown at Tatiana. “Her?” Like it were somehow hard to believe.
Tatiana narrowed her eyes.
“It’s something to do with the device Anna put in her head,” Milar said. “It’s transmitting mental signals and changing her DNA, making her more and more Shrieker as time goes on.”
The skeenk’s pretty green eyes narrowed. “And Anna did that.”
“Yeah, the seven-year-old demon-child and her fire-breathing robot Storm,” Tatiana muttered.
The skeenk cocked her head at her. “Huh?”
Milar immediately flushed. “Look, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about Dobie, but she’s going to be the mother of my children, okay?”
The skeenk’s brow was furrowing even more. “Tell her what?”
Gleeful that she knew something the boob-baring harlot didn’t, Tatiana said, “He told me that Anna’s stupid robot was flying around shooting lightni
ng bolts from his eyes, breathing fire—you know that burning stuff in Rath that Ryan and Luka couldn’t figure out how to make stop spreading and had to eject it into space before it ate the planet? Yeah, that.”
The woman was leaning forward in her chair, now. “You’re saying that Anna Landborn made a war-robot and it fought in the battle of Rath.”
“Noooo,” Tatiana snorted. “I said it took out all the robots in Rath. In like, what, three minutes?”
“Just over nine,” Milar said. “And he wasn’t really in a hurry.”
“With fireballs,” the skeenk said.
“And beams of purple energy and ice blasts and laser claws and—”
“Wait,” the woman interrupted. “Laser claws? Like…Jedi Wolverine?”
Tatiana frowned, wondering what kind of airheaded bimbo read comic books, at the same time Milar said, “Yes, exactly like Jedi Wolverine.”
“Ungh.” The skeenk let go of the controls and dropped her head into her hands in a long-suffering groan. “Goddamn it, Quad.”
Tatiana frowned at the woman. “Huh?”
“Nothing,” the skeenk said, her petite face hardening. “I’ll take care of it.”
The thought of the busty, long-legged skeenk somehow taking out a badass robot with the ability to summon lightning and slice things up with laser claws was so laughable that Tatiana laughed. A lot. And pointed. And pointed and laughed.
“What are you gonna do,” Tatiana chuckled, “slap its ass and tell it it’s been a very naughty boy?” She kept chuckling.
The skeenk gave Milar a pointed glance, then started to glow. Or shimmer. Or something. Her pale skin seemed to start to eat the light. Tatiana rubbed her eyes, still laughing, wondering if maybe she’d snuck an extra dose of Steffen’s latest concoction while she was sleeping.
As she watched, the skeenk picked up the wrench she had put on the table beside her chair and bent it in half with one hand.
Tatiana thought that was the funniest thing she’d ever seen, especially because she knew it was the drugs at work. The very idea that the dainty, nail-painting strumpet could bend a wrench made her giggle.
“Yeah, pretty sure that demonstration was lost on her,” Milar said. “She’s high as a kite.”
“And yet you’re allowing her to carry a gun,” the skeenk said.
“I’m not gonna try and take it away from her,” Milar replied.
Good man. Wise man.
“Chickenshit.” The skeenk reached out and tried to take the gun from her.
Tatiana sobered in an instant and had the gun in her hands, trained on the woman’s face, before she even got out of her badass command chair.
“Easy,” Milar said softly, reaching for her.
“Don’t touch me, Miles!” Tatiana snapped, dancing away from him. “The bitch is mine!”
The skeenk’s green eyes darkened as Milar gingerly said, “Honey? Pumpkin? You need to trust me when I tell you she won’t go down that easy.”
“Don’t ‘pumpkin’ me,” Tatiana snapped. “Not that bitch. The little bitch.”
The skeenk continued to scowl at her. “Who’s she talking about?”
“Who knows?” Milar said. “I’ve never seen her this out of it. Here, just fly us the rest of the way to the Tear. I’ll take her to the cargo bay and try to get things under control.”
“I could get things under control,” the skeenk said in a way that meant she actually thought she could get Tatiana’s gun from her before Tatiana blew a hole through her skull.
“Come on, Tat,” Milar said, gesturing for her. Then, like a blaring mind-horn that must have taken extreme effort on his part, Milar broadcast, You can’t let her know you plan to kill Anna.
Tatiana frowned. “Why not?”
“See?” Milar said. “Totally out of it.” Because she’s one of David’s old friends and she’ll try to stop you. We’ll talk about it later.
“So let her try to stop me,” Tatiana snorted. “I’d kick her—”
Milar grabbed her and, giving her the option of putting a beam through his chest or following him to the cargo bay, started herding her from the cockpit. Because Tatiana didn’t particularly want to put a beam through her lover’s chest, she reluctantly followed. The skeenk, after giving them an irritated look, went back to her Evil Seductress On Her Badass Leather Throne look. Tatiana had the urge to shoot her anyway.
Milar hustled them to the cargo hold, then sealed the door behind them.
“Listen,” Milar said, “we’re gonna be landing in like twenty minutes. We need a plan.”
“Here’s my plan,” Tatiana said. “I’m going to walk in, shoot her, and walk out. I may or may not say something quippy along the way.”
“Did you forget the part about the badass robot?” Milar demanded.
Tatiana frowned. “What badass robot?”
Milar groaned. “Okay, look. Since strategy really isn’t your thing, we’ll just sit down and make a plan before you go flouncing off and get yourself shot.”
Tatiana looked around the empty cargo bay. “Sit down where?”
Making a noise of disgust, Milar said, “Okay, so we need to separate them somehow. Anna’s nothing without that robot. I say we go in there, sit down, exchange pleasantries, over the course of which, we find an excuse to get the robot out of the tent. Then you shoot Anna, then we get the hell outta Dodge until we figure out if the robot is gonna go ballistic or not.”
“Why not just shoot the robot? You told me that Janice Booth made you those EMP rounds. Just take him out with those.”
“I also told you that I saw a Nephyr take an EMP round straight to the chest and he didn’t even flinch. I don’t wanna risk the off-chance she built something that could stop EMP into his tech.”
Tatiana rolled her eyes. “What if they don’t want to separate?”
“We’ll find a way,” Milar said. “The robot’s got an interest in old guns. Maybe I can convince him to come look at my collection on Liberty.”
Tatiana raised her brow. “A robot has an interest in old guns.”
“Yeah,” Milar said, frowning like that was perfectly normal. “Why?”
Tatiana rolled her eyes. “Males.” She sighed. “Okay, so let’s just say you manage to get the robot’s attention. What’s the signal for me to shoot the little tramp? And what do we do when her big sister tries to sic her army on me for killing her dear, sweet little sister?”
Milar grimaced. “We’re going to have to be discreet.”
“Discreet?!” Tatiana cried. “She’s only gonna be here long enough to sit around, mock us, then fly away.” She slapped her hands together. “That’s it! I’ll wait for her to leave, then blow her outta the sky with Honor!”
“Sorry, honey,” Milar said, “you’re not gonna be flying anywhere for a while.”
Tatiana swallowed down the sudden surge of agony at that thought, then wiped her face and said, “I am gonna kill that little bitch.”
“Not arguing with you,” Miles said. “We just need to figure out how to do it right the first time. When it comes to Anna Landborn, there’s no takebacks.”
Tatiana grunted and, between her slightly-inebriated genius and her dragony hunk’s overly-cautious genius, they managed to work out a complex, deliciously convoluted plan of taunts, feints, and social jockeying that would require several hours to bring to fruition, and would leave them a good seven kilometers away from the scene by the time the robot finally realized what had happened to his charge.
When Honor finally settled down, Tatiana’s head was swimming with the if-then statements that Milar had pounded into it. If she is sitting in the middle of the group, then wait until she heads outside. If she has the robot with her, then I’ll sit down beside them. If she’s got the far end of the table to herself like usual, though, then we’ve gotta act natural and sit on the opposite end. If she mocks you, then mock her back. Anything else would be suspicious…
Tatiana’s brain felt like it was on fire as sh
e tried to memorize everything that would, if properly executed, result in a dead Anna. That was her motivator—a dead Anna. Like sweet, healing balm on the festering wound that was Tatiana’s last month of hell, seeing her cute little corpse would make Tatiana’s millennium.
“She still has the gun,” KayKay commented as she stepped out of the cockpit. And, because Tatiana was so psyched at the idea of a dead Anna, she didn’t let it bother her that the porcelain, half-dressed tart still thought she should be disarmed. She simply threw the hatch open and stepped into the final rays of sunset outside.
The command tent was easy enough to find—it was surrounded by tiki torches that would have shown up on any satellite pointed their direction, had Peter Green not reprogrammed them for the rebel cause. Over the course of a week, Peter had been able to hack all but four of the most top-secret military units with onboard perimeter defense systems, the rest of which Anna had cracked in a matter of minutes, then kept for herself. Peter had given his to Magali to keep track of Coalition movements on Fortune. Nobody knew what Anna was using hers to do.
Anna, Tatiana thought again, a rumble of fury in her gut. She’s evil incarnate, but because she’s supposedly on our side, everyone just puts up with her.
Cowards, Tatiana decided. The whole world was filled with cowards. She wasn’t a coward, and she and Milar were going to prove it today, when they wiped the rotting smear that was Anna Landborn off the ledger of time.
“Hey, slow down, sweetie,” Milar called, catching up with her to walk at her side, almost like he expected her to just walk in and shoot Anna without warning. Tatiana snorted, but said nothing. She glanced over her shoulder at the skeenk, who was walking at a casual pace several steps behind them, somehow making the mere act of walking look sexy and graceful. Damn it.
To take her mind off the skeenk who seemed to be suddenly attached at the hip to her lover, Tatiana began reviewing the plan. “So if we get in there and she’s already there in her usual spot, then I head over and sit with her sister, and you sit beside the robot.”
“Yeah,” Milar said, keeping his voice low. “I’ll distract him, talk guns and tech, figure out what his interests are. When I get him outside, she’s all yours.”
