by M. D. Cooper
“We’ll find him,” Kylie said. “Both of you, I promise. We’ll get Winter back. Knowing him, he’s already taken some ship over and is stealing a fortune from this place.”
Bubbs’ face twitched into a smile. “I’d help him, if I knew where he was.”
“Are you ready to work, Bubbs?”
She nodded. “Absolutely. Whatever you need, Captain.”
Kylie wiped her brow as she surveyed the room. “Head back to Precinct 3. Take this prisoner and any other surviving guards with you. Lock her up until I get a chance to question her. You’re the new warden. Don’t let anyone in who isn’t one of us. You able to handle that alone?”
Bubbs glanced down at her gun-arm. “With this thing, I could take out the whole station. Promised myself I’d never put it on again…” she paused and swallowed before meeting Kylie’s eyes. “Consider it done.”
“You sure you can handle that?” Rogers pressed. “You—”
His mouth snapped shut and he glared at Kylie before walking away. Kylie would deal with him once he cooled down. It wasn’t like Rogers to fly off the handle so easily.
“He’s just worried about Winter,” Kylie said, looking back down at their prisoner. “You’re going to need to find a cart or something for them all.”
“Yeah,” Bubbs nodded. “About Rogers…he’s not saying anything I haven’t told myself, haven’t heard from others. I’m a mechanized soldier. It’s my job to charge forward, win at all costs, but there’s only so much I can do. There was no way out of that cell until they opened the door.” Bubbs looked like she was going to say something else, but instead reached down and grabbed the armored enemy, dragging her out the room by the collar.
Kylie was surprised to hear Bubbs sound so vulnerable. An emotional response to Winter’s capture was the last thing she’d expected from the surly merc.
She shook her head and turned to the others. “Rogers, Ricket, let’s get these people uncuffed. We need to alert the hospital. These people need medical attention.” She squatted next to a woman who was huddled under a table, and tapped her shoulder, trying to get a response. Most of the men and women stared off at nothing, weak with fatigue—and in desperate need of a shower. Even with her ability to filter out smells, it managed to overpower her.
A few of the former prisoners mumbled a thank you, one or two even looked her in the eye. Kylie didn’t reply, she didn’t feel like she deserved much in the way of thanks. She rose to her feet as Laura sent her a message.
She pursed her lips and hurried over to where Ricket stood at a lab table. The Hand agent stared at the canisters as they spun, separating liquids inside a tall cylinder. “What is it?”
“Not sure yet. Chemical compound—though I guess that’s obvious. Whatever it is, it’s the focus of their whole operation here. I’m going over their records and they were running medical experiments on some of the workers.”
“That’s not the worst of it,” Rogers said as he strode toward them. “There’s an inventory of ‘product’ as they called it. From what I can see at least ten full canisters are missing.”
“Dammit.” Kylie knew it had to be Raynes. “He’ll try to get it off Chimin. We’ll need to lock this place down. If we’re lucky, he’ll try to bring Winter with him.”
Rogers shook his head. “Winter, not able to escape or put up a fight? I don’t like this, Captain.”
Ricket shook her head. “Whatever this stuff does, they were willing to subvert this entire rock to make it. A bunch of radical anti-AI mercs with the tech to change their faces? It doesn’t make sense. What’s their agenda?” Ricket lowered her voice, “Captain, we might be in over our heads.”
Kylie couldn’t discount the possibility, but there was no way she’d leave Chimin-1 with Winter missing. She’d get him back, one way or another. “We find Winter. No decisions are made until that happens. He’s somewhere so let’s find him.”
She turned as one of the workers struggled to stand. His legs shook under the strain and the quivering spread to his entire body. Kylie suspected it was from exhaustion. “Sir, sit back down. Medical help is on its way.”
He licked his dry chapped lips. “First it takes your mind. Then it takes your eyes. Then you start to itch so bad you want to tear your skin right off. Some do—right before they die.”
Takes their eyes? Kylie thought back to the man in the back office and the cloudy film that had covered his pupils; how some of the men and women were staring off at nothing. Maybe they weren’t staring at nothing, maybe they just couldn’t see.
The man turned his arms over and pushed up his sleeves. The skin on the underside of his forearm had turned red and had bubbled.
“We’ll get you help,” Kylie heard herself saying as the medical teams arrived to take the men and women to the med-bay. “We’ll find a way to help you. All of you.”
It occurred to Kylie that every one of the enemies had been wearing hazsuits, or powered armor—with internal air supplies.
“Easy, easy….” Kylie whispered as she held the man up and set him on a chair.
Kylie’s stomach clenched at hearing the news.
Well…isn’t that just great news.
Marge continued to speak as Kylie sagged against a counter.
As she attempted to summon the strength to go on, medical teams burst through the doors and began to move amongst the workers. A pair of women approached and gently lifted the man who had been speaking to Kylie onto a hover pad.
While watching the paramedics, her mind ran in a dozen different directions. She had never imagined that her father’s teachings would take hold beyond her family. She’d been so focused on finding Paul that it had never occurred to Kylie that there could now be other factions, splinter cells of anti-AI fanatics spreading through space like a plague.
There was also the matter of Raynes and Winter. What was the point in taking Winter when there were so many others here? What could Raynes’ ultimate goal be?
So was Kylie, now that Bubbs mentioned it, her stomach growled.
Kylie wasn’t sure how to even process that sentence. Kylie said.
Bubbs flashed an angry cat image across the Link.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Rogers said as he approached. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you…or Bubbs. My adrenaline was pumping. I shouldn’t have gotten as upset as I did. Hope you can forgive me.”
Kylie placed a hand on his shoulde
r. “Nothing to forgive, Rogers. I’m just worried about why you snapped. Worried about what flying the Barbaric Queen is doing to you. You seem…twitchier.”
He nodded, an air of sadness around him.
“No matter,” Kylie sighed, “we don’t have a lot of options right now. We do what we have to. Whoever took those canisters of whatever this shit is, is going to try to get off this rock. Chances are they’ll try to get to that freighter. I need you and Ricket to get back up there and head them off.”
Rogers nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t let them off this rock. No matter what it is you have to do. You do it. While you’re at it, if you see Bubbs, make up with her the best way you know how.”
Rogers eyes widened. “With Bubbs!?”
“Well, I was going to say get her some coffee, or some bacon, but whatever you decide to do—” Kylie couldn’t help a small smirk.
“Oh, yeah, of course.”
RECRUITING
STELLAR DATE: 11.05.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Facility 99
REGION: Chimin-1, Hanoi System (independent)
With so much to keep her busy, Marge had had to sideline listening to the audio edition of Fennington Station #57. True, she had listened to it thirty-seven times already, but she still was distilling the intel. Plus, the narrator was the best yet, a real craftsman.
If Marge hadn’t known from personal experience that the voice actor was an AI, she never would’ve guessed.
Laura was clearly in the middle of multiple tasks because it took her three milliseconds to respond.
Marge replied.
Marge explained.
Laura accepted, much to Marge’s surprise. Maybe there was hope for the AI after all.
Marge counted herself satisfied with the response. So far, Laura had passed all her tests with flying colors. It didn’t mean she could trust her—not yet—but it was a good indicator they could actually be real friends, maybe test the waters with a mind merge at some point.
It was a good indicator that Laura wouldn’t be an obstacle for what she and Kylie ultimately needed to do. For now, she’d keep testing and prodding, hoping for the best—and planning for the worst.
HOSPITAL
STELLAR DATE: 11.05.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Chimin City Hospital ER
REGION: Chimin-1, Hanoi System (independent)
Kylie walked through the sliding doors and into the hospital’s bustling emergency room. Nurses, doctors, and no small number of automatons were rushing about. Some were tending to men and women on gurneys pushed against walls while others dashed down corridors that Kylie assumed led to other rooms filled with the survivors of Facility 99.
It was plain to see that the hospital was understaffed. Over half of the sick and injured were unattended, their conditions not dire enough to receive triage just yet.
Kylie turned down the corridor on the left, wondering what it was that had drawn her here. It didn’t make sense; she should be searching Chimin-1 for Raynes and Winter. But the AIs were better able to do that—now that they had fully tapped all the security networks.
She was just a fifth wheel.
A pair of double doors were on her left, and Kylie peered in to see a doctor working over a medtable where a man lay. Realizing it was the man Trigg had held as a hostage, she pushed the doors open and stepped inside.
The doctor wore a light-grey hazsuit, with a clear bubble helmet. She was bent over the man, examining his wounds, then turning to punch commands into the medtable’s console.
Her hair was light blonde in shade and was cut straight along her jawline, dancing back and forth as she worked. At one point the doctor reached up absently to brush her hair out of the way, her hand colliding with the helmet.
She shook her head, an expression of self-deprecation on her face. Then she twisted her head toward Kylie and scowled.
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
Feisty. Kylie liked that. She opened her mouth to answer as the doctor started shaking her head.
“You know what, never mind. Grab a mask from over there and then get me a Type-II IV solution. The table wasn’t stocked properly. There’ll be hell to pay when I find out who left it like this.”
Kylie grabbed a mask from the dispenser and applied it to her face before grabbing the IV solution the doctor had pointed at. She approached the table and handed the solution to the doctor.
“Thanks,” the doctor said as she who set it into a slot at the back of the table. “He’s so dehydrated, gotta get the saline directly into his organs.”
As she spoke, two arms swung down and sunk needles into the man’s abdomen.
“Will he be all right?” Kylie stepped up closer, resting her hand on the foot side of the table.
“Should be OK. Bruises fade, time heals. He needs fluids, a good meal, and lots of rest. Are you the one who called this in?”
Kylie nodded.
The doctor’s eyes swept across Kylie with gratitude. “Thanks to you, these men will have a fighting chance. Not all of them will make it, but at least now they have a shot. We’ll do our best. We brought a sample of whatever they were working on down there. I don’t think it’s related to how messed up all these people are, but I want to be sure.”
She appreciated the doctor’s words. Kylie folded her hands behind her back. “Had you heard anything about what was going on down there? Someone had to have been aware of it, someone must have been talking.”
The doctor shrugged. “I heard some rumors, but I hear a lot of crazy talk. Miners who were outside shielding for too long, people high on whatever the latest way to kill your brain is.”
“What kind of rumors?” Kylie insisted.
The doctor only looked up for a fraction of a second. “People going missing. CSF acting funny, getting stri
ct. They changed the rotations on the remote mines, though, so I just wrote it off to shift changes. I think the fact that we were running low on our cereal crops had people on edge.”
“Didn’t you think to ask more questions?”
The doctor puffed out her cheeks. “You may have noticed, but there aren’t a lot of us here. We don’t have time to ask questions about everything happening in Chimin City. I’m paid to keep quiet and do my job. I patch up miners, send them back to work. Here, every day is a matter of survival. We do what we can.
The doctor sighed. “But from what the paramedics said, nothing is planted down in the farms. If there are no crops, we’re in for a hard stretch…a really hard stretch.”
Despite her misgivings, the woman seemed to have her finger on Chimin’s pulse. “If I could just take a few more minutes of your time….” Kylie asked.
The doctor smiled. “You want to pump me for information, huh? OK, but not now. I have a lot of patients to see and not a lot of extra hands. You can wait down the hall in the break room, I’ll meet you when I can.”
Kylie sighed. She didn’t have a lot of time to wait around, didn’t know what had drawn her to the hospital in the first place—maybe guilt, she supposed. But with no news yet on Winter and the way her stomach was rumbling, maybe a break room was a good option.
“I’d appreciate all of that. I haven’t got your name yet.”
“Nicole. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” the doctor gave her a charming smile as she turned and left the room.
As she rushed out, Kylie couldn’t help notice just how round the doctor’s ass was, or how it strained against her tight hazsuit. If the good doctor was all natural, Kylie would’ve been surprised. Didn’t take away from a work of art, though.
Still, Kylie had sworn off relationships for now. Women, or men. She didn’t know what she wanted other than the longing she felt when she thought of Grayson. The good doctor Nicole may have been sending signals, and if Kylie could use those signals to find out what was happening on Chimin, she’d exploit them.
