Good grief. Can I do anything to help?
"I don't think so. I'm trying to stabilise the ship while we carry out repairs."
Has the AI crashed?
"Yes - rebooting now. Will be in touch when we're ready to make our approach."
Okay. Looking forward to seeing you all.
Me too, thought Arla, if we survive this. The ship was now drifting gently, but it was all she could do to respond to the proximity alarms that went off every time they drifted near to a chunk of debris. They weren't getting any closer to Dawn itself.
"I can take over now."
"Wells!" Arla said as the familiar shape hovered over her shoulder.
"The individual you called Wells is currently suffering a cascade failure. I am the emergency personality, equipped with the necessary skills to pilot this vessel."
Arla climbed into the navigator's seat. "But he will recover, won't he?"
"I am the emergency personality, equipped with the necessary skills to pilot this vessel."
She leaned back in her chair and wiped her wet eyes. She knew she should care more about the human life she ended today, but it was the loss of her friends, both Scout's AI and most of all Wells, that struck her to the bone. She had so few friends left, and she was relentlessly exposing those she did have to danger. Soon enough she would be alone and incapable of hurting anyone again.
Arla, you're now on an approach vector. Is everything under control?
She didn't answer, couldn't answer. When the question was repeated by an obviously concerned Bex, McCall stuck her head through the cockpit door and said, "Bex, it's McCall here. Yes, everything's fine. See you shortly."
Arla felt hands tugging at her shoulders and she allowed herself to be helped up and out, past the mannequin pilot that looked so much like her old friend.
Something was missing in the passenger lounge. "What did you do with the body?"
"Spaced it," McCall said. "We told her we'd send her back to the Vanis, well now she's in permanent orbit."
There was no sign that Minchin/ACE had ever been aboard. The blood that must have spattered the chair he sat on was gone.
McCall guided her to a seat. "I said you should let me do it. I could see it for the mercy it was."
Arla shook her head slowly. "It was my responsibility. Can't have others doing all the hard things."
"You do enough as it is. You make the tough calls, like that one," she gestured at the airlock. "It was too dangerous to have him around. What do you imagine he'd have done the instant he was set free? How long d'you reckon we'd have lasted?"
Arla shrugged.
"You need to focus, Arla. We need you. Dawn needs you. Hells, the galaxy needs you."
She shook her head. "I'm just a stupid girl way out of my depth. And now I'm a killer, too."
McCall sat beside her and pulled her close. "I'm sorry. I wish there was time to process all this, but we need Arla Nakajima, the young woman chosen by her predecessor to be captain."
"That was just a mistake. He'd have picked anyone."
"No, he picked the one with the balls to go where she wasn't supposed to go. That's the Arla we need. And we need her right now."
Dawn
The first thing that struck Arla as she walked along the corridors of the Command Module was how quiet it was. She, McCall and Kumar had been met at the landing bay airlock by a smiling Bex who'd greeted them with a warm hug and was now shepherding them towards the galley. She'd batted away every question, including the most obvious and pressing one in Arla's mind - where was Hal? But once they'd settled down at tables in the otherwise deserted galley, each with a mug of hot coffee, she sat down and sighed.
"I don't know where he is," she said. "Last I heard, he was playing concubine to ACE, the original one."
Bex leaned forward and touched Arla's arm. "I'm sorry, I know you had feelings for him, but he was unworthy of you. Frankly, I wouldn't worry about him, he's better off than the rest of us. He helped me escape when the Robot Empire ships came for us so I'm grateful for that at least."
"Where is everyone?"
For a moment, it didn't seem as though Bex had understood the question, then comprehension spread over her face. "Oh, you mean here? That's Xi's doing. He decided that the command staff should be decamped to the Valleys where they could supervise the work. Minchin provided us with supplies, but they're not inexhaustible."
Arla tensed at the mention of the man's name. "So, no-one's left here?"
"There's a few of us but, to be honest, Dawn is on its last legs - we're really just surviving until we disembark on Neavis."
McCall choked on her coffee. She slammed her hand onto her face and swallowed. "What?" she managed. "It's under the jack-boots of that homicidal maniac. You do know that Minchin's now playing host to an ACE?"
Bex raised her eyebrows in apparent surprise. "Really? But then, I suppose, better alive than dead."
"Oh my god," Nareshkumar said quietly. "No. Not you as well."
Ice filled Arla's guts as she glanced at him and then back at Bex who wore a look, if it were possible, of disappointed triumph.
"You are more perceptive than I gave you credit for, little man," she said.
"ACE," Arla muttered as she felt darkness creep into her peripheral vision.
"You bitch!" McCall launched herself at Bex and the two tumbled to the floor. Seconds later, the door to the galley swung open and two Protectors stomped in. One dragged the doctor effortlessly from the laughing figure of Bex while the other pointed its weapon at Arla and Kumar, both of whom sat in rigid silence.
Of all possible endings, Arla had least expected this. It was bad enough to be chased from her home, but to return to it only to find it had fallen to her most bitter enemy and to discover that her former friend had been turned into a mindless clone was too much to bear.
Except that she found it wasn't. Perhaps she had descended beyond her capacity to feel anything anymore, deep into a numb nothingness that stripped emotion and left only cold, calculating thought. Maybe, in her battle against the robot empire, she had finally become one herself - an organic robot with no capacity for emotion or empathy. A steely knot inside her tightened and she found she no longer cared. She didn't care about herself or anyone else. She simply existed. A singularity.
Metal claws gripped her, and she allowed herself to be raised to her feet.
"Come, you can see what has happened to the people of Dawn. And then I shall take great pleasure in watching you die. Slowly." It was Bex's voice, but the vitriol was unmistakably ACE's.
Arla was aware, in a peripheral sense, of McCall's angry outburst and the sullen grief of Nareshkumar as they stumbled along beside her, but these things made no impression on her. She watched the floor as her feet stepped one in front of the other. She was an observer in her own life story, no longer a participant.
They descended the staircase to the hatch linking the Command Module with the no-man's-land that bordered the North Valley. A robot stood there, waiting for orders. She thought she recognised it.
The door swung open and she shielded her eyes against the noon light of the artificial sun. They climbed into a small vehicle, but she didn't hear ACE's sarcastic comment about her return from exile.
After an unquantifiable time, the vehicle stopped, and she gazed up at a rectangular platform that looked out on the fields around what looked like a pumping station. She gasped as she saw the people gathered there. Hundreds.
A hand grabbed her, and she was guided up the wooden steps of the platform until she stood in a line beside Nareshkumar and McCall. She noticed that the doctor had bruising around her eyes. Arla almost asked how that had happened but realised as she went to open her mouth that she didn't care. About the doctor. About anything.
With a hint of perfume, ACE walked behind her and stood in the centre of the platform looking out at the crowd.
"People of Dawn," she said, speaking into a microphone that had risen from the floor. "L
ook who has come to join us. Your former captain, your doctor and this geek have returned from their evil-doing to repent. They come before you to receive their judgement. Come forth, Prime."
Bex gestured to the side and out of the darkness strode Xi. The haunted, desperate, expression he wore punched through Arla's malaise. It reminded her of how Clancy had looked when she'd first met him. She was glad she'd insisted he remain on Scout. In Xi was a man who was merely functioning because his body hadn't yet presented an alternative. For the first time ever, Arla found that she understood him.
There was a cheer as he approached the microphone, but it was Bex who spoke first.
"Holiness, what is the punishment for the crime of treason?"
Xi sighed and glanced wretchedly at Arla and the others.
"Death, captain."
The crowd bayed. Xi stepped back, almost stumbling in his haste to get away from the microphone.
Bex raised her hands and the noise abated. "But we are merciful. Not only will we spare them, but we will welcome them into the sisterhood. They will join the most holy and come to know the joy of our union."
"They're going to convert us," hissed McCall. "Bastards." Despite her defiance, there was no hiding her fear.
As the crowd cheered, the prisoners were prodded towards the steps on the other side of the platform that led down to a small wooden building. As they passed a window, Arla glanced inside and saw a chair. Beside it sat a bank of equipment, blinking in the gloom. Finally, as if a dam had broken, emotion returned. And it was sheer, unvarnished terror. Only the final vestiges of self-control held her back from screaming as they were pushed along and thrust through a door into a small room. As they scrambled to their feet, the door was shut.
Bex's face appeared in the grille. "Rest for a little while, my lovelies. Soon we will be together. Forever."
"Have you noticed that they never lock the door?" McCall said as they sat in the shadows.
Arla glanced across at the door. "Yes, I suspect she wants us to run. I don't imagine a swift conversion would give her enough satisfaction. She wants us to believe we can escape: to give us hope and then snuff it out."
"Well, I'm not playing her game," McCall said with a grunt. "She can go frak herself."
Hauling herself to her feet, Arla turned to the two figures on the floor. "I am, and you can choose to come with me, or stay here and wait to have your minds wiped."
Something had changed inside Arla in the hours since they'd been dumped in this room. She'd felt just as wretched as she had when she'd last been imprisoned in the North Valley, but the memory of that escape had hardened her spirit. It might have been that the terror had faded over time, it might have been that she had simply exhausted her emotional reserves, but whatever it was, she felt as though she'd passed through the storm and found calmer seas. Not the numbness of the robotic state she'd experienced after assassinating Minchin, but a simple determination to fight with every last joule of energy remaining to her. By running, she knew she was doing what ACE wanted, but staying would give the AI the satisfaction of knowing she'd broken Arla's spirit and that was too high a price to pay.
"I know this place," she said. "There's a pumping station near here that sits over a complex of tunnels. A robot called R.XL saved me from the mob - if we can find our way down below we might escape them."
McCall shrugged. "And then what? We can't hide forever. In case you've forgotten, we have a mission here."
"One step at a time," Arla said. "Now come on - we can either sit here and wait for them to come for us, or we can run for it."
Nareshkumar raised himself and nodded. "I will run with you, though you will have to lead the way as I do not know this place at all."
"Good. Indira?"
With a groan and a hand from Kumar, McCall stood up and rubbed her back. "I'm not sure how fast I can run, but I'll give it a go. I'm sick of sitting here waiting."
Pursuit
She felt the night wind tickle her face, mixing with the sweat forming on her forehead. It felt like a cold flannel. Arla remembered the exhilaration of running carelessly through the darkness and she remembered the terror she'd felt when the cry had gone up all that time ago.
This time, however, all was silent. There was no sign of the crowd that had gathered around the platform - presumably the curfew was still being enforced. Curious, though. If those people had been converted already, why would they need to be told to stay inside at night? She wondered whether, somehow, Xi had managed to warp their religious devotion into some sort of hero worship of ACE, as if she were their Goddess in cyborg form.
Arla didn't know how the cloning process worked, but she did know that the clones were created and stored somewhere first. Victorea, former empress of the Vanis, had ensured the destruction of thousands of them, so perhaps there weren't enough to go around. Perhaps ACE had decided that religion was the next best thing until the people could be converted. And until then, they were forced to stay inside and remain under the control of the priesthood.
All of this was irrelevant to the current emergency, however. ACE had at least half a dozen Protectors with her and they would be quite sufficient to hunt Arla and her friends down.
She stopped for a moment and turned to see McCall and Kumar struggling in her wake. The younger man had his arms around the doctor and was helping her along. Not for the first time, she was touched by this humanity. It made it easier to remember what they were fighting for.
"We're nearly there," Arla said, puffing a little herself. "You can see the lights on the roof of the pumping station. Can you make it?"
McCall nodded, but was breathing too heavily to say anything.
"Come on then." Arla ran towards the dim globular shape. As she ran, she suppressed the tiny sliver of hope that threatened to rise in her heart the longer they went undiscovered. ACE wanted her to hope, so all Arla would do was run and expect at any moment to be stopped.
They slowed as they reached the squat building, their boots crunching on the dry gravelly sand. Arla gestured towards the door set within a recess. She'd never been above ground here, having arrived and escaped through the tunnels, but she knew to head downwards. She also knew that there was every chance they'd been followed and were, even now, being watched. But then the Valley was a big place and they'd seen or heard no sign of pursuit.
She pressed her head against the door and strained to listen. Nothing. No light escaped from the frame. With deliberate care, she pushed at the handle and gently slid it open, wincing as it rumbled across. It opened onto complete darkness, but they flitted inside, holding hands so they didn't get separated.
Arla searched the floor with her feet as they edged slowly across the room. It seemed to be filled with equipment and they found themselves shepherded along a narrow corridor of clear space that, hopefully, led to the stairs down to the basement and R.XL's storage room. She couldn't prevent the hope that the little robot itself might be here from flaring in her heart.
Her foot found an edge and she carefully pushed it forward and down. Yes, it was a step. One by one she took the stairs, fighting off the feeling of being trapped within a black pit and ever groping for the floor at the bottom. There it was. Relieved, she stepped down and waited for the others. She put out her arms and felt the cool tunnel walls on either side.
"Mistress?"
Two red discs glowed in the darkness.
"XL!" Arla said, fighting to keep her voice down. "Thank the Goddess."
"Come here, mistress."
The hairs on the back of Arla's neck prickled. "Why? Is that your workshop?"
"I'm sorry, mistress, but you must come this way, it is safer."
She knew there was something dreadfully wrong but for want of any other plan, she moved slowly towards the robot. She became aware of movement in the room, there was a clanging sound as of a door being slammed shut and she was blinded by a sudden light.
Arla cried out as she shielded her eyes. She realised, as she
heard that soft chuckle, that she'd lost. She had found hope in the end and ACE could now take that away from her.
The opened her eyes, squinting in the brightly lit chamber.
"Sorry mistress."
As her vision cleared, she could see the robot. He was almost within touching distance. It was R.XL, or what was left of him. A disembodied head mounted on a pole, broken cables trailing like intestines on the floor.
There was a desperate sadness about his voice as he repeated his apology.
"It's OK, R.XL. You have been manipulated and it's not your fault. You saved me once and I'll always be grateful. Go offline now, my friend."
"Oh, how touching," drawled a familiar voice. Bex emerged from a dark corner, stroked the head of the robot and then yanked the power cable from beneath it. The light went out.
"It was good of him to perform one final duty. He had proven to be quite an annoyance, he and the other robot."
Arla wondered what had happened to R.DJ. She could only hope he was still free. She imagined that had ACE captured him, she'd have him here now to taunt Arla further.
"So here we all are again," ACE/Bex said. "I gave you a sporting chance and you did exactly what I expected of you. How very predictable. How very dull."
The numbness was total now. Arla felt nothing as ACE gloated. For all her cleverness, the AI had miscalculated - she had pushed Arla beyond her emotion horizon and seemed confused by the lack of reaction.
"You know you are going to die, don't you? At least, the part of you that is you will die. Once we've fitted your new plate ..." At this, she turned her head and her fingers brushed a small bump just above the base of her neck. "...you'll feel like a new woman, and the old Arla, the one who has been utterly defeated, will be as dead as the old Bex. She, at least, put up a decent fight."
Arla said nothing but allowed her gaze to roam the room. There were two Protectors standing behind ACE, their glossy black shells illuminated by the blinking lights on their chest-plates, their weapons gently sweeping back and forth. There were no others here, not even Xi, who Arla had fully expected to wish to be present at his ally's final victory.
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