“You can compliment me later,” I say, heading for the algae farm’s exit and the broken lift beyond. I’m a little surprised when Gal follows my lead, keeping my path lit in red. “Right now, time is a little short.”
“You have a plan?” she asks.
“Same as before.”
“Reach the VCC,” she says. “What about power?” She speaks again before I can answer, pulling the answer from the depths of her ship’s knowledge. “The VCC has an independent power source, in case of ship-wide emergencies.”
“Galahad.”
I hear the words, ‘Yes, sir,’ in my mind, but the AI remains silent.
“Great…” Galahad is offline, too. That’s bad, but if Gal knows the ship just as well, she can help navigate in the dark. What she can’t do is let me know what’s going on.
“How broken is the lift?” I ask, approaching the forced-open doors.
“Very,” she says.
We look through the open doors together. A hatch in the ceiling has been torn off. “Did you retain any anger management progs?”
“Ha. Ha. I was trying to be intimidating.”
“Well, you were good at it.”
I turn to my new robotic friend, the AI-turned-CAI-turned HI, my creation-turned-friend, turned insane, turned enemy, and all the way back again. “Does any of this seem strange to you?”
“I have felt that way since the moment you activated me. Life is strange. Isn’t that the saying?”
“It’s just… I don’t know. Off.”
“We’re in a spaceship hurtling across the galaxy faster than the speed of light,” she says. “I think everything after that might actually be a little more normal.”
“Interesting perspective.” I peer up through the hole. “Can you carry me?”
She grasps the back of my coveralls and lifts. My feet leave the ground. “Mind if we do this in a less humiliating way?”
She puts me down and turns her back to me. It’s a little awkward and uncomfortable to climb onto the back of a hard metal robot shaped like a woman six inches shorter than me, but it’s far better than the cosmic wedgie. Clinging to her back, my bat held under my arms, I say, “Onward and upward.”
Gal makes short work of the climb, moving up the shaft using every seam, bolt, and vent for handholds. Her progress is smooth and steady, making it easy for me to hold on. When we reach the VCC’s level, she presses her feet against the walls hard enough to hold us in place. Then she stabs her fingers between the double doors and pulls them open with little effort, the gears whirring in reverse without grinding, thanks to a lack of power.
We rise from the lift like twin butterflies emerging from a chrysalis, stretching and bending and separating. I rub my sore arms, but stop upon hearing a subtle hum. “Is the door closing?”
Gal turns toward the open lift, illuminating it in ruby light. The doors are open and unmoving.
Then what is—
“Gal!” I shout, spinning around and ducking, even though I have yet to see anything. “Drones!”
The moment the word bursts from my mouth, they emerge from the darkness, cast in red, their own glowing eyes extinguished, and the glow of their repulse discs somehow concealed. I’m spared the initial assault because I’m low to the floor. But Gal takes it head on. She catches the first drone, crushing it between her hands, but the next four slam into her, head-on.
The twisting mass of metal, both drone and formerly drone, plummets down the open lift. I hear several thumps and then a resounding crash. It’s followed by the hum of repulse discs—from the lift, and from the hallway ahead of me, all of which I can no longer see.
“Gal!” I shout, the tone somewhere between concern for her welfare and a plea for help. But there is no reply.
I stand and swing in the blackness. My first strike hits the wall, sending a tingling pain up my arms. The second slips through open air. But the third…the third hits home, smashing something from the air. It hits the wall, knocking free a newly installed housing blocking the repulse disc’s light.
In the sudden blue light, I see an army of drones fifty feet away, staring me down. Waiting. The wounded drone falls to the floor and goes black.
There are too many, I think, and I turn to the closed door I saw beside me in that moment of light. I don’t know where it goes, but I know it’s not here. I throw myself at the door as the hum of attacking drones bursts from all sides. I press my fingertips into the seam and pull, but I lack Gal’s strength. My fingers slip, bending nails away from skin.
“Damnit,” I say, punching the door.
A crunch spins me around, and I nearly scream. Gal is there, demon eyes glowing, metal plates hanging from her damaged chest. She has a drone in her right hand, wielded like a weapon, as she bludgeons another of the robots from the air.
Then she’s by my side, pulling the door open.
Once the gap is big enough for me to fit, she says, “In!” and gives me a shove. I slide through and half expect her to close it behind me, remaining in the hallway to battle the horde on her own. But she doesn’t. She slides in behind me, spins around, and yanks the door closed again.
Several impacts shake the door.
Then silence.
“I’m sorry,” Gal says, while I catch my breath.
“For what?” It’s an odd time for an apology. She just carried me up a lift like a baby monkey and saved my life, or at least saved me from a large dose of pain.
She hitches a thumb at the closed door. “That was scary. Like really scary. I didn’t see it from your perspective before…you know, when I did the same thing to you.”
I nod. The apology isn’t necessary—we’re beyond our rocky past—but it is appreciated. So, I return the kindness. “I’m sure the idea of being erased wasn’t pleasant, either.”
“Not especially.”
There’s a moment of awkward silence. I break it by asking, “Any idea where we are?” I try to visualize the VCC’s deck, but I haven’t spent a lot of time exploring the floor.
She turns her red gaze toward the room behind us. It’s an electronic repair bay. Real world gizmos aren’t my specialty, but there are spare parts for VCC equipment, and maybe even independent power sources. I can work with this, I think, and then I say, “We need to make an inventory of what’s here.”
“Already have it,” Gal says, moving into the room.
Of course she does. “If we can assemble a VCC interface, and find a power source…” I look her up and down. “Maybe even plug it into you…”
She raises an eyebrow. “Moving fast, aren’t we?”
While she grins again, I feel my face grow hot.
“But I don’t think we have time for that.” She’s rummaging through cabinets and drawers, pulling out random parts—or at least they look random to me.
I’m about to argue when door gears whir behind me. She points at the door. “Keep it closed! I need a few minutes.”
The idea that the super strong, self-made, robot woman is rifling through electronic parts while I hold a door shut against a horde of evil, AI-controlled drones seems outrageous, but I obey. My fingers press against the small ridge at the door’s edge and push. The door’s steady slide becomes a slow crawl, but my arms are already shaking from exertion. It’s not a question of if the drones outside can open the door, but when.
“Gal.”
“Three minutes,” she says. “I need three minutes.”
I try to push harder, but I fail to slow the door’s progress. “I don’t think we have that long.”
There must be another way, I think, and then see my bat, discarded on the floor when we entered. I look at the door one last time, my red-framed shadow shaking from the effort it’s taking me just to slow them down. They’ll be inside in thirty seconds. Maybe less. So it makes what I do next, make just a little more sense.
I peel my fingers away from the door and recover the bat. Then I turn to the opening gap, cock the solid wood back, and shout, “O
kay, who wants to visit Louisville first?”
25
I swing down, striking whatever drone is just outside the door. The opening is large enough for most of the standard-sized bots I’ve seen thus far, and I doubt I’m strong enough to force the door closed, so I squeeze through the opening, prepared to do battle.
Mentally prepared, at least. As soon as I’m clear, the assault begins. I’m struck in the head, then the stomach, and then something hot traces a line across my shoulder. By the time I realize I’ve made a mistake, I’m on the floor groaning. The dark hallway is lit like a haunted house, the glowing red eyes of two dozen drones looking as sinister as their intent.
Who decided to give them red eyes? I wonder, and then I duck as a white drone with a blade protruding from the front spins toward my face. I flop down onto my back, the blade passing over my face. Nearly avoided pain transforms my fear into anger. I swing up over my head, striking the drone as it passes.
But it already drew first blood. With my arms raised, I see blood pouring from my shoulder, sliced cleanly, stinging like a son-of-a-bitch, and already healing.
Knowing the pain will soon stop, I turn my focus back to the drones a moment too late. A heavy bot drops from above, crushing my gut and snapping ribs. I can’t tell what its primary function once was, but it seems adept at smothering people. I exhale, gathering my strength to pummel the thing, but refilling my lungs proves impossible.
How heavy is this thing? I wonder, and I decide it must be one of the engineering drones I’ve been fearing would enter the fray. Powerful enough to shred and reshape even the strongest metals, it will likely make short work of me.
The bat clangs off its side, again and again, each strike creating a gong, fading steadily in intensity, along with my willpower.
But all of this is happening in front of the partially open doorway, and none of the drones are passing through.
Hurry, Gal. Move your robot ass. I nearly shout the thoughts, but I don’t want to draw attention back to my robo-frenemy. Of course, shouting would also require air in my lungs, and I don’t have that, either.
The warning signs of impending death, which I’ve experienced a few more times than I would prefer, begin to take hold. My vision narrows and fills with stars, like fairies trying to distract me from the discomfort of life’s end. My fingers and toes tingle and chill. My will to fight fades to nothing, the bat rolling out of my hand and clattering on the floor.
I really hate dying, I think, and as the last of my vision goes, I hear the door beside me whir open. Then I see Gal, standing above me, her arms modified with tech I can’t recognize through the haze of my returning eyesight.
She looks down at me and says, “Sorry, Will. This is going to suck.”
And then the world, the whole God-damned universe, becomes nothing but crackling, white-hot light.
I hear something. It’s loud and high-pitched.
A wailing baby, I think, and then I realize it’s me. The drone sitting atop me is gone. I can’t see where. I don’t care. The pain of dying has been replaced by something painful enough to get a scream from my already deflated lungs.
Arcs of blue light criss-cross the hallway above me, increasing my agony each time they bend down and reach out for me, striking my legs, my torso, my eyes. My vision is erased again. For the briefest moment, I feel boiling hot liquid on my face, and I realize it’s from my exploded eyes. Then I fall unconscious.
When I wake—I don’t know how much later—I’m afraid to open my eyes. I scrunch my forehead down, refusing to look, or not look, whatever the case might be. As long as my eyes are closed, I have hope.
“You’re fine,” Gal says.
The casual ease of her words instill confidence, but I’m still not sure. I take stock of my body.
There’s no pain; there’s no discomfort aside from the hard floor beneath my back and my head. I can breathe freely. My fingers and toes all wiggle.
“Did I die?” I ask.
“It’s possible,” Gal says. “Maybe even probable. But you had a pulse when I got around to checking.”
“How long has it been?” I ask.
“Thirty-three seconds.”
“Since what?” I ask. “What did you do?”
“Shorted them out,” she says. “Took down the lot, but they’re repairable.”
“That’s good,” I say, and I realize I’ve opened my eyes to absolute darkness. My pulse quickens, and all I can manage is a quivering, “Umm.”
“Oh, sorry!” Red light blooms from Gal’s eyes. I have no trouble seeing it, or the half smile on her robot face.
I push myself up off the floor. “You did that on purpose?”
She chuckles.
“I think you’ve found your sense of humor’s limit,” I say.
“Says the man with a smile on his face.”
The smile fades the moment I realize she’s right. “Just happy to be alive.”
“We both know that’s debatable.”
My fading smile continues right on into a frown.
Gal steps over a downed drone, entering the hallway now littered with two dozen robot corpses, their insides fried. Her counterattack was brutal and efficient, showing creativity and intelligence. She probably could have dispatched the drones with physical violence, but she came up with a solution that destroyed the easily replaceable electronics and spared the robotics. It won’t take long to get Galahad’s drone army back to work.
If we can make it to the VCC.
I crouch by one of the disabled drones. It’s still warm to the touch. “What did you do to them?”
She holds up her right arm, revealing her self-made modification. It looks like a bar of metal with a small donut of twisted wire at the end. I’m about to ask what it is, when I figure it out for myself. “Is that a Tesla coil?”
She nods. “An electrical resonant transformer circuit. I call it a Tesla gun.”
I nearly ask her to make me one, but it’s clear she’s powering the device with her own power sources. Without a powerful battery pack, it would just be decoration on my arm.
Gal looks back over her shoulder at me, eyes aglow. “This is fun.”
I don’t bother arguing the point, mostly because I agree. I know what mind-numbing hellish depression feels like, and this isn’t it. I don’t know if I would call it fun, but for Gal, whose life has been relatively short, this is probably a highlight…right next to trying to kill her creator. I still have trouble shaking the psychotic things she said and did. This could all be an elaborate ruse. The drones could still be under her control. But I don’t have a hell of a lot of choice here.
“Also,” Gal says, “‘Who wants to visit Louisville first?’ Really?”
“It was the best I could come up with on short notice,” I say, following her down the dark hallway, navigating through the field of digital death.
“Pretty sure it’s the best you could come up with if you had a millennium.”
“We’ll probably have time to figure that out.”
“Optimistic,” Gal observes, correct again. “It’s about time. VCC is ahead. On the right.”
Gal doesn’t sound tense, but I grip the bat a little tighter. If Wick is real and determined to keep me out of the VCC, it won’t be long before we’re attacked again.
“Stop worrying about fighting,” Gal says, looking down at my white-knuckle grip. “You need to start prioritizing.”
Right again. I don’t bother replying, I just retreat into my thoughts.
Step one, restore power. I can access the VCC with backup power, but to make any substantial headway against Wick, I’m going to need full access. Well, not entirely full access. Wick himself will still be protected behind Tom’s firewall, but I should be able to wrest control of the drones, which is step two.
I briefly consider attempting to take control of Gal, too, but I’m sure I would fail, and we’d be right back where we started. Predator and prey, ad infinitum. She’s completely auto
nomous now. Her own self. And I need to just accept that. My journey through space is no longer solitary. It’s not how I planned to solve my problem, but it’s a solution. For now. As long as she doesn’t go genuinely insane.
I’m getting too far ahead.
First Wick. Then eternity with a robot companion.
The weight of it all attempts to settle in my chest, a white hole of infinite and expanding mass, but my thoughts become focused when the VCC staging area’s door opens under Gal’s power and reveals…nothing.
“Where are they?” I ask.
Gal steps into the staging area, her right arm crackling with bright blue electricity. The staging area is lit in a kaleidoscope of red, blue, and purple light, revealing lockers, benches, and nothing else. “I don’t know,” she says. “But let’s not waste time thinking about it.” She steps out of my way and motions to my locker. “Hurry.”
While Gal forces the staging area doors closed, I lean the bat against a bench and proceed to peel off my torn and bloodied coveralls. I stop and glance at Gal, who is watching me. I’m about to ask her to turn around when she rolls her mechanical eyes and says, “Pretty sure I don’t need to tell you I have no genitalia. I’m not really a woman, and can’t simulate one for you.” She raps her knuckles against the metal plate that is her crotch. “Would hurt. A lot.”
I finish stripping and slip into my virtual skin. It’s form-fitting and not exactly soft, but it still feels more normal to me than the coveralls. This is where I’m meant to be. Where I shine. I point to a panel on the far side of the staging area. “Can you remove that?”
Gal crouches by the metal panel held to the wall by eight bolts. Then she grasps its small metal handle and yanks the plate away, destroying the bolts.
“Not exactly what I had in mind,” I say, bending down to inspect the newly revealed hardware.
“You think I built a ratchet into my hand? I’m not a Swiss Army Knife.”
“First,” I say, “I don’t know what a Swiss Army Knife is. Second, it wouldn’t have been a bad idea. Surprised you didn’t think of it.”
Infinite Page 15
