by KL Mabbs
He did cite kidnapping and an unusual furor towards one Captain Michael Scott, retired from the Canadian Army. He could give no corroborating evidence to that allegation because he had never seen it for himself and didn’t know the reasons for it. He signed it with his military ID. Then he left instructions for his severance pay, where he could be contacted in the future, and hit the send button.
He called for help next.
The slap of flesh and bone on a wood panel startled him.
He walked over, easing his gun from its holster. Harris. In the corner of the room, hiding behind a desk. Shaking from fear. When he met the man’s eyes, it was as if a water fountain flowed.
“I told her I would tell. I will. Stay away from her and what’s hers. Not-cub belongs to himself. Michael is her mate. He won’t like this, no, he won’t. Look out. Stay away from her.”
Now what, Jared wondered, was a not-cub?
Harris repeated himself. Jared listened for as long as he could. Two minutes is a long time to listen to the insane rant. He left to find a quieter place to rest, perhaps outside, where the only thing howling was the wind and, perhaps, a wolf or two.
Maybe a coyote.
As he moved down the hallway to the outside door, he noticed the wolf tracks. They showed that she had been hurt, the tracks appearing for a few steps and then disappearing. A short way down the hall they would show up again, and disappear. That pattern repeated itself throughout the base. At the base door there were more. To Jared it showed her being hurt just before she left the base, but the bloody tracks had whirled down the stairs to take one last enemy. He was a misshapen body on the stairs, his head missing, like all the others. Outside there were a few drops of blood leading out into the snow, heading into the rocky terrain and a storm-driven wind.
Chapter 40 Samantha
“Can you show me Ahmed, Sammy?”
“Yes, ma’am. I have approximately a month of memories with Ahmed.”
“A month. Is that all?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A holo-feed erupted from Sammy, filling the room with an image so real it felt like she was with her son. He was sitting on an army cot, a book hovered before him, and he was turning pages with the flick of his hand. She could see the others in his squad, all sitting or talking, none of them appeared to notice what he was doing.
Haptic controls.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her chest hurt suddenly.
“What is that, Sammy?”
“A manual. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes, please Sammy.”
Node Two: Name, Sammy. Primary Interface: General Samantha Ariyan: Adapting. Primary Systems: Nominal. Organics Engine: online. Behaviour and Emotional files: Updating: Choices: For the good of others, for love. Update emotional files: love: strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties, maternal love for a child; attraction based on sexual desire; affection and tenderness felt by lovers; affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests, love for his old schoolmates. Command Structure: Unchanged.
“Since you’re done distracting me,” Kerrigan said. He wrapped his arms around the woman that filled him with more longing than most men received in a lifetime.
They were lying on the soft carpet of her office. This time he was conscious, for all of the lovemaking and the pleasure of taking her clothes off had added to that delight.
Samantha laid her head down on his chest, and sighed. An easy carefree breath. Her fingertips twined through the hair on his chest.
Kerrigan felt . . . confused. The sex was great, but he should have been saying no under the circumstances. The first time he’d had no choice, which was the point. He’d started to rape Samantha, and she had promptly turned the tables on him. Rape, for a man, with a woman—well most wouldn’t turn it down or even feel damaged by it. It was different for a woman. Kerrigan understood that, always had. He wasn’t thinking straight, though. Hadn’t been, since the wolf attack. He had a rage building in him that he didn’t understand. Samantha kept knocking that “angry” on its ass. The fact that she did it with sex made it . . . better, worse. He didn’t know for sure, and that was part of his confusion.
“Oh, no. That’s your fault,” Samantha said.
The other part of it, besides the gorgeous woman who plied him better than any other had, was that until he had been attacked by the black wolf—or rather, been set up to be attacked by the wolf—Samantha hadn’t given him any signs of her feelings. Yes, they were friends. She sometimes touched him in ways a romance rag would say it meant a woman was interested. But she had never said anything. And she was his commanding officer. At least, that was the way he had always thought of her. It kept things professional. Helped with his need for stability.
He had no idea how to cross that barrier.
He kissed her, all the feelings he held washing over him, as if he were buried in the sand at the beach and the tide was rising. “What did I do?”
He should have seen the interest in her eyes, the way he saw it now. How had he missed that? He also knew she had lied to him, and he thought he understood why, finally. He kept remembering a picture of her son. How she had looked at him, in the picture, with love, and pride as well had shone in her eyes. Ahmed’s too, for that matter. This was a mother, and a son, that had truly loved each other. A child shouldn’t die before a parent. It wasn’t right. Grief could sit heavy, and for a long time when it did. Like Samantha’s had.
“You stayed with me. Isn’t that enough.”
Damn. He did please her.
Now if he could only trust her again.
“What happened to your pet wolf?” he asked.
“Sammy?” She raised her head and looked at the desk where Sammy had been. Pointed with her slim hand and heard the tell-tale sound of her charm bracelet.
“Is that normal?”
“Nothing is normal with Sammy. She is—a unique being,” Samantha said.
“I still don’t understand. She’s a machine, you said organic, though.”
“I said biological, Zach. She’s the prototype for the computer we made. The software, even some of the Nano-ware, which was logical. But the biologic, I haven’t been able to recreate that, not even with her help. She’s hardwired to keep her secrets. That’s why I wanted one of the others.”
“Others—Boyen’s belt buckle.”
“Yes.”
“Huer?”
“I don’t know. And I thought Captain Scott’s wolf was his. And the one that attacked him another unit I missed somehow.”
“How did you come by Sammy?”
“Personal effects, from Ahmed, but she was damaged.”
“Damaged?”
“They imprint on their owner. Sammy was as scarred as I was from Ahmed’s death. Building for the future was a way for us to deal with that grief. It helped us adapt to each other.”
“You talk as if she has a personality. It’s programming. Brilliant, but . . .” Kerrigan ran his hands over Samantha’s waist and settled them on the firm roundness of her buttocks.
“Zach, she listens and learns. She doesn’t make mistakes twice.”
“I programmed that into our model.” Kerrigan liked machines. What he had seen Sammy do, that had riled him in ways he didn’t comprehend, and he didn’t know if it was him, or the rage he kept feeling. It seemed like anything new or threatening could and would set it off. It was almost like being a teenager again. Way too much testosterone.
“P.A.C. stands for personal adaptive computer, Zach. She adapts to my thinking and me. Sammy is as literal as I am, and she wasn’t that way before I got her.”
“You said she was damaged. How?”
“Her memory had holes, still does; her last days with Ahmed are gone. She was emotionally incoherent, her moods were manic, and her form kept shifting back and forth for months.”
“You mean changing form like . . .”
“ . . . The wolf is new, Zach. That was from b
lood and medical exams, information from the net. And that beast in the holding pen.”
They both looked up at the monitors in the corner of the room. The black wolf had settled down after they had made love that first time. As if it knew Samantha had picked an alpha and it was no longer in the running. It had even stayed calm when Samantha had introduced them. The staring contest between Ma’ii tsoh and Kerrigan had been interesting, and the body language, even though wolf and human had shown differences, had been tense. Then it had changed, calmed. The body language completely different.
Now the monitor showed Ma’ii tsoh insane again, tearing at the door with his teeth and claws. “Sammy, flood the room with a sleep gas, please. Before he hurts himself.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is she always so polite?”
“I am, Kerrigan. Get used to it, sir,” Sammy said.
He laughed “Now that sounds like you, Samantha.” Kerrigan felt the emotions he had about the machine twist. The feeling of rage was almost instant, and it took all his control to dampen it into place. He breathed a sigh and felt his chest push up into Samantha’s, noticing the soft resiliency there.
Samantha laughed. “We’re like sisters, we share some common ground. In other ways . . .” She shrugged, the motion bringing Kerrigan’s attention back to the way their bodies met.
He kissed her.
“I’m hungry. Famished actually.”
“Me too,” he said.
“When we take a trip into the mountains, maybe Ma’ii tsoh will settle down, back in the wild. I still want answers though. Like why a wolf that becomes human answers to a Navajo name.”
Kerrigan stared at her. “What? He changes! To a human? That means . . . No. No!”
The rage, hiding behind the intellect and control of a man, and the sexual distraction of a woman, exploded. Kerrigan’s muscles tensed, his normally soothing voice turned into a growl, as full of fury as Ma’ii tsoh. His hands made a fist in the carpet, pulling the material up from the floor. Samantha heard a staple pop. She raised herself up off his chest. Under her hands, she could feel his heartbeat going wild, like the hammer of a machine gun.
Her stomach tensed. She brought her knee up, slowly, afraid to startle the man under her, not even sure why he was reacting this way. He didn’t like change, she knew that much. She lifted her weight off of him. He rolled. She moved back more, almost tripping over him as his feet hit the ground and he prepared to stand.
A scream let go from his throat, as if he had just dropped from a cliff. Samantha backed herself into a corner, as far away from her lover as was possible. She tasted salt on her lips. Sweat beaded up and ran down her ribcage. The room was hot suddenly and she felt fevered, as if the ambient temperature had just risen a hundred degrees. Sammy dropped from her wrist, shaping into a wolf, almost too fast to follow. The auburn red of her fur glinting under the organic lighting. She stood between Samantha and Kerrigan, a growl in her throat.
“Sammy. Kerrigan. Oh God. Don’t . . .”
Kerrigan turned, dropping to his knees, his scream turning ragged and harsh.
“Kerrigan. Sammy. Please don’t. I love you both. Don’t make me choose, please.”
The small office echoed with growls, and shouts, and finally the hoarse snarl of something that wasn’t human anymore.
Chapter 41 Michael
Sergeant Frank Huer was interfacing with his P.A.C. unit. “Marlon, go over the ping data from yesterday’s excursion.” The haptic controls were the most fluid he had ever seen, not even the usual gloves were needed. He’d named Marlon after a character in an old motorcycle movie thought to reflect the history of the youth gangs from the fifties. Huer thought it garbage himself, but the actor was considered one of the best of the old emulsion film era. The vintage motorcycles were what had drawn him to the flick in the first place.
“Working, Huer. The functions are constant and within the parameters set for echo location.”
Huh, what did that mean? “Put that in English, please.”
“I need to see the data from the other units available.”
“Captain Scott ain’t here, so no PAC. Hook me up with Ahmed and Boyen, and set up an interface.”
Huer waited a few moments. The time to talk to each of the units directly would take only nanoseconds, but Ahmed and Boyen would slow the process down just by having to relay permissions. Captain Scott had the P.A.C. units follow chain of command. Direct contact was for combat situations only. And since his unit was Prime, all the others followed suit.
Huer used Marlon’s data reader to view the newest in electric motorcycles while he waited. The States had started to export their newest battery tech, too long in coming if you asked Huer, but their bikes could be expected to be powerful and have a range of forty-eight hundred kilometres on one charge. Still, they didn’t roar the way he thought they should. A bike should rumble between your legs, like a mountain under the strain of a quake.
“Done, Huer. Correlating data.”
“And?”
“There is no difference in the data parameters from all three units. Extrapolating that a fourth unit’s data would create no variation, the ping data from yesterday’s excursion is false,” said Marlon.
Huer whistled.
He wondered how Scott would tell the army about where and how he had received the information. Because the data analysis they had just gotten hadn’t been invented yet, not by the military, anyway. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Node Four: Name, Marlon P.A.C. Primary Interface: Sergeant Frank Jackson Huer: Adapting. Primary Systems: Nominal. Organics Engine: online. Behaviour and Emotional files: Updating: Rules: a prescribed guide for conduct or action; the laws or regulations prescribed by the founder of a religious order for observance by its members; an accepted procedure, custom, or habit; a written order or direction made by a court regulating court practice or the action of parties; a legal precept or doctrine; a regulation or bylaw governing procedure or controlling conduct; a usually valid generalization; a generally prevailing quality, state, or mode. Command structure: Unchanged.
Michael’s jaws crunched down on the bones of the rabbit in his bloody hands. The meat was pungent, more gamey than he remembered, but the blood was a tart metallic taste on his tongue. The marrow in the bones was reminiscent of butter for some reason, and he couldn’t say why. Besides the week’s food in his pack, and a dozen energy bars, this was his ninth rabbit in a day’s time. He was eating like Faelon. But it kept the sleep he had been missing from affecting him too badly.
He had foregone a fire just in case it alerted any of the soldiers he had passed. Whether by satellite or smoke, he wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible. PAC warned him when the thermal imagery from an army bird overhead could spot him, and he would dive into the snow to lower his body temperature. Considering how much heat he was putting out—it was 40.3 degrees Celsius, a range that should’ve had him gibbering in his porridge most mornings—he had to return to the snow every few minutes. But it kept the thermal imaging from detecting his body shape from within the terrain. The rest of the time, he watched his movement in relation to tree cover or just stayed still.
Hiding.
He chafed at the waiting. It set his teeth on edge and his muscles to vibrating and the effort to calm himself grew worse over time. The storm brewing let him ease up on his wariness, giving his nerves time to calm. The wind was stealing his heat away just as effectively as his diving into the snow.
He had passed Highway 1 hours back, crossing near Johnston’s Canyon. Though the road was well cared for, it didn’t have the traffic it was originally designed for; the Decline leading up to the Oil Wars had taken care of that. Then Highway 95, and he didn’t miss the signs of civilization or the humans he avoided. He had passed the headwaters of Finely Creek and had reached the mountain ridge that held Faelon’s location; he could see the Cold War Military Base that was their destination. Years ago, the power supply that Canada had been selling to the
United States had been in question—demanded. Canada had honoured those deals, but the politics had been tense, and the Cold War Bunkers had gone up in strategic points along the border.
Faelon’s scent was on the wind; for a time it had disappeared, though now it had the rich smell of blood entwined with it. That and the decaying of flesh, though that wasn’t too strong yet, so he knew it was recent. It increased his fear and his speed to get to Faelon. The thickness of the forest couldn’t stop him, nor could the terrain, the weather, or the surveillance that he knew was out there.
Jared Oberi sat at a computer terminal in the Cold War Military base that had been trounced by one woman, or one wolf, depending on how he wanted to look at it. Hillman and Harris were the only other survivors—Jenkins and all the others had been killed. Either way he had to respect the kind of warrior that did what she did. It impressed the hell out of him. Left a certain amount of fear behind too.
This computer unit had a keyboard and mouse, for those that disliked holo-interfaces or couldn’t handle the frequencies that had a potential for causing epileptic seizures. He was using the holo-interface, but he preferred the haptic control gloves. Before the States had given up a standing army, they would have screened for nerve deficiency which could lead to epilepsy. Blackwater had different priorities for their men, and it was a lapse that could have been missed, but that was the reason for the redundant equipment. Nano-controlled equipment had a failure rate of point zero one percent. Self-repairing tech just didn’t fail, for the most part. That was the good part of fighting a war with the environment and alternative power sources. The catch-up tech was startling.
