by Blaze Ward
Javier hadn’t realized how cold his face had gotten until now.
There was just the faintest hint of ozone here as well. Lots of big, powerful processing nodes, holding bits and pieces, shards, of Hammerfield’s memories and brains scattered all over the place, while keeping it all as close to the exact center of the ship as possible.
“Where?” he asked.
The probe flew a little to the right, tilted down, and pointed a light over the railing at a machine that dominated the space below, a squat ziggurat nearly two decks tall.
Javier turned to the left and located the stairwell down. The steps were all open grate sides and treads.
The place felt oppressive. The engineering bays had been bland, but that was because engineers tended to be boring people to begin with. They didn’t go in for bright colors and cheery design aesthetics. Made them nervous.
This place seemed designed to impress upon the visitor how insignificant they were.
Which made a queer bit of sense, when you thought about it. The being that had lived there had been the flagship of an entire star culture made up of crazy warrior berserkers.
Death before dishonor.
Probably committed seppuku for the slightest embarrassment.
Sykora and her ilk were never the kind to wake up from a three-day bender in a different county, wearing someone else’s pants and a stolen Shore Patrol helmet.
Weirdoes.
His boots squeaked on the treads. Just because, he held the safety railing.
Better safe than stupid at this late date.
Down on Deck Nine, the ziggurat was even more brutal to behold, like some ancient monument to a dark and demanding god.
Maybe it was.
The metal was matte black, instead of the boring gray of everything else. There was a display screen for the Sentience, and of course it was four meters tall instead of one.
Javier glanced around for bushes that might catch fire as a warning.
Finding none, he wandered around to the right side, the designer apparently having been right-handed, and drew a small socket gun from the tools on his belt. Javier already knew that Neu Berne used some weird, local variant of metric measurements for tools, so he had swapped everything out before he left Storm Gauntlet.
The panel he wanted was at shoulder level, and about a meter wide, by half that tall, held in place with six countersunk bolts. He started at the bottom left, seated the socket gun over it and pushed the thumb button on the back to grab the bolt head. A moment later, he pulled the trigger and the socket gun grabbed the bolt.
Trust Neu Berne to use a ten centimeter long, machine-threaded bolt to hold a simple metal panel in place.
Middle bottom next. Bottom right. Top right. Top left, until the panel was held in place by only the top center bolt.
Javier put his left hand on the panel to hold it in place and undid the last panel. He dropped all six bolts into a pouch and holstered the socket gun on his belt.
The panel dropped away to reveal a motherboard with twelve slots, all open.
“Light, please,” he said, leaning forward.
Suvi put her spotlight into the space.
Huh. Standard design, right across the board.
Javier had always wondered how such a consciously-militant culture had handled their tech.
Apparently, they had outsourced to the good, little merchants of the Concord for parts.
Made sense. The Concord was the only relatively neutral nation in the entire quadrant big enough and sophisticated enough to handle something like that.
Sure, they had generally supported the Union of Man, but that was more from a standpoint of not letting Neu Berne’s mad dreams of galactic conquest come to fruition, rather than some ideological thing.
And it let the Concord sell gear profitably to both sides.
That helped, because this was suddenly going to be way easier than he had hoped.
Javier had feared he would have to rewire this entire section of the ship, unconsciously expecting those yahoos to have gone and invented something completely insane to run their ships.
He could work with this.
“You ready, kid?” he asked his sidekick.
“You have no idea how long I’ve been looking forward to this,” she replied.
“Well, deploy your landing gear, put yourself down here, and pop your panels,” he said. “You’ll take a quick nap and wake up a whole new woman.”
“Rawr,” she purred.
The probe set down, opened itself like a steamer trunk, and went dark.
Javier reached in and popped the first chip-board loose.
Each was about the size of a deck of cards on a side, by about half that thick. In a moment, he had all eight out and arrayed on the deck in front of him, in the exact order he would put them into the ziggurat’s brain.
The greatest act of piracy in a century.
Javier sighed a little as he picked up the first two boards. Never again would he have his dangerous sidekick running around down on a planet with him.
Radio lag was too great for her to control something from orbit, and she would be a starship for however many centuries after his death as she could maintain and upgrade herself.
But that was a problem for next week.
Javier rose and smiled.
A voice came out of nowhere, somewhere behind him.
A woman. A very angry woman.
“Don’t you dare move, you son of a bitch.”
PART NINE
FORTUNATELY FOR AFIA, her quarry was in no hurry to get anywhere, convinced he was the only one awake right now. And the dangerous probe was obviously distracted as well.
The dim corridors helped Afia, since she didn’t cast much of a shadow as she jogged, first lateral and then fore. She even had time to catch her breath, ducked out of sight and listening to Javier talk to some woman who absolutely wasn’t Sascha.
He hadn’t managed to call for reinforcements from somewhere else, had he?
Not a chance.
But then, who was he talking to? The probe?
Afia had heard the probe’s voice before. The one he had programmed to communicate verbally, and not just via the little portable remote he carried around. It sounded like that in tone, but this sounded like a real person talking, having a conversation with Javier.
He hadn’t been able to program his survey remote to be that smart, had he? How much programming had he done on his old Sentient Probe-Cutter? Enough to make her sound like that?
This was Javier. He would absolutely program it to sound female. Not in a sexist way. No, just because he preferred women. Smart women.
Competent women.
She hadn’t heard him mention anything about that significant of an upgrade, though, and the probe had been dumb and monotonous just a few hours ago.
If she sounded that smart now, then she had been then, as well. Which meant she had been hiding.
What would be so important that he had to hide her in a survey…?
Afia nearly screamed.
Ground her jaws. Clenched her fists.
Considered banging her head against the steel behind her, if there was any way to do it silently where Sascha wouldn’t hear.
Javier hadn’t programmed her to be that smart. That sassy.
Well, no, he probably had, but not in the last month.
Maybe ten years ago.
Javier had told the captain that the boards containing the cognition matrix for the Sentience back on his old ship had been destroyed. That Javier had killed her rather than letting the slavers have her.
Afia had been part of the crew that cut up the carcass later, so that Javier could salvage his arboretum and his chickens. After the woman who was Javier’s pilot was dead.
Except she wasn’t dead.
Somehow, he had rescued her, like an ancient princess in a fairy tale, and brought her here.
And he was about to enter Hammerfield’s Primary Processing Core, w
here he could somehow transfer her into the gigantic warship, bringing her back to life with a kiss.
Afia wanted to scream.
Javier as Prince Charming.
Afia suddenly saw the gray sphere not as an eyeball, but an egg.
Holy crap!
Afia managed to not move. Not breathe.
Not scream.
In the hallway around the corner and behind her, Javier passed through the hatch into silence.
Afia peeked out to confirm.
She waited. Patience, itself.
Right on cue, Sascha appeared, one of the ancient, Greek Furies, goddesses of divine retribution, coming for Javier’s soul.
What would she do when she discovered the truth?
More silence as the other woman opened the door and vanished within.
What the hell was Afia supposed to do now? Call the dragoon? Captain Sokolov?
How?
She had left all her electronics back with her pants. All she had now was her gun.
It would be up to her to decide what happened next. Sascha Koç would absolutely kill Javier. She knew that much.
Afia sucked down a hard, dry breath, past a tongue grown too big for her mouth.
She rose, absolutely covered in goose pimples for the first time today, and padded over to the door.
She hoped enough time had passed for Sascha to move away from the hatch before it opened.
The last thing she needed right now was a firefight.
Afia keyed the door and tried to look as innocent as she could manage, half-naked and armed.
Sascha wasn’t there when it opened.
Afia stepped in and slid to her right, backing her bottom up against a cold, steel bulkhead as the hatch closed and she tried to find everyone.
The space was huge. Not quite as big as down in engineering. Way bigger than the bridge.
Two decks’ worth of space, and she was looking down, between her big toes, at the steel grate that made up this level.
Nobody on this level. Which was good. This space was barely ten meters deep by thirty wide, with catwalk stairs down on her left.
Sascha was at the bottom of the staircase, crouched down and looking every direction except up.
From where she stood, above, Afia caught motion on the right side of a big, black, monument-thingee.
Javier. And the egg.
“You ready, kid?” Javier asked the air.
“You have no idea how long I’ve been looking forward to this,” the woman’s voice came back a second later.
There was no doubt in Afia’s mind that she was hearing with a person, and not a stupid computer system. The warmth of the tones guaranteed that.
The longing.
“Well, deploy your landing gear, put yourself down here, and pop your panels,” Javier said. “You’ll take a quick nap and wake up a whole new woman.”
“Rawr,” the woman replied.
Afia nearly laughed. The egg sounded just about exactly how she had always envisioned Javier’s perfect woman would. Probably tall and blond as well, though Javier had shown himself to be remarkably open to all shapes and sizes, for as long as she had known him.
Movement on her left caught Afia’s eye.
Sascha creeping forward, oblivious to anything except the betrayal unfolding.
Javier had knelt and opened the sphere like a standing suitcase. He pulled a half-dozen boards from inside and put them on the deck in front of him, pausing for a moment as if in prayer.
Perhaps, asking for the woman’s forgiveness? Or the gods of the cosmos itself, as he was about to unleash a powerful avenging angel.
And who would these two pursue? Had this all been a ruse to get here, so he could draw the captain in and kill Storm Gauntlet?
Javier owed them all a serious debt of pain.
Was he about to collect?
Javier picked up two boards and stood.
Sascha watched from the corner of the big device, a pistol in hand. Every line on the woman screamed rage at Javier’s unfaithfulness.
The pistol came up, an extension of Sascha’s fist.
“Don’t you dare move, you son of a bitch,” Sascha cried.
Javier spun about in surprise, eyes agog.
Literally, hand in the cookie jar.
Even from the shadows overhead, Afia could watch the anger slowly overtake the surprise in his face as the two stared hard at each other for long seconds.
Afia knew Javier had slept with Sascha. More than once. Enjoyed the same casual relationship with her that he did with many women of the crew.
It wouldn’t make a lick of difference right now.
Sascha was going to kill him. Afia could read that in the woman’s stance.
The pistol never wavered, but the rest of Sascha’s body quivered, barely under control.
“This is why we came here,” Javier said simply. “I’m going to bring this ship back on line, and together, we’re going to go hunt those bastards down and kill them.”
“This couldn’t wait for the morning?” Sascha cried.
Afia could hear the wail starting in the woman’s voice. She gambled on the two lovers being focused on one another, and began to slowly ease forward until she was more or less above them.
She wasn’t sure which one of them she needed to shoot. Not yet.
As long as they didn’t realize she was here, she held the balance. The probe was no longer able to stop her.
Javier paused.
Afia could see his jaw muscles work. Probably grinding his teeth as he looked for the response that didn’t get him killed a heartbeat later.
“I’m not sure Sykora’s sane anymore,” he finally explained. “I’m afraid if she was here, and saw what I was doing, she would snap completely and kill me. Maybe all of us.”
“How can you say that?” Sascha challenged.
“You’ve seen the look in her eyes, Sascha,” he replied. “Did that look like your boss?”
Silence.
Goal scored, five hole.
“And you couldn’t trust me?” Sascha’s voice did begin to wail. Rising, although in anger or anguish was hard to distinguish.
That was the crux of it.
Who the hell was this stranger, standing at the heart of Hammerfield and about to do something that would have repercussions across a good section of the quadrant?
“To do what?” Javier challenged in turn. “Trust you to not run off and tell your boss? That woman is a threat to the entire mission, right now.”
He relaxed a little, but never moved.
“I took a chance, coming here alone,” Javier continued, his voice getting deeper and harsher as he went. “I’ll admit that. Until I opened that panel, I wasn’t even sure this would work. I’m pretty sure it will. But I won’t know what she’ll say, or who she’ll kill. Especially now. Did I betray you all? Yes. But I told Sykora that there was somebody I hated more than her. I still do. I just don’t trust you bastards one damned bit.”
“Why?” Sascha choked on the word, like a hard candy.
“You made me a slave, Sascha Koç,” he growled, eyes locked on her like gunsights. “Dress it up any pretty way you want, but don’t you dare forget it. Don’t you ever forget that. I sure as hell never will.”
He held up the two boards that he had apparently forgotten were in his hands.
“And you would have made a slave of her, as well,” he continued, volume building now to an angry roar, like a glacier letting go of megatons of ice as something calved into the Beaufort Sea. “I will not allow that. If you want to kill me, fine. Do it now. Otherwise, get the hell out of the way of my revenge, woman.”
Afia could see the Sascha’s pistol start to shake now.
Not much. A quiver, mostly.
The woman must be screaming inside. Afia couldn’t see if she was crying from up here.
“What’s it going to be?” Javier pushed verbally.
That was unnecessary. Sascha would have already shot
him if she was going to.
The pistol came down.
Javier took a step forward, transferring the chips into his left hand as he took the pistol from Sascha with his right.
The barrel was in his hands, so it wasn’t a threat.
Neither was Sascha, as this point.
She might be broken. It was hard to tell.
“Can I get back to my vengeance now?” he asked in a quieter voice.
A college professor dealing with a tardy freshman.
Sascha nodded, so he stuffed the pistol into a pocket and turned away.
“Javier,” Afia called, leveling her own gun at his face when he spun around. “Is this really just about your vengeance?”
“Damn it,” he snarled. “Did all of you follow me here?”
Good question.
Afia peeked over her shoulder, guilty of the same focused intent that had let her sneak up on Sascha earlier.
She was alone, as near as she could tell.
“No,” Afia replied. “Just me. Do you really hate us that much?”
His eyes were cruel, but she could see the emotion in them, even from here.
“Most of you?” he asked, voice easing some, slowly receding to something human. “No. Even Sykora has her uses. But I will be free. You do not get to take that away from me, again. I will kill over that.”
And he would.
She could see the terrible fire alight in his eyes. This man was an unstoppable force now.
He hadn’t been before. Angry? Sure. Inflexible? Occasionally.
Lethal? Only now.
But he was looking at a point a thousand light years past her. The people he was planning to kill weren’t on this ship, or in this system. Even Zakhar Sokolov wasn’t in the top ten on that list.
Afia didn’t have a holster, it being attached to her pants somewhere else.
She was half-naked, and kinda aroused. If Javier liked competent, smart women, Afia liked smart, passionate men.
She lowered her pistol to her side as a peace offering.
“Would you please introduce me to your friend?” she asked.
Javier blinked at her for a second before his face lit up.
“I would be delighted,” he said. “Give me a few moments to see if this works.”
