Liberation's Desire

by Wendy Lynn Clark

  That made a little more sense. “The assignment comptroller reported you as dead.”

  His direct predecessor, Robotics Faction agent Xan|Arch, had been assigned to assassinate target Cressida Sarit Antiata. According to information Yves had been given for this assignment, the rogue had turned Xan against the Faction, but they had later reestablished control and killed both him and the target.

  Obviously, some facts had changed.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Xan said, “they were right. ‘Xan|Arch’ is no more.”

  “Hyperbole isn’t a subroutine the comptroller is programmed to understand.”

  “So far as you know. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” The former soldier class flashed him another off-center grin. “Like how many other things the Faction was lying about.”

  The question lodged in his brain like a blow and set his skull to ringing.

  “What I wonder is what the hell an Undovan warship is doing this many hub systems outside of its own space,” he muttered. “Exactly who did you piss off?”

  “Who knows?”

  They ascended through a top-of-the-line vessel outfitted with a luxurious array of black market carpets and micro-gravity controllers and anonymizers. The furniture had skipped the usual trade embargoes to unite in one mashed-up patina of beauty and functionality. The walls, multiple-foot-thick steel alloy coated in screen material, displayed the spatter of stars and the passing shipping lanes. Frames added to their resemblance to actual windows.

  While they walked, Yves finished cracking the network. Silently and seamlessly, he poured into the processors. As he off-loaded his life support to unused bits of ship network space, his paralysis abated to a limp.

  “Cracked the network protections, I see.” Xan grunted as he upped his pace. “You could’ve asked for the encryption key.”

  “If I did that, how else could you test my abilities?”

  They reached the captain’s chamber. Like the rest of the ship, the walls of this most interior room were coated to appear as windows directly into space. Only a few screens displayed specifications, maps, and communications. The warship filled most of one screen.

  Xan grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. “Time to prove you’re more than a glorified alarm pet.”

  “You’re worth it, Mercury,” Cressida was saying. “We would brave a hundred warships to rescue you.”

  Mercury hugged her older sister. “One is more than enough.”

  Yves slid into a control seat and dug into their systems.

  The warship had not actually declared war on them, which was good, because it was large enough to smash them to pieces, and bristling with so many auto-turrets that not a speck of debris would get through their defenses to dent the shiny trim.

  It was just violating the intergalactic laws of good navigation by flying closer than a thousand miles to the other ships—essentially, bumping them out of their lanes—and coming up on them from behind. The hubs, which would usually punish that illegal maneuver with a warning and then the kind of ship-breaking weaponry he had so recently experienced, appeared to be allowing the infraction.

  “Maybe they’re trying to pass us,” Mercury offered, studying the same histories as the rest of them.

  “I wish,” Xan said. “Nobody intimidates a hub but the Faction.”

  Mercury looked at Yves.

  He warmed with her attention. Another oddity, but he was so glad to be the source of her authority that he ignored it for now. “My colleague is unfortunately correct. I see you are aiming for the Tube to the Onyx Hub.”

  “It’s a trick,” Xan said, stretching out his hands and tossing a devil-may-care grin at his pale, commanding wife, Cressida. “We’re going to shoot past the Tube at the last instant. The warship has more mass so it will get sucked in. We’ll head to the Heliopolis Hub instead.”

  Yves checked the messages from the buoys as they passed. “I see nothing wrong with your plans.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  Cressida gripped the arms of her command chair. She had taken a seat, and Mercury hovered beside her. “I hoped you would talk him out of that madness.”

  “Why?” Yves looked at the x-class. “You are functioning within acceptable limits?”

  “Exceptional limits.” He grinned.

  “It’s crazy,” she said.

  “Shooting past a Tube would be difficult, especially for tricking a warship with a military-grade throttle, but is not impossible.” He returned to scanning the system to learn more about their situation. Something tugged at him. Something odd…

  “Heliopolis is closer to Antiata space,” Cressida was telling Mercury quietly. “Onyx leads to a more direct route, but apparently the Faction’s Third Brigade is stationed just outside that Hub.”

  “What’s the Third Brigade?”

  “About a hundred ships,” Xan tossed over his shoulder, “but honestly, that’s nothing in comparison to a single Treatymaker class.”

  “Do you think the Antiatas will help us now?” Mercury asked her sister.

  “I don’t know. But,” Cressida took Mercury’s hand, “it’s the fastest way to Aris also.”

  Mercury whitened. “He’s at risk?”

  “I’m not taking any chances.” Cressida gripped her hand, and then motioned her to the plush co-pilot seat. “Strap in. If anyone can do this crazy thing, it’s my husband. But I don’t promise it will be a smooth ride.”

  Xan smiled as though he could feel his wife’s eyes on the back of his head.

  The warship flew right up into spitting distance, so close they could almost feel the tangerine star’s sunlight reflecting off its bristling auto-turrets and glaring into their eyes. The command room fell silent.

  It paced them.

  They passed another buoy, and Yves noted that the ship was set to auto-download the buoy’s messages. It was fairly standard; the private ones were junked unless you had the key, and the public ones contained useful information. Occasionally they contained dangerous viruses or worm programs, but the owning Hub usually cracked down on that right fast.

  Which was why, with one eye on that and the rest of his attention on the history of the warship, he was startled to see that his own ship was sending some sort of encoded file back to the buoy.

  “What are you broadcasting?” he asked Xan.

  “Broadcasting?” The x-class raised a brow like he was crazy. “We’re trying to fly under hub radar, not up it.”

  Shit.

  “In that case, I have bad news.” He began a full systems scan and chased down the origin of the broadcast.

  “Systems scan?” Xan’s voice rose. “Don’t lock up my controls. We’re almost at the Tube!”

  “It’s going to get worse.”

  Yves found the broadcast order and yanked. Code unraveled like a sizzling powder cable, and he followed it deeper into the brain of the ship. Each layer he opened, the malicious virus reared back and snapped at it, a roiling deadly mass of trap-doors and spawn-points of little monsters. He slayed the last one and stepped over its body to reveal…

  …ah, fuck. Just a signature.

  “The zero class,” he muttered.

  “What?” Xan said.

  “The zero class. She snuck a virus into the messages you downloaded. It’s been sending our information back—and possibly even recording our cabin conversation.”

  “Shit. She knows everything,” Xan said.

  Behind them, on the screen, the warship passed by the buoy. He counted up the seconds it would take for the warship to query the buoy, receive the packets their ship had secretly sent, and read the contents. Earlier than he would have predicted, its accelerators opened up and it started moving.

  Dropping sideways into a slower lane.

  What the fuck?

  The hail light blinked.

  Xan checked the source. “Hub Authority. So much for flying under their radar.”

  “If we don’t answer it, we’re not out of co
mpliance, and they can’t use the PFA on us.”

  The hail light blinked insistently.

  Tension strung the silence tight. Lasers the Hub Authority used to exert its dominance in the system regularly cut ships in half, from the highest class of warbirds to the lowliest garbage frigates. The PFA was what had destroyed their most recent conveyance. And the warship was dropping back to get out of the way.

  “I could go down Onyx,” Xan said, strain in his voice as their window narrowed. “We can make it before they can shoot us.”

  “The Third Brigade is suicide,” Cressida said.

  “So is getting chopped in half.” He glanced at Yves. “Usually.”

  “Can we still get away from the Tube?”

  “Sure.” Xan gripped the controls. “We’ll just shoot around it, back into orbit for Heliopolis, at about a thousand percent faster than is good for us. Plus, the PFA will have a clear shot.”

  Oh. Yves suddenly saw the entire field and realized the zero class’s plans. The warship wasn’t dropping into a slower lane to give the PFA room. It was swinging out to force them down the Tube for Onyx.

  If he had realized it a few minutes earlier, Xan could have tried another maneuver.

  “We’re going to Onyx,” he announced, took his hands off the controls, and stood.

  The women stared at him, faces white with fear.

  “I can make it,” Xan said, the control screen starting to jitter and hum under his fingers despite their gravitational controls. “I can make it!”

  “No, you can’t.” Yves dropped one knee beside Mercury’s thigh on the co-pilot chair, caged her with his arms, and looked deep into her startled blue eyes. “Mind if I share your seat?”

  Her pink tongue darted between her lips, enticing him with a warm wetness. “Sure.”

  “Thanks.” He leaned forward, burying his face in her hair. This, her warm and alive, was what he needed to confirm since the moment he had seen her in the distant bubble. He just breathed in and out.

  Despite her tension, she laughed. Sweet and adorable. “Yves. We’re in the middle of a fight.”

  “It’s already over. Just let me hold you until everyone else figures it out.”

  She acquiesced to his wish.

  A moment later, the warship gunned itself forward, forcing their smaller ship into the Tube for Onyx Hub just as Yves had predicted. To the tune of Xan swearing, Cressida screaming, and Mercury clinging to Yves with all her might, they entered the Tube bound for the Faction’s deadly Third Brigade.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  And down they went. Straight into the gullet of Zenya’s trap.

  She stretched out on the luxurious Undovan’s captain’s bench. This was how she was meant to travel. All she needed were a few slaves to attend to her.

  Too bad she’d had to kill them all.

  Maybe, once the luxury cruiser fell to the Third Brigade, she could request the androids’ bodies. Rip out all their processors and fill their brain pans with a simple logic processor, and they wouldn’t even need to talk. Just follow her orders.

  She sipped her lotus tea and bit into what Mercury had entitled a sparkling truffle. Essentially, it was a globe of lavender-infused chocolate coated in edible diamonds.

  Meh. She’d had a fancier truffle a hundred years ago, a rose globe coated in edible fireworks that lit off in her mouth and added an exciting candy splash to the melty chocolate cream.

  She flipped through the recipes. Maybe if she had an android slave to reprocess these for her and surprise her…

  You cannot have the androids , her robot told her.

  She ignored it.

  Of course, Yves would try to get away from the Third Brigade. So maybe she could do her own snatch and surgery.

  The assignment is the rogue .

  Well, she could still have a little fun.

  Yves had found and destroyed her tracking programs, but he was still unaware of the worms embedded deep in his own brain. The Faction fully intended for the rogue to sever him from the network, and now they expected him to test and analyze the original exiles. This was all part of their plans. So, when he least suspected it, the Faction could reach out and touch him. Violently. Behind his skull.

  Or the program that, when activated, would melt him down to scrap with a single word from her.

  But he still had to activate the worms for them to regain control. For now, his exact actions remained a mystery.

  She stretched.

  How would he attempt to beat her trap? She could think of a hundred different ways, but only one would be very interesting.

  Oh, she hoped he did that one.

  She wanted his death to be interesting.

  ~*~*~*~

  Mercury helplessly watched an all-too-familiar scene from her childhood.

  Her sister, fully in command, dynamically reasoned with authority figures over how best to deal with a problem brought on by Mercury. After all, Cressida and Xan had successfully escaped their own Robotics Faction assassin, and now they were endangered by the one chasing her and Yves.

  The difference? This time, instead of convincing parents or teachers not to ground Mercury or leave bad grades on her permanent record, Cressida argued with two inhumanly beautiful androids about how to save themselves.

  “The only way,” Yves said quietly, “to survive the Faction’s Third Brigade is to avoid meeting them. I propose—”

  “Tubes have one entrance and one exit.” Cressida tapped her index finger against her lip. “When we get out, we’ll be caught in the accelerators. We can’t slow down or speed up, much less turn around. We’re stuck.”

  “Which would be fine if we could keep going to the next Tube,” her husband said, “but we know the warship will force us into slower and slower lanes until we’re decelerated out of the hub traffic and float right into the Third Brigade.”

  “And then they have us,” Cressida said, fighting hard to keep her frustration in check. “We’re trapped.”

  “Not quite.” Yves rotated a map screen to show the entire Tube, like a planetary transit map. “If we can rapidly slow ourselves down, that will be as effective as speeding out of their trap.”

  Cressida’s brows pulled together. “We can’t.”

  Yves looked at Xan.

  Xan violently shook his head and pulled his wife close, wrapping his arms around her from behind. “What she said.”

  Yves glanced over at Mercury. A miniature map glowed in his oculars.

  What had happened to the opinionated woman he’d met at Luck Station? She hadn’t been any smarter then, but she had put herself out and made a contribution.

  She cleared her throat. “I have a question.”

  Everyone looked at her.

  “If you’re suggesting this, doesn’t it mean you already have a plan?”

  Cressida sucked in her lower lip and frowned.

  Xan rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Yes,” Yves said, smiling as though she had won a prize and the glint in his oculars promised she’d be more than welcome to collect as soon as they finished this conversation. “Of course. I recommend we hook onto the buoy stationed outside the Tube and swing around it in one full circle.”

  Cressida looked up sharply. “What? Is that even possible?”

  “It’s not easy.” Yves met Xan’s knowing chagrin. “The possibility is not advertised.”

  Mercury unfolded. “How is it possible?”

  “The buoys have their own engines,” Yves said. “Otherwise, they would get sucked into their own Tubes. We hook onto one, swing around, and shoot through the Tube’s decelerators a second time.”

  Which meant reentering the Tube from the side. “Is that even possible?”

  “Drones are stationed to prevent it,” Xan said.

  “But the Tube itself is more like a swift current in the river of space,” Yves said. “There isn’t a wall separating a Tube from the rest of space. That’s why they’re so clearly marked, so no one accidental
ly flies into one at normal speeds. We should end up far enough behind the warship that it will not be able to maneuver behind us, even with its superior mobility.”

  “And the Third Brigade?”

  “They will not be in Hub orbit,” he said. “They are in the system for some other purpose.”

  Cressida thought hard. “So we attach ourselves to the buoy…won’t we be moving a little fast for that?”

  “Nothing your x-class can’t handle.”

  “Oh, sure,” Xan said. “I’ll just pot-shot a marker-buoy while we drop out a Tube. No problem.”

  “Because we’re dropping out,” she continued, talking herself into it. “Just falling out of the Tube.”

  “Yeah. Think of squeezing a bar of soap so hard it bullets through your wall and breaks out your neighbor’s window.”

  “It’s not an ideal exit,” Yves agreed.

  “It’s fucking ill-advised,” Xan said, eying Yves. “Tubes are clear, monitored by Faction drones, and collision-proof. If you didn’t want to go to the destination hub, you’d choose an alternate route to get there. Plus, flying into one from an unauthorized entry is likely to get you shot or slammed into another exiting ship.”

  “So there is a collision danger.” Cressida tapped her lip.

  “Most of space is empty,” Yves pointed out.

  “And the odds of finding a freeze-dried mummy is a hundred trillion billion to one,” Xan snapped. “You know how often, say, the Novus Galleana quadrant finds one of those historical dead?”

  Mercury raised her hand.

  “Eight times a day. That’s how often!”

  “Novus Galleana are sited along strong solar winds,” Yves said, clearly wanting to move on to the meat of his plan, even though Xan and her sister kept throwing him fixings for appetizers. “And the statistical likelihood of finding a victim of interstellar conflict in a specific location is much different than the statistical probability of all locations.”

  Mercury raised her hand higher.

  Cressida put a hand on Xan’s stiff arm. “What is it, Mercury?”

  “What happens if we don’t?”

  A moment of silence met her question.

  “In a word, we’re fucked,” Xan said.