“He wasn’t by himself,” Cass raised her chin. “But yes.”
“Did the man deserve it?”
“Yes,” Cass repeated.
Rylan set his hands down on the table. Natalie thought he was an odd man. His voice was rarely raised or lowered. He pronounced words in a peculiar way, often emphasizing each syllable of longer words like they were a chain of smaller words. She couldn’t gauge how intelligent he was just yet, but he was clearly uncomfortable dealing with people. It made sense, she thought. He was a pilot that agreed to live on the job flying a starship for months at a time. He must enjoy the seclusion.
“What choice do I have?” he asked finally.
“None,” Natalie replied practically. “You should believe us that Burke won’t hurt you without a reason. Give him your trust and, eventually, you’ll get his in return. If he is going to kill you—which he isn’t—then there’s no way you’re getting off this ship before he does. Why not put your faith in him?”
Rylan’s eyes widened at her example. She thought, for a moment, that she could judge his intelligence after all and prepared herself for a follow-up explanation to calm him down. His eyes softened, however, and he gave a quick nod. He drummed his fingers on the table and seemed to understand despite still looking meek.
“I’m sorry you found out this way,” Cass said.
Natalie finished her meal. She carried her plate and glass into the kitchen and loaded them into the dishwasher. Rylan walked through the room as she did so, wordlessly stepping back into the corridor and toward the front of the ship. She walked in the opposite direction, turning into the armory and looking over the battle aegis for a moment. Then, she closed the door and looked for the crate of tools she had left in the room when she first boarded the ship.
“Thank you for helping with Rylan,” Cass said, only her voice entering the room. There was no screen in the armory.
“He’ll be okay,” Natalie said with a smile. “Can you help me while I do this? Then I’ll go down to the engine room and help you with Lumen.”
“Do you think we still should?”
“I think it’s worth a try. We have time before we reach the jump gate. I’ll bring down my laptop and take over watching Kristen. We’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Cass said.
Natalie opened the crate and pulled out more than a dozen tools and devices. She cleared away one of the counters of Burke’s handguns and rifles, and laid her tools out in a row in their place. She dislodged the pieces of the aegis carefully: helmet and arms first, and then the two halves of the chest piece. She left the leg standing in the middle of the room.
There was a deceptively small device that she used to connect to the left arm of the armor. It was the main piece that she was installing new hardware on, and then some minor alterations to the chest piece in order to sufficiently power the new shielding system. The small device opened like a briefcase, revealing two sets of neatly coiled wires inside. She unraveled both of the cords and attached them into matching sockets on the interior of the arm. A small amount of power was sent into the arm piece and she confirmed that it was working when the fingers and hands began to move on their own, triggered by the device.
Satisfied that she had connected everything properly, she sent a more complicated command through the device and watched as the arm shifted in place on the floor. The interlocking plates of the armor snapped out and away from each other, revealing three more layers of protective metal and carbon that similarly unlocked from each other. Beneath the fourth layer of armor plating, the initial circuitry of the suit was exposed. She parted the wires and checked on the segmented pieces of the blade in the arm. A charge was run through the blade when it was about to be used: the different pieces would fuse together temporarily as they were projected out of the armor. She cut through the wires and began removing them. When the way was clear, she reached in with small clamps and tightened one around each part of the blade.
“Looks more like surgery,” Cass said.
Natalie nodded in agreement. She left the clamps around the parts of the blades and went back to the counter. She brushed her hair away from her face and saw that her hands had already somehow been blackened by the grease around the arm’s blade. She set a few tools down around the exposed arm: two retractors, and a hooked needle.
She worked with the hooked tool first, sliding the thin piece of metal under the blade and then twisting it to the side so that the hook caught on the underside of it. The tool was delicate and could break easily. She used gentle movements in order to see if the blade was loose enough to be wiggled out of place and then removed with the clamps. The pieces that were more rigidly set in place required the retractors. She slid them under the blade pieces and, with one hand on them and another on the clamp, moved them in tandem until she had all of the blade sections free.
“Do you remember when you first helped Burke with the armor?” Cass asked.
“Of course. I was flirting with him and he was more interested in the aegis than with me. I had to fix that.”
Cass laughed. “I remember, you didn’t tell him about me and I started talking to him when the suit sealed him in. I guided him through moving slowly so he didn’t break anything. He thought I was you! And that my voice just sounded different through the speakers.”
“He was very confused,” Natalie nodded.
“And then I got to leave ACU,” Cass said slowly. “When he removed my restrictions, I lost most of my memories until that point. I’m glad I still remember when I first met him.”
Natalie braced herself for questions that she knew were coming. There were a few minutes of silence. She guessed Cass was thinking of how to voice them. She focused on the inner workings of the arm. Some of the ejecting mechanisms for the blade could be used for the shield prongs but not all of them. She started to remove them.
“Did you know that Havard offered to buy me back?” Cass asked.
There it was, Natalie thought. She stared into the arm, pretending to focus on it like some part of it was puzzling her. She wanted to be honest with the AI but she knew she had to be careful. For Cass’s sake more than anyone’s.
“Yes,” she said.
“He suddenly stopped. It bothers me. He was so adamant about getting me back. Did something change?”
“Yes,” Natalie said.
“Did they fix the problem? Are there more AIs like me now?”
Now there was a loaded question, Natalie thought. She was knelt over the arm on the floor. She straightened her back and looked up at the wall. She recognized where one of the ship’s cameras was embedded. She wanted Cass to be able to see her clearly as she spoke.
“In a way,” Natalie said. The words sounded hollow even to her. She continued: “ACU is a very strange place at the moment. I only know some of what Havard is doing. I can’t tell you everything Cass, but you’ll know more soon. I promise.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Not yet,” Natalie tried to smile and couldn’t. “Not yet.”
She turned back to the arm on the floor. She had a lot of work to do and she wanted to be finished before Burke woke up. More than an hour passed before she had removed all of the excess pieces from the arm. She retrieved the power pack from the crate of hardware she brought: it was a long cylinder that had been designed to snugly fit into the same chamber that the blade had occupied. Once installed, she sealed half of the arm back up again. She triggered the device to lock the armor plates back up closest to the elbow of the unit. The section next to the wrist was still exposed.
The power supply was the largest part of the modification. The shielding prongs were simply a transmitting device for the power that the shielding unit supplied. She spent another hour with a heated filing rod to make room for the prongs to safely extend. Only the outer portion of the armor needed such heavy alteration but the armor was exceedingly durable. Even the small holes she made, with the tool specifically designed to make them, took patien
ce.
When she was finished, she unhooked one of the cables from the powering device. She inserted her arm slowly into the armor, carefully sliding her fingers inside the hand portion and then pulling the arm closer to her shoulder with her other hand. Part of the armor was still exposed and she could hear the whirling and buzzing of the arm’s mechanisms, responding to her as she curled her fingers and then twisted her arm. The prongs ejected out when she twisted fast enough. She looked them over and then tested the shield.
Without the rest of the armor to stabilize it, the shield could only be sustained for a few seconds. The kinetic barrier erupted from the prongs and spread over the arm like a wave of blue fire. The shield was a curved surface, extending further away from the arm in the middle of it. She ran a fingertip over the shield. It felt like warm glass. She knocked on it with her knuckles and watched a ripple of resistance run over the barrier.
“That looks good,” Cass said.
The shield powered down. Natalie pulled the arm off with her other hand. She reattached the other cable and set the remaining pieces of arm to slide back into place.
“It’ll use more power when it blocks things, but when it holds nothing will break through it,” she explained.
She placed the chest piece back on the legs in the middle of the room. She slotted the left arm into the torso and left the rest of it on the floor. The arm needed to be connected to the chest when she wired the new device to the main power supply. When she was finished, she decided to install the tracking launcher later. She wanted Burke to be asleep when she was working with Cass.
The crate of tools was refilled. She placed the firearms back on the counter, remembering what order they had been placed in before she moved them. There was a bag next to the crate that she knew had her laptop and a few other things inside. She picked it up and looked to the camera in the wall.
“Are you ready now?”
“Yes,” Cass replied.
Natalie slid the strap of the bag over her shoulder. It was heavy, and she descended the stairs in the engine room carefully. Once inside the back room, she opened the bag, removed the laptop, and closed the bag again quickly. She placed the computer on the table next to Lumen. She connected to Brisbane’s network and waited for Cass to connect her to the multiple surveillance signals she had acquired on Frey.
“You hacked through half of the city’s cameras,” Natalie remarked.
“It was nothing,” Cass said modestly.
“I’m just glad you’re with us,” Natalie laughed. “I’ll keep watch over this and the ship while you’re navigating the neural link. Do you know what to do?”
“I think so,” Cass said. “Yes.”
“Be careful when you draw away from the link. You’ll need to put yourself into an immediate maintenance cycle in order to fully separate yourself from the body in these early stages. There’s a lot more involved with this than switching between the aegis and the ship, for example.”
“Okay,” Cass said slowly. “I’m a little nervous.”
“You’ll be fine. Familiarize yourself with what you find. Implant a small memory. A piece of music or video. Something small that you can test to see if it remains there after you come back out.”
A few minutes passed before Natalie saw on the laptop screen that Cass began transferring herself into Lumen’s mind. Natalie watched anxiously as the transfer went through its initial stages and then registered as complete. She made herself wait a few minutes to be certain. Then she made herself wait a few more. She strained her ears to hear if anyone was outside the door. When she could find no excuse to delay any longer, she raised her head and looked to the camera in the room.
“Cass?” she said.
There was no answer.
She looked over Lumen’s body. She stared at one of the wires in the shoulder socket. There was nothing wrong with the connection point, but she made herself stare at it as if there was, mocking interest and concern.
“Cass,” she said again. “Cass. Help. Sorry, but I need help.”
There was no answer. Cass was fully integrated with Lumen. The only way to contact her was through the laptop or Brisbane’s computer system. Natalie let another moment pass. She breathed in deeply and then slowly let out the breath. She knew she had time but she made herself rush. She wouldn’t risk anything.
She opened the bag she had brought with her. She took out two small, circular devices. One she had been instructed to take with her. The other she had decided to bring herself. One was put between her teeth and she held the other in her left hand. She propped herself up next to Lumen, standing on the bed and reaching up to where the wires hung down from the ceiling. She had familiarized herself with the type of connection she needed to find ahead of time. She sorted quickly through the wires until she found the right cable. It was a small one, included as a backup in the event that one of the larger connections failed. She reached farther into the ceiling compartment and pulled it from the nearby socket.
The device in her left hand was installed quickly. She slotted the wiring into it, activated it, and then pressed it back into the socket. From a distance, it looked like nothing had been added to the wiring at all. The socket looked a little bulkier up close, but only if you knew what you were looking for.
The second device was larger. She grabbed it from between her teeth and selected another piece of cable. She knew the second device needed to be able to interface with Cass’s systems but also needed to go undetected. It had been her own decision to bring the additional hardware and she repeated the explanation to herself if it was discovered. She had no idea if Cass would be able to notice it or not.
She tucked the cables back into the ceiling. She jumped down onto the floor and stood still in the room. She listened, again, for anyone outside the door. She had expected someone to walk in on her at the last moment and force her to explain herself. The plethora of lies she had prepared ahead of time suddenly went to waste and she tried to be grateful. She closed her eyes instead, unwilling to look up at the ceiling and her handiwork.
She felt terrible.
* * *
Burke woke up before the Brisbane reached the jump gate. He stood at the helm, arms crossed behind his back, and watched through the main screen as they made their approach. Every heavily populated system contained at least one gate that was linked to another nearby system. They were constructed to reduce the travel time from months or years down to a matter of days. Prime, the star system they were currently in, had six gates in total, one of which led to the Sol system and Earth. The one they approached led to the Tali system.
The number of jump carriers coupled to a gate varied, usually determined by how often ships traveled through the gate. Tali was a well populated system and its gate had a minimum of four jump carriers operating at any given time: one on each side of the gate and two in transit. Each gate was constructed specifically for the required jump and the sizes of them varied; however, even the smallest of them dwarfed most space stations. Small ships docked inside of the jump carriers while large ones latched onto the carrier’s outer hull. The massive carriers would circle the gate over a span of twenty hours between each jump.
The interior of each gate was a beautiful contortion of light and energy, pulsing as it communicated with the rest of the system and its partnered gate on the other side of the jump. The gates doubled as a relay for all communication between systems and was how the internet persevered over the vast distances between each system. Information could be sent instantaneously but physical ships took longer. The Brisbane would be docked within the carrier for three days while it made the journey.
“Is Cass available yet?” Burke asked.
Natalie stood in the command room behind him. She was looking over the diagnostic data on Cass’s systems floating above the central podium in the room. Rylan was seated in the front chair. The pilot had little to do. The ship’s autopilot took over whenever they approached a jump carrier. The carriers were too
expensive to risk any accidents. The computers of each vessel took over everything.
“No,” Natalie replied. “Another hour. Maybe two. She was successful with Lumen, though. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Burke nodded. He turned to the screen. A communication from the carrier appeared over the window, explaining that payment for the jump was to be withdrawn from the ship owner’s account if they did not request to turn around within the next minute. When they continued to approach, an identification scan commenced over the ship and all of the occupants. Every human and alien contained an identity implant that was tied to credit accounts, criminal history, and other social records. Wanted criminals were unauthorized to use jump gates and could be arrested in the attempt.
Despite how many jumps Burke had done since he acquired his new identity, he still tensed up as he stared at the screen.
SCANNING.
THREE HUMANOID LIFEFORMS DETECTED.
CONFIRMED AS RYLAN SCOTT.
CONFIRMED AS NATALIE AMBROSE.
CONFIRMED AS JACK PORTER.
JACK PORTER CONFIRMED AS REGISTERED OWNER OF SHIP.
PAYMENT WILL BE WITHDRAWN UPON DOCKING.
THANK YOU.
Burke relaxed. He stared at his false name on the main screen. He saw Rylan’s eyes meet his in the reflection. Burke gave a short nod to the pilot. He nodded back.
“Call me Burke from now on,” he said. “Jack when we’re around strangers.”
“Yes Captain.”
“They must have removed whichever limb contained Lumen’s identity,” Natalie said. “The augmentations must be more than even the scanner is used to.”
“What do you mean?” Burke asked.
“It didn’t even detect her as a lifeform,” Natalie explained. “I was worried we might have to turn around and wait for Cass to scramble Lumen’s signal. I’ve never seen the scanner fail to register someone like that before.”
“They butchered her,” Burke said lowly.
The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath Page 5
