The Elderon Chronicles Box Set

by Tarah Benner

  “He never treated me like a child,” says Mordecai. “A child is supposed to be loved — not alienated and ridiculed, begging for scraps of attention while his sister eats it all up . . .”

  “This is why father disinherited you.”

  “He did not disinherit me!”

  “He left me sole ownership of the company.”

  “Because you were his pet!” Mordecai spits. “Is this how you repay him?”

  “Me?”

  “Don’t act pious,” Mordecai snarls. “You and father are two peas, Ziva. Always so high and mighty . . . looking down your nose at everyone who didn’t share your brilliance, your bizarre love of machines.”

  There’s a long beat of silence, filled only by the static of the connection. Ziva is staring at the screen with a look of profound sadness twinged with anger and disgust.

  “You have no right to criticize me,” says Mordecai after a moment. “After everything you’ve done.”

  “What is this really about?”

  “You know what this is about,” says Mordecai. “Even if your friends don’t. They will. This is only the beginning, little sister. Take care.”

  Mordecai moves as though he’s going to end the call, but then he stops, his face inches from the screen.

  “I thought about having them kill you, you know. But I decided that you deserved to live . . . to bear witness to all of this. It’s the logical consequence of everything you’ve done.”

  Ziva shakes her head, too angry to speak. Mordecai ends the call, and the desktop goes dark. The projection disappears, and I blink to clear the light from my eyes.

  Still I can’t get Mordecai’s face out of my head — his madness is burned in the back of my mind.

  Tripp turns slowly to Ziva. He opens his mouth, and Ziva collapses at her desk. She seems to deflate as the shock sets in, her narrow shoulders shaking with sobs.

  “Care to explain?” Tripp asks delicately, as though we just witnessed a bad breakup.

  Ziva continues to weep, but Jonah’s face is unsympathetic. I know what he must be thinking — that Ziva should have known what her brother was capable of. I’m inclined to agree, but I still feel bad for her.

  Finally, Ziva pulls herself together and drags in a shaky breath. “There’s something you should know,” she says, dabbing under her runny nose.

  “Something else?” says Tripp, looking worried.

  “About the bots.” She takes a deep breath and gets to her feet.

  Tripp hands her a tissue from the box on her desk, but Ziva ignores it and turns her gaze to Jonah.

  “The humanoids aboard Elderon are working prototypes of our most advanced bots yet. But they aren’t the only ones.”

  I glance at Jonah, who is staring at Ziva as though he already knows what she’s going to say.

  “There are more,” she says in a shaky whisper. “At least a hundred more on Earth.”

  13

  Jonah

  It takes a moment for Ziva’s words to sink in. There are a hundred more humanoids on Earth? A hundred more of those creepy bot assassins — the human lookalikes that have killed at least four dozen people?

  “You didn’t tell me . . .” says Van de Graaf, looking at Ziva with intense distrust. “You didn’t disclose those bots in the company assets.”

  “They don’t belong to the company,” says Ziva. “Not technically. I built them with my own inheritance. It was my plan to sell them to BlumBot when the time was right.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “The business didn’t have the capital,” says Ziva. “I did.”

  Van de Graaf looks furious. “You wanted me to have to pay for bots that you built with my company’s intellectual property?”

  “No,” says Ziva calmly. “My intention was to sell the bots I built with my intellectual property.”

  “Which I bought when I bought your company!”

  “Where are the bots?” I ask, interrupting their ridiculous argument.

  Ziva purses her lip. “My father’s estate in Atherton, California.”

  “Have you heard anything from the Mountain View office?” asks Van de Graaf. “Are the bots down there awake?”

  Ziva shakes her head. “The bots are guarded twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Does Mordecai know about them?” I ask.

  Ziva doesn’t say a word. She just swallows down a look of dread, and Van de Graaf lets out an exasperated sigh.

  “If he hacked the bots on Elderon from Earth, there’s no reason he couldn’t hack the bots sitting in a house in California!”

  “You don’t understand,” says Ziva. “I have a household staff whose sole responsibility is securing —”

  “And have you heard from them since this started?”

  “No.”

  Van de Graaf swears. Boy Wonder looks more agitated than I’ve seen him yet. It seems that Ziva trying to sell him bots created with his own IP is more than he can stand.

  “Do you have any idea what Mordecai might be planning?” I ask Ziva.

  “You heard him,” she says. “He wants to see me destroyed. He’s angry that my father left the entire company to me, and now he wants revenge.”

  “This can’t just be about your father’s company,” says Maggie doubtfully. “It sounds like this thing with Mordecai has been going on for a while.”

  Ziva shakes her head dismissively. “Mordecai has always been jealous of me. Ever since we were children he resented that Father favored me over him.”

  “Do you have any idea what might have set him off?” Maggie asks.

  Ziva averts her eyes. She seems guarded, but finally she settles and shakes her head. “No. I don’t know what goes through my brother’s head half the time. Only that he is a sad, angry little boy who has always been desperate for our father’s love. I have tried my whole life to help him, but he hardly wants anything to do with me.”

  I glance at Maggie, and she meets my gaze. I can tell that she, like me, thinks that Ziva knows more about Mordecai than she’s telling. Clearly the guy is a nutcase, but he didn’t get this way overnight. She had to know what he was capable of — even if she won’t admit it.

  “So you have no idea where his next target might be?” I press.

  “No,” says Ziva, looking genuinely helpless. Maybe she really is that self-centered. She didn’t notice that she had a budding terrorist in the family.

  I sigh. “Then we need to talk to Buford.”

  Maggie and I leave BlumBot’s offices and head for the training rooms in the defense module. Greaves brought Buford in for questioning at the same time that he detained Ping and I, and it’s the first place I think to check.

  Van de Graaf wants to come with us, but Maggie convinces him to stay with Ziva. I’m glad. I don’t trust Ziva as far as I can throw her, and with her crazy brother on the rampage, there’s no guarantee that Mordecai won’t change his mind and send one of the bots to finish her off.

  As the person who designed the bots, she’s the only one left who understands how they work. There has to be a way to shut them down, even without Buford’s access code. We leave Van de Graaf to extract as much information from Ziva as possible and head to Sector R to question Buford.

  I’m a little nervous about facing Greaves. As far as he’s concerned, Maggie is a criminal and a possible suspect. If he tries to detain her, I’ll have no choice but to stand between her and my commanding officer.

  I’m surprised that we don’t encounter a single guard on our way to the training rooms. It’s against Space Force protocol to leave persons of interests unattended — even officers accused of terrorism.

  My blood pumps faster as we near the room where Ping and I were held for questioning. Buford was being questioned just down the hall, and I assumed that Greaves had left him there. But when we reach the sector, all the training rooms are empty.

  It’s unlikely that they would have detained Buford in lockup. He still carries the rank of an officer, and tha
t means something around here. But once it’s clear that he isn’t in the training rooms, I go down to check the holding cells anyway.

  They wouldn’t have released Buford — not without conducting a formal investigation. But then I think of Flaccid Greaves, and a cloud of dread starts to swirl in my gut.

  Greaves has always been a pushover. It’s possible that Buford coerced him into issuing a provisional release or persuaded him that Maggie was the culprit.

  As soon as I round the corner, I see a figure slumped on the ground — facedown, unmoving, and blood pooling from his body.

  I swear and fly down the hallway at a sprint. Maggie helps me flip the body over, and a familiar emptiness drowns out everything else.

  It’s Jameson — one of the other sergeants I knew from officer training. I take his pulse out of habit, but it’s immediately clear that he’s dead. His dark skin looks drained and lifeless beneath the surface, and the volume of blood seeping into the holding cell is too much for any person to lose. His overshirt is untucked and soaked with blood, and his weapon is missing from its holster.

  “Jonah.”

  Maggie’s voice pulls me out of my trance. She’s standing over my right shoulder, staring down at Jameson’s body.

  There isn’t anyone inside the cell. All that’s left is a spilled mess of food and an upturned plastic tray. From the looks of things, Buford grabbed Jameson when he came to deliver his meal. He bashed his skull against the bars and shot him with his own pistol.

  Jameson was the only man on duty.

  “Fuck!” I yell, pounding my fist against the bars. Buford is gone — has been for a while.

  It doesn’t matter that I’m on Greaves’s shit list. I try to call in the body, but emergency dispatch doesn’t pick up. I storm down the hallway toward the officers’ barracks, moved by a manic, unbridled rage.

  I didn’t care much for Jameson, but he was a fellow sergeant. He was innocent in all of this — just an officer doing his job. Buford didn’t think twice about killing him. He wanted to escape, and Jameson was in the way.

  There are only so many places Buford could be. It’s difficult to hide on a space station. Chaos may be on his side for now, but once word gets out that he murdered an officer, he’ll be the most wanted man on Elderon.

  I touch my Optix and try emergency dispatch again. Still nothing. Maggie tries to reach them on hers, but she can’t get through either.

  We head for Buford’s private quarters, and I key in Van de Graaf’s access code. We pile in, weapons raised, but the room is completely empty.

  It’s strange to be standing in a killer’s room. I’m not sure what I was expecting.

  Buford’s quarters are nearly identical to mine: same narrow bed, same fake-wood bureau, same scratchy gray blanket. There are no personal effects, no serial-killer wall — just uniforms, paperwork, and a Space Force toiletry kit.

  Maggie suggests we check the armory, so we turn around and head back to the main hall. Wherever he is — whatever he’s planning — Buford will need another weapon. He can’t hold off an entire army with a nine millimeter handgun and two spare clips.

  But the second we reach the armory, I know something is amiss. The automatic door has been purposely jammed — a Kevlar vest wedged between the door and the wall.

  The vest is definitely Buford’s handiwork. He probably put it there so he wouldn’t have to keep punching in his code to escape with the weapons he took.

  I motion for Maggie to wait outside and raise my rifle to my shoulder. On the off chance that Buford is still inside, there’s no way I’m letting her go in first.

  The armory is as quiet as a grave. There’s no sign of Buford anywhere.

  The small room is lit by dim canned lighting, and the walls are covered in bumpy black foam. There are hooks mounted every few feet with bar codes corresponding to individual weapons.

  The walls are bare. Buford couldn’t have taken all those weapons. Most of them were probably checked out to defend the colony against the bots.

  I take the three remaining pistols off the wall and hand one over to Maggie.

  “What are you doing?” she asks, taking the weapon with reluctance.

  “We need to be ready,” I say, finding some holsters and a size small Kevlar vest. I hand it to Maggie and grab one for myself.

  Wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, Buford isn’t messing around. Maggie is the sole witness who can attest to his crimes, and he’s already tried to kill her.

  We load up on ammunition and head back to the tech sector. We need to warn Ziva and Van de Graaf about Buford’s escape. Ziva needs to be guarded around the clock. Mordecai might have decided to spare his sister, but we don’t know if Buford cares to keep her alive.

  Most of the Space Force is busy fighting the bots, so we head to Maverick to grab a few guards from there.

  But as soon as we arrive at headquarters, we’re immediately waylaid by Van de Graaf’s assistant.

  “Where have you been?” Porter snaps as soon as we walk through the door.

  Government agents are still swarming the lounge, collecting Maverick’s files and combing through documents.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “Mr. Van de Graaf has been asking for you,” Porter snaps. “He says it’s urgent.”

  “Van de Graaf’s here?”

  “Of course he’s here. Where else would he —”

  “He wasn’t supposed to leave Ziva’s side!” I growl. “He was supposed to get her to shut down the bots.”

  “Mr. Van de Graaf had to leave Ms. Blum,” Porter says icily. “He received an urgent alert from the docking station, and he had to —”

  But I don’t hear a word the little pimple says next. I shove past him to get to Van de Graaf’s office and catch several scared looks from the other Maverick nerds.

  I know how we must look. We’re dressed to the nines in bulletproof vests toting handguns and semiautomatic rifles. Most of these people have never seen a gun up close — much less shot one.

  I’m moving like a bat out of hell as I shove past the FBI guy to get to the office. I open my mouth to tear Van de Graaf a new one, but then I see him sitting at his desk, looking as though he just lost everything.

  “What happened?” asks Maggie, her voice filled with concern.

  Ping is still on Van de Graaf’s couch. His expression is more serious than I’ve ever seen it, and my anger morphs into panic.

  “Is Ziva . . .”

  Van de Graaf doesn’t reply. He doesn’t even move a muscle.

  “Tripp?” Maggie steps around me and slowly approaches Van de Graaf’s desk.

  Still he doesn’t look up. He’s just sitting there staring down at his desk, his face drawn in devastation.

  “Tripp!” Maggie’s voice is urgent now. “Where’s Ziva?”

  “Ziva’s fine,” he mumbles, not looking up.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Van de Graaf says nothing.

  “Answer me!” I growl, my voice loud enough to make Porter shrink back.

  “He’s gone,” says Van de Graaf, his voice low and empty.

  “Who’s gone?”

  “Buford,” says Van de Graaf.

  “Yeah, I know,” I grumble. “That’s why we’re here. We need to send some men over to BlumBot to guard Ziva. Wherever he is, Buford is dangerous, and —”

  “You don’t understand,” says Van de Graaf slowly, looking up with a contemptuous expression.

  I just stare at him.

  “An alert came through from the docking station . . . finally. The whole system’s been on the fritz.”

  “What came through?” I ask impatiently, annoyed by his quiet brooding demeanor.

  “A distress signal,” says Van de Graaf. “The people there were under attack.” He takes a deep breath. “A man broke in and forced them to enable launch procedures. There’s a panic button in that room, but . . .” He shakes his head. “The Optix network has been acting up
all day, and it only just now came through.”

  “When was the attack?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I sent some men down there to check it out, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “The docking personnel?”

  Van de Graaf nods, and I watch all the color drain from Maggie’s face.

  “Buford took the government shuttle,” he says after a moment. “He’s gone.”

  14

  Maggie

  Jonah and I don’t speak the whole way back to the barracks. I can sense the fear and dread building inside him, but he moves as though he’s headed to battle.

  Buford is gone — flying back to Earth to reunite with Mordecai. He slaughtered four people to make his escape, and the Space Force has hit a dead end.

  According to Tripp, they managed to contain most of the bots to a few locations throughout the station, but with BlumBot’s Elderon team lying dead in their offices, Ziva is the only person left who can shut them down.

  Before I know it, we’re back in Jonah’s room. I’m sitting on his bed, exhausted and demoralized, while he paces back and forth.

  We don’t speak. There’s nothing left to say.

  From Mordecai’s perspective, everything went according to plan. Buford was able to infiltrate the Space Force, steal the SPIDER data, and provide the information that Mordecai needed to install the malicious software. He hit a hiccup when Maverick shut down the bots station-wide, but because of me, those bots got another chance at destruction.

  I’m the reason those people are dead. If it weren’t for me, Ping and Jonah never would have orchestrated that reboot, and all those people would still be alive.

  I try to tell myself that I’m not responsible — that Mordecai would have found another way. But with a little more time, Maverick and BlumBot might have identified the malware. They may have been able to uninstall it completely, saving dozens of innocent lives.

  Suddenly Jonah stops moving, and I’m drawn out of my dark train of thought. He doesn’t say a word.