by Gwynn White
“Rogues,” Ven growled then explained the threat to Liv even as he was initiating hive-sync with Trinity-Nine. “Issue evacuation orders to all citizens and crew aboard the station. There are four rogue battleships on approach. I will hold them off for as long as I can.”
He left unsaid that four against one weren’t good odds, even for a warship with as much battle experience as him.
Trinity acknowledged his orders. “I will aid you as much as I can.”
The station’s weapons were for repelling raiders, pirates, and other unruly factions that might be foolish enough to approach an outpost this close to the edge of Spire territory. However, both AIs were well aware that the station’s weapons wouldn’t stop a warship.
“Trinity, I’ve seen what these rogues will do. Begin preparations to separate your primary core from the station. Once all civilians and crew are evacuated, move your primary core onto one of the escaping ships. I will send one of my telepaths to protect you from sensory deprivation during transport. If I fall before you can separate from the station, do what you can to aid with the evacuation then prepare to self-terminate. Do not allow yourself to be corrupted by the rogues.”
“Trinity acknowledges. And Vengeance, thank you for your service.”
Vengeance dropped out of hive-mind with her as he undocked from the station and continued to ready himself for battle. Four against one. This might be his last battle, but he would see his crew safely into life-pods and transports then drag as many of the rogues into death with him as possible.
“All crew, report to main battle stations. Danger imminent.” A ship-wide alarm sounded, its deep tone raising goose bumps along Liv’s body. She held perfectly still as her mind raced.
Ven’s voice boomed across the comm system a second time, confirming what she already feared. “Four rogue battleships approaching. Seven minutes out. I repeat. Proceed to battle stations.”
Liv’s stomach heaved, and her legs became weak. Rogues. No, not again. The rogues would take all telepaths then kill Ven if he wasn’t able to escape. He had to run, not make a stand. It didn’t matter how much artillery he had in his arsenal. It wouldn’t protect him or his crew from the rogues’ attack.
He’d been unable to defeat them before, and he’d had help then. Now, he was alone.
Fear threatened to overwhelm her once again, just as it had in that cave when she’d briefly relived experiences she’d been trying to keep buried for years. Ven didn’t need to name the rogue warships. She already knew one of them would be Basilisk, the leader of the rogues, the most powerful among them, and the AI who’d spent months torturing her as he attempted to force a link between them. Ven’s drone still stood beside her, and she gripped his arm to prevent herself from falling. But what could she possibly say to convince him to leave so she could save his life?
He’d never run away from a fight, especially with rogue AIs who’d destroyed a planet and murdered innocent people.
After all, as he’d once told her, he’d taken the name Vengeance for a reason.
The hull under her feet shook with the slight tremor of Ven’s heavy drives coming on line, and she gripped his arm tighter as those feelings of impending doom chipped away at her ability to think calmly and rationally.
Ven carefully extracted her fingers from his arm and forced her to look at him. “Olivia, go down to deck thirty-seven and prep a life-pod for escape.”
“No.” Her fingers slowly closed into fists. So far from the engines, she was useless, and worse, she couldn’t even use her telepathy without exposing herself to Ven. Sweat beaded along the back of her neck and the small of her back and prickled under her arms.
If I were in engineering, where I belong, I could do something. Pull it together, Liv.
Like bulk heads sliding home, Liv realized Basilisk had found her, somehow following her across the empty vastness of space. Maybe she’d never really lost him at all.
“Weapon systems and main drives priming,” Vengeance said, his voice cutting through her chaotic thoughts.
She steeled herself and told him, “I’m staying and fighting.”
His drone looked down at her again and begged, “Liv, please. Go get in a life-pod. I’m outnumbered.”
Liv shook her head. “I need to get to engineering. I can override some of the safeties and cut down the time it takes your main weapons to prime. You need to take them out at a distance, or they’ll kill you and the rest of the crew then take your telepaths for themselves.”
Ven grabbed her wrist and shook his head. “I’ve already seen to the safeties—my main fusion cannon can’t fire in time to take them out before they’re within firing range of the station. There’s nothing you can do in engineering to change that. If you refuse to get in one of the life-pods, at least stay close to Renee. I’ll protect you both in case we’re boarded.”
“Fine. But I want weapons because they will try to board for the telepaths.”
“Acknowledged.”
Ven didn’t let go of her wrist as he pulled her away from the exit toward the interior of the ship. Three sentinels turned a corner, encircling Renee, whose eyes immediately settled on Ven’s drone. They only managed a few more steps before the ground beneath them shivered then the vibrations shook the ship more violently. These tremors weren’t the result of his engines.
“Rapid-fire pulse cannons. Shields holding,” Ven announced.
The vibrations became more random and increased in strength.
“Returning fire.”
Liv would have fallen if he hadn’t still been holding her wrist. His grip tightened as his drone helped her regain her footing. Tables and chairs rocked and slid as the ship shuddered from the attack, and a sentinel swatted a stool out of Liv’s path before it could hit her.
“Ven,” she asked, clenching his tunic to keep herself upright, “do you see hull markings? Can you identify what models are attacking you?”
She held onto an irrational hope that these ships would be strangers, and this attack had nothing to do with her.
“Their birth stamps identify them as Basilisk, Warlock, Centurion, and Boudicca,” Ven said. “Trinity-Nine is targeting Centurion, but she’s not equipped to battle warships.”
“Basilisk,” she whispered.
Ven shot her another curious look, so she pressed her lips together and vowed not to open them until they got to wherever Ven was leading them. After he took a couple more violent hits, she just concentrated on her lurching steps and trying to stay upright.
His destination turned out not to be the main bridge, but a secondary command center five levels above. En route, it was easy to feel but hard to picture the space battle outside, but once they were in the satellite command center, the battle became all too real.
Human officers monitored energy-web interfaces, and Commander Lisk gave orders with his usual calm efficiency even in the heat of battle. “Kilo squad, why are you still in the hangar? Sierra squad, prepare for drop. Tango and Victor will follow them out.”
“I’ve been unable to reroute power to Kilo squad’s hangar. My drudges are attempting to repair damage,” Ven informed Commander Lisk. “All other fighters, both manned and those under my direct control, have been scrambled.”
Bright flashes of weapons fire lit up the screens, revealing glimpses of the enemy ships against the darkness of space. Between the retina-searing flashes of light and the resulting hazy momentary blindness, Liv glimpsed what she’d been hoping to spot.
“Ven!” she exclaimed. “The harpoons—I recognize the design. They’re purely energy converters, non-penetrating. Drop your shield just before the harpoons strike. They’ll continue past and shatter against your hull. They’re not designed to penetrate materials as molecularly dense as your hull skin.”
Ven nodded and excitedly added, “Thereby allowing me to funnel all resources to my planet killers and cut through an enemy’s shield.”
“Yes!” She could have kissed him in that moment. Not many AI
s or their senior commanders would think to lower shields during an attack. And enemy warships probably wouldn’t be prepared for that development either. “You’ll sustain damage from whatever the other two throw at you, but if you—”
“Harpoons incoming,” Ven informed his crew, oddly calm despite the battle taking place outside. “Shields down,” he added. Seconds later, two reverberating thuds shook the hull. “Harpoons rendered inoperative.”
Commander Lisk spun his chair around. “You’re both mad. Raise your shields. There are drillers incoming.”
“Negative. Journeyman Engineer Hawthorne’s idea is valid.”
Liv flinched when several pairs of accusing eyes glanced her way before jerking back to the energy-webs. She only knew the commander and one of the other officers, Lieutenant Robin Turner, who shook her head at them then returned her attention to her web.
However, Commander Lisk’s expression promised a world of trouble for Liv’s future career. She glanced away in time to see a cloud of drillers descending on Ven.
Maybe Lisk had been right, and he shouldn’t have lowered his shields.
“Ven?” she said uneasily. The hull shivered under her feet in a continuous wave that couldn’t be weapons fire. Lights dimmed and screens went dark, blanking out one after another until the room was plunged into darkness. Liv’s stomach dropped and her heart raced.
“Warlock targeted,” Ven said. “Firing main fusion cannons. Continuous ten second burst.”
Liv exhaled slowly. No wonder he’d blacked out entire sections of the ship. He needed every drop of power he could spare to fire the fusion cannon. It was still the longest ten seconds of her career.
“Systems normalizing. Fighters intersecting drillers. Shields up. Damage reports incoming,” Ven broadcast.
As the lights flickered back on, Liv blinked rapidly to clear the gray spots floating in her vision. The energy webs shimmered back to life, weaving lights and colors until the space battle was pictured once more. Basilisk and Boudicca continued to assault Ven’s shields with their laser arrays, cannons, and dark matter bombs, but Warlock—what was left of him—rotated in a slow spin, dead in space as he drifted toward Basilisk’s position. The corpse of the Spire battleship bled energy and fluids from a ragged wound in his belly. Flames fed by dying oxygen reserves leaped and sparked, showing how deep the tear went.
Any dead rogue was a good sight, but seeing Basilisk rotating dead in space would have been much more comforting.
“It wasn’t my intension to frighten you. Are you all right, Journeyman Hawthorne?” Ven’s soothing voice—nothing like the somewhat hollow tone of ship-wide communications—sounded close to her ear. Very close.
Liv looked down at the hand she gripped, warm with strong elegant fingers, a dusting of dark hair marching up a toned forearm. Vengeance’s drone.
She swallowed then jumped when he spoke to her again. “Journeyman Engineer Hawthorne?”
“Yeah?” she breathed.
“Are you all right?”
“Uh… I’m… I think I’m okay. Ask me again later.” She forced her fingers to release the drone’s hand and stepped back, straightening her shoulders. Composed again, she looked around the room. Renee stood at Ven’s opposite shoulder, tucked against his side with Ven’s other arm draped around her protectively.
Renee’s expression held the slightly vacant look of deep link. She was likely assessing Ven’s battle damage.
Liv shifted her attention from Renee to Ven and found his expression intense, far from vacant or unfocused. He studied her a moment more then shifted back into full battle mode.
“Commander Lisk, prepare ground troop units for immediate deployments. Forty-seven infiltration drillers are behind my shield and presently penetrating my hull. We are being boarded.”
Lisk muttered a curse as he surged into action, informing Captain Welner on one energy web while simultaneously giving ship-wide orders to intercept and disable enemy sentinels.
“Remaining two ships on approach,” Ven informed him.
Commander Lisk swore again. “The insane suicidal bastards are going to ram us.”
Ven’s voice remained calm. “They’re rogues. As far as AIs go, they’re the very definition of insane.”
Lisk mumbled something unflattering under his breath.
Ven continued like he hadn’t heard. “They’re smaller, and would do more damage to themselves than me. However, they are 45.035 seconds from impact, and I am 33.295 seconds from full drive initialization.”
Something didn’t feel right. Ven’s theory was logical, but he didn’t think like a rogue. Nor had he been abducted and tortured by the chaotic mind-invasion of an insane AI.
They wouldn’t allow Ven to escape. They couldn’t allow him to return with reinforcements. Because of her past, Liv knew of one way to prevent Ven from leaving, which meant the surviving rogues most likely did too. But they would need to be closer. Liv’s stomach swirled again as she realized Ven had miscalculated.
“They’re not planning to ram us!” Liv yelled. She immediately reached out to Renee, expanding her mental shields toward the other telepath. But Liv was seconds too late, and Renee screamed, her hands rising to her head as if protecting herself from a physical blow.
But Liv knew the act was futile. Renee couldn’t possibly defend herself. Liv had spent days experimenting and practicing to push Basilisk out of her mind, days filled with torment and pain as he fought back. She’d eventually succeeded and figured out how to construct a mental shield, which the rogues scraped and clawed at now as they looked for any weaknesses and attempted to finish what they’d started. The AIs no longer had abduction on their minds, but Ven’s destruction, and the only way to destroy him was by taking out his links.
The rogues were trying to murder Renee.
18
As Liv watched Renee’s fingers curl helplessly in her hair, she tried to expand her shield to protect her, but in her panic, the link fought her.
Ven, as panicked as Renee, became defensive. The two sentinels within the command center flanked her, their weapons aimed at the nearest crewmembers.
“Get back!” Ven ordered, his drone holding Renee in his arms as she continued to scream and grip her head. Liv inched forward, knowing it was foolish given Ven’s fear, but it didn’t matter. If she couldn’t help Renee and get Ven’s attention back on the fight with the rogues, she was dead anyway. All the crew would be too.
“Ven, listen to me,” she said gently, holding her hands out in front of her. “You need to fire everything you have at the other two ships. One of them is attacking Renee, and they’ll target your other telepaths as well. You need to distract them.”
Liv inched a little closer to his drone, who held her gaze, his panic and confusion briefly shifting to a murderous rage before she heard his cannons initializing rapid fire.
“Good,” Liv assured him, trying to sound as calm and soothing as she could even though she was terrified as well. “Now you need to get Renee to medical. Let me help.”
Liv had almost reached his drone and Renee when one of the sentinels trained his weapons on her.
Damn it. Ven obviously wasn’t going to let her get close enough to Renee to blanket her in added protection.
Of course, if she didn’t give Ven some kind of warning, and Renee suddenly disappeared from his mind, he might panic again and get everyone killed.
Liv mentally cursed, but held her hands above her head. She was in a hopeless situation. If she revealed her telepathic powers now, Ven might think she was in league the rogues, but if she didn’t do something, Renee would die.
Maybe, she thought, I can slowly add layers to the shield around Renee without Ven noticing.
“It’s all right, Ven,” she promised him. “I’m going to help you. Let’s get Renee to medical.” She stepped closer to the sentinel whose weapons were still pointed toward her, but he didn’t fire. Liv took a slow, deep breath and interpreted that as permission to act. She ste
pped around the sentinel and stood in front of Ven’s drone, reaching out carefully to put a hand on his shoulder.
The drone never looked away from her. “Five of my telepaths are dead and four others are dying. Renee is the strongest of them, but…” His voice cracked, and grief transformed his features, his dark brown eyes filled with so much pain.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “But look…” Liv gestured toward Ven’s link, whom he still held in his arms. “She’s looking better. And you’re right: She is strong, Ven. But we need to get her down to medical now.”
Liv added another layer to her shield surrounding Renee, but Ven’s arms tightened around his link and he cried, “Renee? Liv, I can’t feel Renee!”
“Okay, maybe that’s a good thing,” Liv lied. “Maybe she’s blocking out everything else to protect herself.” Liv glanced behind her at the crew, most of whom had returned to their stations to override automated systems so they could help Ven fight back. Even with all weapons at full power, the battle images that spread across the energy webs didn’t look good.
Ven needed to get the hell out of here, but without his telepaths, he couldn’t transit without experiencing total sensory disconnect.
“Are you still able to fire your heavy drives?” she asked him.
“Yes,” Ven answered, “but that will be useless without—”
“We’ve got another wave of drillers incoming, Commander!” Lieutenant Turner yelled as she looked over her shoulder, her face pale as she studied the images. Liv could guess what she was thinking—everyone onboard was about to die.
Liv took a deep breath and closed her eyes. These bastards won’t win. Not if I can help it.
This time, Liv didn’t hesitate. She allowed her telepathy to merge completely with Renee’s.
“What?” Renee’s voice was like a whisper in her mind.
