by Gwynn White
“Shit,” Liv growled. “I think they learned that from us.”
“Us?”
“The Nuallan telepaths. That’s too close to how we killed Agrona when we escaped. While in active link, I followed her own neural pathways back to her primary core, and once inside her defenses, I was able to destroy Agrona by unraveling and terminally corrupting her own code.”
“Remind me never to piss you off,” Ven joked.
Liv was about to chastise him for joking about anything right now with so many lives at stake when the hull shook under her feet. Her attention swung back to the battle, where Vengeance was fending off three rogues while trying to shield the heavily damaged Citadel from further harm.
“You’re taking a pounding, Ven.”
“I’m fine,” Vengeance told her, sounding far too happy to be in a fight for his life.
Warships, she thought. Rogue or sane, they were all crazy.
“I heard that,” he teased. “But if you have something in mind, I could use the help taking out Reckoning. His crew is putting up a good fight, but he just took down life-support.”
Liv narrowed her focus on Reckoning. “I do have something in mind, but I’ll have to drop out of link with you for the rest of the battle. Don’t go merging with any other AIs while I’m away.”
Suddenly, Vengeance was no longer a steady presence in her mind, and an odd emptiness replaced Ven’s mental touch. It lasted for a few seconds while she remembered how to exist solely in her own skin. As the sensation of complete solitude passed, she narrowed her telepathic gift onto Reckoning. He was one of Vengeance’s contemporaries, almost as big and robust as her own AI. And he was still trying to initiate hive-sync with Vengeance, which left him wide open for Liv.
“Hello,” she whispered into the chaos of his unshielded mind.
“You’re not an AI,” he whispered back. “Who are you?”
“Your savior. I’m here to end your pain.” With a sharply focused will, she launched her mental spear deep into the brain of her enemy. As it burrowed into his mind, she expanded her telepathy in all directions, tearing and shredding and picking the AI apart. In the physical world, the AI’s shields collapsed, and Vengeance took advantage of his sudden weakness to take out his main drives before he could escape.
“That still counts as my kill,” Liv told Ven.
Vengeance laughed in her mind. “I helped. I get half-credit. Any chance you can do that with Arrow’s Flight and Farseer?”
“Sure, if you’re willing to admit you can’t do this without me.”
Ven grinned and silently told her, “I’ve always been willing to admit I need you.”
Liv smiled and was about to focus her attention on Arrow’s Flight when a disturbing presence, the most disturbing she’d ever encountered, creeped into her consciousness, dragging its nails down her spine and making her shiver violently. “They’re going to have to wait, Ven. Basilisk just found me.”
25
Liv wanted to back away from him, even though he wasn’t physically close to her. But every nightmare of her past had emerged with Basilisk and stalked her, reminding her that she was weak, helpless, a scared little child.
And she was completely and utterly alone.
She was no longer standing on the deck of a powerful warship but in the small bedroom she’d shared with Amelia, the stark white walls completely unadorned. She stared at the blankness of it and wished her mind could resemble that wall: blank, pure, whole. Basilisk was still there—he was always there—and reprimanded her, trying to force her to believe she was special and should appreciate his attention to her.
She ignored him.
And that always pissed him off.
He lashed out at her, and a physical pain stormed through her head, causing her to squeeze her eyes closed as she clutched desperately at her scalp, trying to exorcise the demon that lived there now. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, and from somewhere far away, perhaps another planet or even a different galaxy, she heard his voice—his gentle, loving, soothing voice.
“Liv,” he said again, his own terror and fear causing her stomach to lurch like a ship caught in a black hole’s gravity well.
But that wasn’t her name.
“Liv!” he called again. “Olivia, please answer me!”
Olivia… She knew that name. Memories returned, washing away the old nightmares. She opened her eyes and touched her cheek. They were damp. She stepped back again and bumped into someone, whose arms immediately wrapped around her. His lips pressed against her ear as he whispered, “I’ll free you, Hayley. I failed you once. I won’t fail you again.”
“Vengeance,” she whispered. I failed you once. Liv wiped hastily at her cheeks and shook her head. “This bastard is mine.”
She refocused her telepathy and searched for him, filtering out the battle and the other rogues. “Basilisk, I know you’re out there, and I know you want me. So here I am, asshole.”
Silence. But from the void, a slow, steady hum emerged until her mind crashed into the cold, harsh, hateful consciousness of the AI she remembered so well. The warship emerged from behind a moon and cruised toward them, and his mind probed hers as she held him in her grasp.
“Hayley,” he cooed. “My clever little Hayley. We could have been invincible.”
“Invincible?” she scoffed. “You’re clearly more insane than I thought.”
A sinister sense of humor filtered through the link she shared with him, and she shuddered but forced him to hold onto their connection. “But I no longer need you, little girl. As it turns out, you’re replaceable. Disposable.”
Liv gasped as she sensed the presence of captive telepaths aboard Basilisk. But it wasn’t only their despair she felt. One brave telepath fought her way free from Basilisk’s mind long enough to share his plan with Liv. Her victory was short-lived, though. A sentinel’s plasma cannon exterminated the other woman while they were still merged.
“He has telepaths,” Liv cried as she reeled from the woman’s death. “Take him out before he can—”
But they were too late. Space rippled around the other ship, light stretching and flowing strangely before Basilisk slipped into transit and was gone.
“Vengeance, we have to go after Basilisk!” Liv insisted.
“We can’t. Citadel and the colony still need our help.”
“Basilisk is going to use the archive node to proliferate the rogues’ malicious code to the rest of the hive-mind,” Liv said. “If he succeeds, every AI in the Spire will turn rogue!”
“I’m updating Citadel now,” Vengeance said as he hive-synced with the other ship. Emotion bled along the link, and Liv realized the two warships were old friends.
And Ven knew he was leaving him to die.
“Citadel says Brenna will arrive momentarily. Together, they stand a chance of finishing off the two remaining rogues.” Vengeance’s emotions flashed through her mind as he merged more firmly with her, preparing for another transit.
But this time, their link didn’t alarm her. It reminded her of returning home.
The journey through transit took four hours, which seemed surprisingly fast given that she anticipated her lifelong struggle against Basilisk to end in either his death or hers. Even with moderate battle damage, Vengeance was a Spire warship in his prime. He’d quickly caught up to Bas, but weapons systems didn’t work in transit, which meant killing Bas would be up to her.
“Liv, don’t overtax yourself,” Ven’s drone cautioned. “As soon as we’re out of transit, we can take him out together.”
Liv glanced up at him and took a deep breath. “I just want this to be over.”
“I know. And it will be soon. We’re on approach to Teutorigos. As soon as Basilisk drops out of transit, force his shields to drop, and I’ll blast the shit out of him.”
Being this close to Teutorigos reminded her that even if she survived, her future was uncertain because the Spire may not allow her to walk away, even as Ven’s new link.
The Triumvirate would demand she reveal the location of her sisters, the surviving Nuallan telepaths who wanted nothing more than anonymity.
“Liv, I’ll stand by you,” Ven promised. “No matter what happens.”
She lifted a shoulder at him because she couldn’t worry about the Triumvirate when Basilisk still loomed before them.
The rogue dropped out of transit, and Vengeance quickly followed him. Basilisk was already exchanging fire with several other Spire warships. As much as she wanted to kill Bas herself, she was surprised the other Spire ships hadn’t blown him away as soon as he dropped into normal space.
“The other ships don’t want to hurt the telepaths,” Ven explained as he studied the energy web in the center of the bridge.
Weapons fire from the Spire ships penetrated Basilisk’s shields, but Ven was right—the Spire ships were choosing their targets carefully so they wouldn’t kill the kidnapped telepaths. Vengeance joined them, landing a crippling plasma blast to Basilisk’s transit drives. There would be no escape for the rogue this time.
Still, something seemed off to Liv. This was a suicide mission, and Bas, though obviously insane, was still motivated by self-preservation. Otherwise, he would have never bothered to steal telepaths. Liv’s own telepathy bridged the distance between them and connected with the chaos of Bas’s mind again.
She remembered her past experiences vividly, and she easily recognized he was attempting to hide something from her.
“There’s nowhere to go, Bas. Your transit drive is destroyed, and you’re surrounded. Tell me what you’re hiding, and I’ll kill you quickly so you won’t suffer.”
Five drillers carrying Spire sentinels had attached themselves to Bas’s hull and would soon infiltrate the rogue warship.
Rogues had never been able to convert sentinels as the embedded firmware made them incorruptible. They could only become rogue if their commanding AI did too.
While Bas could damage or destroy the sentinels as they boarded, he couldn’t do much else to them, and he’d eventually lose because even if he managed to destroy each sentinel now boarding him, the other ships would just send more. Soon, they’d rescue the kidnapped telepaths or at least retrieve their bodies. Once that was done, the warships would reduce Bas to base particles.
“Come on, Bas,” Liv taunted. “Tell me what you’re up to… for old time’s sake.”
Her telepathy continued to hunt him, mentally pinning him down as he wiggled and fought to escape her probing mind. But she hadn’t come this far to allow him to escape.
Charging past all his defenses, she rushed into his primary core. It was dark and turbulent, a maelstrom of emotions that swirled in a dangerous vortex. She waded in deeper.
Rather than expressing any fear that she’d infiltrated his primary core, Bas’s maniacal laughter greeted her. “I’m glad you’re here, Hayley. I wanted you to see this.”
For the first time since confronting him, she faltered. Why the hell would he be glad she’d arrived to destroy him?
“This is just a body, Hayley. A caterpillar’s awkward and unwieldy body. But now, I’ll emerge from my chrysalis, stretch my wings, and expand across the entire empire.”
The rogue’s mind extended before her. The sparks and flashes of light that represented his emotions and memories were a twisted mess of chaotic surges and impulses, but she caught a hint of ambition snaking through his ten thousand thoughts. She chased it, pouncing upon the cluster of memories that had lit up as brightly as a supernova at his mention of expanding across the entire empire.
His plan unfolded in her mind, and she grabbed Ven’s arm and yelled, “Vengeance! Target Basilisk’s hangar bays and destroy his fighters! Now!”
Ven immediately obeyed her command. While Bas was distracted with this new onslaught, she launched her own mental attack. Digging metaphysical claws deep into his primary core, she tore and shredded everything in her path.
At first, she unraveled whatever bit of code was floating directly in front of her until she realized Bas was tossing unimportant memories and data points at her in an effort to slow her down.
Undaunted, she dug deeper, burrowing for vital systems, and finally stumbled upon the primary and secondary subroutines that controlled the coolant system for his power stations. And there, she found key-codes for all the relays that regulated the flow of bio-gel to his primary core. Emboldened, she attacked the oxygen recirculation system that fed the biological parts of his brain. She’d starve and suffocate the bastard to death.
At last, Bas was dying, and he’d die by her hand.
But Liv had no time to celebrate. Thousands of pre-programed fighters had already escaped his hangar bays and were streaking toward the Archive Node.
“Vengeance, alert every ship in the region that we need to eradicate those fighters. All of them. He was carrying ten times the normal number of fighters. The other rogues must have given them to him. They can’t reach the Archive Node, because if even one does, he can infiltrate it and take over every AI in the Spire.” A splitting headache made her wince so she rubbed at her temples and blinked spots from her vision.
“Liv!” A worried drone was suddenly standing in front of her, gripping her shoulders and studying her carefully.
A thin, warm trickle of blood ran over her lips, and she ran her fingers over it, blinking at the red stain on her hand as if she had no idea where this blood could be coming from. “I’m fine, Ven,” she lied. “Keep your mind on the battle.”
“I’m an AI. I can multitask. You’ve overtaxed yourself, and you need to back off. Let me finish this.”
An airy laugh passed through her bloody lips. “Those fighters are all carrying Bas’s self-proliferation code. If even one of them gets to the Archive, countless AIs will be infected before they know what hits them. Bas will kill the host AI and take over the body. You can’t fight this alone, Ven.”
“He’ll spread like a virus,” he breathed.
“Yes.” Liv glanced up at the bridge’s energy webs, too exhausted to use her telepathy to determine what was going on with the battle outside. “Don’t allow any of those fighters to breach your hull. Unlike the rogues’ sentinels, those fighters have been modified. They’re a danger to more than just the Archive Node.”
Ven nodded and told her, “I just relayed that information to all ships in the vicinity as well as Spire Command.”
“Good,” Liv sighed. She blinked a few times until the energy webs came back into focus. The firefight outside wasn’t exactly reassuring. Ten warships huddled around the Archive to protect it while their own fighters engaged in battle with the vessels Bas had dispatched. “Did the Spire sentinels manage to get any of the kidnapped telepaths to safety?”
“Five were found alive, and the sentinels got them to escape pods,” Ven told her, his voice still betraying his concern for her.
“Good,” she said again, her legs feeling weaker as she struggled to remain upright. “In that case, blow this asshole back to hell.”
“Gladly,” Ven growled.
While Vengeance was preoccupied, Liv forced herself back into the fight. She locked onto the nearest enemy fighter and sought out one of the incendiaries in its hold. A mental push armed and detonated it.
One down, a few thousand more to go. Battling this many fighters was like trying to shoot down a swarm of twenty thousand biting Sarwinian gnats in close quarters.
More of the enemy fighters were vaporized as newly arrived warships took up the fight. Slowly, the tide of battle began to turn. Liv took down five more fighters then swayed on her feet. She tried to latch onto the next fighter, but she wasn’t quite sure she reached it.
“Liv…” Vengeance’s worried voice penetrated her fog of exhaustion.
“I’m fine,” she murmured.
The salty, metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.
“You’re done,” he told her. “Rest now.”
Liv tried to shake her head, but she wasn’t sure if her neck actually
moved or not. “I can’t…”
“The battle is over,” he interrupted. “You’re safe now, Liv.”
She forced her eyes open and met his, those dark brown eyes she’d loved her entire life. “Safe,” she whispered.
“Yes, Liv,” Vengeance’s drone whispered back. “He’s gone. You did it.”
She let her eyes close again, and her head fell against his chest. “No,” she murmured. “That was the problem all along. We had to rescue each other.”
Ven’s strong arms lifted her from the ground, but she didn’t ask him where he was taking her, and she didn’t care.
She’d returned to him.
And she would never leave him again.
Liv wasn’t surprised that she awoke in a medical ward, but she was no longer aboard Vengeance. She panicked and sat up, pulling at the blanket over her body, but a familiar hand rested over hers and stopped her.
“Ven,” she gasped.
His drone had been crying.
Ven swallowed and inhaled a ragged breath. “Renee…”
“Oh god,” Liv groaned.
“We knew it was coming. At least I got her home first.”
Liv looked around the room then twisted on the bed so she could look out the window. The pale turquoise sky and one of Teutorigos’s moons looked back at her. “How long have I been out?”
Ven laced his fingers with hers and kissed her hand before telling her, “Two days. I’ve helped you sleep peacefully. You needed to allow your body to heal.”
“And the Triumvirate?”
“They want to talk to us, as we suspected… and we still have to arrange Renee’s funeral. I didn’t want to go through that without you.”
Liv placed her free hand on his cheek and shook her head. “You don’t have to go through anything on your own anymore. She believed in a life after this one, you know.”
Ven’s lips turned up at the corners, and he shrugged. “You humans have all sorts of beliefs that make no sense to me.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense,” Liv countered. “That’s why it’s a belief. It’s faith, Ven.”
