Freed

by Elin Wyn

  "Base.” Conner said excitedly. “That's what the Hunter kept repeating, and how we found you. ‘The results of the Daedalus Experiment are to be returned to Base.’"

  I looked around at our diminished numbers. "Yeah, they returned as many of us as they could.”

  The hell with it. We were going to be here all night. I lifted Nadira off her chair, settled myself in with her in my lap, and started talking.

  At the end of Connor’s report I sat back. "Telepathy. That could be useful."

  Aedan looked over. "Maybe we should arrange for a stop on that planet for a while. We wouldn’t need to bother the colonists."

  "It has advantages but also creates some awkward moments." Connor was blushing. I did not want to think about what could make one of the Wolves blush. "And we’re not entirely certain how it works. Eris might have had a natural disposition for psi-talents and none of us ever knew exactly what Doc did to our individual genomes."

  I was okay with stopping at whatever it was that had made him blush.

  "Noted. We'll keep it as an option, but maybe not for immediate execution." But what did need immediate implementation? I wondered.

  "Hey, AI."

  “Nixie.” Nadira elbowed me lightly, reminding me.

  Whatever.

  "While you're in the Star's files, can you do a couple of things?"

  The little box chirped. This was gonna take some getting used to. But, looking around at our recreated Pack, new members, and the holes where old comrades should have stood, there were a lot of things to get used to. We’d survive.

  "Sure, if Eris agrees."

  The strange woman rubbed her eyes. "It's all right. Unless you think that a request from Ronan or any of Connor's brothers is going to endanger the ship, go ahead and run it."

  "All right! I'm the one who found you guys, you know."

  I looked at Connor, one eyebrow raised.

  "She pulled the coordinates for Base from a Hunter’s Dart.”

  "Sounds like you missed a few things in your report."

  "Sorry, it's been a little crazy. I tried to hit the highlights but I'm sure there are facts that have fallen through, or been forgotten.”

  His AI, or his mate’s AI, been able to raid the files on a Dart. And that wasn't one of the high points. Well, this should be exciting.

  "Yeah. We hear that." I turned my attention back to the little box. "Nixie, in the files and communications of this ship, please look for a way to unlock the doors to the bridge. Also, we’d like it if you can find the coordinates of the place referred to as the compound."

  "Ooooh! I can put the idiot child onto the coordinate search. That's about his level. I'll play with the lock. I like puzzles.”

  “Sounds like we won’t be leaving for a little while yet,” Nadira said.

  “We’re not in danger, and with the AI, we can find more information. We’ve been on the defensive long enough. Time to change strategies and bring the battle to them.”

  “Agreed.”

  Eris took Nixie’s box off to the side to talk with Quinn. He’d be best able to explain what we’d run up against. No doubt the AI could do the work twice as fast, but it couldn’t hurt to give them an overview.

  Connor stepped around to stand in front of us.

  “You’re a doctor, right? Do you have equipment here?”

  Nadira slid out of my lap. “Nothing like what you would have been used to on the Daedalus, but we have enough for the basics. Are you injured?”

  “No, not me.” He glanced over to Eris. “When she was kidnapped, she took a couple of hard blows. She says she’s fine, but there’s something she’s not telling me. I’m worried.”

  “How long ago was the attack? Is she experiencing any dizziness, blurred vision, or confusion?”

  “It’s been a few weeks.” He frowned. “We were both pretty confused, getting used to the whole being-in-each-other’s-head thing. And if she’s had dizzy spells, it might have been because she doesn’t like being on-planet, it makes her anxious.”

  “You know that whatever I find, if there is anything to find, it’s her decision to tell you, right?”

  His throat worked as he swallowed, hard. “I know. I don’t have to like it, but it’s more important to have someone qualified check her out. There was a medic on Skarth, but what if she missed something, what if something’s changed?”

  Nadira shook her head and started across the room. “You’re all going to be like this, aren’t you? You ought to come with a warning sign: ‘Caution, obsessive over-protectiveness ahead.’”

  Nadira

  “Can you always hear him, all the time?”

  Eris and I walked to the medbay together, Lorcan trailing along out of habit.

  “No, we’ve gotten better about it, learned to have some privacy. But it took some doing.”

  Once we reached medbay, Lorcan gave it a quick scan, nodded his approval at the lack of threats, and left to stand outside the door.

  I closed it, and turned back to find Eris’ lips curving slightly.

  “I thought living with one worrywart was exhausting. How do you not smother them in their sleep?”

  It was a horrible thought, but I couldn’t help but laugh. “They sleep too lightly. I’d never manage to sneak up on them.” The humor fell away. “And it’s been an intense few weeks. They have reasons to be careful.” I gestured towards the padded table. “Sounds like you had your own share of adventures. Connor’s worried about concussion. Any reason to be?”

  “Other than I’m not staying in bed, propped up with pillows?” she laughed. “No.”

  “Do you mind hopping up? I’ll do a quick scan, we can tell him you’re fine, and we’ll have each other’s backs to keep out of the cotton and pillows.”

  Eris looked at the table, hesitated.

  “Look,” I touched her arm gently. “If you’re my patient, that’s it. Your business is your own, not his. If there’s something you want to tell him, or not, that’s up to you.”

  For a long moment she stood still, then sagged as she exhaled. “Probably for the best, anyway.”

  She mounted the table, took off her ear comm, and I started the monitor over her head.

  “No sign of brain injury. Something a bit odd in your brain’s electrical currents, but that could be a result of whatever you were exposed to on the planet.”

  The monitor beeped cheerfully as I moved it lower, but she tensed.

  I stopped, stepped away. “Eris, I’m not going to treat you unwillingly. We can go back now, tell Conner you’re concussion free, and be done.”

  She reached for my hand, her face pale. “No, it… I’m trying not to think about it. It’s hard, still, to keep something private. And I’m a little worried.”

  Alright. She wanted treatment, but didn’t want to think about it. Not impossible. I’d done harder things this week. We could do this.

  “What if I run the examination silently and you tell me all about Nixie, and your ship, in all the detail you can? Everything from how piloting works to how the engine is put together.”

  She frowned, but nodded slowly.

  “If anything comes up as a problem, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, you can stop worrying.”

  She released my wrist, lay back down, and proceeded to tell me more than I ever wanted to know about machining parts for a new engine.

  I hummed at the hopefully appropriate places, watching the monitor as I checked over her heart and lungs. Capacity and circulation both looked good, no sign of either congestion or murmur. All fine and within normal ranges.

  Liver, fine. Kidneys, fine.

  Oh.

  Well, that was a surprise, but… a few more readings… a healthy one.

  I logged the results, continued with the exam.

  “We’re finished.”

  I put the monitor down as she sat up, biting her lips.

  “You already know, don’t you?”

  “I guessed. But I didn’t want to be sure.
If I’m sure, he’s sure, and he’s already an overprotective mess.”

  “We can find a way to tackle that problem, I’m sure.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Really? Ronan didn’t seem to be super laid-back. I don’t think any of them are.”

  “Not exactly.” I waved at her abdomen. “How much do you want to know?”

  “Is it, she, he, healthy?”

  “Yes.”

  She dashed away a tear.

  “Sorry, I’m not usually a crier. But I’ve been worrying about this for weeks, while trying not to think about it. Have you ever tried to not think about something? It doesn’t take long before you can’t think about anything else.”

  A piece of gauze would have to do. “No wonder he’s worried, your head’s been in knots. I’ll prescribe that you repeat the word healthy, over and over, when you start to think of it, until you’re ready to tell him.”

  “Soon.” She nodded and then reinserted her earcomm. “Maybe when we get all of you off this floating graveyard. I don’t want him thinking I can’t pilot in the middle of all this.”

  “Hell.” She frowned, tapped her ear. “What is it?”

  A long pause.

  “I’ll get everyone together, stop fussing.”

  She hopped off the table. “Nixie wants to talk to Ronan, she’s upset about something.”

  Her hands flew to her mouth, eyes wide. “Oh, good grief! How’s she going to take this?”

  Battlefield medicine, cutting-edge genetic manipulation, and now AI psychology. Every day I found new gaps in my education.

  “Just tell her she’s going to have a baby brother or sister,” I shrugged. “I’m pretty sure that’s the traditional way.”

  The exam hadn’t taken long. We found Ronan with Connor, still in the conference room, talking with Nixie and Quinn.

  “Okay, Nixie, what did you want me here for?”

  “Before you have the baby, do you have time to take me to Sagav Station? We could make it there and back in just a few days.”

  Connor gaped at Eris. “Baby?”

  “Well, that’s one way to tell him,” I muttered. No one moved, making it easy to gently shove Eris into a nearby chair. She covered her eyes. “Nixie, we’ve talked about eavesdropping before.”

  “I know, but this is important!”

  “So’s this,” I snapped. “Nixie, go find the coordinates for the compound. And then every station and habitable planet within one jump, sorted by climate and amenities.”

  “But…”

  “Do it!”

  Connor knelt by Eris’ side. “Are you sure? Is it, are you, okay?”

  “They’re both fine,” I said, shaking my head, watching them together.

  Ronan’s arms tightened around me. “I didn’t realize it was possible.”

  I stared up at him, struck. “Why the hell not? You do realize you’re all functionally human, right? Enhanced, modified, sure, but you’re still human.” I grumbled to myself a little. Doctor Lyall might have been brilliant, but there were a few facts of life she hadn’t managed to make clear to her boys.

  “So, what about us?”

  “What about us?”

  His forehead furrowed, and I realized what he was struggling to say.

  “Oh. Nope, not a worry. My implant is still good for a while yet.”

  “Do you want to, later, I mean?”

  My lips brushed over his, touched at his scrambling for words. “I think we have enough on our plate for right now. We have all the time in the world to decide, right?”

  The blue lights flashed again. “I’m sorry, Eris. I just want to solve this, and that stupid thing isn’t cooperating.”

  She patted it. “That’s alright. I needed to tell him anyway, but we’ll talk about how to figure out when to share information.”

  “So, you can still take me?”

  “No,” Connor blurted. “She shouldn’t be going anywhere!”

  Oh boy.

  “Connor, she’s still very early along. Travel isn’t going to hurt her, or the baby.”

  “But she should stay here, near you, right?” He turned to me.

  “Not necessarily. I’ll check on her, but unless there are complications, this is a perfectly normal process.”

  He glowered at her belly. “Can’t you just take it out and put it in a tank until it’s ready?”

  “Connor!” Eris’ hands wrapped protectively over her middle. “I’m not going to do that!”

  “Seems safer,” he mumbled.

  “You have to let Eris decide what’s comfortable for her. And while Doc Lyall might have been able to safely transfer the fetus, we don’t have the equipment here.”

  “She still shouldn’t be piloting.”

  “Wrong again, buddy.” Obviously it was time to put on my ‘serious doctor’ hat. I’d been planning for a few more days to think this through, but I had a naughty AI to thank for putting me on the spot. “She shouldn’t be doing anything that makes her unhappy or stressed.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Which means what?”

  “You can’t tell her what to do, or not to do. If you try to restrict her activities, it’ll make her unhappy. And that’s not safe for her.”

  “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “Do you see another doctor around to double-check with?”

  “No.”

  “Then, when we find one, you can get a second opinion.” His scowl was too close to Ronan’s when denied for me to be annoyed.

  The high color in Eris’ face told the room we’d reached her limit of discussing her, her baby, and whatever she’d be able to do for the next few months.

  Time to change the topic back to the original point. “Nixie? What’s this about going to Sagav Station?”

  “It’s so stupid.” If it hadn’t been an AI, I would have thought she was whining. “If we had lots of time, I could get it. But Quinn says we need to get off the Star before you send it into the local sun.”

  Right.

  Ronan tapped his comm. “Hakon, how’s it going with the flight path for the Star?”

  Nixie piped the answer into the room. “Everything is locked down. I’d suggest we get off this thing pretty soon.”

  “How soon are you talking about?”

  “It’s gonna get hot in here in three, three-and-a-half weeks.” Some unintelligible muttering. “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind.”

  Ronan looked around at the three of us, shook his head. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  He broke the connection.

  Eris refocused. “Nixie, how long do you think it will take you to crack?”

  “Normally it’s not hard at all. Even if I don’t know anything about the person, they leave little traces that I can use to figure it out. Or they don’t pick something good and long.” Her blinks slowed, looked almost stubborn. “But this captain, there’s nothing on her I can find yet, and it looks like she was really smart.”

  “How smart?”

  “She didn’t just use a word or two as a passcode. I think it’s an entire passage of a book.”

  I looked at Ronan. “Think she’d be able to have something like that memorized?”

  “No problem. The soldier who brought home those ribbons would be more than capable.”

  “I’ve been running it against everything we have in the library, trying to find a matching passage, but if she also used character substitutions, or another language, or even a lost book, something she wrote herself… It’s just going to take some time.”

  “No more lessons in crypto, Nixie. Just how long?”

  “Two years?” came the small voice.

  “I don’t plan to be here that long,” I answered.

  “But now I really want to know what’s in there.” Ronan leaned back, eyes half closed in thought.

  “Me too! Which is why we should go to Sagav!”

  “Why, Nixie? You still haven’t explained.”

  “She said a copy of her code was left
at corporate headquarters, right? That company was dissolved, and all of its assets sold. A couple of times, actually. Currently they’re stored in the vaults of Thantorn Limited.”

  I shook my head, then realized she probably couldn’t see me. “That’s not a good thing. Even with a ship with a working jump drive, we can’t get all the way to the Hub and back before the Star burns.”

  “But they have a small branch on Sagav. It’s the closest possible access point into their systems.”

  “Nixie, you may not know this,” I hunted for the right words, wondering when I started worrying about hurting the feelings of an AI. “The Capitol and Hub-allied stations are pretty strict about unrestricted AI. I’m going to guess they’d be annoyed to find you there, and super annoyed to find you playing in their systems.”

  “I don’t have to go all the way there. If you get into their building, find a commline and put one of my extensions on it, I can beam the data back to myself, using the ship as a relay.”

  “How do you expect us to get you inside?” Ronan scoffed.

  “I don’t know. Do I have to think of everything?”

  Crap. This was a part of my life I’d left behind long ago.

  But Ronan wanted in there, and he was right. Any information we could find about whoever had taken over the Star and what had happened since then would help.

  Maybe it was time to stop running away from my past. Especially if it helped the family I’d chosen for my future.

  “I can get us in. I have an account there. My retina will be on file.”

  I looked away from Ronan’s shocked face, nodded at Eris.

  “If we want onto that bridge, I’m the best choice to go to Sagav.”

  Ronan

  Like I was going to let that happen.

  “If you’re going, I’m coming with you.”

  Eris and Conner had left, taking their terrifying AI with them, to talk over their new family status. Part of me envied him, but Nadira was right. Not now. Not until we’d settled once and for all which whoever-the-hell had decided to ‘terminate’ us.

  “Eris can take me. We’ll pass easier than any of you.”