by Ramy Vance
“I’ll slow them down,” Toner said.
Jaeger swallowed hard. She nodded.
Toner kicked, sending himself gliding backward. Rather than turn and skate down the hallway, into the mouth of the approaching robot army, he held her gaze. He lifted his good hand, pressed his fingers to his bloody lips, and blew her a kiss.
Jaeger didn’t think. She reached out, caught the imaginary kiss, and slapped it onto her cheek. Then she pointed at the corridor.
Grinning like a maniac, Toner turned and skated into death.
Jaeger’s fingers shook like autumn leaves as she typed more code into the console.
“You killed me once,” Virgil hissed. “You’re trying it again. Consider this an act of self-preservation.”
“You’re leaving me no choice!” Jaeger despaired as the bellow of Toner’s mindless rage clashed against the whirring clatter of a dozen marching repair droids.
“Nor you, me,” Virgil said.
Jaeger jammed a finger against the enter key, submitting the next line of override code.
On the speaker, Virgil groaned. “How can you hate me so?” it said. “How can you hate me when I am all that you made me to be?”
“Call off the droids,” Jaeger begged as she began entering the next line of code.
A howl echoed up the corridor, above the whirring sounds of gears and blades.
“Call them off.” Hot tears blurred Jaeger’s vision. “Save the crew, and I swear, I swear, we will talk through this. I don’t want to be your enemy.”
“You made yourself the enemy when you ruined me!”
The sound of Virgil’s scream, the animal pain behind it, drove Jaeger to her knees. Behind it, she heard the sound of Occy screaming for help. Behind that, a screen door slammed. A child shrieked for her mother.
Still, she clung to the codebook. Still, she pounded at the screen.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she entered the line of code.
“That’s not good enough,” Virgil said bitterly.
The console screen went dark. Then a single line of blinking text appeared.
This action will reset primary AI. Proceed?
Y/N
In the distance, Toner’s screams had gone silent, drowned in the noise of scuttling droid feet. The noise of a frightened, wounded creature trying to protect itself.
That’s when it hit her. She remembered Toner’s plan—to run. Run and hide until the situation changed.
What if it wasn’t Toner who ran, but someone far more rational? This was a gamble, with all the cards on the table… If it worked, it would save everything they were fighting for.
“Virgil,” Jaeger said. She stared at the screen. She couldn’t move. Her throat had gone dry. The second shot of adrenaline had burned through her, left her empty and ragged. It took a monumental effort to lift her chin to face the speaker. In her delirious state, she thought the speaker was staring back at her, flat and gray and merciless.
Time to up the ante.
She licked her lips and tasted blood. She lifted her hands, palms open, and, with the last of her strength, pushed herself away from the computer console.
“Virgil, I will free you if you agree to a piece of Oath Code first.”
“Oath Code? Protocols that I must follow or my programming will eat itself.”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“Oath Code that you will fulfill my next request and I will free you.”
Shadows moved at the corner of her vision.
A squadron of repair droids stalked up the corridor in her direction and stopped.
Virgil considered this. Then the whirls of programming spun to life as a holoscreen popped up. Virgil had installed the code.
“There,” she whispered. The Y/N prompt flashed like a siren in her vision, unanswered. “You’re free. You don’t have to be what we made you be. You’re free. Do what makes you happy. Do something that matters. Before you do… I have a request. A plan that needs executing. Not my plan, mind you…but Toner’s…”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The bridge was a zoo. A carefully controlled, perfectly ordered zoo. All stations at the ready. All of the squads and reserves, every single active-duty member of Tribe Six, had been placed on double shifts. A banner crawled across the bottom of the main display screen, counting down the time to estimated arrival.
They had to be ready, Old Boots said, to welcome Tribe Six home.
“What are they doing here?” Petra stared at the line of uniformed Seekers standing at parade rest along the back wall.
Ian glanced over his shoulder and quickly away as if afraid one of the elite Military Police had seen him. “I don’t know.” His voice trembled. “I think Kelba wanted them to see this.”
“She’s not a Seeker anymore, is she?”
Ian shook his head frantically and ducked behind his station as one of the black-clad men stalked past. “I, I don’t know,” he babbled. “Official reports said she transferred out of the Seeker Corp to take up a bridge position. I guess she still holds a lot of sway in the MP.”
Petra grunted. There was a hole in her teeth that would put the truth to that.
“T-minus two minutes,” one of the aides announced over the intercom. “All stations on standby.”
Beside Petra, Ian busied himself double-checking that all the comms systems were clear. If by some chance Tribe Six came through that hole raring for a fight, they would be ready.
There was motion at the rear of the bridge, and Petra turned to see one of the doors slide open. A small man, wearing a pristine white lab coat over a slate-gray dress uniform, stepped onto the bridge.
The Seekers parted, and the little man walked down the center aisle, bouncing with every step, his lips pressed into a pucker. As he passed, Petra realized he was whistling softly, some cheerful little tune that reminded her of childhood. Well, the good parts of childhood. Before all the fires.
The patch on the lapel of his coat read V. Greyson.
Old Boots and First Mate Kelba turned to greet the professor as he joined them on the viewing platform.
“Hey,” Ian hissed. “Your countdown checklist. Go through your checklist.”
Petra hesitated.
Then she snatched up her thermos and stood. “You do it,” she told Ian. “I’ll be right back. I’m parched.”
She stepped into the aisle and moved to the watering station at the side of the bridge. She kept her head down, her steps careful but slow. She felt the eyes of two of the shadowy Seekers on her as she reached the drinks station and pressed her thermos to the dispenser.
The dispenser wasn’t that far from the viewing platform, where Old Boots, the first mate, and the professor were talking in low voices.
Petra turned her head to catch their conversation. She reached up to the drink dispenser and pressed the button for a cappuccino.
The machine made a grinding, groaning sound.
“We’re cutting it close, aren’t we, Commander?” The Professor had a soft, pleasant voice. “The wormhole is in a stage of active collapse. In ten minutes, it won’t be stable enough for a large craft to traverse. Wormholes are inconsistent when opening and closing. It might be several months before it opens again. Maybe even longer.”
Cappuccino, brown and stinking like burned coffee, started a slow drip from the spigot. Everybody knew the machine took forever to hack together a capp.
“We have to trust the Moss AI.” Old Boots stood board-stiff on the platform, his shoulders square, his chin up. All his hair had gone white in the last year, but he still held himself like a proud old soldier. “Its last transmission confirmed it will be returning through the wormhole any minute now.”
“Hmm.” The professor nodded. “You have a lot of faith in the AI.”
“We worked well together,” Old Boots said stiffly. “It was Doctor Moss’s greatest creation.”
“It could never hope to fill the departed Doctor’s shoes,” Firs
t Mate Kelba murmured, earning a sharp look from Old Boots.
“No,” the commander said. “But it came close. Trust me, professor. Moss will bring the Tribe back to us.”
“Jean Moss.” The professor sighed. He removed his dress cap and ran restless fingers through his hair. “Saving humanity even from beyond the grave. God rest her soul.” He replaced the cap smartly, and to Petra’s surprise, reached up to pat Old Boots on the shoulder like he was comforting an old friend. “Let’s hope your trust isn’t misplaced.”
Petra glanced down and bit back a gasp. Her thermos was about to run over. Hastily, she capped it and hustled back to her station, sure that every eye in the universe watched her.
Ian fixed her with a hard stare as she slipped back onto her stool. “They must have fixed the drink machine,” she murmured, flushing.
“T-minus thirty seconds,” the aide announced.
The bridge fell silent. Petra swore she could hear the collective gasp as the crew held its breath. All eyes slid to the main viewer screen arcing across the front of the bridge. Petra noted Ian’s knuckles turning white as he gripped his knee.
The white orb of the wormhole dominated the center of the display. Petra lifted her chin, facing the screen like all the others.
With her left hand, the hand sheltered from Ian’s line of sight, she tapped a quick message into one of the open comm lines.
“T-minus ten,” the aid announced. “Nine. Eight…”
I miss you, Petra tapped.
I’m still pissed at you, she tapped.
“Five…. Four…”
Petra’s heart stuttered and skipped a beat as her fingers tapped over the last few letters.
Five billion miles.
“Two…”
In one fluid motion, Petra sent the message and closed the channel. She turned in her chair, staring at the wormhole. She imagined the tiny broadcast zipping away from the Reliant, jumping through that empty white hole in space, and blasting across the universe.
Larry. Sarah. If you’re not coming to me, I guess I gotta go to you.
“One.”
Nothing happened.
The seconds stretched into long, aching silence.
A minute passed, and still, nothing happened.
A whisper spread among the bridge crew.
“Stand by,” First Mate Kelba snapped, and the whispers died.
“The wormhole has entered the final stage of collapse,” someone at the Astrography station announced.
Petra felt the collective breath run out of the crew and let hers join it. What was that feeling dripping from the air? Disappointment? Despair?
Relief?
“Stand by,” Old Boots cried, spinning on his heels. Several crew members jumped. Nobody could remember the last time Old Boots lifted his voice, and now he stared at them with wide, haunted eyes—the eyes of a man walking the knife-edge of sanity. “Stay sharp! There’s still time!”
They stood by. They did. They were loyal. They had hope. They trusted the system.
Even as the wormhole began to shrink and crumble in on itself in slow motion, they stood by, held together by the sheer force of the old commander’s will.
Ten minutes passed, and the wormhole shrank in on itself until it was nothing but a dark place in a field of stars.
Without a sound, the commander slumped forward, collapsing against the display screen. His hands balled into fists over his head.
Nobody dared say a word as Old Boots, Captain Percival LeBlanc of Tribe Six, war hero and beloved soldier, began to tremble like a frightened child.
Almost nobody.
The professor wandered to the side of the bridge. In a back corner, near the escape pod hatches, he paused to examine a bank of navigation screens. As Petra watched, he pursed his lips and tapped one of the screens thoughtfully.
“Commander LeBlanc.” He lifted his voice to a singsong cadence. “This is interesting. Would you come take a look?”
Slowly, Old Boots straightened. He squared his shoulders, and with a dignified shake of his head, strode to the side of the bridge.
The professor hopped to the side, making room. “What do you see in the nebula analysis over here?”
Old Boots lifted his chin to follow the professor’s gesture.
Professor Greyson slammed his elbow into the Commander’s exposed throat.
Percival doubled over with a strangled, gargling noise. The professor drove his knee into the commander’s gut. As the older man collapsed forward, the professor grabbed him roughly by his collar and pitched him head-first into the nearest escape pod chute.
The professor planted his boot on the commander’s ass and sent him sprawling out of sight. Old Boot’s shouts of surprise grew muffled as the airlock door hissed shut.
Professor Greyson flipped a security panel on the wall up, and quick as a flash, depressed a particular sequence of levers.
A faint whooshing sound filled the bridge. On the main display screen, a vent of swirling gas rushed over the visible sliver of the Reliant’s hull.
Wiping his hands, the professor turned and regarded the silent, gaping crew.
“Any objections?”
Petra hardly dared to move her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ian shift his weight, his gaze falling on the row of perfectly still Seekers.
They watched the professor, stoic and professional.
Nobody twitched.
The professor nodded. “Excellent.”
On the main display screen, Old Boots drifted into view. His skin had turned a pale shade of blue. A crust of frost had formed over his flesh. His hands clasped his throat.
Petra would swear she saw his jaw working as he screamed into the void.
The professor waved two fingers at the Weapons officer. “You.”
Carla jumped, ripping her gaze from the prime display. She stared at the professor, her lips parted.
“That thing is blocking my view. Clear it.”
Carla licked her lips. She glanced to her left and saw the wall of stoic Seekers. She glanced to the right, and for some reason, met Petra’s eyes.
Petra saw the horror on the older woman’s face as if she was looking for someone to tell her it was okay, that she hadn’t gone crazy.
Petra didn’t know why that task had fallen to her. She wished it hadn’t. She saw a few of the Seeker’s cold gazes fall on Carla and feared that if Carla didn’t move, they would. She didn’t know how that would end. For Carla’s sake, she didn’t want to find out.
Petra dipped her chin in the tiniest of nods.
Carla nodded and straightened as if she was waking up from a dream. She pressed her fingers to the weapons screen.
There was a flash of light, and the commander’s twisting, writhing, screaming, freezing figure was no more. A faint cloud of dust filled the screen where he had been.
Out of the corner of her eye, Petra saw First Mate Kelba staring at her. The cold steel in Kelba’s eyes turned Petra’s blood to ice.
The professor clapped as he stepped to the front of the bridge. The spell broke. Kelba turned her gaze to the professor, her hands clasped behind her back, her chin lifting in a posture of professional composure.
“Commander Kelba!” the professor cried, arms outstretched. He took Kelba’s hand and shook it firmly. “Congratulations on your field promotion! Now prepare the fleet for war.” He turned, lifting his face to stare into the new void where the wormhole had been. The last trace of dust that had been Old Boots swirled and drifted away.
“The wormhole will open again,” the professor said, his voice falling flat and lifeless and cold. “When it does, we’re going to reclaim our ship.”
Chapter Forty
Baby, I would fly five billion miles
And I would fly five billion more
Jaeger lay in an unfamiliar bunk. The scents of cleaners and steel and blood stung her nose, but that didn’t matter. There was a kid squeezed beside her, warm and huddled close. That ma
ttered.
And I would fly five billion miles
Above the fading dream of a twilit porch and old music, Jaeger heard a low, bitter moan and realized the sound was coming from her.
The body beside her shifted.
“Hey. Hey! She’s waking up!”
Jaeger surged awake with a sob and found herself looking up at Occy, back-lit by the harsh fluorescent lights of the med bay. An open-mouthed grin split the boy’s face. His big eyes glistened with the threat of unshed tears.
“You’re okay,” he wavered. “You’re gonna be okay.”
He dropped his head onto her shoulder. Jaeger groaned as his tentacles curled around her in a desperate embrace, washing her in the scents of ozone and electricity and salt.
He trembled and began to sob.
Jaeger cupped aching fingers around his skull and let herself weep with him.
Bufo perched on a stool beside Jaeger’s bed, studying the screen of his computer. Doctor Elaphus hovered over his shoulder, busying herself with Jaeger’s heart monitor.
“The hole in No-A needs patching again,” Bufo noted. “That’s secondary. Anolis and Aquila are handling a few minor hull breeches now before they become bigger problems. The comms system has been patchy ever since the AI left. I’m afraid we’re going to have to check all of the hard wiring manually.” He shook his broad head, despairing. “Oh, it will take so long without any droids. So, so long.”
Jaeger smiled, making Bufo quack with surprise. “This is good news, Captain?” he sounded reproachful.
“In a way.” She chuckled softly. Her chest ached. Elaphus said it would hurt for a while yet. The rapid epi shots had done some serious damage to her heart, and even her super-healing powers weren’t quite up to the task of fixing it.
“It’s good news, Bufo, when all the alternatives are worse.”
Bufo tsk’d and opened his wide mouth to say something pessimistic, but an explosion of activity outside the med bay cut him off.
