Vengeance (Warships of the Spire Book 1)

by Lisa Blackwood

  Basilisk’s sentinels had infiltrated Vengeance’s warship.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As soon as Ven was out of transit, Bas had been able to reestablish his control over the infiltrator sentinels, and he once again pursued the link he’d almost killed. Liv realized he was coming for the injured woman and threw her shields around her again, crying out to her even though she doubted Renee was still conscious. “A rogue’s sentinels are onboard!”

  Renee stirred but didn’t open her eyes or answer her. Liv yelled her warning aloud to Vengeance. “Infiltrator sentinels must have been onboard already when we transited. They’re converging on our location now. At least five of them.”

  Ven’s sentinel that had been holding Liv and Renee lowered them to the ground, and Liv immediately put her body in front of the older woman’s, even though the only way she could help her now was with her mind.

  Ven’s humanoid drone held two large energy weapons scavenged from one of his sentinels. The soft hum of the rifles arming was a sweet sound.

  “Got a couple more of those anywhere?” she asked.

  “Affirmative,” he answered, but didn’t divert his attention from the seemingly empty corridor. One of the inbound rogue sentinels surged around a tight intersection, and two more followed closely behind it. They opened fire on a drudge unit who’d been assessing battle damage then darted behind the massive corpse of the maintenance bot and used it as cover while Vengeance’s sentinels were still taking up positions.

  Since the rogue sentinels hadn’t attacked yet, she assumed they were waiting for more of their number to arrive. The others couldn’t be far and would probably be on top of their position in less than a minute.

  “Give me a gun,” she tried again. “There have to be more coming since the other three are waiting.”

  “Correct.”

  Liv narrowed her eyes at his drone. “How far away are your nearest reinforcements?”

  The drone glanced back at her and narrowed his eyes too. “Too far.”

  “Then give me a weapon,” she demanded.

  He looked her over quickly then told her, “You’re my engineer. It’s my duty to see to your welfare.”

  Liv grunted at him and put a hand on her hip. “That’s a lame excuse, and you know it. Stop trying to protect me and give me a weapon. I can help. Because I’m an engineer, I know where to hit the rogues to hurt them. They probably haven’t seen proper maintenance in years and will be glitchy as hell.”

  While most telepaths weren’t strong enough to push commands at a sentinel, even if they knew how to circumvent the primary and secondary security subroutines, she was no ordinary telepath. And she’d make damn sure those sentinels were glitchy as hell.

  Ven’s drone blinked at her then dual clinking sounds as one of his sentinels released the clamps on his leg sheaths made Liv smile. She marched over to the massive hulk of metal and plucked the gun from its holsters. As soon as she had the weapon in her hand, the holsters slid back into his calves, the clamps locking in place and the bio-metal skin smoothing over seamlessly.

  Liv turned around to resume her position by Renee, but a large metal hand slammed down across her shoulders and shoved her face-first into the floor. Energy fire crackled above her head. Liv winced and groaned, her body aching from all the recent contusions, but at least she was still alive.

  More deafening cannon fire echoed up and down the corridor as Ven’s sentinels engaged the rogues.

  Two of his sentinels concentrated fire on the closest enemy. From her position on the ground, she leveled her weapon at the nearest target. With a quick mental scan, she assessed all enemies and switched her aim to the sentinel on the left of the one she’d first picked out. He had a deep gash running along his side from an earlier firefight. One of the armor plates underneath was buckling at one corner, exposing softer, sensitive parts.

  The sentinel must have known about the weakness because he was using his shielded forearm to protect that area from Ven’s targeted hits. But Liv had an advantageous position from the ground.

  Liv fired at the wound. The gun had more of a kick than she’d expected, and in the two seconds it took her to steady her grip, she missed seeing the kill. But she felt the sentinel’s core power source overload. As the sentinel lost control, he knocked into a nearby rogue, providing Ven with the distraction he needed to take out another enemy.

  Renee groaned, and Liv risked glancing at her, reaching out to her mind to encourage her to hold on.

  The dying woman didn’t answer.

  Ven glanced at his link, his drone’s eyes round and fearful, but unlike his panic before, he continued to fight the rogue sentinels. Liv returned fire as well, but allowed her telepathic ability to unfold even more until she could feel all the sentinels within range. She singled out the enemy sentinels then targeted the one farthest from her.

  She pushed her telepathic gift outward, narrowing it into a spear, and slammed through the sentinel’s armor into its newly exposed network. Once there, she fried the sentinel’s ability to receive outside commands.

  Then she made a rash decision, fueled by her anger and fear.

  She struck out at Basilisk himself.

  “Remember me, asshole?”

  His chaotic, irrational thoughts and emotions, the result of being an unbalanced AI, answered her. Beneath the turmoil, she sensed his pain and hatred for everything, including himself.

  Time hadn’t been kind to the AI. Soon, his mind would deteriorate beyond the ability to function. Until then, he would continue to spew all his self-hate and destructive tendencies onto everyone he encountered.

  But even through all the chaos, Bas had retained just enough of his original self to remember what he’d been before he’d become a rogue warship—a being of seemingly limitless power and a vast wellspring of knowledge, nearly immortal in his ability to inhabit new bodies. In that memory, that kernel of awareness of who he used to be and could never be again, existed misguided beliefs that he could regain his power and immortality by finding a link-level telepath.

  Basilisk’s hatred and anger shifted to surprise then curiosity as he realized she’d touched his mind.

  “Remember what I did to Agrona?” Liv asked. “Keep pursuing Vengeance and me, and I’ll be your death as well.”

  His thoughts scattered into a million different patterns then slowly solidified, sharpening into one obsessive emotion: desire.

  Liv shuddered, but with Bas’s intense, covetous attention on her instead of the fight with Ven, she could better turn his own fighters against themselves. Controlling the sentinel she’d hijacked earlier, she forced him to wrap one hand around his neighbor’s neck while also directing him to clasp his opponent’s head. With a sharp twist, the other sentinel was beheaded in a shower of sparks. She aimed the forearm cannons at the nearest enemy, but her sentinel took heavy fire before she could reciprocate.

  Her link with the sentinel was severed by its death.

  Mildly disoriented, Liv shook her head, but gray spots still danced around the edges of her sight. One of Ven’s sentinels engaged the last remaining rogue in the corridor with them, and as it fell to the ground, she asked his nearest sentinel, “Are you okay?”

  “Minimal damage to this unit. Reports coming in from other parts of the ship confirm that there are only two other skirmishes in progress. Damages and casualties from the driller attack are localized. Repair units and medical aid are en route.”

  “Good,” she sighed. “Let’s get…” A sudden burning pain lanced though the muscle of her left shoulder, causing her to collapse in agony.

  As Ven’s sentinels returned fire, she willed herself not to pass out, but the pain washed away her ability to think of anything else. The hulking form of one of his sentinels stood over her, protecting her from the enemy she still couldn’t see. She closed her eyes and the sounds of the fight quieted.

  At first, she thought she’d passed out after all, even though part of her realized she woul
dn’t have been able to think that if she had. But as fingers gently pulled back her uniform, she understood that his drone was checking her wound and the quiet surrounding them was the result of the rogue sentinel’s death. “Are they all dead now?” she asked through gritted teeth.

  “Yes,” he answered. “I’m sorry. One of the sentinels I’d put down earlier still had plasma cannon function. Can you move your arm?”

  “It’s still there?”

  Ven sighed at her, and she opened her eyes. His dark brown eyes met hers before he shifted his gaze back to her shoulder. “Of course it’s still there. You have a deep tissue burn with probable nerve damage though. You both need to get to medical.”

  The sentinel that had been standing protectively over her slid open a compartment on his abdomen, revealing the basic first aid kit for Ven’s drone. He reached into it, retrieved a medipen and pressed it against her bare arm. The pain dissipated, and she finally relaxed her jaw.

  “Can I have another one of those?” she murmured.

  Ven snorted and shook his head. “I’d rather we not cause heart damage. You’ll need a regeneration patch once we reach medical, but you’ll regain full use of your arm in a day or two.”

  Liv smiled as the pleasant warmth from the painkiller made her head spin. “Good, because you just got the shit kicked out of you, and I’ve got a lot of work to do now.”

  “Hey,” Ven countered. “I just survived fighting off four rogue AIs on my own. I should get some sort of Badass Extraordinaire award from the Spire.”

  Liv’s smile faltered as her groggy brain remembered where they’d been heading and why. “Renee,” she whispered.

  The red lights on the sentinel’s shoulders faded, and his drone’s expression fell. “She’s too weak to move. Medical is coming to us.”

  Liv forced herself up and blinked at the older telepath’s body. Two sentinels were perched in front of her, but he didn’t dare touch or move her. Renee’s skin was two shades paler than the dove gray dress she wore, and the blood that dripped from her nose and ears was strangely vivid in contrast to her pale complexion. Though her chest still rose and fell, her eyes remained closed. The link’s mind had withdrawn into itself, so Liv couldn’t feel her thoughts even when she tried to reach out to her.

  Liv already suspected this was more than a coma—it was the early stages of brain death. But the way Ven watched her betrayed his own irrational thought processes: He clung to the hope for a miracle.

  She remembered the signs, though, that a telepath’s death was imminent. From those repressed memories of her childhood, the images of the weakest of the kidnapped telepaths resurfaced. They’d been unable to withstand the onslaught of the rogues.

  It wouldn’t matter if medical reached Renee in the next ten seconds or ten hours. But Liv didn’t have the heart to tell Ven his link couldn’t be saved.

  She wiped hastily at her eyes, and Ven’s attention flickered briefly back to her. “One of my sentinels can take you to medical.”

  Liv shook her head and with her good hand, wrapped her fingers around his arm. “I don’t want to leave you. Either of you.”

  Ven’s drone took a deep breath and blinked back tears. “Thank you.”

  More of his sentinels arrived before the med units and formed a semi-circle around Renee, kneeling and bowing their heads, their shoulder lights dimming then flashing out entirely. An honor guard for the woman Ven must have suspected he’d lose.

  Liv knelt beside the sentinels and drone, whose tears finally fell, and her breath caught painfully in her lungs. Her throat burned as she watched the man she’d loved her whole life mourn for the woman she’d once idolized.

  Truthfully, she still did. Renee had known her secret all along and hadn’t betrayed her. She’d tried to bring her back to Ven in the same respectful, compassionate way she always dealt with those she cared about. Liv still held Ven’s hand, and her fingers twitched inside his then a painful, ugly sob burst from her chest. His drone glanced at her and released her hand, putting an arm around her shoulders as they both cried for Renee.

  The seven-foot med units turned the corner, and Ven’s sentinels rose quietly and backed away, giving them the space they needed to lift the unconscious link from the ground and bring her to medical. Carefully, gently, they placed her on a transport and within minutes, she’d vanished around the bend in the hall.

  Ven’s drone took a slow, ragged breath and told her, “I’m going to follow them. You should have your shoulder looked at anyway.”

  “I’m needed in engineering,” Liv whispered absentmindedly. She couldn’t look away from the corner of the hall where Renee’s body had disappeared. She had the terrible premonition she’d never see her again.

  “No,” Ven insisted. “You’re needed in medical. If you don’t have that injury attended to, you risk permanent nerve damage.”

  Liv swallowed, but kept her eyes on the now-empty hallway in front of them. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

  “I don’t lie at all,” he answered.

  “Renee… are her injuries worse…?” Liv’s voice trailed off because she couldn’t seem to vocalize her fear that Ven would lose his link and best friend.

  Ven’s drone tilted his head at her, giving her a curious look. “Don’t you already know? Didn’t you assess her injuries yourself?”

  “Yes,” Liv breathed.

  “You’re a telepath. You’ve tried to hide it from me twice now—when you and Harper escaped and today during the attack when you used Renee to link with me.”

  Liv finally tore her gaze away from the hallway and blinked at him. Ven continued before she could speak, which didn’t matter because she had no idea what she could possibly say.

  He’d known for over a week that she was a telepath and hadn’t turned her in.

  “It’s rare, but occasionally, the telepathic gene gets passed down to daughters naturally. But you’ve used yours twice now, which means you know you possess this ability and you’ve practiced with it at some point.”

  Oh, God, she thought. If he insists on having me tested, he’ll discover I’m not really Olivia Hawthorne.

  “Ven, I…” she fumbled, but she was momentarily rescued by an unexpected voice—a voice that scared the shit out of her because it was the voice of a ghost.

  “Vengeance,” Renee said.

  “Renee,” his drone whispered.

  Before them, a holographic image materialized, and the link’s warm smile and kind eyes shifted to Liv.

  “I’m sorry if I scared either of you. As soon as Basilisk attacked me, I suspected I wouldn’t survive and created this interactive recording for you. Liv, I know I promised you I’d keep your secret, but given the circumstances, he needs to know everything.”

  Liv wanted to run, but she couldn’t free her hand from the drone’s grip. “Renee, please,” Liv begged. She had no idea if an interactive recording could be reasoned with, but it didn’t matter. Renee continued as if she hadn’t heard her.

  “The young woman you think is Olivia Hawthorne isn’t just a telepath. She’s Nuallan, as you likely suspected, Ven.”

  The few sentinels that had remained in the hallway with them turned on her, the red lights along their shoulders flaring to life again. Liv gasped and tried to free her hand a second time, but he still refused to let go.

  “She’s no danger to you, Vengeance,” Renee added. “You already know that. And you know I would have never kept a secret for her if I believed she were a danger to you or anyone else onboard. But she is powerful and has tremendous strengths and few weaknesses. You need her.”

  “Shut up,” Liv hissed at the hologram, whose eyes flickered to her again.

  In her last message to the AI she’d served for almost three centuries, Renee had chosen to betray Liv, to attempt to force her servitude to a warship. And she wouldn’t become his new link. Not even Vengeance would invade her mind again.

  “Liv?” Ven asked.

  She glanced down
at their hands, their fingers still tightly woven together, and slowly shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered.

  She wasn’t quite sure if she meant she couldn’t be his link, or she couldn’t tell him the truth.

  “I know,” he said, his voice softening.

  “Liv,” Renee’s hologram continued, “I want what’s best for Vengeance and you. In order to create this message, I had to instruct the nanites in my blood to migrate to my brain, and relaying it now will most likely speed up my death. But I needed you to hear this. Please.”

  “No,” Liv groaned, but she didn’t try to pull her hand away from Ven again.

  “Vengeance is the only Warship of the Spire to survive an encounter with rogues like this, and you are a telepath who has learned how to withstand the chaos of their minds. Together, you would be indestructible. Regardless, he needs you now to return to Teutorigos because the Triumvirate must learn how to defeat Basilisk and the other rogues. Ven, you know what Spire regulations are if an AI suffers the loss of all his telepaths at once. Surviving senior staff will enact the endgame protocol. And for Liv’s sake, I want you to tell the crew that she’s a latent level-four telepath, and that her gift was triggered by the rogue’s attack. That’s when I merged with her and transferred as much of my knowledge to her as I could.”

  “Affirmative,” Ven sighed.

  Renee’s eyes shifted to Liv again, and she said, “I hope you can both come to understand one another. You need each other more than either of you realize.”

  “I can’t be his link, Renee,” Liv cried.

  Ven’s fingers relaxed, and his drone took a small step away from her. “It doesn’t matter if you were engineered for me or not. I never would force you to be my link.”

  “You knew?” she responded weakly.

  “Only that you were Nuallan,” he insisted, but his drone suddenly inhaled a sharp breath. “Renee… I have to go.”

  The hologram fizzled at the edges before vanishing, and Ven’s drone ran, leaving her alone in the hallway with one sentinel who’d either been left behind to defend her or to defend himself from her.