by Natalie Grey
He should have known that Barnabas would triumph against the remains of the Yennai fleet. It had been a foolish mistake on Biset’s part, but no other ship he’d seen could take on seven and survive.
And the last two times they had faced the Yennai ships had not been true encounters. Once, the fleet had been ordered to let them through—Ilia Yennai’s ill-fated idea that letting Barnabas be cornered in the flesh by mercenaries would be a better way to kill him than being fired on by an entire fleet.
She’d paid for that mistake with her life.
The other times Barnabas had faced the Yennai Corporation, it had been with the backup of the Jotun fleet. Biset had assumed, therefore, that the Shinigami on its own would not be able to triumph.
Clearly, he had been wrong. More critically, he had expected Barnabas to play by the rules. The pings they had caught from the space stations and buoys had been a ruse. Whether Barnabas knew this was a trap, or he was just habitually suspicious, he had known enough to arrive when he wasn’t expected.
Biset tried to calm himself. Barnabas would have to get off the ship to fight him. The bunker was too far below ground to be reached with bombs, and even Barnabas’ strike team couldn’t get through this many robotic warriors.
Briefly, he thought of Ilia Yennai, and he was worried. But this was different. Robots did not feel fear. They did not mourn when their comrades were destroyed.
The others who had faced Barnabas had suffered from a lack of resolve, but Biset would not have the same problem. Biset would triumph.
He wondered idly if he would show the committee the Shinigami and laughed quietly to himself. He knew he would not do so. He was the one who had faced the danger, so he would be the one who kept the spoils of war. The Shinigami and its AI would be his for the taking after this.
If Koel Yennai had wanted it so much, after all, it had to be worth something. Biset expected it to be booby-trapped, of course, but he’d find a way around that. It was just an AI, and he had learned in his years that any mind could be turned with enough time and the right leverage.
No one was incorruptible.
Unseen in the rafters above, Kantar knelt to watch Biset walk through the ranks upon ranks of robotic soldiers.
Gokrun III was theoretically a resort planet for the Jotuns. No one else wanted it with its salty, storm-tossed seas, but the Jotuns liked the novelty of it—and the Jotun Senate, apparently, used the bunkers on its smallest continent to hide their experiments.
It was well-protected, which had meant that there was no way she could get a ship in here on her own. Any ship would be noticed and scanned. The satellites in low orbit were highly-attuned and well-armed.
So she had done the only thing she could and gotten herself aboard Biset’s private ship. To escape detection, she’d had to power herself down and hope he did not take long enough in space for her to suffocate. Luckily, he had not. There had been a long time of the ship drifting aimlessly, and then—just before they began their descent—there had been some quick maneuvers that suggested a battle.
They had not fired their weapons, however. She did not know what had happened, and there was no one to ask. It did not especially matter anyway. Biset would soon be dead. After Huword, he was their next target. Biset had been Huword’s direct contact, and was, as far as Kantar could tell, one of the most dangerous members of the committee.
She wondered about sending Barnabas word that Biset had been killed. On the one hand, if he knew about Biset and was hunting him, he might break off his pursuit when he knew Biset was dead.
On the other hand, he might just be more curious. Barnabas, she had come to believe, was motivated not by revenge or vice, but by the search for truth.
That made him dangerous. She knew that. Gil and Wev had been very clear that Barnabas could bring their government crashing down, and Kantar knew they were right. If the committee’s work were made public, every other government would turn on them.
And yet…she found that she respected Barnabas’ quest for the truth. The thought of burying all this, dealing with it quietly, gave her a twisty feeling in her gut. It didn’t seem right, somehow.
The Jotun people all suffering for the actions of a few didn’t seem right either, however. And if Barnabas insisted that they must, what would she do?
She would kill Biset, she decided. Then she would decide what to do.
She stood quietly and followed his path, walking silently on the rafters above him. Biset was training to lead a robotic army, much like an admiral would lead many ships in battle. She would have to figure out how best to deal with that, but she had always been good at waiting and biding her time.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Landing sequence activated,” said Shinigami’s voice over the loudspeakers, “complete in thirty seconds.”
Barnabas bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited at the blast doors. He heard clanking a moment later, and Jeltor came around the corner with Shinigami. Gar trailed them, speaking quietly with Tafa as he did the last check of his weapons.
One of the first things Barnabas had trained him to do was to take care of his weapons, knowing them inside and out and not expecting technology to rescue him. It was impossible to understand all the specialized technology, of course, but clean, well-maintained weapons and armor were essential for survival.
At the door, all of them nodded to one another, and Tafa gave them all smiles.
“Be safe,” she told them, and she disappeared down the hall. Barnabas could tell she was very determined not to look over her shoulder at them or watch as they left the ship. She was worried but trying to control it as best she could.
He could not blame her. What was waiting for them down there, he could not say.
But he knew one thing... He was deeply curious, and he was very much looking forward to bringing the ringleader to Justice. Shinigami had been correct when she’d said that whatever Huword had been up to, it was nothing good.
The Shinigami set down so gently that when the doors opened Barnabas was alarmed.
“Don’t worry, silly.” Shinigami’s smile was teasing. “It’s all okay. We’re down, and the atmosphere is breathable. But don’t tell me—back in your day, you had to get where you were going in a horse-drawn carriage, and you felt every bump. You didn’t even need to land.”
Barnabas was laughing silently. “No, no, in my day we rode dinosaurs.”
“Now that is a mental image I can get behind. I’m going to have them clone you a dinosaur.”
“Bad idea,” Barnabas warned her as they walked into the underground bunker. “Didn’t Tabitha show you Jurassic Park?”
“Where do you think I got the idea?”
“I think you took the wrong lessons from that movie.” He crossed his arms and looked around. “So, we’re…underground?”
“You’re a great detective. No wonder the Empire flourished under your care.” She strode out and looked around the bunker with him. “But yes. These doors were supposed to be closed to us—but I swear, a toddler must have written those algorithms.”
Barnabas smiled slightly. From the pride in Shinigami’s voice, it was clear that the algorithms had been significantly harder to break than she was suggesting. When they first came to this sector, it had contained technology different than any they had seen, and both had struggled to adapt. They had managed, though, as their enemies were presently finding out.
He followed slowly, examining this place with care. The ceiling in the bunker was low, and long pools of water ran down the center and sides of the room. Like the seawater outside, it smelled of salt and kelp.
The room was also empty.
“I don’t like this,” Barnabas murmured. “It just reeks of a trap.”
As if in answer, one of the doors lit up and a Jotun voice—recognizable by its faint mechanical whine—said, “Thank you for coming. I knew it would be difficult to get past the Senate’s blockade, but if anyone could do it, you could.”
Jeltor’s eyes had narrowed, and he shook his head. I don’t know this voice. It’s none of the admirals.
I’ll play along, though, Barnabas said. He strolled forward. “Are you going to show yourself? I promise we’re on your side. We want to bring Justice—the same thing you want.” It nearly made me sick to say that.
That’s the problem, Shinigami commented. Honorable people have trouble lying even for a good cause, but it doesn’t bother dishonorable people.
“I’m afraid it’s too risky,” the voice said. “And that antechamber may be bugged. I cannot give you this information anywhere the Senate might hear of it. I’ll light the way to a safe place.”
Safe for us to get filled with bullets, Barnabas guessed.
Now, now, Shinigami scolded, they might be planning to drown us instead.
They’d probably find that fitting, Jeltor agreed. They don’t like other species, and most Jotuns are at least a little bit annoyed that we’re the only ones who are amphibious. Luvendi don’t count, I’m afraid, he told Gar.
We swim, Gar pointed out, annoyed.
You don’t have to be carried around in tanks. If the Jotuns had their way, you’d all be in air tanks and all stations would be filled with water.
Everyone quiet, Barnabas said as they walked forward slowly, and let Shinigami concentrate on mapping this place. I think it’s safe to say that we want to go anywhere but where they’re telling us to go.
Pretty much, Shinigami agreed. But we’ll have to move fast when we choose an alternate route. I’m not in their systems yet, and they can see us.
The group emerged into a second chamber and was immediately faced with a group of robotic warriors, all of whom leveled the arms of their suits to show the barrels of guns.
“On the other hand,” said Shinigami cheerfully, “maybe we don’t need to spend time trying to find the trap after all.”
Barnabas didn’t pause to chime in, but he was laughing as he charged the group. He grabbed one warrior by the arm and dragged it around to face its fellow soldiers as they began firing. Many bullets landed, some ricocheting off the heavy plate armor of the robots, but others finding their targets: joints and weak points that hissed and sparked as the bullets struck.
Interestingly, not only did his robotic warrior stop firing, they all stopped firing—at the same time.
He’s controlling them remotely! Barnabas called over the Etheric connection.
He didn’t wait to see how they used that information but instead launched into action. He hopped onto the head of his robot to look around the room, then made his way to the far back corner using the shoulders and heads of the warriors as stepping stones.
They tried to follow him with their guns, but whoever was controlling them was not used to the pace of hand-to-hand fights, especially when an enhanced human was involved. Barnabas landed lightly without even a close call and whirled, drawing his Jean Dukes.
The guns went off with a roar and two of the robots staggered, one having turned to face him, the other still facing the other way and trying to pick its target. Barnabas fired again, aiming for the column below the sensory panel—the equivalent of the neck on a biological fighter.
With their connection to their sensors and their remote control disabled some of the robots shut down, but with others, Barnabas seemed to have fried some of the central controls, and the robots began to short out. Their bodies shook, limbs moving spasmodically. One collapsed, and another began firing straight at the floor. The bullets hit the reinforced concrete and bounced, sending projectiles in every direction.
“Hit the floor!” Barnabas yelled. He had time to worry on the way down that this might be too colloquial, but the rest of the group seemed to understand him just fine.
There was a scream, and his head jerked up—only for him to start laughing. The scream was apparently Shinigami’s battle cry.
And what a battle cry it was! What she lacked in precision, she more than made up for in sheer power. Her body was the first produced by Bobcat’s team, but they hadn’t been sloppy in their work, and they’d done thorough testing. Now that she knew how to use it, she had more raw power at her disposal than Barnabas might ever be able to summon.
It was enough to make him feel just the tiniest bit annoyed for a moment before he shook his head good-naturedly and joined the fight.
If she were stronger, he would have to become that much better in his form to match her. He could already tell that their sparring was going to get a lot more painful, and he found himself mentally repeating Bethany Anne’s adage with a smile: Pain is an excellent teacher.
Shinigami, unaware of his thoughts, had taken a page out of his playbook from last time and was ripping the limbs off some robots and using them to beat the others into the ground and push them into the pools of water. They weren’t made to swim, and they sank quickly below the surface.
On the off chance that their enemy was in those pools, Barnabas started doing the same thing. Now that the circuits were exposed they were sparking like crazy, and he could only hope that the Jotuns were electrocuted to the point that they could not concentrate—although from what he could see, they must have liquid sensors that cut the power to their suits as soon as they were submerged.
Gar, meanwhile, seemed to have appointed himself Jeltor’s personal bodyguard, although Jeltor had put a thin sheet of nearly-transparent armor over the front of his tank and was taking well-aimed shots at the robots that were still standing.
Battle always seemed to Barnabas to take both infinite time and yet pass in the blink of an eye. For what seemed like an eternity, the world was full of bullets firing and ricocheting, metal screaming, Shinigami yelling, and the close-quarters combat of mechanical warriors against biological ones. And then, just as suddenly, it was over, and the remnants of the robots were twitching on the ground before them.
Then Barnabas noticed that the water level was rising.
The smart thing to do, of course, would be to leave the bunker. But that would mean leaving his quarry, too, and he was not about to do that.
“Wait here!” he yelled to the others, and he took off into the bunker at a dead sprint. The pounding of footsteps behind him told him that no one had listened. “I said, wait there! Or, actually, leave!”
“Oh, hell no!” Gar called, a strange colloquialism coming from a Luvendi’s mouth. “We’re not going to let you have all the— Holy shitballs!”
Floodlights went on in the next chamber, where easily three times the number of robotic warriors faced them. The person controlling them must have learned their lesson because these did not wait. In unison, they raised their arms—and fired.
Chapter Twenty-Six
This time, Barnabas didn’t have to yell anything. He heard the others throw themselves down, and the next moment an exceedingly strong hand grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him back through the doorway.
“Ow! Bones!”
“Sorry,” Shinigami said unrepentantly, hauling him upright like a rag doll. “I figured your ankle would heal fine as long as you were, you know, still alive.”
“Yes.” Barnabas hopped on the other foot while the bones knit themselves back together. “Thank you. I take your point.”
Bullets were still whizzing through the doorway in large numbers, and the water was now up to their ankles and pouring into the room beyond.
“Does anyone have a plan?” Gar asked pragmatically.
Shinigami ducked into the doorway for a moment and then came back. There was an impact point where something had gotten her in the head, but she didn’t seem to have noticed.
“I think the person controlling it all is at the back of that room,” she said. “I guess those robots aren’t going to run out of bullets for a while. He’s going to try to drive us out of here with water and kill us with traps whether we do or don’t fight.”
“Well, then,” Barnabas said, “looks like he’s only given us one option, hasn’t he? Try to kill him to stop all o
f this.”
The rest of them nodded.
“Any particular ideas on that front?” Shinigami asked Barnabas. “I’m not quite as squishy as you are, but I don’t think I can take that many bullets.”
Barnabas considered. “Jeltor, tell me what you can about those things…and be quick about it since this water is rising fast.”
Kantar lowered herself from the rafters carefully and began to work her way down the back wall.
She had feared the robots at first, but Biset was a fool. He was too afraid to let them function as they had been intended to, so he had put them entirely on manual control. He didn’t trust them to utilize their auto-targeting or fire their guns only as the algorithms suggested.
It was the sign, in her opinion, of a weak leader. Biset only wanted to trust those things he understood instead of trusting that his orders had been carried out.
And he did not have the capacity, as the Jotun admirals had, to control that many different bodies, each with different objectives, all at once. There was a reason there were only two or three admirals per generation. It was a rare individual who could manage all of that without going mad.
So much the better, as far as she was concerned. With the robots taken off auto-targeting and Biset wholly concerned with Barnabas’ strike team, Kantar had a clear shot at Biset. If Huword had deserved to die, Biset deserved something far, far worse.
She only regretted that she couldn’t think of a worse death to give him, but when it came to things like this, it was better to take the shot and kill him, thus making sure he could never hurt anyone else, than to try to draw out his pain and take the chance of him surviving.
Much better.
She watched as the water began to rise, and then, as Barnabas and his team charged out of the doorway toward the robots, a thought came to her.
She didn’t have to kill Biset. Not yet.
