by S. E. Smith
“Where?”
A long snake pushed the grill off the vent and dropped down to the floor. She coiled up and lifted her head, regarding Ale. I will sssshow you.
Ale held out her leg. “Climb aboard and let’s go get our guy.”
That calls for a battle song.
And “This Is Me” began to play inside her head. At least, Ale hoped it was just inside her head. This was a battle and not a parade…
For the first time ever, Rap missed the music the other AIs like to play. There was silence in the room, except for the hiss of the cutting torch, and a deeper silence inside his head.
It was his first, and possibly last, battle as a human and not a machine. While there were many downsides to fighting this way, he realized he felt more alive than he’d ever been. The scents and sounds were sharper, and he felt as if he reacted more swiftly—though logic told him this could not be.
“When—if—I die here, make sure you get back to the ship,” he said aloud. The words seemed to bounce around the room.
Their virus was winning. Chaos was spreading through the system and around the planet. It affected systems in the buildings, but also in the orbiting ships. But there were still many obstacles between him and the ship. And he would not leave without Ale.
The words felt tight in his throat, even though the only females around were unconscious, but he needed to say them. “If Ale makes it, tell her—” his throat closed again, though there were more words in his heart. He could not say these words out loud. She’d been a good friend, a good warrior, an efficient robot—
I don’t think she’d want to hear that last part.
Rap considered this and decided Nelson was correct. The words were not…romantic. His eye twitched at the word, but it was what she deserved. He did not know what she’d suffered here, what she’d fled, but he knew what he’d left behind. It was nothing good.
The hissing stopped behind them, and the robots began to assail the hole they’d cut.
I’ll tell her you wish you could have held her and kissed her again.
That was better. But it was missing something. “Tell her that I…loved her…”
Apparently all you needed was to lose all hope to find your romantic voice.
The noise outside rose sharply. There must have been humans with the robots because they cried out. There was the sound of weapons fire being exchanged.
And the music started…
Apparently, Ale’s cybernetic skin had some abilities she hadn’t known about. She’d wished she could hide and it…cloaked. It even cloaked Snake. It would have been nice to know that before. She ran in the direction Snake indicated, mostly dodging any humanoids she encountered because she didn’t have time to shoot everyone. She rounded a corner and they were there.
The mass of robots and humans had finished cutting a hole in the door and the humans were now directing the robots to knock out the red-hot circle of metal. They did not care that this caused the robots damage. Or that the robots were feeling the effects of the virus. The humans screamed and yelled at them. Since she now had time, she stunned them. Then she considered the robots.
I can do thisss part…
Snake slithered down her body and approached the first robot.
She’s fast.
Jett sounded admiring and a bit jealous.
I am not jealous.
Ale ignored this and moved in to help. Each robot Snake attacked started to have coordination problems. None of the still semifunctioning robots appeared to notice, so Ale ran up and turned them off. It helped to know where this was possible, and then when the last robot knocked the circle of metal out, she took him out, too.
Snake shot through the hole calling for Rap and Jett started a victory song.
“We’re not in the clear yet,” Ale pointed out following Snake through, then stopping as shyness swept over her.
Rap stared at her.
She stared at him.
“You’re…”
“Yes. So are you.”
Rap took a half step toward her and stopped, his hands curled into fists at his side.
I am having difficulty in finding the right song for this level of dysfunction, sweetie.
“We should leave,” Ale suggested.
Rap blinked, swallowed, and then nodded. “Yes…we should leave.”
Chapter 4
Yes, There is Worse Than Pearshaped
“ The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” Michael Porter
“What is better is to not get into a situation where you need a strategy.” Nelson
I am, of course, reluctant to intrude on, um, whatever this is, but this would be an optimal time to, um, escape.
Rap swallowed hard, his hands fisting at his sides. Nelson was correct. They still had to find their way back to the ship and fly home. Home. Now he knew why he wanted to be free, what he wanted. But they were not safe or clear yet. He was motivated to achieve both.
Rap leaped the consoles, landing lightly in front of Ale. “I will take point.”
Ale’s face was tense. Like him, she had no illusions they were anything close to being in the clear. She hesitated, then nodded.
Rap might have felt regret she did not kiss him again, even though logically he knew there was no time for that. It had been quiet in the corridor but sound began to ramp up again.
“I’ve got your six,” she said, her lips trembling into an almost smile at this very Earth phrase.
And we will cover the in between, but you need to move!
Rap turned, not understanding the song that began to play inside his head. Why would his mother care if he were out? In any case, his mother was long gone.
He reached the cooling ring of metal and took a quick look out. The corridor was…
Chaotic is the word you are searching for. It seems we did our job too well. It’s rather ironic.
There were robots swarming the space, fighting each other, fighting humans, pounding on the walls, trying to climb them.
The space will filled with tracers of fire in blue and red and gold and green. It was not a surprise the humans were losing. Even with the virus in play, they could not keep up the return fire.
“The vents?” he asked aloud.
There is not ssssufficient sssspace for rapid transsssit.
“What about that?” Ale pointed at the fallen circle of metal. “Can we use that to deflect fire?”
Two would be better, but one is all they had.
“We have cloaking,” Ale mentioned, as Rap bent over and hefted the metal circle, “but they aren’t aiming.”
“Perhaps we have greater shielding,” Rap suggested. “I wonder how—” As if called by the thought, his cybernetic shielding thickened. Will it be enough, he wondered.
Not if you take sustained, multiple impacts.
He could count on Nelson to be an optimist.
“Snake, wrap yourself around my waist, but keep my arms—”
Clear. Like I do not know thissss….
His eyes met Ale’s. There was only one way to do this. She nodded as if she read—or shared his thought.
“Fast,” she said.
A map to their ship appeared inside his head. Nelson…
I am heading to the ship to, er, light the fires and kick the tires.
Rap didn’t take the time to ask what this meant. He did have time to think that it had been good to serve with Nelson. Rap heard a faint ditto just before he plunged into the maelstrom.
Ale could not have followed Rap through the smoke and tracer fire if not for Jett. Ale did not know how the AI did it, but the direction was always there inside her head.
Turn left. Straight. Now right. Dodge. Get down.
She took hits. Even with enhanced shielding there was pain. And behind the pain her mother taunted and wailed and cried and begged and screamed.
Keep your promise.
Ale didn’t bother to argue with her. She lacked the mental bandwidth, nor cou
ld she afford the distraction. She did notice that Jett upped the music volume, and changed the song choice to a tune about not stopping. Since this was good advice, Ale didn’t.
Ahead of her, Rap reached the hangar bay where their ships were. He still had hope they could return with both ships intact and functioning. Forgiveness was easier CabeX had said, than permission, and more likely to occur if they brought a peace offering.
He halted in the open doorway as she ran up beside him. He tossed the scorched and pitted, metal circle to the side. It would not help them here.
The hangar bay was not just filled with battling robots, there was also the sight and sound of ships attempting to take off and failing. Instead they banged against the roof of the bay and into each other. And if this were not enough, they also fired on each other.
Wait here, pleasssse….
Ale was startled by the sound of Snake’s voice inside her head. It slithered down Rap’s body and shot into the bay.
“I did not know she could move so quickly,” Ale said, her voice pitched to be heard above the din.
“Step to the side,” Rap ordered, his expression unhappy. She sheltered behind him, watching their backs while he watched the bay.
“She is your friend,” Ale told him. “Friends help…friends.” They don’t try to hurt them or wrest unfair promises out of them, she added to herself.
You betray me, your mother!
Now Ale took a moment to answer her mother. It seemed she had time now. You betrayed all of us. You are not my mother. You are unworthy to be Teimanein. As the last—her mind flinched at this thought—of my people, I cast you out. You are rejected of our blood and are left without power.
She did not know how she knew this, or that it mattered to a ghost, a mind-control worm inside her head. She did it to the memory. It writhed and wailed then faded to—nothing.
And was replaced by a song about girls having fun. It would have been a good choice, if the rabble of sound outside the hangar, coming from both directions of the corridor where they crouched, did not suddenly begin to build.
Rap glanced back, his gaze meeting Ale’s worried one. If he had to guess—which he did—he’d say some humans had rallied. Someone with a brain had figured out there were two working ships in the bay and they were trying to get to them, too.
He studied the hangar bay—what he could see through drifting smoke and lines of fire.
“We can’t get in,” he said. He stared at Ale, words clogging his throat. So many words. So little time.
Snake has a plan.
Rap blinked. Snake had a plan?
Be ready.
Suddenly a high-pitched whine overrode all the sound in the bay.
Oh, and I would advise you to take cover for a few minutes.
Ale matched his crouch against the edge of the door, her back still against his as she prepared to defend his six. The feel of her there, of knowing she was with him as she’d always been, he felt strength and resolve flow into his bones and muscles. It flowed into his heart.
“I wonder…” she murmured.
“Wonder what?” he asked.
“What a Snake’s plan looks like?”
The whirring inside the bay increased in intensity and was joined with an increase in weapons fire.
“She’s got both ships firing,” Rap said, almost conversationally.
“Yes but for what purpose—” Ale’s words were cut off as cannon fired erupted out the opening next to them.
Rap threw himself over Ale, attempting to protect her with his body.
The sound continued to grow, enough to make Rap grateful for the auditory protection the cybernetics provided. More shots hit the walls across from the door, punching holes through into the next corridor and the one after that. Rap deployed climbing talons from his suit, hooking them around a vent grate next to them.
“If that keeps up—yeah, there it goes,” Ale said, her voice muffled where Rap pressed her into the wall.
The cannon breached the outer hull and decompression began just as a mob of humanoids came into view—and were sucked out the hole. It tried to drag them out, too, but Rap found new strength to keep them both from getting dragged out. They were battered fiercely, for what felt like a long time. This new howl of oxygen escaping at high velocity could not be wholly mitigated by his cybernetics, but it did stop the pitched battles. When the air began to equalize, Rap rolled them both toward the opening. Perhaps they could reach the ship now.
The Exarch, followed by the Khanri, hovered just inside the opening. The ramp lowered for them. Rap pulled Ale to her feet and they ran for the ramp. It began to rise as they raced up and headed for the bridge.
Rap stopped in the opening, staring, with Ale peering over his shoulder.
Snake sat at the helm in what he could only call a relaxed position, one that said she’d been there before. Part of her was curled around the helm control, with other parts of her wrapped around essential controls.
“You,” he stopped and swallowed, “can fly a ship.”
Of coursssse I can fly a ssship.
“I didn’t know…you never said.” She’d not said many things he recalled.
You never asssked.
Ale arched her brows. “She does have a point.”
No wonder females were so hard to talk to.
May we leave this place now?
Only, Rap thought, if you play the right song. Ale snickered. “What?” he asked.
“Jett told me what you said.” She grinned. “Tell him to play “Day-O.”
“That does not sound like a battle song,” he objected.
“It’s not, but trust me, you’ll like it.”
Love involved trust, so he nodded. “Okay.”
And she was correct. It was entirely inappropriate and also perfect. They did wish to go home.
Chapter 5
Rapping It Up
“If someone truly loves you, they won’t tell you love stories, they will make a love story with you.” Anonymous
“That should be a song. Is it a song? Because it should be a song.” Jett
“My circuits hurt.” Nelson
It was ridiculously easy to leave Q’uy airspace. Ale watched as red licked against towers and smoke plumes rose to mingle with the storm clouds that never seemed to dissipate. The smell of hot metal, weapons fire, and fear still lingered in her nostrils.
Exhaustion—a new human thing to learn—dragged at her limbs as she watched the planet, watched her past, grow smaller and smaller as they accelerated away. She glanced at Rap. He was slumped in the comm position, his cybernetics retracted so that she could see the tracks of weary digging into his face. His eyes were closed, the shadow of a beard darkening the lower part of his face.
She was going home. Home. For the first time in…forever…she could see the future on her horizon, instead of endless clouds. Even her years aboard the Najer, she’d not felt this light, this free.
She was free.
Take a look at you.
What? Ale glanced down. She was slumped in her position, her feet crossed at the ankles, one arm propped on the rest, the other hanging down the side. Imperfectly aligned from top to bottom.
You’re almost chill, sweetie. And our future’s so bright, we might need shades.
Without help, without force, Ale’s mouth curved up. She was too tired to laugh, but she managed a tiny chuckle that wouldn’t wake up Rap.
They didn’t talk much on the trip back, but for whatever reason, this did not bother Rap. There was not talking because one didn’t know what to say, and there was companionable silence. This was the latter. There was ease in knowing that when the time came, he would speak.
They docked with the Najer, turning both ships over to other crewmates to return to the Earth Expedition. There would be explanations to be made, but CabeX would handle that.
For the first time, Rap let himself feel the human he was becoming again. He noticed the lack of tension aboard their
ship. Their home. He did not know if his—if their future—would happen here, but the Najer would always be home. Just as his place of birth was home. He could build on a past that had been so thoroughly laid to rest. For the first time in forever, he found his mind turning to equations and explorations. And to love. To life. To a life with Ale.
Nelson might have mumbled something about it being well past time. Snake hissed contented agreement. Her issues were almost gone now that she was flying again.
“Where’s Ale?” he asked aloud. And Nelson told him.
Ale knew she’d been marking time since they got back. Though she paced around the ready room—the only space large enough for pacing on the Najer—she did not pace without purpose.
She hadn’t spent the whole time since their return thinking about Rap. She’d spent it also pondering her sisters, wondering if any still lived. She’d spent it learning of the power of Teimanein, coming to understand what had happened when she faced down Erume. She realized now that it had unlocked something else inside her mind. Something bigger and more powerful than the mind control Erume had tried to use against her.
Knowledge.
It was as if there’d been a secret cache about her people that had been locked away from her. And this cache spoke to her as if she were their leader now. She was not sure this meant she was the last, or that she was the only one to access the knowledge.
It was a shock to learn that her people could heal—to some extent. Not diseases of the body, but they could ease the wounds to the mind and heart. That this power could kill, this troubled her, but as more and more information came to her she realized this involved choice as well.
Choice. Such a powerful thing. No wonder so many sought to corral and minimize it. To get the oppressed to choose to not choose, or to choose slavery.
