by Paul Barrett
If they haven’t already, the voice told him. Despite the ease of entrance, he half expected to find his craft covered with Council soldiers. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Hawk there, waiting to gloat over his victory. I’ll kill him before I give him that pleasure.
He arrived at his craft and stopped. He saw no one, soldier or otherwise, near the vessel. As he exited the car, he spotted something unbelievable. So unbelievable that he shut his eyes for a moment—certain his anger was making him hallucinate—and then reopened them.
It was no hallucination. There, sitting a hundred meters away, was Ship in all her glory. They had tried to disguise her with a hideous paint job, but Moran knew her modified lines too well. Her sleek, long wedge shape sang to him, rendering useless any attempts at camouflage.
He stared at her, unable to believe his good fortune. He scanned the area, using his cybernetic eye to view the port in all spectrums, searching for invisible foes or an unseen trap. His meticulous scrutiny revealed nothing. He double-checked Ship herself, probing for any telltale signs she was an elaborate illusion concocted by Gerard. He saw nothing to indicate her as anything other than the vessel he lived aboard for so many years.
Something still rang false. It was too coincidental. The odds of Hawk being instructed to park so close to Moran’s ship were astronomically low.
But not impossible. Moran thought. Hawk had always liked to dock Ship in private fields when possible, and there were only two such fields in the city. This one accommodated no more than thirty ships. So while highly unlikely, it certainly was not out of the realm of acceptable chance.
Moran stood there for at least two minutes, frozen by indecision. The prize he had sought for so long sat within his grasp. He feared that as soon as he went to take it, it would be tauntingly yanked away from him. He would be better off to board his craft, fly away, and try again. He was the one who set traps; he didn’t fall into them.
Any trap Hawk has set, I can easily avoid. There is no trap. He had no way to know this was my ship. It looks like a dozen others out here. He landed Ship here without even realizing what he was doing. I don’t believe in Fate, but maybe it’s there and has decided to be kind to me for once. After all, hadn’t he managed to avoid any pursuit arriving here? One’s luck could only be bad so long.
It isn’t right, the machine said. Hawk did it deliberately. Leave now.
The sound of distant sirens broke into his thoughts. That decided it. His time was running out. Gerard had dispatched the Council to hunt him down. They would have the Port Authority pinpoint his vessel, and they would surround him. It was now or never. Trap or no trap, he was not going to leave the planet without Ship. He moved.
Laura walked into the control room followed by Wolf and Salakon. The executive’s hands had been tied with cable. Even though defeat lined his wrinkled face, Salakon held a more confident set to his shoulders. Hawk knew that would disappear soon enough.
Laura, despite the bruises on her body and redness in her swollen eyes, looked as if an enormous weight had been removed from her chest. She smiled.
“I’m glad to see you’re in a better mood,” Ashron said.
“Sorry to be so rude earlier,” she replied. “Imminent death can do that to you.”
“So the antidote worked?” Hawk said.
“Yes.”
“What about the other board members?” Hawk asked. “Did you give them some?”
“No, they don’t need it,” Laura told him.
“I thought you infected two of them.”
“What, by spitting at them? It’s not transferred like that. They’ll be fine.”
“You’re very cruel,” Hawk said, smiling.
“Only when I’m forced to be,” Laura told him, face grim. “What’s going on?”
“Ship and I have gone to plan B,” Hawk told her. “Moran is at the spaceport, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s about to try and board Ship.”
“What?” Laura said. “Have you sent Council Marines after him?”
“We’ve sent one squad, but I don’t think they’ll get there in time.”
“Then why are we still here?” She asked.
“Because Plan B relies entirely on Sara. It was a last resort, and I hoped it wouldn’t get this far. I think Moran’s in for a big surprise.”
“Oh?” She looked around the control room. “Where’s Trey?”
Trey woke up to find himself lying on a pallet in Hawk’s whirlpool. It had been drained, and he saw the five kenquala huddled in a clear plastic bucket sitting on the small deck around the pool.
Confused, he sat up and shook his head, trying to clear the fuzziness floating in his brain. He remembered after Ship’s doors locking he had gone to his bed, and Gerard gave him something for the pain in his arm. He had fallen asleep in bed. So how did he get here? And where was everybody else? “Ship?”
“Good afternoon, Trey,” Ship said. “How are you feeling?”
“What do you mean, ‘how am I feeling’?” he asked, suddenly angry. “I’m confused. Why am I in here? And where’s everybody else?”
“The entire crew is gone; Laura is safe, and Unicybertronic’s plan to overthrow the Council has been thwarted. However, it will be best if you…” she broke off.
“Ship?” Trey said, anger disappearing as fear took over. “Ship, what’s wrong?”
Moran walked closer to Ship, taking in her awe-inspiring presence. Trapped somewhere inside this cold metal body was Sara. His Sara. Five years she had been trapped, left alone without him to comfort her. For five years she had belonged to Hawk. Now she was in his grasp, and they would be together again. He would save her, and she would be eternally grateful. There were still experiments to be performed, but it could be done. He knew that for certain. He would free her; her life with Hawk and the Knights would be a thing of the past.
He stopped short, still wary of a trick, like a mouse that sees the cheese and is aware the metal bar may be waiting to snap down. He also knew Ship herself had defenses to stop intruders from getting too close. Those didn’t worry him.
“Ship,” he said aloud, wondering if she would even bother to answer.
“Yes, Moran,” the loudspeakers piped, and Moran stopped breathing for a second. It was her. He had barely been able to believe it when he heard her voice on the holovids. To listen to it now was the closest to heaven Moran knew he would ever reach.
“Sara,” he said, his voice full of anguish. I’m so sorry, he thought, but could not bring himself to say. “Let me on.”
“I don’t think so,” she said flatly.
His face flushed with anger. “Let me on willingly, or I’ll come on by force,” he said.
She said nothing, her silence a stinging rejection.
“Very well,” Moran said. “Security shutdown beta twenty-seven, code word knight errant.”
He could almost sense the struggle as Sara tried to run counter to the programming he had instilled in her back when she was only a cluster of circuits surrounded by a metal shell. Programming none of the other Knights knew about. Hawk and the Council weren’t the only ones with secrets.
“Security shutdown beta twenty-seven complete,” Ship said, her voice a mixture of resignation and defeat. Moran didn’t like hearing that voice. He had no wish to hurt Sara. She had brought it on herself. Again.
He strode under the Ship, looked up at the hull bottom, and repeated words he hadn’t said in over five years.
“Lower the lift, Ship.”
“Ship?” Trey said again, voice trembling with fright and concern. Ship was capable of carrying on multiple conversations, doing thousands of calculations at once. Something had gone wrong if she just quit speaking.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong, he thought. Maybe they told her to quit talking to me. I’m being punished for something I’ve done.
“That’s stupid,” he told himself. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The word “wrong” echoed in the room. He had done
something wrong. Something bad. Dark images he had managed to hide from himself came back in the chamber’s dim solitude. Pictures of a boy kneeling beside his parents, crying as they screamed in pain at the wounds they had taken. In between the screams they begged him to end their suffering. The boy couldn’t do it. He loved them too much. He held a pillow against his ears, hoping to drown out their pleas. It didn’t work.
Finally, because he loved them so much, he took the pillow from his ears. Soon, their pain was over. His was only beginning.
Like a breached hull spewing oxygen, other memories poured forth. Trey saw that same boy hiding as other, bigger boys ranged through the streets, looting the bodies of the dead and dying. That boy with a gore-coated knife in his hand, fighting to survive, doing what was necessary, even if it meant—
A rush of claustrophobia engulfed Trey. He scuttled out of the whirlpool and charged toward the door, desperate to be out of this tiny room. He knew the door would be locked. They had found out the boy’s secrets—even though the boy himself had only now remembered them—and they were going to take him someplace where they put boys who did terrible things.
The door flew open at his push. Trey fell into Hawk’s cabin, jarring his shoulder as he twisted to avoid landing on his missing arm. Tears poured as pain and guilt racked through him. They didn’t know. They hadn’t locked him up. He sat up and moved his jammed shoulder to make sure it was okay. He winced at the pain.
“Ship,” he said again, hoping she would answer. She didn’t.
Why had everyone abandoned him?
“Stop it,” he wiped at his eyes as darkness threatened to overwhelm him. “They haven’t abandoned you. They went to save Laura. Ship said so. Everything is all right.”
It sounded good, even if it didn’t explain why Ship had stopped talking. It occurred to Trey that perhaps she had malfunctioned. Even though Ship had the soul of a human, she still had the workings of a machine. Machines broke down occasionally. It was a fact of life, just like it was a fact of life that kids became orphans and sometimes had to kill other kids.
“Stop it!” he said again. “You’re a Knight now. You have to act like one.”
He still wore his uniform and touched it to reassure himself. He had to do something, if for no other reason than to keep his panic at bay. He decided to go to the bridge. If there were a malfunction, it would show up on one of the monitors. He wouldn’t be able to fix it, but knowing what was wrong would make it less frightening.
Right now, he desperately needed to be less frightened.
Moran walked up the ramp, his eyes drinking in Ship like water. Despite some minor changes, she was still Ship. Five years had diminished none of his memory, and he headed for the elevator with the confidence of a man who has simply been away for the morning.
Trey stepped onto the bridge and looked at the monitors. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. That was perhaps the most frightening thing of all.
“Ship, talk to me,” he pled, placing his hands on the console.
“I’m right here, Trey,” she said.
Relief washed over him at the sound of that voice. His fear drained away. “Thank you.”
“Trey, there’s an intruder on board. You need to hide until I can—”
“Too late,” a voice said from behind him. Trey turned and saw Moran in person for the first time. As Moran raised his gun, Trey started to scream.
He heard Ship say something he didn’t understand and he suddenly went blind as a bright blue flash went off from somewhere behind his eyes. A strange sensation of separation whispered through his body, like a layer of sunburned dead skin being peeled away at once.
The sensation passed, leaving only a peaceful feeling of floating. The blue flash dissolved and he saw his parents. They smiled at him and covered him with love and told him he had done the right thing.
Then everything turned to darkness and Trey remembered nothing more.
Moran stepped onto the bridge to find Ship was not empty. A small brown-haired boy, his arm missing at the elbow, stood listening to Ship.
“Trey, there’s an intruder on board,” she was telling him. Moran briefly wondered who else might have gotten on board, then realized she was referring to him. She was instructing the boy to hide.
“Too late,” Moran interrupted her, again feeling rage build up. He was not an intruder. If anyone was an intruder, it was this child. This child who was dressed in the Knights’ uniform. Moran almost laughed out loud. Hawk had fallen so low that he was allowing children to dress like Knights.
Low he may be, but he beat you, the machine said.
He did not beat me. I’m on Ship, and he isn’t.
Hawk obviously cared nothing about the boy’s welfare, since he had been careless enough to leave him on board. Well, a child that unloved shouldn’t have to suffer. Moran raised his gun, and the boy screamed.
For a second, gibberish boiled from Ship’s speaker. Moran saw a blue spark leap between Ship’s console and the boy; the boy stopped screaming. Before Moran could even begin to pull the trigger, the boy dropped to the floor like he had been struck between the eyes.
Confused, Moran walked over and used his foot to push the boy onto his back. The child’s good arm flailed limply, and a dark stain spread around his crotch. The boy’s face and hand had turned bright red. Moran smiled, pleased that he had inspired enough terror to make the boy faint. That was the proper respect.
The thrumming sound continued. Moran glanced up, wondering what it was. He looked back down at the boy—Trey, Ship had called him, and Moran remembered seeing him in the holos—and wondered what to do with him. He couldn’t keep him, since the boy would never work for him. He could sell him, but the thought of someone like Salakon getting hold of the child made Moran’s skin crawl. The boy would be better off dead. Moran didn’t feel like wasting time considering any other options. He had more important things to do. He pointed his gun at the boy’s head. At least he would make it quick.
“Moran,” a voice said behind him. Startled, Moran turned and raised his gun. When he saw who had called him, the gun fell from his hand and clattered against the deck.
Sara stood before him, as beautiful as he remembered. Her green eyes sparkled like bright emeralds as she smiled her dazzling smile. “Aren’t you a little old to be playing with children?” she asked, her voice silky and soft as always.
“Sara,” he murmured, dazzled by her radiance. “How?”
“Your desire has made me whole,” she said. “I am as you want me.”
She held up her right arm, and Moran saw that it was cybernetic, an exact duplicate of his. She wore no clothing. As Moran looked closer, he saw that copper filaments and traces completely covered her pale skin. Microcircuitry ran just below the skin’s surface, and the green of her eyes was the green of crystal power chips. Her long brown hair flowed to her shoulders and crackled with tiny arcs of electricity. A small netjack was set in her temple. “I am flesh and computer, the perfect blend of human and machine.”
“You are beautiful,” Moran said, moving closer.
She walked across the bridge, her long, filament-covered legs moving gracefully until she stood before the main control panel. “I have evolved to a greater being, just as you desire to do,” she said, spreading her arms before him. “I am more than man and more than machine. Do you wish this?”
“More than anything,” Moran said, crossing the room. “You don’t hate me?”
“For what?” she asked, her voice tinkling. “For making it so I could be taken to a higher form of existence. For freeing me from the confines of my human form? I am immortal, and you are the reason. How could I hate you for that?”
She held out her arms as he moved forward. He stepped into her embrace and started as a jolt of pure energy rocketed through his body. He felt every nerve tingle to life with pleasure.
“Is this what you wish?” she whispered into his ear.
“Yes,” he whispered back, barely able
to talk from the almost painful pleasures coursing through him.
“Sit here,” she motioned to the captain’s chair.
Reluctant to part from her, he nonetheless moved to the chair. This was where he belonged. As he sat down, power that had nothing to do with electricity coursed through him. This is where he deserved to sit. Standing at his side was the woman he deserved to have. Ship was his; it was just a short step to rule the rest.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Sara told him. “I’ve been waiting a long time for someone like you. Hawk doesn’t understand what I’ve become. Alone, I don’t have the power to be what I should be, what I long to be. Hawk has no ambition outside his own narrow view of things. With him, I can go nowhere, but with you at my side, I can succeed in my desire.”
“What is that?” Moran asked.
“To take the next step up the ladder. To become a goddess and rule over the humans who have controlled me for so long. Join me, and you can be a god.”
God. Moran liked the sound of that. “You’ve changed,” he told Sara, remembering the idealistic crusader she had been.
“I have,” she told him. “I’ve had my eyes opened and seen all that is wrong with the universe. I have seen how frail and useless other beings can be without something to guide them. Together we can ascend to the next plane and lead them all. They will worship us as their overlords. Join me, and together we will rule over all man and machines.”
“Yes,” Moran said. Five years had given Sara wisdom, and she finally saw Hawk for what Moran had known him to be all along: a little cog in the vast mechanism of the universe. He would never be anything more than what he already was.
“Join me,” Sara said. She placed her finger in the jack that sat on the arm of the Captain’s chair. Pointing to the stud on her temple, she leaned over and kissed Moran.
