CHAPTER 32
Talinn had never seen anyone bleed from their eyes before.
Her skin attempted to slough off her bones every time she caught a glimpse of it, the wrongness making every individual nerve shriek in protest. Yet her gaze constantly tracked back to it, as though expecting to see something else. Bloodshot eyes, those were normal enough. But not when the bloodshot was so shot with blood it leaked out of the corners, tracing the contours of nose and cheeks. And it was her own face, or near enough, which made it infinitely worse.
Otie carried two AI programs in her head, both larger than the average created intelligence, and she still put one foot in front of the other.
She didn’t do much else—walk, and bleed from the eyes—but that she could do either seemed a testament to the clone program. It would be an impressive note on a commendation report.
Bee couldn’t scold her, or keep her on task, so Talinn tried to yank her own thoughts onto some semblance of a track as she guided an older version of herself to a ship that might or might not work. Bee was still there, still reachable, but more still than she’d ever been, coiled tight, doing her level best not to upset what modicum of equilibrium kept Otie functioning.
Sammer had woken to find his Lei newly doubled with the splintered Lei. While he’d promptly lost consciousness again, Jeena hadn’t panicked and let him be for nearly an hour before forcing him awake. He and the combined Leis were going to do their best to interrupt the remote interference in the installation, while triple-Bee attempted to make a small ship fly, finagle it to the defense array without being vaporized, and then somehow interrupt the functioning of a massive, armada-destroying simple artificial intelligence that had gone utterly bonzo.
They had EMP drones and small explosives, but Talinn would have preferred a tank. A space tank. A fleet of space tanks. She had . . . not that. A broken version of her own self, and a more generous complement of AI programming than potentially anyone in history.
Talinn swallowed back the hysterical laughter and told herself the lesions on her brain were affecting her usually professional and sober mien, which made the wholly inappropriate laugh bubble right back up again.
She didn’t have to hear words to know her Bee, and the doubled Bees, and probably every B-series ever commissioned in a Command server were disapproving of her reactions at that moment. But given they were almost certainly going to die, having struck exactly zero blows on either IDC or UCF Command, it didn’t matter. Maybe some measure of her own insanity would survive, floating on a bonzo defense array, and some day it would infect another Talinn and Bee, and they would be far, far more successful.
The likelihood of such a thing was infinitesimal, but so was the likelihood that she’d have ever been in this situation. She was an Eight, crafted and trained and aimed, now wildly off course and unsure how to get back on course. Or what the course was. Or in what dimension. Her thoughts veered all over the place, and she couldn’t blame it on aftereffects of Jeena’s drug or Bee’s holding silence or anything but her own neutron star’s worth of pressure, beating against her skull, sure she was making the wrong decision and completely unhelpful as to what the right decision might be.
She ran through the plan again, as it was the only thing she had control over in the moment.
Talinn would get Otie and her cargo safely to the ship.
Talinn would pilot the ship, the contained load-in AIs hopefully running beneath the defense array’s notice. In a normal universe, a small passenger ship, unarmed and un-AI’d, should pass under the threat threshold.
Nothing she could do about it now if that weren’t the case.
Once close enough, Otie would put her triple layer of AIs into the ship, and they would send packets in pulses to interrupt the malfunctioning defense array. Talinn would seed their small EMP drones and look for openings in the defense arrays.
Back at the installation, newly conscious and double-AI’d Sammer would be doing his best to punch through the interference while the others ran distractions and seeded enough explosives and more EMPs to give a solid appearance that the base could defend itself.
From an incoming ship, possible. From a defense array? Laughable.
And something else she could neither control nor affect, so Talinn put it out of her mind as well. She focused on the next five or so steps, then ran through the plan again.
Plan, such as it was. A frantic stab in the dark void of space and hope, against an enemy they couldn’t entirely grasp. Was this how civilians thought of Eights? Not quite human, not entirely other, but beyond understanding. Exaggerated monsters used to scare them into behaving?
She longed for Bee’s input, but instead put one step in front of the other, holding tight to some other version of herself from the other side of the war.
They hadn’t talked nearly enough about how IDC and UCF operated—were there differences enough to matter? She had a window into the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses and hadn’t probed. If she hadn’t already abandoned her post and her side, she’d feel downright treasonous about it.
They rounded toward the bay with the ships, and Talinn pulled Otie to a halt. Fastened her helmet—getting another too-long look at the vibrant red trailing from her eyes—then tapped the top of the thick surface and put on her own. Readings indicated the bay was still sealed and full atmosphere, but their sensors had been lying about nearly everything, and the last thing she intended to do was float off into vacuum without even attempting their idiot plan.
She had to help Otie lift first one leg, then the other over the small lip of the airlock that separated the normal round hall from the bay. Did all the wheel components that opened to the outside of the asteroid have their own airlock? She should have explored more.
There was a lot Talinn should have done more of, and that also went in the “not right now” bin of her mind. She steadied Otie against the wall, turned around and closed the end of the airlock they’d come through. Once it chimed to indicate an acceptable seal, she tromped to the other side and held up Otie’s hand, specifically the one with the wristlet, and waited for a panel to slide open.
“Exploring wouldn’t have done much good without one of those,” Talinn muttered, mostly to make herself feel better against the “should have dones” leaking out of their box. The panel beeped agreeably, indicated all was well on the other side of its door, and she allowed a full three-second pause before opening the other side of the airlock.
The bay appeared in order. The wall that opened to the great velvet black of space was closed, all nine of the small ships were in neat lines, and there was no suspicious movement around any of the equipment. The panel indicated everything was breathable and good, but all the same she activated her magnetic boots, tethered Otie to her so she wouldn’t have to help the woman move about in her own boots, and kept them both helmeted. For extra measure, she turned and fastened a manual bolt across the airlock. Magnets would allow anyone on the other side to unbolt it, if escape into space somehow became a slightly less risky endeavor than staying in place, but it had no programmable release. Safer given their current reality.
“Second off the line and straight on till contact.” It didn’t make her feel better to make little comments no one could respond to, but turned out not doing that felt even worse, nerves jangling and stomach fluids fluiding, so little comments it was.
She angled them toward the ship they’d been meant to take, and then locked her boots firmly to the flooring when a flicker of motion above indicated everything was about to get a lot worse, a lot faster than expected.
“Don’t know if you can hear, Sammer.” Comms had remained spotty, static hitting tones that had made at least two of them keel over and empty anything they’d ever thought of eating out of their bodies. “No alarms or alerts, but the wall is for sure unlocking. Least I don’t have to worry it won’t leave room for takeoff.”
Bright sides. She could totally focus on bright sides. “Airlock is closed, and fastened, so you all should be good to keep on breathing.”
In less bright-side territory, she had no idea how fast the big wall would open—if it were anything like the doors in the installation, she didn’t have much time. The idea of dragging Otie’s seminonresponsive body while she moved one leg at a time all the way to the end of the row did not appeal, so she made an immediate turn to the closest of the ships.
They were all vaguely the same style and size, though there was enough variety she’d figured they’d been taken from various corners of the settled systems. Each would hold no more than six people, had basic navigational systems and propulsion, and very little in the way of defensive capabilities. Offensive capabilities included ramming the entirety of the ship into something critical and hoping the explosion paid off. For no reason whatsoever, she picked the nearest one on the left rather than the right.
Then she ran.
As much as she could run, pulling the clomping Otie along with her, and ensuring one of her boots remained in contact with the floor at all times. It involved a very wide-legged pace, and she’d be thankful if there was a later for her hips to be sore at her about it.
Her chosen ship was rounder than the others near it, and like the rest, had a landing ramp extending from its bolted-in position on the bay floor to the sealed door on its side. As soon as her feet locked to the ramp, Talinn hauled Otie around and again pointed her arm at the door. Nothing happened—
Rephrase. Sound intensified around her from the echo of her boots to the roaring of air fleeing the compartment. The wall had parted enough for the atmosphere to be affected, so that set her heart to hammering even though they were currently secured. Otie made an unintelligible noise, not quite words, but the tone disapproving.
“I’m not excited about our invisible enemy trying to dump us into vacuum either, other me, but if you could get this to open . . .” She waved Otie’s hand with each of the last words, straining to get close enough to whatever sensor existed to secure the ship, and then she made a wordless noise of her own.
Caytil had been leading her to one of these ships not that long ago, and neither of them had had wristlets. Therefore the ship doors weren’t on the same wristlet-secured system, and therefore . . . carefully, tipping only one boot enough to break contact, then keeping her steps closer and tugging on Otie’s leash, she approached the door until her helmet nearly grazed the surface.
Nothing happened, ship wise. Bay wise, the roaring grew, and at least a few things clanged.
Evidence of bad discipline for Deep End’s denizens—everything should have been well secured. Even empty—unadapted—humans knew that, in a compartment that opened regularly into space.
She ran back over the plan. There’d been nothing specific about how to load the ship, only what to do once she was in.
Probably why they’d specified which one she should take.
But again, only recently Caytil and Talinn had been hurtling toward this very room, neither with any particular ship assignment nor any guarantee they’d remember it if they were given one. Voice commands didn’t make sense for the same reason, and the comms had already been glitching, they couldn’t have been relying on a signal sent from the information room or any other part of the installation.
“Open!” Talinn grated through her clenched jaw, and with a surfeit of irritation and a deficit of care, she pried a boot from the ramp and kicked the door as hard as she could from her angle.
And it opened. “Violence is the answer,” she said, and shoved Otie ahead of her. She glanced back at the ramp, decided it would retract as it was supposed to when the ship revved online, or she’d tear it from the floor on the way, and kicked the wall for the door to close before the ship’s contained air got any bright ideas about running off with the bay’s atmosphere.
“You down,” she continued, shoving Otie into the closest seat and fastening her with the cross belt. The other woman listed to the side, and Talinn hesitated, then engaged Otie’s boots so her feet would stay sealed to the deck of the ship and not kick around in maneuvering. Of course if they really got into the shit, it was likely the other woman would dislocate her legs from her hips entirely, but that was more recoverable. Probably.
At this point probably was more than good enough. Talinn gave the ship a once over as she slid into the pilot’s chair. Compartments along the sides and top were marked for what system they gave access to—power, propulsion, and life support—and the control panel had clearly marked areas for comms, navigation, sensors, and a relay port. Several small windows in thick, clear plasteel studded open spaces on the floor, walls, and ceiling, which would make navigation possible, if tricksy, when the sensors went wonky.
“Easy as you pleasey,” Talinn said to no one at all, and hoped knowing where everything was meant she wouldn’t have to find it in an emergency. Preventative anti-jinxing, which Bee would definitely say wasn’t a thing, but then Bee couldn’t talk to her right now, so she repeated it aloud like a wish and ran her fingers over the ignition sequence.
Two warning lights flashed—a quick review indicated they were for the dropping pressure in the bay surrounding them and the attached ramp remaining attached—and she told the ship to ignore and launch.
The little construct shuddered around them, engines engaging, then a small vibration grew to a large series of shakes that allowed Talinn to count her individual teeth. She didn’t bother to check the sensors, figuring they’d be as likely to lie to her as be helpful, and decided it was kicking free of the ramp. Or the floor of the bay itself. A little light damage between friends.
“At the end of this we’ll be dead or conquering heroes, so I’m guessing there won’t be a bill,” she announced cheerfully to the cabin, her voice shaking only due to the movement of the ship. For good measure, she brought the screen online. The display used external cameras same as her and Bee’s tank had, but she knew where the opening of the bay was, and had a general course in her head. Everything else would come together as she used the windows, trigonometry, and whatever muddled story showed up in front of her to plot a reasonable course through possible disinformation.
It wouldn’t particularly help them to navigate around any missiles or mines, the odds of her catching those with her unassisted eye while rotating through space unimaginably impossibly low, but at the least it allowed her alternatives in approach. Besides, if the array decided to vaporize her, there wouldn’t be much of anything to dodge, whether she could see it coming or no.
The ship broke free of the bay floor and hurtled toward the opening into space.
Talinn whooped, because it might be her last chance to do so, and her older self made noises she couldn’t discern meaning into. Bee was silent. They were all committed to stalking a massive, wildly out-of-spec defense array in the depths of a conflict riven system.
What could possibly go wrong.