Rutger Tanaka dove behind a stack of crates, rolled, and came up in time to bisect the WBD corpo-sec officer before she could bring her SMG to bear. He heard gunfire, recognized the staccato pffts of Leo’s smart needler, and knew the troop deployment tunnel was under control. His AUI displayed the status of the team—each person’s location and a summary of their bio signs via color gradients. Everyone was in the green. Using Fred’s map and the pale blue dot indicating his location, Tanaka darted for the lift, hoping Kostas’s intel would, once again, prove correct.
He jerked the specialized deck from his belt and pressed it against the access panel. Two seconds and three beeps later, the doors slid open, and bullets started flying. Tanaka rolled to the left, tucking himself around the corner of the plasteel lift housing, and waited for the bullets to stop. His boost was almost ready, and he watched the countdown, monoblade ready, deck once again secured to his belt.
When the timer dipped below one second, he started moving, ducking low, rotating, and then firing the boost as he swept around the corner and into the lift. Everything slowed down, and his mouth filled with the coppery tang of blood as the officers came into view. Three quick cuts and the two corpo-sec were no longer whole, living beings but seeping piles of meat. He touched the controls, using the programmed biometrics in his glove to send the lift down. Just as the doors closed, he heard the first explosion and felt the ground shake. The Cherry Blossom had arrived. “So, Kostas came through,” he muttered as the lift descended.
“You doubted her?” Fred asked.
“I’ve never assaulted a hardened installation on Mars before, but, yes, I was doubtful she could keep the turrets from firing.” Tanaka couldn’t explain Selene Kostas or her resources. For instance, he couldn’t understand how she could have designed a deck to bypass all the security on this lift. Still, he couldn’t argue with the results. He just hoped she was right and that the New Galveston Navy wasn’t going to swoop in and eradicate Juliet’s friends in the gunship.
They were on the other side of the planet from the main city-domes, so, hopefully, Kostas knew what she was talking about. The Cherry Blossom should be laying waste to the hangar bays, negating WBD’s small, local fleet, but the company was no piddling multi-national. They were a bona fide megacorp; surely, if they got a distress call out, some ships would respond.
“You’re worried about other response vessels,” Fred said. The damn PAI was more insightful than Tanaka liked, sometimes.
“Hai.”
“Trust Alice and Selene. They’re going to keep other ships away.” Fred’s tone was almost patronizing, and Tanaka shook his head, mildly annoyed that his PAI was developing an attitude. Yes, Alice had the Lady Hawk ready to intercept mercenaries or any support that came from the WBD shipyard in orbit, and yes, Kostas was jamming the installation with the enormous transmitter she’d built onto her ship, the Furies’ Wing, but there were always unforeseen obstacles on a job this complicated. Tanaka knew that from decades of experience.
“I’m worried about your overuse of the speed boost, Rutger. Your nanites are working overtime to repair the capillary damage, but there are signs of nerve strain that require proper medical attention. We should get you aboard the Wing after this mission.”
Tanaka didn’t respond. He was, indeed, using the boost much more often than he should, but the situation warranted it. He could rest when Juliet and the others were safe. “Or when I’m dead,” he muttered, pushing his doubts and worries away. It was time to get to work—his people were waiting, and he’d grown damn tired of this particular corporation. He gripped his monoblade and, as the lift came to a stop and the doors opened, he activated his boost. Moving like a bullet through leaves caught in molasses, he got to work on the fools waiting for him.
#
As the plasteel beneath her couch shuddered again, Juliet opened her eyes and subvocalized, “They’re moving the ship ahead of schedule. Something’s going on ‘planetside.’ That’s all I could come up with on short notice. Everyone’s in a panic—either excited, fearful, or just plain stressed ‘cause they weren’t ready. Speaking of not being ready, Angel, we need to make something happen!”
“Daisy’s afraid to move. She can feel him—Apollyon. He’s not actively watching, but he’s . . . aware. She had to hijack a personal data deck from one of the hangar crew to send the encrypted signal to me—she’s afraid that enabling one of the ship’s transmitters will draw his attention.”
“Can’t you help? We need to know where to go! If I could get my gear—if you could see the camera feeds . . .” Juliet trailed off, sure that Angel could fill in the blanks.
Angel tried a different angle: “How hard do you think you could push Harriet?”
“Probably pretty hard; she’s better today. When I listened to her thoughts earlier, it seemed they hadn’t given her an injection all week. Still, I don’t know if I can make her do something as crazy as letting us go.” Juliet didn’t add that it would make her feel incredibly guilty to coopt someone’s will so thoroughly, especially someone like Harriet. She was reasonably sure she could send her thoughts, her words, into a person’s mind. Could she just try to argue their case?
“You don’t have to get her to let us go. Get her to let you plug into her terminal, or, I don’t know, leave you alone near it for a minute. If I can use the direct connection and the processing power of the network, I’m sure I can help Daisy get around Apollyon. I’m sure I can find a way to access the cameras and wireless transmitters without him noticing. It won’t take me long, either.”
“But all of your libraries—”
“You’ll plug the deck in first; I’ll set it up to create a directory, copying everything over for me to use. That will give me access to all of the tools I’ve been creating while we’ve been here. With those as a bridge, I’ll get whatever else I need from the WBD network.”
“That sounds like it’ll take a little while. I’ll need to swap the cable at least twice. Meanwhile, we’re sitting at Harriet’s terminal while God-knows-who watches us through the camera feed.”
Juliet could feel Angel thinking about it, so she did, too. She tried to think of an avenue to convince Harriet to allow her to use her data terminal, but she kept drawing blanks. Even if she could, she wasn’t so sure Angel’s idea would work. She was hobbled by her circumstances; could she really go up against Apollyon?
In frustration, Juliet tried to think of something else. There wasn’t time to wait; she couldn’t count on the ship going somewhere she could escape. She couldn’t count on being allowed to run free while it moved. She couldn’t count on being left alone while Gentry and Apollyon put their agenda into motion, whatever it was. Montclair was creating monsters with her DNA. Chen was creating monsters of another sort with Angel’s code as a base. She had to do something, and the time was now.
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Finally, she settled on a simpler, more straightforward plan. She wasn’t comfortable trying to force Harriet to do things, but she didn’t feel so conflicted about others. She reclined on the couch and closed her eyes, and then she opened her other eyes. Her awareness expanded as the void of mental space populated with the galaxies of nearby minds, and she drifted forth, no longer bound by the walls that caged her physical form, free in a way her captors could never grasp.
She couldn’t wander as far or for as long as she could while swimming in the cold pool, but she knew where she was going. That morning, when she’d been swimming, trying to build an understanding of the ship’s layout, she’d finally found Kline in his workspace when he wasn’t in the lab. In his mind, she’d seen his small office and, nearby, a slightly larger suite, if you could call it that—a small room with an acceleration couch and an adjoining bathroom, smaller than the one she had on the gunship. Prominent in his recent memories of the room had been a locked plasteel crate. A handwritten label on a strip of tape proclaimed its contents: “JB – Personal effects.”
She zoomed through the void, straight for the last place she’d found Kline, and breathed a soft sigh of relief when his unique mental cluster of glowing thought-threads was still there. Without hesitation, knowing her body temp would give her away shortly, she dove into his mind.
Over the last few days, Angel had remarked to Juliet about the quantity of the strange “psionic energy” she’d been building up along the lattice. It accumulated with her wandering and listening. She knew that energy was useful for a few things—it enhanced her telekinetic ability, allowed her to wipe the memory block in the listener’s mind, and seemed to help her deliver powerful emotional impulses. She also speculated that Joshua Kyle had used it in his mental attack against her and Polk back at Grave.
Juliet knew she couldn’t be careless; she didn’t want to damage Kline’s mind or drive him mad. She just wanted him to feel a desperate need to do something he wouldn’t normally consider. To that end, Juliet remembered the times she’d been most desperate. She remembered desperately wanting Ghoul to be alive when she found her sitting slumped in Vikker’s hidden bunker. She remembered desperately wanting Mary Moon to be lying when she said Nick was dead. She recalled how Tono had been desperate for Lexi to be alive as he cradled her still-warm body in his arms.
With those powerful emotions boiling inside her, Juliet pushed them out, wrapping them in some of the psionic energy pulsing through the lattice. She sent that package out, bridging the void between her mind and Kline’s and, along with it, the desperate need to bring her the plasteel case in his quarters.
#
“Jesus,” Kline said, jolting to his feet. His chair noisily rolled along the plasteel decking behind him, its magnetic wheels squealing in protest as it crashed into the wall beside the door.
“Kline?” Ruby asked.
“Not now,” he said. He hurried to the door, hand shaking as he touched the access panel. “Fuck! I have to hurry!”
“What did we forget?”
Kline ignored her, his mind focused on only one thing—the crate. He had to get it. He hurried down the corridor into the stairwell; he’d learned it was much faster to traverse the single level on the stairs than to wait for the lift. The crate was in his room, sitting against the wall near his built-in dresser.
He could see it in his mind, could feel it in his hands, could almost smell the oily sheen of the plasteel, still slick from the packing in the shipping container. He bolted out of the stairwell and jogged down the corridor, bumping shoulders with half a dozen people, ignoring greetings and indignant curses. None of it mattered. None of the faces even registered in his mind.
“Kline! We were supposed to finish the Weekly User Experience Report before four, and a dozen messages are lined up for your response regarding the emergency situation on the planet. The ship will be moving soon, and I don’t think it will look good for you if you ignore those duties!”
“This won’t take long, Ruby.” He slammed his forehead against the wall in his haste to put his eyeball in front of the scanner beside his door. When it beeped and hissed open, he bolted into the room and snatched up the crate. It was oblong—maybe a meter long, but only a fraction of that wide and deep. It wasn’t very heavy, either. It felt good in his hands, and relief washed over him as he ran his fingers along its contours. Before he could revel in the brief victory, he felt a desperate need to deliver it, so, once again, he stormed through the corridor, jogging for the lift.
“Kline, why do you have that case?” When he didn’t respond, Ruby flashed red and white strobes across his vision. “I’m serious, Kline! Tell me what’s going on.”
“I have to do this, Ruby. Trust me,” Kline grunted as he stepped aboard the lift and slammed in his code.
“Trust?” Ruby sounded speculative. “I want to trust you, Kline, but you’re not behaving normally.”
“What’s ‘normal,’ Ruby? I have something I need to do. Do you understand ‘need’?” The lift surged into motion, and Kline began to feel some of the pressure diminish. He was doing what he had to do, right? This was so important! There wasn’t anything he could think of that was more important. His heart was racing, his brow was sweating, and his knees were trembling with the need to keep moving to deliver the case.
“I do, Kline. I need to keep you safe. Why are we bringing that crate to the lab level? Are you going to let Juliet attempt to reclaim some memories? Is this a strategy I missed? I don’t know how I could have. Was I taken offline unawares? Kline! Please! Answer me!” Ruby’s desperation finally cut through, and Kline blinked just as the lift lurched to a stop and opened.
“I need to do this! Please, Ruby! Just . . . Goddammit! Just trust me!” He stepped off and hurried toward the door flanked by four bulky corpo-sec officers. He frowned at their armbands, wondering what they signified. Shouldn’t he be in the loop? He shook the thought aside as another wave of desperate need hit him, pushing his pace into a near speedwalk.
Ruby found her voice again: “Are we . . . are we defying Gentry? Are we . . .”
“No! No, Ruby. Or, I don’t know. I just need to deliver this damn box. Trust me.” His voice was hoarse and strained as he added, “Please, Ruby. Just don’t do anything yet.” He didn’t understand what he was doing. He didn’t understand anything other than the desperate need to get that box to Juliet. If Ruby told Gentry or one of the others, one of the pocket execs . . .
Kline. When Juliet’s voice sounded in his ears, Kline jerked to a stop about five meters from the security guards and nearly fell on his butt. He leaned against the wall and, through the overwhelming compulsion to deliver the box, he managed to wonder if he’d finally snapped, finally gone mad from the pressures of his harried existence. Then her voice came again: Kline, do you have one of the Angel twos? What did she mean, “Angel twos?” Oh! The release candidates. Ruby was a second-gen, right?
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes, what?” Ruby asked.
Tell your ‘Angel’ that the original wants to speak to her. Tell her you have to deliver this crate, or you’re going to lose your mind.
“Ruby,” Kline paused, looking at the four guards eyeing him. Jesus! Was he doing this? Was he so desperate to deliver this crate? Was he really listening to a voice in his head? What the hell was happening to him? He switched to subvocalizations, “Ruby, um, the original Angel wants to speak with you.”
While the PAI digested that, he straightened from where he leaned on the wall and started forward again. He nodded to the security team, then leaned against the wall as he put in his authentication keys and provided his biometrics. “Kline,” Ruby’s voice was exaggeratedly calm, “what do you mean the original wants to speak to me? What are you doing with that crate? I’m going to call for help, Kline.”
As the door to Harriet’s lab hissed open, he subvocalized, “If you don’t let me deliver this box, I’m going to lose my goddamned mind! Literally!”
Good, Kline. You’re almost here. You’re so close. We’re going to get you out of this mess. You don’t want to work for an evil woman serving an evil AI’s agenda! Along with those words came a wave of warmth and wholesome, nearly overwhelming, camaraderie and joy—the kind of feeling Kline had chased his entire adult life serving the corporation and never felt even an inkling of. How many times had he done the impossible, hoping for the recognition and approval of the old lady? How often had he done the unthinkable, hoping it would bring him closer to her or some nebulous idea of the “corporate entity”?
“Hello, Mister Kline. Here to take a look at my reports? Do you know why the, um, facility was vibrating earlier?”
Kline looked at Harriet, his mind so distracted and distraught that her words didn’t register. He stared at her blankly for a moment, then stumbled toward the door to Juliet’s cell. Ruby said, “Kline, please! Tell me what you meant by all of that. Have you gone mad? Should I have your nanites administer a sedative?”
“D-don’t, Ruby. Don’t! I must do this!” The final door was before him, the final barrier keeping him from fulfilling his purpose. What did Juliet mean? What “evil AI”? He put in his code and touched the button to open the door. It began to go through the process, and he heard Juliet again.
Kline! Turn off the cameras before you come in. He’s watching.
How the hell was she talking into his head? The Gipple? Hadn’t the listener checked her out? The listener who went nuts—
You’re so close! Don’t get lost in the details! I’m telling you this is the right thing! Again, a wave of warm camaraderie struck him, and Kline felt tears streaming down his cheeks. On the heels of the beautiful closeness was another wave of desperate need—he had to deliver the crate. He tucked it under one arm, stomped over to Harriet’s desk, and, as she watched him with questioning, puzzled eyes, he pushed her aside, rolling her chair several feet away so he could access her terminal.
By the time Juliet’s door finished swinging open, he’d disabled the cameras. When he looked up, he saw her standing in the doorway. She wore her dark gray bodysuit and, somehow, had cut her hair short, dying it bright red with black streaks. She smiled at him, and his heart almost burst. “You did wonderfully, Kline. Everything’s going to be better soon.”