Authors: Maria Hammarblad
Adam looked relieved when we returned.
I had used up my abilities to play cool. I hugged him and whispered, “That’s not her.”
John nodded in agreement. “It might be her body, but it’s not her in it.”
He sank down on the sofa and Adam took a seat in an armchair, pulling me down on his lap. His arms around me made me feel a little better.
Adam said, “If this is happening here I think it’s safe to assume it’s happening on other Confederacy ships as well. Maybe whole worlds.”
It was probably spreading to the stations too. There might not be any truly safe places left. Following that line of thought, we might have been lucky to be interrupted before docking with GA95.
I tilted my head against his. “I think it’s safe to assume they won’t just let us leave.”
John crossed his legs and leaned back with his hands behind his head. “And right now the two of you are thinking you need to do something about all this. Save that for later. We need to prioritize getting some distance between us and this ship. We can’t do anything if we’re dead.”
He was right. We couldn’t take the risk of being changed too. Every minute we spent on the Bell was one too many. Unfortunately, they were also more than able to shoot us down.
“Guys, I’m so tired I can’t even think. I need to go take a nap.”
It was early evening on the Bell, but my body announced it must be at least four in the morning.
Both men followed me to the bedroom. I loved them, but right now they made me feel a bit crowded.
Just a little…
John said, “I don’t like the way you’re avoiding the subject.”
Was I? “Do you think I’m influenced by something already? Because I think I’m just tired, but I might be wrong.”
Adam watched the bed with his head tilted to the side. It was a good bed. It served us well for a long time and I looked forward to reacquainting myself with it.
“I’m just saying, it’s not like you to go to sleep in the middle of a life or death situation, even if it’s late.” John sounded concerned.
“Really? Well, I guess we hadn’t met the time the ship was invaded and I took a nap on the floor in Engineering.” Adam had let me sleep, making everyone else wait.
I shuffled towards the bed. It was there, and I could at least get to sit down.
Adam still stared at it, until I
almost
sat on the edge. He grabbed me before my butt could touch the mattress and tossed me to the side.
He normally calculated his force with great care, but this time I flew and would have hit the wall if John hadn’t caught me.
John said, “Son” in a reprimanding voice.
Adam backed towards us. “Stay away from the bed. Go to the front door right now.”
I didn’t see anything wrong with it, but if something about it was unusual enough to scare
him
, he threw me far away from it on purpose.
Jia’Lyn
had
seemed keen on getting us on it.
Adam went to the closet and tossed over a pair of bulky glasses. I fumbled with my pair and almost dropped them. “It’s the night-vision thingies?”
“Infrared. Turn them on, put them on, and go to the front door.”
He didn’t sound impatient, but in a hurry. I obeyed, probably much too slowly for his taste, and yelped the moment I saw through them. Microscopic dots on the bed combined into an intricate pattern, moving towards us.
“What are those?”
John tugged me backwards, into the living room. “I’m guessing small robots, and they’re here for us.”
“No wonder she said sleeping would clear our heads.”
My previous lingering and reluctance to obey Adam seemed careless on the verge of suicidal.
Leaving the Bell was no longer a matter of going gracefully or not being pursued, it was a matter of immediate life or death. Home was no longer home; it had turned into a nightmare. Hopefully, the icky little crawlies wouldn’t be all over John’s ship too.
The eerie stream ignored Adam, but followed John and me faster than I would have thought possible.
I almost forgot the android head when running through the living room and had to go back to get it. Adam’s nameless brother might never be completed, but I didn’t want to leave him to
this,
and whoever was behind it should not get their hands on any more technology.
Adam stopped by the door. “It might be worse out there.”
Cheerful.
John said, “Do you have any other ideas? I don’t think we can stay in here.”
Adam shook his head, opened the door, and looked as surprised as I was to see two armed guards outside. At least there were only two, and the corridor didn’t hold any red dots scurrying towards us.
John shot one of the guards and Adam hit the other, saying, “I’m sorry about this.”
“You know who liked nanites? Eve liked nanites.” Both men ignored me.
Our old home wasn’t far away from the lifts, and I wasn’t surprised to see Anya appear next to one of them. She waved to us, “This one.”
Once the doors closed, she appeared beside us.
“I will try to clear a way from here to the docking bay and buy you some time, but there isn’t much I can do.”
I wanted to take her hand, but she didn’t have any substance. “You have to come with us.”
“I can’t.”
John said, “Honey…”
She shook her head. “You know it’s not that easy. It’s not like you can stay and wait while I do a data transfer. Besides, I still wouldn’t be able to leave. My programming requires approval of the Captain to leave the ship.”
I said, “Anya, I love you.”
“I love you too, Alex. All of you. Now, run!”
The lift stopped and the door opened. It was time to take her advice.
*****
I felt a little better when the heavy door to the ship closed behind us. Instinct said to run to the bridge, but Adam said, “Wait.”
He inspected John from top to toe, even under his shoes. It only took a minute, if that, but I could feel our pursuers closing in.
“Go.”
John ran into the ship and Adam said, “Your turn. Then you’ll have to check me. They didn’t seem interested in me, but that doesn’t mean they can’t catch a ride.”
The responsibility of looking for a microscopic particle that could ruin all our lives was too much. What if I missed it and condemned us to a faith worse than death?
Adam saw the brewing panic on my face. He took my hands. “I will help you, but there are places I can’t see. Look on my back and in my hair.”
I obeyed, but my hands shook and my legs wanted to buckle. Not in a good way this time.
“What if some reached us and snuck under our clothes, or if they’re already in here?”
He looked at me with a frown, as if not understanding why I would say such a thing, or worry about it. The next moment he scooped me up and carried me through the ship, towards the bridge. It was the right decision. I wouldn’t have been able to remain standing much longer.
I clung to him and buried my face against his shoulder. This
had
to be the worst day since he died.
“Alex, listen to me. The ship has been closed and locked all this time. No one has been in here.”
“How do you know?”
“Because of the security systems. No one could have broken in without us knowing about it. And remember this is a spaceship. It is hermetically sealed, with airlocks. Nothing, not even something as small as a nanite can get in unless we bring it. I know this to be true because they’re bigger than the atoms and molecules in the air you breathe, and if the nanites could get in, our air would get out when we’re in space. It doesn’t do that.”
Normally, his calm and thorough explanation would do the trick, but this time I couldn’t stop shaking. Reason did nothing to quench my fear.
Adam said, “Even if there were one or more hidden inside our clothes, I don’t think it would be enough to change a person, or they wouldn’t have come in such a big scale. But, we will check once we’re out of here.”
“They’re so creepy, like being chased by millions of tiny red spiders that want to take over my mind.” My voice was anything but steady.
“And you don’t like insects. I didn’t make that connection.”
In my opinion, the lack of arachnids was one of the best things about being in space. The nanites probably didn’t look like creepy crawlies to him, but they sure did to me.
What would happen to all the people we were leaving behind? Debana, Anya, everyone else? Would Jia’Lyn be like this forever, or could she be turned back? Were all the ships like this? Confederacy worlds? Wondering who did it might be more prudent, but my imagination had many answers to
that.
Adam entered the bridge and put me down on a chair, freeing himself from my death grip around his neck. I cringed, imagining nanites materializing under me and crawling up my back.
John said, “I need your help.”
He clearly wasn’t talking to me and I ignored them.
Adam said, “They won’t hesitate to shoot us down, not knowing what we know. This will not be easy.”
“I don’t need it to be easy, just possible.”
I had been so preoccupied fearing microscopic robots I hadn’t given much thought to John’s ship being parked
inside
the Bell. Reaching it did not make us as safe as I wanted to imagine.
John had powered everything up and the soft vibrations from the ship conveyed we hovered in the bay, but there was a thick door between freedom and us. Outside there would be weapons firing at us, and the tractor beam that already caught us once.
Hiding in a closet wouldn’t help, but it might make me feel better.
Adam said, “The shuttle is still aboard. I might be able to open the bay door from there.”
“Go.”
I watched my husband hurry out. He could suppress his emotions. How convenient it would be if humans could do the same.
“Alex, come over here. I will need your help.”
I doubted my legs would carry me, but the mere idea of John needing
my
assistance cheered me up. I made it to the chair Adam just left.
“What do you want me to do?”
He took the time to glance over at me and wink. “Nothing right now, but that will change quickly.”
The large door up ahead slid open a little, stopped, closed to a slit, and opened again.
Not enough to let us through.
John muttered, “Great. I’ve always wanted to be crushed to death.”
“Right. You’re not afraid of anything.”
“Of course I am. Everyone is afraid of something. I just try not to let it get the upper hand.”
I groaned, “I’m so bad at that.”
He flashed a smile. “That’s not a bad thing, Hon. It means you’ve had a good life where you haven’t had to fight for survival.”
It was true. Life on Earth had been pretty cushy, and after that either he or Adam had taken care of me. I had been in trouble a few times, but one of them always showed up to save me.
I glanced up at the monitors. The door was open, but still not enough for us to squeeze through. I imagined Adam’s fingers racing over the shuttle controls, trying to persuade the Bell’s computer letting us out would be the prudent thing to do.
The doors opened a little more, paused, and went all the way. John slammed a control and we darted forward. In my imagination, the bay doors closed again and metal ground against metal, but it probably wasn’t real.
Our ship trembled as we left the artificial gravity of the Bell and our computer compensated with our own.
It was a matter of seconds before the other ship fired. I could see the beam of deadly energy on the monitors, but it went far away from us.
“Anya is helping us.” I couldn’t explain how I knew, I just knew.
John pressed his lips together. “I hope the price won’t be too high.”
If they figured it out they would reprogram her. Or delete her.
This wasn’t the right time to think about it.
A blast hit us, rocking the ship. How far did we have to be from the Bell before entering hyperspace?
“How are the shields doing?”
Shields, shields… I had spent so much time here with him and I didn’t remember a thing. Stress did not improve my brain functions.
My gaze found a familiar display. “Eighty-nine percent.”
“Not bad. Keep an eye on that.”
He banked the ship so hard I almost fell out of the chair before the computer compensated. We would have some cleaning to do when this was over.
Not a big problem. We had to survive in order to worry about things falling.
Adam finally returned and I was more than happy to let him have the seat. Good thing he was on our side. With him on the Bell no amount of tampering by Anya or anyone else could have prevented a direct hit.