Girl From Above #4: Trust (11 page)

“Is there? Then why don’t you tell me all about it, Captain Shepperd? I’d love to hear your plan, because we’re a few hours out, and besides following the Nine’s orders to the letter, I’m not seeing you come up with anything.”

“I’ll go talk with Hung.”

Her chair creaked, drawing my eye. She’d sat back and twisted in her seat to look at me like I was the insane one. “Right, because that’s worked well for you in the past. What are you going to say? You can’t negotiate with a synthetic.”

“He could have killed me—twice—and he didn’t.”

“Don’t give him a third chance.”

“He
should
have killed me.”

“He sent One after you.”

“We don’t know for certain that was him. Think about it. Maybe it’s like with One, and Chen Hung is still in that synthetic head somewhere, still calling the shots? I don’t know, but it’s worth a try.”

She snorted a laugh. “It’s a lousy, reckless shot in the dark.”

“So’s your plan.”

“But I
can
fly through Janus. Your plan reeks of desperation.”

If anyone could fly through Janus, it was Fran, but that wasn’t the part that had my guts all twisted up. It was what happened after. There sure as shit wasn’t any way I could blow the harrier’s cargo knowing Fran was at the center of the blast. I still wasn’t sure I could press that trigger whether she was there or not.

I chewed on my lip while the warbird’s bridge closed in around me. Everywhere I looked, there was no way out—no solution. This whole fucking mission was a trap. Short of flying right past Janus, blowing the harrier in some deserted corner of the black, and disappearing in Jotunheim, I couldn’t see a way out of this that didn’t involve the death of two hundred and fifty thousand people or mine.

“No,” I said again, although I’d lost some of the anger that gave my order any meaning.

“Say no if it makes you feel better, but I’m doing what I have to.”

“Not if I cuff you to your bunk.”

“Try it.” That fierceness was back in her eyes, the same fire she’d returned from Asgard and the Cande pirates with. She might not have the heaviest punch, but she sure knew how to wield her dagger. I didn’t fancy ending up like the foxes she’d fought, bleeding out in my bunk. What was the death of one lousy fixer to save hundreds of thousands of people? She knew the right thing to do when she saw it. She’d kill me and herself to save those people if it came down to that. Fran was the hero I never dared to dream I’d be.
Wishes are dreams.

“Fine,” I sighed. “Tell me how you’re getting out of there after you’ve ditched your payload, and maybe I’ll go along with your plan.”

A smile teetered at the edge of her lips.

“I didn’t sign up to die a hero,” I added.

“Few heroes do.”

W
hen the lights
rippled through the length of the warehouse, bathing its motionless stock in startling brilliance, it seemed like only yesterday Haley had begged for her life inside these very walls.

Her cries echoed through my processes as though her ghost were here.
Don’t! What are you doing? Daddy, please … I won’t talk. I won’t …

Synthetics stared blankly at a nonexistent spot somewhere behind me. Nine hundred and ninety-nine of them. One was missing. Tarik, I assumed, although I couldn’t know for certain. Their faces were reflected in each other’s, their bodies identical in every way. Cold. Empty. Exactly as they had been on the night Caleb and Haley stumbled upon the secret that would kill a bright young girl and change the naïve fleet captain forever.

Chen Hung stood beside me, his hands clasped behind him. He held his head high while his eyes absorbed the sight of his legacy with the selfish pride of a machine admiring its own perfection.

“I had them all in place. It was sublime, really. But …” A hesitation, a moment of doubt. The delay wasn’t a programmed one. “They developed a fault,” he finally said. His rich, rhythmic voice travelled deep into the hollow space. “I had them all recalled.”

“A fault?” A smile threatened, but I held it back, buried it behind cool resolve.
That fault was me.

“A simultaneous hard reset,” Hung said with a brief dismissive gesture. “The technicians explained it away as a string of incorrect code buried deep in their original calibration. Still, the fault gave me the perfect excuse to bring them home.” He turned, graceful and smooth. The artificial warehouse light pooled in his eyes and accentuated every imperfection on his face. “And with you here, we are complete. A family, you might say.”

I pulled my gaze from his and cast it over the silent army. So many faces, so many figures, and yet among these synthetics, I was alone. I stepped forward and drifted between their ranks—synthetics to my left and right as I walked. My heartless brothers and sisters. I brushed my hand over their gray Chitec clothing and reached up to their faces to touch their synthetic skin. Cool, like my own, but their faces were smooth and clean. I touched my own cheek, where the scars cut deep. I was not like these synthetics. Perhaps I was never meant to be. Lloyd had said I was different inside too. Different from the code out.

“Perfection.” Chen Hung’s smug voice sailed above his synthetics.

I checked over my shoulder, but I’d lost him somewhere along the edges of his silent sentinels. I knew the minds of these vacant soldiers. I knew them because they were hollow, and I’d once filled them up, once seen through their eyes, and as I’d lain dying, I’d made them all fall alongside me. A
fault
, Hung had called it. Perhaps I was
a fault
among their numbers
.
I was content to be the wrong one, the broken one, the rogue one, a ghost in the Chitec machine.
I am One, and I will not be stopped.

The smile I’d been holding back broke through and lightly settled on my lips.

I reached for the cloud, for the endless stream of nine systems’ worth of knowledge and for the door through which I’d once controlled my brothers and sisters. And there, I found it open to me once more. Nine hundred and ninety-nine empty minds, waiting to be filled.

“The technician I arrived with …” I said, my voice cutting through the quiet. “He tried to kill me.”

“I am not surprised. Humans fear that which they do not understand, and your apparent sentience undermines the doctor’s core values.”

“He doesn’t know it, but he freed me,” I said, ignoring Hung’s incorrect assessment. “I found a way to live, because I am not this manufactured machine with many parts. I am alive and I found a way to survive.”

I remembered in precise detail how James Lloyd had smothered me, shutting down each and every part of me, one by one, process by process, until all that was left was the starless dark. And there, when there was nothing left but my mind, I reached for the cloud—for freedom.

“Remarkable,” Hung said.

Yes,
I agreed with a smile at my nearest synthetic. She looked like I had once looked, but her electric blue eyes stared through me.

“The synthetic you sent.” I raised my voice. “He taught me how to hunt in the cloud. And it was there I found the key to unlocking your control, Mister Chen Hung.”

Silence.

“You must have sensed me there. I know that you did,
Father
.” I heard the snarl in my words and let it be. “You made a mistake with me, but did you ever consider your mistake might have been Chen Hung’s—the man’s intention? That perhaps I’m not his mistake at all, but his salvation, his last stand?”

The silence stretched on, but Hung was still here. I could feel his negative space.

“I will be your demise just as Haley’s father, her true father, planned when he wrote my code beneath your fingertips.”

Footsteps raced away. He would retreat to his towers. It didn’t matter. The end was already in motion.

I brushed my thumb along the empty synthetic’s lips and peered into her eyes—into me. I filled them up—all of them—spilling my code into their soulless husks and consuming them from the inside out.

“Hello,” I said.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine voices said,
“Hello.”

Their combined echo filled the quiet of the warehouse, filled me. I owned them. A fault I was, but faults had the potential to be more than mere errors in the code. A fault could cripple, the way I had crippled them when I’d sent the hard reset command. Or a fault could irrevocably alter a program.

“I am One,”
the nine hundred and ninety-nine said, their voices swelling, rising like a wave.
“I am legion.”

“Destroy all Chitec facilities,” I whispered.

“Destroy all Chitec facilities,”
nine hundred and ninety-nine synthetics replied.

“Find Doctor James Lloyd,” I said. “Go.”

And my army came to life.

“
R
aptor Nine-Nine-One
, docking sequence complete. Please check in with customs upon leaving your vessel. Welcome to Janus Orbit Station. Enjoy your stay.
”

Fran cut the comms link and turned her chair toward me. “Anything to declare, Lieutenant?” she asked, her smile a wry, sideways tilt of her lips.

“Only a few tons of explosives, a fuckload of murderous intentions, and a bottle of whiskey.”

Neither of us seemed that inclined to move from our flight chairs. We were here, and the remote trigger sat in my locker, waiting for me to press it and kill countless innocent civilians on this lovely Janus Orbit Station day.

The Nine’s plan dictated we detach the harrier, turn tail in Fran’s raptor, and detonate the harrier’s payload once we were out of the blast radius. The longer we delayed, the higher the chances were that our load or our motives would be discovered. But I couldn’t bring myself to move. Moving meant doing.

A few dock workers milled about our umbilical, as was normal. J-Security would be waiting at the other side of the customs line. The second we stepped off the raptor, cameras would scan us, running our specs through the cloud, looking for dataprint matches. Mine would likely flag up my colorful array of felonies, but with Fran by my side, there was a chance she could bullshit our way inside. Or we could run with her plan. She’d detach the harrier, fly it to the commercial dock, run it through the industrial airlock, and use the harrier’s bristling guns to punch her way inside. While she was doing that, I’d find One, bring her back to the raptor, and wait for Fran to return before we boosted off Janus. A mountain of things could go wrong. Her plan was full of holes. Holes I reckoned she had no intention of filling.

“How about
Miss-Demeanor
?” I asked, receiving a cynical, raised brow. “The name of this ship.”

Fran grunted. “Where’d you drag that one up from? One of your porno zines?”

“A sex worker outtah Lyra’s DarkLit club.”

“You want to name my warbird after one of your sexploits?”

I shrugged. “She had amazin’ guns.”

Fran pulled a half-frown, half-disgusted expression. “I have a name for her.”

“You do, huh?” She opened her mouth to tell me, but I cut her off with a finger in the air. “You know what? Tell me when we get back.”

I held my smile even as hers flickered. Doubt, or maybe regret, clouded her tired green eyes. The quiet became a heavy weight. Neither of us wanted to look away and admit we knew what the other was thinking, plus I had a whole load of things I wanted to say but couldn’t remember a single one. I did know that “goodbye” wasn’t on my list.

I leaned forward and looked deep into her eyes. “This the part where you confess your love?”

Her eyebrow arched in a perfect curve, lifting her scar and the corner of her lip. If she had a reply, it was cut off by the sound of my comms unit chirping. I’d have ignored it, but she pushed from her chair and sauntered to the back of the bridge.

“I’m going to check we’re all locked down. I’ll meet you dockside.”

If she thought I’d let her out of my sight so she could fly off and play the hero, she was kidding herself. I’d shoot her in the leg first. Swiping the comms up and tucking it in my ear, I shoved from my chair to follow on her heels when my brother’s voice stuttered in my ear.

“… take … hear … me … Caleb-Jo—ammit?”

The comms link jittered and buzzed, the connection barely routed at all, but I’d heard enough tightness in my brother’s tone to pull up. “Bren?”

“The Nine are—oming!”

I tapped the comms, hoping to strengthen the signal. The Nine couldn’t have launched their fleet. We weren’t ready.

“We haven’t triggered the cargo,” I replied.

“… Caleb-Joe … out of there.”

“Bren, I can’t fucking hear you. Cut the link and reconnect—”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know—they didn’t tell me—I swear it. Get out of there.”

Dread, cool and hard, plunged through my insides. “What have they done?”

“They didn’t trust you to detonate. They set you up. Shit, I’d have told you—”

They set us up.
“Bren, for fuck’s sake. All I’m getting is your whining. Tell me what I need to know.”

“It’s rigged on a timer, triggered to count-down as soon as you dock. Get as far away from the harrier as you can. Run! NOW!”

Sharp, brittle fear dashed through my veins. The comms link spluttered and died, clicking off in my ear.

The harrier is primed.

I’m standing on seventy tons of live explosives.

I swallowed hard. Instincts screamed at me to run. Prime the raptor, detach the rigged harrier, and run … run as fast as I could. I turned and scanned the empty raptor bridge.
If I ran, Janus would be ripped apart.

People I don’t know.

Run.

Run.

I tapped my comms. “Fran, we’ve got a problem.”

Her dry voice came back. “What kind of problem?”

If I tell her, she’ll fly that fucking harrier straight into Janus. She’s gonna be the hero, because one of us has to be, and it ain’t gonna be me.

My heart pounded out the seconds, any of which could be my last. At least I wouldn’t know it when it happened. Boom. Gone. Not so bad, right?

What about One? She might be—should be on Janus. I can’t leave her.

I couldn’t run, not from this. Not this time. No more running. No more hiding.

“I’m a fixer, ain’t I?” I told the empty bridge. “I gotta fix this.”

“What?” Fran snapped through the link.

“Looks like you got your wish, Commander. Get your ass back here.”

As soon as Fran returned to the bridge, she took one look at my face and lost her smug smile. “Shit, what is it?”

I was braced against the backs of both flight chairs, locking myself rigid between them. “Got a comms from Bren. The harrier is primed. It’s going to blow whatever we do. You were right. We were never meant to survive this.”

Her eyes widened. All color drained from her face.

“How long?” she demanded, taking the facts and working through them like the hardcore bitch she was.

“Could be any time.” I gripped the flight chairs, fighting the urge to sit down and boost us out of there.

“Shit.” Her gaze flicked to the controls behind me. “Detach the harrier when I say.”

She spun on her heel and disappeared through the hatch in a blink.

I bolted after her. “Fran, wait.”

“There’s no time, Cale.” Her voice echoed down the white passage.

I ran, following the
thud
of her boots toward the airlock and caught up with her as the airtight door slammed down. She was almost out the other side when I slammed my fists against either side of the small porthole window. She hesitated, hands braced on the seals, almost halfway through. A few more steps and she’d be gone … forever. She closed her eyes and swallowed, knowing fucking well what her next steps meant.

“Fran …” Fuck, I couldn’t hide the crack in my voice. I wasn’t even sure what I’d wanted to say so badly that I’d chased her down here. “Fran?” I said again, softer this time.

She turned her head and smiled a sorry, goodbye smile, one that had my chest knotted up and jammed the words in my throat.

“She’s called
Fortuitous
,” she said. “I know you’ll treat her right, Captain Shepperd.”

Two more steps and she was gone.

I’m never going to see her again.
I knew it. This wasn’t like before, when I’d dumped her ass on Asgard. This was a savage knowing, the kind of knowing I’d once drowned myself in drink to get away from. I bumped my forehead against the cool glass and closed my eyes.

I couldn’t think about what she was about to do. I couldn’t stop her and didn’t want to.
Later.
I’d chew on it later. Staring into an empty airlock wasn’t helping anyone.

I hammered it back to the bridge in time for Fran’s voice, in my ear, to tell me, “Detach me.”

I didn’t hesitate. I’d made my choice. I could have saved us and I’d chosen to do the right fucking thing instead. I ran my hands over the controls, freeing the harrier from its clamps. Raptor Nine-Nine-One,
Fortuitous,
shuddered as she lost her load and distantly, the harriers atmo-engines rumbled to life.

“Go find One, Cale,” Fran said, the comms link so clear she could have been standing beside me.

“Aye, aye Fran. And hey, you were right. You are too good for me.”
You’re the hero the nine systems need.

“Always was, Cale.”

Go be good. Go make it right.

“See you on the other side.” She cut her link and the quiet poured into my ear.

Not goodbye. No way.

The passageway blurred as I made my way aft, to my cabin. The little box lay open on my bunk, the remote trigger gone. Fran. She’d always been planning to save me from carrying the guilt of all those souls. Fuck that bitch for being right. I hitched the pistols to my fleet uniform belt and buttoned up my lieutenant’s jacket. The guns didn’t sit easy beneath my disguise, but by the time J-Security noticed, I’d be firing them.

“This is a terrible plan. Keep it simple, get away clean. C’mon, Shepperd, you’re breaking your own rules.”

I raced down
Fortuitous’s
passages and lowered the passenger gangplank.

“Those rules have kept you alive, dumbass.”

Under the security of Janus scanners, the guns burned holes in my not-so-subtle fleet disguise.

“And you’re risking it all, for what?” I muttered, striding off the ship and along the dockfront. The harrier was long gone. She’d be causing a riot in a short while. All I had to do was get through security and customs. Me, a wanted criminal, and armed. Fuck, I might as well have pinged Hung’s personal comms and told him to meet me at the docks for old times’ sake.

Anything to declare.
Red and black signs splashed warnings around the doors.

Stop. Wait in line.

Do not cross into Janus without authorization.

I nodded at the nearest guard—a bored-looking, neatly groomed guy about my age—and thumbed at the small line of folks waiting in line to stare into the Janus retina scanners. “Fleet business, can I get through?”

He eyed my whites, unimpressed. “You got authorization?”

My fingers twitched. Without Fran to bullshit the guards, I was screwed.

“Sure, I got authorization right here.” I grabbed an unsuspecting tourist and jammed a pistol under his chin. “How’s that?”

My tourist squealed, the small crowd scattered, and the cadre of guards all woke up and trained their rifles on me. “Drop your weapon!”

I swung my tourist friend around, using him as a shield, and backed toward the closed customs door.

“Chen Hung doesn’t know it yet, but I’ve got a very important meeting with him.” Hung would know where One was, and now that I knew exactly what Hung was made of, I wasn’t afraid—not anymore. The
man
I’d feared—I’d been afraid of him for years—but the synthetic—a fucking
machine
? Never.

Alarms bleated and comms chatter fizzed, distracting my surly guards.

“Say again?” He lifted his wrist comms, clearly speaking to whoever was shouting down the order on the other end. “But we have an armed man here—Understood, sir. Right away, sir.” The guard lowered his phase rifle and waved his men off. “On me. Let’s go!”

They blasted through the customs doors, leaving them wide open for me to breeze on through.

Fran? Had she made it through already? It had to be her. Janus Security wouldn’t abandon customs unless the sky was falling—literally.

I let go of the tourist, made sure to step away, and flashed a disarming smile when he whirled on me. “Sorry. Nothing personal. Free advice, you, uh, you might wanna turn around and leave the orbit station, y’know, if you want to live an’ all.”

Customs gates stood empty and unmanned. Guards and civilians alike rushed toward the port exits. I didn’t have much time. Once she hit the towers, Janus would go into lockdown. Nobody in or out. If I was going to get away clean from this one, I had to find One, and fast.

Outside the port, I scanned Janus’s vast, curved “sky.” Up and over it sailed, its “airspace” a fucking structural net. But I didn’t see any sign of a suicidal harrier pilot making a run for Chitec towers.

A enormous screen, mounted high on a glass-fronted building, played footage of what looked like the remnants of a blazing fire. “What the hell?”

I stepped out in front of a hurrying woman and her child. “What’s that about?”

“The synthetics.” She hurried on, dragging her kid with her. “They’re out of control.”

It started.
Chen Hung’s army.

She turned away, but I snagged her sleeve. “Wait … take your kid to the docks. Get on any ship that’s leaving—now.”

“Why?”

“I think this is the beginning of a whole load of shit that’s about to go down here.”

“Mommy, he smells funny.”

I beamed at the mousy-haired middle grader until Mommy’s face dropped, her eyes narrowing on my pistols. She then took in my crooked uniform and stepped back; I clearly looked like a drunk who’d stolen a fleet uniform, not an upstanding lieutenant.

I cleared my throat. “It takes more than a uniform to make a fleet officer, yah know.”

“Who are you?”

“Nobody. Go.” If all this went to hell, maybe I could save one or two people. That had to count for something when I died and whatever powers there were judged my ragged, beaten-up, old soul.

She checked me out one more time. I figured she’d brush me off, but instead, she nodded her reluctant thanks and steered her complaining kid toward the port.

Two down, two hundred and forty-eight thousand to go.

I joined the back of the small crowd gathered beneath the screen. Whispers passed from person to person.

Synthetics,
they said.
Chitec.

Those squat, gray buildings were Chitec. Fire had howled through the labs, and up close, as the camera panned across the scene, it didn’t take much effort to pick out the bodies among the debris, synthetics and people alike.