The Commander (40 page)

He slipped the rope from his waist and pushed off toward the scooter. “Take off the rope!” he shouted at the chancellor as he slid onto the seat.

“It’s gone,” she said as she threw away the loose end. She grabbed Luke with both arms.

He leaned away from the enemy ship and opened the throttle. “Any second now,” he said, looking back over his shoulder.

The cannon fired once more. A small flame jetted from the cut but the muzzle flash seemed as large as before.

“It’s still firing,” the chancellor exclaimed.

Luke brought the scooter to a stop to examine the cannon. “No. Look at the barrel,” he said. “That last shot bent it about thirty degrees. Next one should do it.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“We just keep at it!” he replied. “But let’s see what happens.”

When the cannon fired again, the twisted barrel caused a backfire into the gun housing, which exploded, sending fragments in all directions.

Damn
. Luke jerked the scooter away and twisted the throttle full open.

Something heavy hit the back of the scooter, making it skid sideways. The chancellor lost her grip around his middle. He looked back and saw her drifting in space with small red globules gathering around her still body.

He turned back and hurried to her side. She was conscious but her face was filled with confusion and she gasped for breath. Blood bubbled from a puncture wound on her back. A piece of jagged debris drifted nearby, its twisted point covered in blood.

He dug into the saddlebags and found the first aid kit. He tore away her jumpsuit, exposing the wound, and squirted a bottle of antiseptic liquid over it. After covering the puncture with gauze, he wrapped a long elastic bandage around her back and shoulder. While he worked, he mumbled various reassurances. The young woman groaned during his ministrations but otherwise bore it stoically.

A flash of light reflected off her face. She groaned in misery and pointed at the Bakkui. “Look,” she moaned.

A new gun housing had appeared on the enemy vessel. The Bakkui ship’s self-repair was still functioning. While they watched it fired again.

“Go,” the chancellor said. “Leave me. Just promise me that you’ll stop that monster.”

Luke was running out of ideas. If he left her floating in space, he might not be able to find her again. He wasn’t sure he could even find the cutter. In his haste to escape the explosion, he’d left it floating near the gun housing. He was feeling light headed and suddenly realized that much of the blood that had accumulated around the chancellor’s body was his own.

A shadow crossed in front of the sun, drawing his gaze.
Great
. If this was another Bakkui ship, it was all over. The configuration was new to him but it looked like a large fighter.

A door opened on the side of the fuselage and he saw a shadowy figure silhouetted against the bright interior. She had flyaway blonde hair with red highlights.

“Annie?” he croaked.

The cannon on Annie’s strange looking ship fired one time and the Bakkui exploded. The detonation cascaded throughout the vessel. Massive eruptions burst through the hull one after another, racing from the middle of the ship outwards. Halfway along the hull a huge secondary explosion tore the entire ship into pieces.

Annie floated out and pulled the chancellor into her ship. A second later she was back to retrieve Luke. He had a million questions but his vision was getting fuzzy. Annie made noises about blood on his clothes and he tried to explain the chancellor’s wound but he slumped to the deck, unconscious.

# # #

Luke sat in the hospital bed, watching TV. During his recovery, he was amused to discover the Jiguan’s loved soap operas. He was annoyed when he got sucked into a daytime drama. He watched it each morning. Today it appeared that the brusque but handsome psychologist had fallen for the cute but conniving fortune-teller. It was ridiculous.

But he had nothing else to do. In Earth movies, the heroes jumped out of hospital beds and pushed doctors aside to run out and pummel the bad guys into submission. In Luke’s case, any of the petite, blue-skinned nurses could have taken him down with one hand tied behind their back.

He had a million things on his to-do list but he was exhausted. The nurse said it was due to loss of blood. A transfusion was evidently not possible. His brand of human blood wouldn’t mix with the locals. He explained that his blood type, 0 positive, could accept blood from anyone. The doctors disputed his medical acumen but they did load him up with IVs and oxygen. He would survive; it would just take a little more time.

At the moment, Luke didn’t care. He wasn’t in a hurry because Annie kept him company. He was still getting used to the idea she was back. He was not surprised to discover that she was already a local hero.

She’d saved the planet, rescued the young chancellor, and brought the warlord back from the brink of death. The hospital staff talked to each other endlessly about the exciting details, but not to Luke. Medical practitioners on Jigu believed patients needed rest and that external concerns only delayed recovery.

The TV drama ended and news came back on. For the hundredth time Luke watched the video of the destruction of the Bakkui warship by Annie’s last-minute arrival. The report was sprinkled with video taken by the little scooter, George, and even from the planet’s surface. Luke hadn’t known the scooter was recording anything, much less how the locals had managed to capture the shots from the surface. No one would tell him anything.

The one tidbit they did share was that the chancellor was alive and well. She was recuperating in a separate wing of the hospital but not ready for visitors. Annie gave him updates during her visits. Hospital rules did not seem to apply to Annie. Luke was not surprised. She had a way of bulldozing through bureaucracy no matter what planet she was on. She already informed Tyler that she was reorganizing the military forces here and on the moon.

The door to his hospital room slid open and a familiar figure walked in with a smile on his face.

“Tyler!” Luke exclaimed. “I must be on the mend or you wouldn’t be here.”

“You are.” Tyler grinned. “I’m here to take you away. If you can stand up on your own, that is.”

“I don’t think that’s a problem.” Luke stood and stretched. “See? Everything works.”

“Touch your toes,” Tyler suggested.

“Everything works, but not that well,” Luke admitted, sitting back on the bed. “Give me a few more days to get back in shape.”

“Fair enough. I thought we would take you up to Moonbase if you like.”

“What about Annie?” Luke asked.

“She’s visiting the chancellor. She’ll be here in a minute.”

“Annie and Sarangi seem to have hit it off well,” Luke observed.

“Oh! Sarangi now, is it?”

Luke smiled. “We went through a lot together. I have royal permission to use her given name.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Tyler said. “That’s going to make life easier for both of us. She’s introducing Annie to her fiancé now.”

That piece of news had spread around the planet like wildfire. The young man was on patrol when the intruder arrived, but only three of the patrol ships were actually lost; the rest were simply disabled.

“Since I’m getting out of this place, give me an update. I’m tired of being kept in the dark. Even Annie won’t tell me anything.”

Tyler took a seat next to Luke’s bed. “She’s been very tight-lipped since she got here. There’s more to her story than she’s let on so far. But I gather you know about the level-two-device.”

“Yes. George told us when he realized what was going on. How did you know?”

“Annie told me. The same thing happened back on Earth. Anyway, the Bakkui destroyer gave shutdown orders to our AIs. My guess is that it didn’t even know there were humans onboard. Think about it. That ship lives in a world without life. To it, there are only machines.”

Luke wasn’t sure about that, but anything was possible. “Maybe,” he admitted.

Tyler continued. “Annie got here and knew right away what had happened. First thing she did was blow the Bakkui ship to kingdom come. She also transmitted an override signal to our warships that reversed the shutdown command. We were back on alert within a few minutes.”

“All of that sounds good,” Luke said.

“Our crews were alive, except for the three ships we lost. The chancellor’s boyfriend, Be’rim is his name, was one of the survivors. I see a wedding in the near future. You’ll probably get an invite.”

Luke leaned back against the pillows. “Thank God for that. And thank God for Annie. I couldn’t believe it when I woke up and she was sitting here beside me.”

“You remember seeing her in space.”

“Nope. Nothing at all. Last thing I remember is trying to cut that stupid barrel off the Bakkui.”

Tyler nodded. “So I take it you and Annie are back together? No hard feelings?”

“Not from me. I told her that the first thing I’m gonna do when we get out of here is marry her. I don’t ever want to be apart again.”

“She agree to it?”

“Not in so many words,” Luke admitted. “There’s something she won’t talk about.”

“That’s what I was telling you,” Tyler said.

Annie stuck her head in the door. “You boys ready?”

# # #

A crowd of spectators gathered around the deadly looking spacecraft floating safely above the hospital lawn. Luke was impressed. Hearing about it was one thing, but the explanations had not prepared him for seeing this new version of his old shuttle.

“This is actually
Sadie
?” he asked.

“You can decide once we’re onboard,” Annie replied.

The onlookers moved clear when
Sadie
descended. Her side door opened and the three stepped inside and settled into the overstuffed chairs of the main living area.

“
Sadie
?” Luke said aloud. “Is this really you?”

“Still me, boss. I hear you abandoned another version of me with young Miss Faulkner. I am sure I asked you not to go anywhere unless I was with you.”

Luke nodded appreciatively. “Sure sounds like her.”

“It is, believe me,” Annie said with a smile. She reached over and took his hand. “She treats me just the same.”

Luke fixed his gaze on her face. “I was just telling Tyler that I wanted us to get married. And that you aren’t exactly saying ‘yes’.”

Annie looked away. “The answer is I will marry you. I want nothing more. But you need to know a few things first.”

“As long as you’re saying okay, what else is there?”

“Tell him about George,” Annie said to Tyler.

Tyler grew serious. “You know that the last thing before he attacked, George sent a probe back to Earth. You remember that, right?”

“Yeah.” Luke nodded. That memory was fresh.

“Well he sent one down here too. It had his core memory and he took over
Priscilla
when she opened it. I gather they shared a brain for a period of time. George was the one that started filming everything. He replicated some kind of super-camera on the spot and videotaped your encounter with the Bakkui. The locals watched you and the chancellor in real time. When it was all over, George replicated a new warship replacement and transferred his brain into it. Far as I can tell, it’s as if nothing ever happened to him.”

“Neat trick,” Luke observed. “So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is
Priscilla,
” Tyler said. “The day after George was out of her brain she tried to use our large-scale replicator to make a message drone. But she did it on her own, without telling anyone.
Sadie
happened to see it and checked on what was going on. It was the result of some leftover code from George. It acted like a virus in her brain.”

“Can’t George fix her?” Luke asked.

“Not anymore,” Annie said somberly. “
Sadie
killed her. Wiped her brain completely.”

“What?” Luke was shocked that a shuttle would even take such an extraordinary step, let alone be able to accomplish it. He looked toward the cockpit. “
Sadie
? Where do you get off doing that?”

Sadie
replied in a mechanical monotone. “Once an AI mind has been compromised a system wipe is normal procedure, Commander.”

Luke pulled back slightly. “That’s true. George said something along those lines. We had some problems with
Toby
, a recent AI here. But
Sadie
, that is something for George and I to decide on. I’m uncomfortable with you acting on your own.” Luke’s eyes suddenly widened with concern. He leaned toward Annie and whispered. “Do you think
Sadie
is okay?”

“She’s fine. I’m more concerned about the drone
Priscilla
was trying to send off,” Annie said ominously.

“How so?”

“The destination was deep inside Bakkui space.”

Luke scoffed at the idea. “Why would
Priscilla
try to send a message into…”