Ed nodded sagely. “Correct. I will, for the time being, be as mortal as you.”

  Ana felt hope and joy welling within her. She hadn’t dared to ask him, even though she knew full well he was necessary if they were to have any hope of reopening the gates. “That’s wonderful! Oh, but Ed, it’s dangerous.”

  “No more dangerous than the life all of the rest of you live.”

  “Yes, but we have no choice. You do.”

  “Yes,” Ed told her. “I do have a choice. And I choose to live. I never really did that before today. There were never any costs, any risks. And there was surely never any love. I think perhaps the two are intertwined.”

  Ana suddenly felt terribly awkward. She desperately needed Ed to come with her, but she was absolutely not ready to confront whatever he might think he felt for her. “Oh,” she said, hating herself for not being able to come up with something better able to deflect.

  “Yes,” Ed said. “I feel I can now understand why Kane fought so hard. I learned much today, most of which I am still processing, but I am certain that this is the way. If the gates can be repaired, I will do it.”

  Ana felt her cheeks burning, and surely Ed could see it like it was literally written on her face. He had all of the necessary sensors to work out that she was in some sort of high emotional state, though he likely wouldn’t be able to work out the exact reason. “Yes,” she breathed. “It’s a noble choice.”

  Ed held her gaze a moment longer, and Ana was certain he had something more on his mind. And why hadn’t he actually come in? Could an AI even feel awkward? “There’s something else we should discuss,” he said.

  Ana braced herself for his confession, having no clue what she would say, when Bleys’s head suddenly popped up behind Ed’s shoulder. “You can say that again. We all need to talk.”

  Ed turned to look at Bleys. “Yes, this conversation should include all three of us.”

  Ana suppressed a groan. She had no idea what was going on with Ed, but this had the potential to turn ugly very quickly. “Maybe we should discuss this later, Ed.”

  Ed gave her a strange look. “This is an exigent situation. We should talk now.”

  Bleys seemed to notice Ana’s distress and raised a querying eyebrow. “So, what are we talking about, Ed?”

  Ed looked back and forth between Ana and Bleys with an expression that said he thought very little of their intellect. “The Pestilence, of course.”

  Bleys flashed Ana a look of annoyance and clapped Ed on the shoulder. “Great minds think alike, pal.”

  Ana, even more embarrassed now, shrugged meekly and gestured for them to enter. She wasn’t certain why Ed hadn’t before, but clearly her assumptions had been far off. She wondered again if perhaps there were something wrong with him, but he seemed to move fine as he walked to the bench and took a seat. Bleys followed, and the cabin door slid closed behind him.

  Ed spoke immediately. “We have a plan to eliminate most of the pestilence by reconfiguring our defensive satellites and coordinating them to deliver a planetary wide gamma ray burst. This will be absolutely lethal to biological creatures. You need to move Doro out of orbit immediately.”

  Bleys shrugged. “She’s shielded, but yeah, best to be on the safe side.”

  How bad are things on the surface, Ed?” Ana asked.

  “As bad as you expect.”

  “It makes no sense!” Ana declared. “How could it have grown so large? When my—” Ana stopped suddenly. “My God, you don’t know! I have to tell you everything.”

  Ed shook his head. “I do know. I went through all of our logs when I visited Avalon. You had quite an experience.” He turned to Bleys and said, “And I would like to compliment you, Captain, on thoroughly frustrating Alsatia. It was quite amusing, reviewing your interactions.”

  Bleys puffed out his chest, tugged at the lapels of his jacket, and grinned. “My pleasure.”

  Ana said, “But if you know what happened, you should understand why I say it all makes no sense. Alsatia triggered the devices. The Pestilence should have ended up in Avalon, like Chert did. How was it able to take control of all those bodies? Mine was burned to a crisp! Surely, it can’t use dead tissue?”

  “Yours appears to have been a unique situation,” Ed told her. “Few of the other creatures had begun an assault when Alsatia triggered the implants. In most cases, the electrical pulse killed the brain only. The Pestilence seems to have taken control of the flesh after the fact, before cell death occurred.”

  “But some had already been attacked?”

  “Yes. The early attacks resulted in situations similar to your own, which is what prompted Alsatia to seek a more…comprehensive solution.”

  Bleys’s eyes widened. “More like a final solution.”

  “So there are more Cherts in Avalon, now?” Ana asked.

  Ed nodded. “Eighteen. Father is managing the affair personally. Alsatia is under severe restriction at the moment. It seems, in addition to everything else, she’s raided the bank accounts and taken a significant amount of currency. It’s not anything we are worried about, in that we have quite a bit to spare. It’s petty cash, really, but the primary concern is what she may have been up to with it. So far she has refused to explain her behavior.”

  Bleys shook his head. “This all creeps me out. Badly. I’m going to go up front and get ready to move us. Ed, I’ll find a bunk for you somewhere soon.”

  “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk with you about, Captain. I don’t need quarters as such, but a work area would be useful.”

  Bleys nodded and rose to leave, then paused. He looked hesitantly at Ed, then at Ana. “There is one more thing. I wouldn’t even mention it, but it might be important.” He cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and continued.

  “Ana, we didn’t download all of your memories. The big computers shut down just shy of sixty percent.”

  Ana sat in stunned silence a moment, trying to process this bombshell. “What...my God…how can I even be here, then?” She tried to run a brief inventory. She remembered her childhood, her college, the discovery of her disease. Nothing seemed to be missing, but how would she know?

  “Chert,” Bleys said. “He did something. He said he remembered you and could fix it. I asked him why the fuck we didn’t do it that way to start, and he said, well….” For a moment, Bleys looked extremely uncomfortable, and looked back and forth at the two of them, saying nothing.

  “What the hell did he say, goddammit?” Ana screamed, unable to control the panic racing through her.

  “He said he might leave, uh, traces.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  Bleys shrugged. “I’m just the messenger, sister.”

  Ana felt as if she were choking at this news. She turned to Ed, who seemed calm enough at the revelation, but then Ed had never been emotional. “Am I infected?”

  Ed considered a moment then shrugged. “We have no detector. But I think it unlikely. The Pestilence is connected. It would have used you to interfere with our escape if it could.”

  Bleys shook his head. “Not necessarily. Not if it wanted to propagate, get to Cerberus. But I don’t think Chert meant physical. I think he meant your ‘what you know’ part you described.”

  Ed’s face lit with understanding. “Of course! Your double memory!”

  Ana stared at him a moment, uncomprehending, before it unfolded again in her mind. She had two distinct memories of the same event: she had tested herself for the Pestilence, that was certain. But she remembered two results. In one, a green light had announced her free of the disease. In another, a red light warned she was infected, and they had both occurred simultaneously.

  The bizarre, dual reality made her feel slightly nauseated, but she thought she understood. She spoke slowly, forcing herself to understand the truth. “I failed the test. And Chert forced a memory on me to believe I passed. I have both that memory and Chert’s own memory of the event.”

  Ed nodded vigorously. “That sounds correct. If so, you should have more of the creature’s knowledge.”

  Something inside Ana objected to Ed’s use of the term “the creature.” “Call him Chert. The name was important to him.”

  Ed’s eyebrow rose in appreciation. “Did he ever tell you that?”

  Ana spoke before she thought. “No, but—”

  Ed nodded. “Exactly.”

  Bleys clapped his hands together to get their attention. “Okay, guys, this is too creepy for me. I’m gonna go fly the ship now.”

  Ed rose as Bleys exited the cabin. “I’ll need to join him. We’ll contact Father and let him know when he can execute the gamma ray burst.”

  Ana smiled up at him, still convinced there was something Ed had intended to say to her about his feelings. For whatever reason he had chosen not to, probably for the best. She rose and smiled at him. “I’ll go check on Kane.”

  Kane opened his eyes, his last memory of Ed firing an eight ball into his leg now the first thing on his mind. He didn’t recognize the room, but he assumed it was Bleys’s shitty autodoc area, which was a good sign in that it meant he’d gotten some kind of medical attention, but bad in that the autodoc was pretty useless for something like having your leg blown off. It was one step above a blowtorch in terms of what good it would do for that sort of wound.

  His lower leg was gone. He knew it without bothering to look, not because he saw it or felt it, but simply because he knew what an eight ball would do to a suit of power armor. The only real question was whether Ed was pissed off enough to permanently cripple him, or if he had been kind and left a decent stump for a cybernetic replacement.

  Kane raised his head and looked, just to confirm. His right leg ended just above the knee, as he had expected. It looked good for a cybernetic connection, though, which was a bonus.

  The door slid open, and Ana entered. Her eyes widened slightly as she saw Kane sitting up.

  “How’d you know I was awake?” he asked with a grin.

  Ana pointed to a plastic bracelet that had been placed on his wrist while he was unconscious. “Biomonitor. Comes free with every surgery. I see you’re admiring my work.” She winked at him. “You’re welcome.”

  “Thanks,” Kane told her. “What’d I miss?”

  “Ed and Ed Senior are working on killing the Pestilence on Elysium with a gamma ray burst. Captain Bleys is moving us to a higher orbit to avoid that bit of nastiness.”

  “Where’s Ed?” Kane asked, suddenly alarmed. If he lost Ed, he lost everything!

  Ana laughed softly. “He’s with Bleys in the cockpit, using the comms to coordinate the sterilization. He actually left and came back. I am surprised, to be honest. He could have let you die, but he risked himself to save you, and then, when he had his chance, he chose not to escape. You seem to have impressed him greatly.”

  “It’s a brothers in arms thing. I wouldn’t expect a civilian to understand.”

  Ana’s expression of contempt made Kane wish he had a weapon. “Excuse me? I served same as you! The only civilian here is the Captain.”

  Kane raised both hands in surrender. “My mistake. And believe it or not, he’s not a civilian either, not anymore. Admiral Weyland drafted him. Technically, he outranks us. He actually is a Captain.”

  Ana snorted, her expression doubtful. “A man like him? Never.”

  Kane laughed. “Bleys is cunning, so he can plan. He’s lazy, so he’s inclined to delegate. He’s charming, so people actually want to follow his orders. And he’s a lucky bastard and always ends up looking good. How are those not perfect zero qualifications?”

  Ana gave him the stink-eye. “Watch it, Chief! I’m a Lieutenant Commander.” She allowed her severe expression to fade to a smile. “Or at least I used to be.”

  “Found out who your father was after you got out, eh?”

  “You’re pushing it awfully hard for a cripple.”

  “I only got one speed, ma’am. It’s flank or nothing.”

  Ana laughed out loud. “One speed, one leg, I should call you Solo, Chief.”

  “Get me another suit of armor and I’ll be fine. She’ll run just fine, leg or not.” He tapped the nodule at the back of his neck. “Interface will handle it. I won’t even notice.”

  “Really? That’s quite sophisticated!”

  “But necessary. If I take a round, shatter a knee, or start to bleed out, the old suit will tourniquet, block nerves for pain control, even make it seem like a missing leg is just fine. It’s designed to keep you moving and shooting unless you actually die.”

  “It seems to have failed you.”

  Kane shrugged. “Shit happens in war. If it had been a normal AP round, I would have been fine. Explosives, all bets are off.”

  Ana nodded. “Being honest, an explosion inside your armor might well have killed you. You were lucky.”

  Kane nodded. “A little lucky. But it was a lot of skill, too, on Ed’s part.”

  “To be fair, he is a walking computer. He even drew the lines to clean up that wound. Guess who did the slicing.”

  “You’re saying it wasn’t you?”

  Ana snickered. “Your man Morgan, with an industrial laser.” Kane knew his face must have registered shock by the way she giggled. “Under my direction, of course.”

  “Good,” Kane said. “Now tell him to put a new leg on my armor so I can get mobile.”

  The door to the makeshift medbay opened again. Ed and Bleys entered, smiling.

  Bleys winked and pointed his fingers at Kane like he was shooting him with two pistols. “Good to see ya, Rags! I was a little worried there for a bit.”

  Kane nodded toward Ed. “Thank him. I shit you not, Bleys, I was a goner back there if it hadn’t been for my new best pal.”

  Bleys put on a mock sad face. “But Ragsy, I thought I was your best pal.”

  “You were, Bleys,” Kane assured him. “Now he is.”

  Ed looked back and forth at them. “Friendly, good natured ribbing,” he announced with a nod, eliciting laughs from the other three. “It may take me some time to get it all down, but I am learning.”

  Bleys cleared his throat for attention. “So, we’re in a high orbit a safe distance from Elysium. Ed’s defensive satellites shot some green shit at the planet—”

  “It was not green,” Ed corrected.

  Bleys shook his head and continued, “And apparently a shitload of Pestilence had a very bad day.”

  “It does have a color,” Ed continued. “But not one you could perceive…” He trailed off, looking slightly embarrassed.

  Kane decided if no one else was going to ask the obvious question, he would. “So what’s next?”

  Ed spoke first. “I can’t speak for the safety of Elysium’s surface until Father has the dreadnaughts up and running again. That will take a few days. Our best use of time would be to head to the gate and power it up, see what condition it is in.”

  Bleys began fiddling with his coin again. “And here I was thinking you would just build new ones for us.”

  “That wouldn’t be possible without the facilities on the core worlds. It would take us a century to build the tools to build the tools…” He again trailed off as Kane shook his head. Ed looked back and forth at them a moment. “Sarcasm?” he asked.

  They all nodded. Bleys, looking guilty, said, “Sorry, man. It’s just how I talk. Not trying to trip you up.”

  Kane laughed aloud. “He’s pretty much a dick to everybody, Ed. You’ll get used to him.”

  Ana laughed with them briefly, then said, “I think we should go to Cerberus first. We can’t risk the embryos. I could be setting up the herds while you visit the gate.”

  Bleys nodded. “That’s our best bet. It’s about three days at 1G, same as the trip over.”

  “I suppose a few extra days won’t make a great deal difference,” Ed agreed.

  Bleys clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Sounds suspiciously like a plan! Ed, care to join me in the cockpit? Maybe give the old defense grid one last check before I do something dumb and get us killed?”

  Kane laughed at this. “And would you guys believe he’s in charge?”

  As Bleys and Ed left, Ana moved over to unwrap Kane’s stump and have a look. “It looks clean enough. The synthskin looks solid. I wouldn’t go banging it against the bulkheads, but it should do until we can get you a cybernetic. I am assuming you have the facilities on Cerberus to manufacture something in your size?”

  Kane nodded. “Yes, ma’am. All Imperial Military grade.”

  Ana nodded. “Then I think you’re good to go. Morgan has your armor in the aft gear locker, and he already mentioned getting something in place so you can walk around in it.”

  “Outstanding!” Kane answered and unbuckled the lap belt keeping him strapped to the table. A wave of vertigo struck him just as he pushed off in the zero-G, and he felt himself spinning out of control. Ana grabbed his arm and redirected him back to the table just in time for him to avoid cracking his skull on a low overhead beam.

  “Careful, Chief!” she said with a smile as she guided him back to his spot. “You might have some residual effects from the anesthetic. Let’s rest you a bit longer, hmm?”

  Kane lay back on the table and allowed her to buckle the lap belt again. She was right. He could use a bit more rack time. He heard Doro’s engines power up and felt the ship rumble as Bleys broke orbit for Cerberus and closed his eyes. The truth was he could use the rest, and there was no better time to get it. They were in interplanetary space with the jumpgates closed, probably the only ship in the star system. They couldn’t get much safer from attack.

  “I’ll do that,” he told her.

  Ana gave Kane a full twenty-four hours before clearing him for duty. At Morgan’s insistence, she agreed to allow him and Iezzi to play a prank on the chief when his time was up. They hadn’t gone into details, but apparently it involved shaving cream and permanent markers. Not wanting to be associated with whatever shenanigans they were up to, she decided to take advantage of the ship being under thrust to enjoy an actual cup of coffee in the galley. Drinking it out of a bag just wasn’t the same.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24