Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (152 page)

The lilting murmur sent a delightful shiver radiating down her spine.

Oh, yes it did.

He chuckled in response but stepped away as they entered the top-floor Operations Suite and their escorts at last retreated to a reasonable distance. Her mother hadn’t arrived yet, but Dr. Canivon should be on-site and—

—Kennedy materialized out of nowhere and promptly tackled her with enough fervor to nearly knock her to the floor. “You are the craziest, most insane woman in the galaxy, but damned if you aren’t also the luckiest!”

“Or the craftiest. It’s good to see you, too, Ken.” Alex managed to disentangle from the embrace and regain her footing. “I hear you had quite the life-threatening ordeal yourself.”

Kennedy gestured a mock dismissal. “It was no big deal. Except for all the ways it
was
a big deal. Speaking of….” She turned to Caleb, who waited against the opposite wall. “Caleb, I’m glad you made it, too. There’s someone here you might like to see.”

His eyebrows rose in surprise. “Someone
I
want to see? I don’t know anyone on Earth…do I?”

Kennedy motioned for them to follow her around the corner and into a lounge/break room. It was empty except for one occupant. A man sporting shoulder-length dirty blond hair, rugged khakis and a faded t-shirt was putting the ‘lounge’ nature of the room to full use. He had kicked way back on a couch, tossed his feet atop the table in front of it and crossed his hands behind his head.

“I’ll be damned. Noah?”

The guy pushed up off the couch. “Hey, you did live!” He and Caleb met halfway and embraced in the casual, masculine way guys do. She noted Caleb subtly shift his body in such a way that his injured side wasn’t at risk.

Alex eyed Kennedy expectantly.

“He sort of saved my life on Messium. We hid out, deciphered the cause of the exanet interference, crossed a city under attack by the aliens and fled the planet in a shuttle—and in this total crazy random happenstance, it turns out he knows Caleb.”

She watched Caleb and this ‘Noah’ chatting animatedly. “So I see. There’s more to the story though, right?”

“Well, sure. He’s Lionel Terrage’s clone but ditched his father to live on the wild side on Pandora, and the Zelones cartel put a price on his head, which is why he went to Messium in the first place—”

“I meant are you two together?”

“Oh. I think so.”

“You
think
so? It’s not like you to be tentative when it comes to men.”

Kennedy grumbled. “I know. And yes, we are. It’s just…” her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper “…he’s a bit of a free spirit. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep him.”

Alex’s lips pursed together to squelch a laugh. They tugged upward nevertheless, eyes dancing in flagrant amusement.

“What?”

Her gaze roved to the ceiling. “Nothing.”

“Oh, say what you want to say already.”

“I was merely wondering if perhaps you had finally met your match. And if so, it’s about damn time.”

Kennedy’s head thudded against the wall behind them. “I am in so much trouble.”

She did laugh then, and was still laughing when Caleb brought Noah over for introductions.

Alex left Caleb in the lounge with Kennedy and Noah. The levity and relaxation they brought would do him good, she thought.

He was in a much better state of mind now—after the attack, ironically. He had slept most of the trip from Pandora, for which she was immensely thankful. It was far better than all the not sleeping he had done on the trip
to
Pandora. But more importantly it had allowed his body to devote most of its energy to supercharging the regenerative process, and as a result he was now healing at an accelerated pace.

Still, the events of the past several days or even weeks had used up a lot of his reserves. He deserved a break.

Of course, he’d probably say the same of her…but he would be incorrect. She wasn’t worn down. On the contrary, she felt invigorated, driven inexorably forward by the conviction that she possessed the ability and the means to bring an end to this war.

The Special Projects building was a five-minute walk away, which meant she had an escort of three MPs. Despite her casual behavior toward her escorts, they remained polite and respectful to such a degree she was forced to consider the possibility it might simply be that they were terrified of her mother.

Because Special Projects was not locked-down so tight as Operations, her guards not only escorted her to the door of the lab, they inspected its contents and personnel before allowing her inside. Two of the MPs then took up positions outside the door and the third staked out the hallway entrance.

Dr. Abigail Canivon had been allowed to take over the testing and development lab for ANNIE, complete with the attached clean room to house Valkyrie’s hardware. Alex entered to find her standing at the giant, distinctive 3x3 screen from her lab, which she had apparently brought along from Sagan. Thousands of lines of code were jammed onto the right side of the screen, grouped into segments with squiggly lines and arrows creating a web to interconnect them. The left side displayed a series of schematics for what looked to be portions of the human brain, magnified in several cases to a neuron level of detail.

“Nice friends you have there. The frisking they subjected me to was quite thorough,” the woman muttered as she tweaked one of the strings of code.

“Sorry about that. They weren’t my idea.”

Canivon finally turned around and gave her a wary glance. “I’m afraid there isn’t a proper place for us to sit and converse, but you’re welcome to pull up a chair.”

Alex dragged a plain lab-style chair next to the screen and sat backwards in it, crossing her arms over the top of the backrest. “Do you have everything you need?”

“For now. I do expect to be requesting a significant number of additional items soon.” Canivon found her own chair and brought it closer to the screen, though she sat properly in it. “This isn’t the time for small talk. You want her, don’t you? It’s why you insisted I bring her with me.”

No equivocation, straight to the point. Alex was immediately reminded of why she had always admired Canivon. “I do.”

The woman’s mouth twitched. “This building houses an Artificial which is by any objective measure more powerful. It’s certainly larger, even if half the hardware could be eliminated with the judicious application of a few efficiency principles. It is newer and contains a plethora of databanks on military history, procedures, resources and tactics. It is already a part of the Alliance infrastructure. Use it instead.”

“I don’t know ANNIE—and to put it bluntly, I don’t want a government machine mucking about in my head. Hell, odds are it would spend the entire time making sure we’re following the proper checklist; everyone else in the government does. I know Valkyrie—and I know you will have built her to the highest standards.”

“You spent an hour with her four years ago.”

“Which is fifty-nine minutes longer than I’ve spent conversing with any other Artificial. I liked her and she liked me, something you readily admitted. It’s the obvious, logical choice, and the only one I’m comfortable making. Doctor, I recognize she is important to you, but in my hands she is important to our very existence. I don’t merely want her—I need her.”

“She isn’t important to me. She is precious to me.” The woman blinked and lifted her shoulders. “But she would not forgive me if I denied her the chance to help save humanity. You win. If this impressively subversive idea of yours is allowed to go forward…she is yours.”

Dr. Canivon was a taciturn, aloof woman on a good day, and Alex didn’t know her well enough to decipher her reaction. “Thank you. I mean it.”

The woman let out a sigh Alex did identify as exasperation. “If you’re going to become a symbiote of my closest companion, you may as well go ahead and start calling me ‘Abigail,’ seeing as she does.”

“All right then, Abigail. What now?”

Abigail’s demeanor didn’t change; she didn’t look up and the tenor of her voice did not alter. “Valkyrie, do you remember Ms. Solovy?”

The voice came from a speaker near the large display.
“Of course I do. I have been attempting to follow your exploits these last two months, Alex, but information has been scarce. I’m very pleased to see you alive and well.”

“Thank you, Valkyrie. I’m not sure I’d call what I’ve been doing ‘exploits,’ but I’ll admit it hasn’t lacked for excitement.”

“When you have a few minutes, would you consider telling me about it?”

The Artificial’s intonation and speech patterns were far more natural than she remembered; four years had made a discernable difference. She smiled. “If you’re willing, I can do more than tell you. You can see it for yourself.”

Richard allowed the door to close behind him then activated the lock and surveillance shielding on the control panel beside it. Next he activated the additional shielding device in his pocket. Only then did he turn to greet the six men and women gathered in the small meeting room.

Together they constituted his best agents currently stationed on Earth. He’d recalled those not already in the Cascades while still en route from Pandora, and the last one had arrived on the Island less than fifteen minutes ago.

“Thank you all for coming in on such short notice, and in several cases for abandoning active investigations to do so.”

Major Flores shrugged. “I’m guessing we’re here to do something which will help us still be a functioning species come next month, which strikes me as more important than catching a Colonel babbling state secrets to a hooker in his sleep.”

Richard chuckled mildly. The others lounged against the walls rather than sit at the single table, but he kept his posture somewhat formal. Due to the nature of the job, military intelligence field agents were often the least ‘military’ of any serving officers. That had once been him, but now far too many people saluted him to allow him to relax.

“In a matter of speaking, yes. Everything from this point forward is Level V classified.” It was the highest secrecy level, and one applied solely to situations involving four-star officers and government cabinet members. The announcement resulted in the desired reaction.

“Damn.”

“Who exactly are we protecting—or hunting?”

Richard’s head tilted in concession to the seriousness the classification level alone represented. “As of an hour ago we have two guests with us here on the Island. Their safety and continued survival is of the utmost priority, and not merely or even mostly because one of them is Fleet Admiral Solovy’s daughter.”

“And the other is the Senecan Intelligence agent formerly accused of the Headquarters bombing who escaped our vaunted security last month.”

“Yes, actually. How did you come to this conclusion?”

Captain Kessler snorted. “I’d hope you’d fire me if I didn’t come to it.”

“Probably just probation and a remedial course—the first time. Alexis Solovy and Caleb Marano are here under the protection of EASC Security Bureau. They have round the clock military police coverage and escorts for all their movements on the Island. Major Lange has instituted a top-level security protocol surrounding their activities.”

“With that kind of entourage, what are we needed for?”

Richard kept his expression neutral; the information would evoke a more pronounced effect this way. “The first location they were sheltered at was bombed to rubble—and it was a Senecan Intelligence safe house so clandestine we didn’t know about it. The second location saw three elite private security officers murdered in close-quarters combat by a highly-trained freelance assassin. In the hour they’ve been here on the premises, Security Bureau has foiled two infiltration attempts and one assassination attempt from within.”

“Jesus. Who has such a hard-on for them to be dead?”

“The Metigens.”

Flores regarded him in blatant disbelief. “Sir?”

“The aliens have human agents working on their behalf. We don’t know how many and in most cases don’t know who. We only know they exist. In all three incidents today the assailants were killed, so they won’t be providing answers.”