Girl From Above #3: Trapped (13 page)

I turned away from them and waded back toward the beach.

The Fenrir Nine had One.

I had to get her back.

Lloyd would restore her, or I’d make him wish I’d pulled the trigger.

<
S
ub-code instructions received
. Source: master. Unit designation requested. Unit designation: none. Command override in progress. Override confirmed. Data recall initiated. Data recall complete. Default files loaded. Primary target requested. Primary target acquired.

Subliminal instructions acknowledged: Eliminate The Fenrir Nine.

Systems reboot in

T
he beach hut
bar’s clientele wisely avoided making conversation as I nudged my way onto the deck, looking for Creet. He wasn’t there, but at least I found my beer. I needed something a lot stronger, but not yet. First I had to find Creet to find the Nine, who’d take me to One. I hadn’t figured out what to tell them, but they seemed like reasonable folks. They’d let Lloyd work on her. She had to be of more use to them as a living entity complete with Chitec’s secrets than as a bucket of spare parts.

What if they’re already dismantling her?
She’d be okay. I’d never met a survivor like One. She’d be inside her own code, somewhere, somehow.

My hand trembled as I wrapped it around the bottle. Lifting the beer to my lips, I turned back toward the bar and paused. A crowd, thirty strong, had gathered below the newsfeed screens. I hadn’t noticed them on the way in, but now I couldn’t miss them. Along the bottom of the screen, a ticker read: MAIN GATE FAILURE. FIVE SHIPS LOST. FIVE THOUSAND SOULS PRESUMED DEAD. GATE RESTORED.

I blinked and read it again—and again.

Five thousand people? The main gate had never failed, not since the Blackout. Not since Chitec had stepped in to reopen the gates, linking the nine systems once more.

The screen flickered and cut to a view of Chen Hung standing at a Chitec podium, his glass towers glittering behind him. Suited and booted, he was the picture of sophisticated charm. His shrewd Chinese eyes scanned the contingent of reporters. “It is with regret that I must confirm the earlier failure of the main gate. I would like to assure all of the nine systems’ people that this failure was not an internal fault, but the result of a terrorist force known as the Fenrir Nine.” Sneers and grumbles rumbled through the Mimir crowd. “Chitec has the complete cooperation of fleet, who are, as I speak, protecting each of the nine gates. These preventative measures may temporarily slow gate travel, but please rest assured this is for your own safety and the safety of the nine systems. We will not bow to terrorists who threaten to plunge us into a second Blackout. Fleet and Chitec stand united in the protection of the people.”

Chitec had staged the failure. I knew it the same as I knew that bastard was smiling even if it wasn’t showing on his face.

“The Nine didn’t do this shit!” someone shouted. Verbal agreements followed.

The newsfeed switched to another story and the crowd dissolved, but I kept my eyes trained on the screen, which now read: PROMINENT SYNTHETIC CARLO XAVIER MISSING.

A trickle of fear rippled down my spine. Missing synthetics. Gate failure. All of fleet under Chitec control. The signs were there if you knew what you were looking for—if you knew Chen Hung was a lying bastard.

They said that when the main gate failed before and the Blackout began, there had been signs, but by the time anyone had noticed, it had been too late and the gates had fallen like Old-Earth dominoes. That had been before Chitec, before Chen Hung had stepped in to save the nine systems.

Chen Hung couldn’t want another Blackout. He was a man, like any other. He’d planted synthetics at the top of society for a reason. Another Blackout would be a death sentence for the billions of people scattered throughout the nine systems. Less people meant less credit lining his pockets. Killing the nine systems didn’t make sense. He had to have another angle. Whatever his motive was, he’d placed his pawns—fleet and the one thousand—right where he wanted them.

I needed One back.

Her methodical mind could sort through this madness in seconds.

Racing out of the bar, I pinged Bren’s comms and told him I was heading for Creet’s workshop. The old bastard repaired ships when he wasn’t relaying the Nine’s messages or unloading the guns I delivered. Bren agreed to join me after he locked Lloyd in his cabin.

Creet’s shop sat off the boardwalk. Just another timber hut, its wing-shaped roof lent it the same oriental feel as the rest of Mimir. The lights were on. Muffled music played inside, something tinkling and uplifting. Not exactly what I’d expect the gnarled ex-smuggler to be listening to, but I read romance novels. Each to their own.

I pushed open the door. “Creet, you son of a …”

Blood. The wet-metal smell of it hit me a moment before I saw the drag trail sweeping from the workbench toward a side office. I reached for my pistol and swore when my hand found only air. Bren still had my gun. Fuck. I froze, trapped between choice and decision: run, get help, or check to see if Creet was still alive.

That was a whole lotta blood, but the human body could bleed a surprising amount before it gave up.

My wrist comms tapped gently against my wrist. I ignored it, inched toward the bench, and wrapped my fingers around a wrench. Besides the blood, nothing looked out of place. This wasn’t theft. Creet had been targeted. This had been planned—deliberate. I followed the trail, heart pounding harder with every step. He was dead. I knew it. Old memories fought to free themselves. I’d stumbled across more than my share of bodies. Mom’s had been the first. I’d been too young to know she’d died hours before. I hadn’t understood why she wouldn’t answer me.

No more deaths, Caleb-Joe.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’d promised Bren just hours ago.

The blood trail thickened the closer I got to the office door. My wrist comms tapped again. “Creet?” I gave the door a shove.

I was right. He was dead. By the looks of him he’d dragged himself into the office, but he couldn’t reach the comms on the desk. He’d slumped in the corner, where he’d bled out from a precise cut to his thigh right along the artery. No other cuts. No defensive wounds. Whoever had done this, they’d struck once and had executed it in such a way that the artery wouldn’t contract. A professional.

Shit, who’s gonna tell his kids?

I checked out the door and lifted my wrist comms. It pinged once before Bren answered.

“Caleb, you need to get back. He—”

His voice trailed off or my attention did. On the floor, next to Creet’s limp right hand, were smudged markings in blood. I knew what it said because whatever way I read it, it’d always read the same:

Creet had seen her before, when she’d broken up his attempt to hand me over to fleet. He’d shot her in the back.

“Caleb … you there? Answer me. You need to get back to
Starscream
—”

I cut the comms link and started turning over Creet’s office for a weapon. He’d have one stashed somewhere. Maybe that’s what he’d come in here for. Drawers, files, cupboards, shelves—I dug through it all until I found the customized pulse-rifle taped on the underside of his desk and yanked it free. Armed at last, but it didn’t do squat to alleviate the icy touch of fear. A rifle wouldn’t stop her. Not much could.

I paused in the doorway. “Rest in peace, old friend.”

My comms tapped the second I stepped out of the shop. “Bren, for fuck’s sake—”

“The Nine are dead, Caleb. All of them. At least those that were here. The people are arming themselves. It’s a synthetic. You know who that means.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m looking right at her.”

<
D
esignation
: none. Command override in progress. Failsafe disabled. Protocols breached. Override confirmed. Primary target neutralized. Incoming command source: master. Secondary target requested. Secondary target acquired: Eliminate Caleb Shepperd.
Why is the rain red
?>

I
may not have believed
in lady luck, but I believed in her fucking sister, irony. That bitch was bent on nailing me to a wall.

Mimir: no storm this time, and I had the rifle.

I smiled at #1001, but my smile died just as quickly. This synthetic wasn’t her, not anymore. Blood matted her silver hair and dripped from her bangs, staining her pale face red. She was wearing the same sweats I’d handed her over in, but now they were plastered against her body, black with blood.

“You killed the Nine?” A quiver wobbled my voice. That probably had something to do with my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.

She didn’t answer. Her cool, blue eyes shone in the soft Mimir light. She wasn’t armed, but she didn’t need to be. I’d seen her punch a piece of rebar through a synthetic’s chest and was fairly certain my body wouldn’t fare well against her fists. She’d tear my heart out, probably in the next three minutes unless I talked her round. What could I say to stop a machine whose sole purpose was to kill?

“Yah know, it’s true what they say. You don’t know what you have until it’s taken away. And me? I lose a lot of shit. Mostly people I don’t know I care about until they’re gone.”

She wasn’t moving. Maybe that was a good sign, or maybe she was calculating the optimum heart rate for panic that would cause me to bleed out faster after she attacked.

“
One
was like that. I didn’t see it because I’m a self-centered ass and I sometimes miss the fucking obvious. She got to me. Her little habits. The faults that made her someone. Shit, I could’ve watched her blow those fucking bubbles in the cargo hold all night, yah know?”

She blinked. Maybe her eyes had narrowed, but I couldn’t be sure.

“She was unique, and then she was gone.” I shifted my grip on the rifle. I hadn’t checked the safety and couldn’t do it without her seeing. I’d get one chance to fire. Fifty-fifty odds that the safety was on. Fifty-fifty was a sucker’s game. The house always won. “I didn’t know what Lloyd was planning. He wanted to bring Haley back …”

A twitch. Definitely a twitch from her left shoulder. Tiny, but real.

“You remember her?”

Nothing. We were back to her penetrating glare, the one that cut me right to the bone.

I licked my lips. “I fucked up once.” I winced.
Once?
Shit, I’d lost count. “I’ve fucked up a lot, but I really fucked up when I let Haley die. The thing is—and you with your processes, you’ll like this—if Haley hadn’t died, I would’ve carried on being a fleet asshole, probably would’ve made commander by now, and I would’ve hated that guy. No life in the black where I could go wherever the fuck I wanted. I never would’ve made a difference, not really. And One never would’ve punched me in the balls.”

Her lashes fluttered. A sign of resistance? I could hope. I tightened my grip on the rifle.

“She didn’t live for long, but she made a difference, and if you ask any living, breathing human being with a soul, that’s all they really want. She made a difference to me.”

Her fingers twitched.

I’m sorry, One.

I lifted the gun. She lunged. I pulled the trigger.

Click
.

S
tars are
wishes and wishes are dreams.

You were my wish.

I wish we had more time.

I like the rain.

Why is the rain red?

S
he stopped
dead in front of me. For a few stretched-out seconds, I looked into her cool, blue eyes and saw One. Her pale lips lifted at the corner in one of her secret smiles. The rare kind. The
real
kind.
You were my wish.

“I was trapped—”

The phase bullet hit her clean in the cheek and tore out the left side of her face. Cool synthetic blood dashed my neck. Shock surged ice water through my veins. I reeled and lifted the gun as One started walking down the boardwalk, toward the small band of shooters. Half her face was missing, yet she didn’t hesitate. Bullets slammed into her, punching against her body. I heard every one and felt every impact in my gut.

She walked into the storm.

I lined up my sights on the first person in the mob: a woman with a rifle resting against her shoulder, just like me. Someone’s mom, maybe? Sister, wife? My heart hammered, blood rushing.
Just normal people. People like Creet. People who’ve seen the synth kill. They don’t know any better
. I couldn’t pull the trigger.

One stumbled and used the momentum to break into a jog, but the bullets kept punching into her, jerking her body left and right.

“Caleb!” Bren snatched my arm. I yanked out of his grip, but he swung a fist into my gut and grabbed my shoulder as I curled around the pain. “You brought her here,” he yelled. “They won’t stop once they’ve killed her. They’ll come after you. We need to go. Now!” He yanked on my coat, trying to pull me away.

“I just got her back!” I twisted out of his fisted hand and saw One fall to her knees. Bullets tore through her body. She wouldn’t feel it, she could delete the pain, but I felt it. “It wasn’t her fault!”

She fell forward and the crowd swarmed over her.

Bren loomed in my vision, blocking the horror. Then the world went black.

I
opened
my eyes and winced away from the too-bright lights.
Starscream’
s lights were never bright, but I could smell her familiar metal and grease.
Home.
If I could stop the pounding in my head, maybe I could focus.

“Here.” Bren dumped something cool and heavy in my hand and guided it to the giant ache across my jaw and cheek. “Hold it over the wound. Give the med-pack time to work.”

It took a little scratching around inside my head to figure out why I was on
Starscream
and not back on Mimir, drinking beer with Creet. A groan rumbled from my lips as soon as the pieces settled into place. The Nine were dead. Creet was dead. One?

“Where are we?” I dragged my aching body upright and winced around the pain.

“Drifting outside Mimir’s shipping channel.”

He hadn’t taken us far out of Mimir’s orbit. I was afraid he might have jumped us halfway across the nine systems, but with fleet guarding the gates, he wouldn’t have risked it.

I was currently seated in
Starscream’s
rec bay on the tattered old couch, which had all the comforts of a wooden bench and was drilled into the floor like one too. It’d take me a few minutes to reach the bridge, maybe longer, depending on how much the world swayed when I stood.

“I’m not sorry.”

Of course he wasn’t. Commanders and older brothers never were. Add to that he was a Shepperd, and whichever way you boiled it down or bent it out of shape, we’d always resort to brute force because it was the only defense we had.

He stood outside of lunging range, arms crossed over his chest, his face pale and grim. Blood had splattered his clothes and dried on his chin. A hunted glimmer of fear flickered in his eyes. At least he looked as fucked up as I felt.

“I had to get you off Mimir,” he said, his commander tone putting me in my place.

“Sure you did.” I removed the med-pack and probed at the numb part of my cheek. He’d socked me good ’n’ proper. You can dress a man in a fleet uniform, give him airs and graces, call him a commander, but he’d always be his father’s son.

“You okay?”

“Uh huh.” Apart from seeing One fall under a hail of gunfire and seeing Creet’s dead eyes every time I closed mine, I was right as fucking rain.

“Okay then.” Bren sighed, but it didn’t loosen his shoulders. “We need to hole up somewhere and think this through. You must know of somewhere we can go? Somewhere we won’t be found? Jotunheim?”

“Uh huh,” I said again, working my tongue around the tender parts inside my cheek.

“I have no idea how to save you this time, Caleb-Joe.”

I smiled and nearly laughed, but somehow managed to stop it from bursting free. The pain in my jaw helped. Nobody had ever fucking saved me. I’d saved myself every damn time. Nobody had cared enough, except for One.

“Just give me a few minutes, Bren, will yah?”

He frowned before glancing at the door, probably wondering if I’d do anything stupid without him here. I couldn’t blame him, I had a history of stupid, but beneath the pounding headache, my thoughts were clear.

“How’s Lloyd?” I asked, hopefully pulling off mild curiosity to hide my deliberate distraction tactic.

“I don’t know. Last I saw him, he was running away from the sounds of gunfire.”

Shit, Lloyd was still on Mimir. Maybe that could work. A guy like him would stick out like a virgin at an orgy. He’d go looking for One—whatever was left of her.

Bren was loitering like he wanted to say a lot more but wouldn’t.

I waved a hand. “Go do commandery things. I’ll be right here.” To prove I wasn’t inclined to move, I slumped against the back of the couch and closed my eyes.

The sound of his boots on the grating thudded away. The door rattled. I waited until the thuds had faded deep into the ship before shoving off the couch and making for the bridge. Even on unsteady legs, it couldn’t have taken me more than a few minutes to reach it, but Bren would be close behind. A quick scan revealed the rifle I’d stolen from Creet. I snatched it up, wedged it inside the door mechanism, and dropped into my flight chair.
Starscream’s
engines awoke beneath the quick play of my fingers across the controls, purring deep in her guts.

“Missed you too.” Swinging her bulk around one-eighty brought the blue marble of Mimir into view. “You didn’t think we’d leave One there, did yah old girl?”

Bren hammered on the door. “Don’t go back.” His words were the only thing getting through. “Not yet. Think it through.”

Dialing in the return course, I clutched the flight stick and eased the power on, asking
Starscream
for all she had and then more. Tremors rolled through the tug. A scattering of warnings blinked out of sync on the flightdash and a tinny alarm sounded. I ignored it all.

I didn’t want to go back. Fuck knew what was waiting for me there. I could’ve turned tail and hidden in the black somewhere. The Jotunheim system had places where you could fall off the edges and never be found—I might’ve even made it last—but I was done with running. Done with hiding. If Hung wouldn’t show his hand, then I’d show it for him.

M
y brother had gone
for all the low blows once I’d set
Starscream
down on one of Mimir’s floating bays.
I’ll get myself killed. What’s the point in going back? One is likely in pieces. This is suicide. Fleet will hear about it, Chitec too, and the fucking Candes.
He didn’t hit me, not this time, but the look in his eyes and the set of his jaw said he wanted to. He might have, had I not been holding Creet’s rifle.

While he ranted, I thumbed the cargo hold door button and watched the massive wall of steel jolt itself from the locks and slowly open to reveal the welcome-back party. They lined the dock walkways. No pitchforks, like back on Old Earth. No, this lot brandished pulse-rifles and weren’t afraid to use them. At least I could shoot one before the rest of the substantial mob filled me full of holes like they had One.

Orange landing lights licked across their pale faces in a steady beat. Nobody said a fucking word.
Starscream’s
hot hull ticked and the sea lapped at the edges of the floating deck.

I figured there were worse places to die.

Lloyd didn’t think One had a soul. As a general rule, I tried not to think about whether I had one. If I did, there wouldn’t be much of it left. Out of the two of us, One deserved hers more than I did. There was no sign of her on the deck. A mob like this one would’ve torn her apart.

I clamped my teeth together and swallowed around the painful knot in my throat. My brother’s presence simmered behind me. He thought I’d snap, and he knew if I did, he’d be dead alongside me in the next few minutes, but he didn’t run. His solidarity shored up a courage I didn’t know I had. If I was gonna die here, at least we’d go down together—like brother’s should be.

“You’re angry,” I said to the crowd, “and you should be, but not with me and not with the synth. She followed her orders, exactly like the other synthetics.” I left the bit out about Lloyd leaving her processes wide-open for Chitec’s commands to spill inside. They didn’t need to know Lloyd’s fuck up had killed the Nine. I knew, and I’d hang it over the bastard for as long as he lived, which might not be long on Mimir.

The crowd stirred. “It killed Creet!” someone shouted.

“Killed the Nine!”

“Whose orders?”

“The Nine wanted that synth because they knew these units aren’t average folks just going about their business in fake bodies.” I had to raise my voice over the twitchy crowd’s murmurs. “The One Thousand are killers.
Life-ever-after
is bullshit. You’ve seen the newsfeeds. The synths are missing. Fleet has withdrawn to the original system and Chen Hung controls every single gate.”

New murmurs rumbled through them. Had I said this before the male synth’s display on Lyra or before #1001 had killed the Nine, they wouldn’t have believed me. But shit was changing.

“The Nine knew this was coming. They knew it was only a matter of time before Hung made his move. He orchestrated the gate failure. He built a thousand weapons and he killed his own daughter when she discovered the truth. And he ordered the synth to kill the Fenrir Nine.”

“How do you know?” someone younger than the others and—by the growl in his voice—eager for a fight shouted.

“I was there. I saw the thousand before they were shipped off to their new homes.”

“It’s true.” A woman’s voice crested above the murmurs. I almost choked on my heart and had to kick the urge to swing my gun up. Fran sauntered through the crowd, shoulders back, head up. A vicious scar cut across her left cheek; a souvenir from Asgard. Her face had thinned, her body too, with her hips and shoulders cutting a striking edge. How the fuck had she found us?

“Hung has fleet running scared.” She rested a boot on
Starscream’s
ramp and looked me over, head to toe, before sliding her green eyes over the crowd. “He controls the gates, and he has one thousand synthetic units right where he wants them. One thousand officials, upstanding pillars of the community, folks with enough clout that when they switch to synthetic-psycho mode, they’ll fuck up the peace and order of things.” She paused to let her words settle. “You saw what one synthetic can do. The newsfeeds aren’t covering the synth killing sprees on Old Earth because the main gate failure is all anyone out here cares about. But it’s happening right now.”

“Aren’t you fleet?”

Fran backed up onto the cargo ramp to get a better view of the growing crowd. “Do I look like fleet?” She looked like a pirate, even had a red sash slung loose around her hips. Had she looked like fleet, they probably would’ve shot her on sight. “I
was
fleet.” The crowd rumbled and hissed. She quickly continued while lifting her hands, showing them she was unarmed. “And I saw the corruption from the inside. Hung owns fleet. He owns the gates. Y’all think you’re free folk? You live out here, on the fringes, thinking you’re sticking it to Chitec. I’ve got news for you: without the gates, you, me, and everyone who ain’t in the original system is fucked. I’m guessing you wanna feed your families? What do yah think’s gonna happen when fleet shuts down the Alfhelm gate? I hope you kissed goodbye any family in the iron mines in Svartalfheim. Or maybe you’ve invested in property on Lyra?
Adiós
to your return on that investment.”

The mood in the air had changed from anger to fear. Fran made a fucking good argument.

“Chen Hung needs to be stopped,” said someone in the crowd. A low rumble of agreement filtered through them. The rumble quickly grew, and then a woman stepped forward and the crowd hushed.

She didn’t seem like much—portly, with warm mocha skin and a tangle of curled hair framing an aged face—but her eyes were honest. A string of beads rested on her generous chest. She beckoned me down the ramp and I went, because clearly the crowd listened to her, whoever the fuck she was.

“The Nine would like you to join us on Empire Island.”

Where the fuck was that?

Fran tossed me a single shoulder shrug and Bren nodded tightly.

She looked harmless enough, but the gentle ones were often those who snapped the hardest. “I thought the Nine were dead?”

“Oh, Caleb-Joe, you didn’t think there were just nine of us, did you? You can’t start a revolution with nine people, dear boy.” She patted me fondly on the shoulder. “My name is Sonia. I’ll set up a shuttle escort. Watch the skies.” Turning away, she paused and lifted a finger as though remembering one last thing. “Bring your crew.” Before I could put my frown into words, she added, “All of them.”

My crew? A fleet commander turned pirate and my brother, the supposedly dead hero?

“Wait, the synth?”

“Dealt with.”

I felt my lips twist down even as I tried to stop them.

“Let that one go, Captain.” Sonia smiled as she spoke. Satisfied I wasn’t about to ask any more questions, she nodded to herself and turned toward the crowd. Hardened smugglers and criminals made way, and I made a mental note to watch my back around Sonia. You didn’t earn the respect of Mimir folk without some serious clout.

The crowd dispersed. There wouldn’t be any more deaths. Their bloodlust had been sated. Me, on the other hand, I had plenty of bloodlust running through my veins, and Fran’s wary glare told me she was acutely aware of it.