Rubicon, page 32
“But it’s…” She glanced back at the main aisle, heart thudding loud in her throat. “Intact?”
His helmet bobbed. “It’s paralyzed in its body right no—” He hacked a wet, jagged cough. “Oh shit. That’s blood…”
Adriene heaved in a rough breath, gripping the side of his helmet. “Shit, Kato, I’m so sorry.”
“S’not like you’re the one that shanked me. Besides—mission accomplished, right? And it was a good plan, Ninety-Six. It worked.”
She opened her mouth to offer some kind of consolation, but couldn’t find the words. Tears welled behind her eyes.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. Years.
“Hey,” Kato said, voice light. “S’all right.” He hacked out another wet, sick, bloody cough. “I’ll see you again in a few days.”
He launched into a coughing fit. She gripped his shoulders to steady him, but soon the coughs withered and died away. His head lolled back, tension melting from his limbs. In her HUD, his blue pip faded to gray.
Adriene curled forward, resting her head on her knees. She focused on breathing slowly and steadily, urging her racing heart and the swell of tears to abate.
Her breath hitched, air seeming to come up short. She willed another combat cocktail from her suit to calm her down.
// No. //
Please. I can’t.
// You have to. It’s normal. //
It doesn’t feel normal.
// You just forgot. //
Forgot what?
// Sympathy. Grief. All of it. //
She squeezed her eyes tighter, the heat of tears stinging the corners.
Dammit. He was right.
When the hell had she started giving a shit about people again?
A haggard groan cut through comms. From a white pip.
Cradling her skewered left arm in her less-skewered right, Adriene sat up, then managed to stand. She turned to find Blackwell on the ground across the aisle. He shoved Rhett’s dead body off his chest with considerable effort.
The shards that had killed Rhett had shallowly pierced his suit, and they clattered to the ground as he stood. A handful of smaller shards protruded from the left side of his suit. Blood dripped freely down the dark metal. He stared across the aisle at Adriene.
Her eyes scoured her HUD. No one else stirred. All seven other pips remained a dull, inactive gray.
Blackwell stepped into the aisle, glancing down at the eerily still Mechan, then back at Adriene before he clicked over to universal comms.
“Augur Team here,” Blackwell said, his low voice toneless. “Please relay to Aurora Actual … Asset acquired.”
Then he turned away without another word.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Adriene stood on the bright white bridge on the highest deck of the Aurora, fairly certain she’d never been in deeper shit.
A sleek but simple affair, the bridge had a dozen control consoles in a pristine arc on the top level, overlooking a lower deck reserved for the primary systems of flight, navigation, armaments, defense. The stations sat empty—it was 0100 ship time, and whatever bare-bones bridge crew would normally be on duty had been dismissed.
On the bottom deck, Commodore Thurston stood silently before the large central viewscreen, split into dozens of feeds from the ship’s external cameras. Each showed the same thing from different angles: the mesmerizing, long, thin, branching strands of subspace.
As Major Blackwell continued to rant, Adriene remained silent, oscillating between genuine shame, mounting rage, and crushing grief. She couldn’t force herself to focus on Blackwell’s justifiable anger as he brusquely outlined the events of the mission for Thurston.
Because she’d gotten her entire squad rezoned.
Kato had bled out in her arms. Brigham and Gallagher had died alone, skewered to the floor, no chance at concealing themselves from the bot’s frantic death throes.
“Special assignment” or not, there was no way Thurston would let this slide.
She clasped her hands behind her back, and pain fired up her wounded, wrapped forearms as her muscles tightened.
Brigham and Kato and Gallagher would have woken up with the same stabbing pain, all over their bodies—a phantom, sourceless agony, echoes of the wounds that caused their deaths, and any amount of painkiller would do nothing to deaden it until the memory faded. Such was the joy of a new husk.
“Is that true, Sergeant?” Thurston’s baritone voice cut through her thoughts, still managing to sound full and thick as it carried across the empty, silent bridge. His first words since Blackwell had dragged her here. “Did you subvert the major’s orders?”
Her besieged emotional gauge flitted, landing somewhere between anger and humiliation.
No point in lying or trying to shade it with rationalization—they could see the whole damn thing from the suit cams. They’d probably watched it back a dozen times already.
“Yes, sir,” she said as steadily as she could manage. “But only after Major Blackwell’s comms malfunctioned.” She bit the inside of her lip. It wasn’t entirely a lie … That malfunction just happened to be orchestrated by her Rubicon.
Thurston tilted his head to one side. “And so you took it upon yourself to amend standing orders?”
Her gaze fell, focusing on his polished black boots. “Yes, sir. I know I should have let Lieutenant Rhett step in as the senior ranking officer, but my Rubi—” She cleared her throat pointedly. “My pathfinder module allowed me insight she didn’t have.” She eyed Thurston, hoping he’d get the hint, but he didn’t react in any perceivable way.
Blackwell let out a low growl. “Should we discuss the result of ignoring those orders?” he added, hard gaze swinging to Thurston. “She caused the rezone of two squads.”
A sharp pang bolted through her chest as her eyes sharpened. She’d accept responsibility for her squad’s deaths, but the Stormwalkers had not been her fault. Other than Rhett.
Thurston remained facing the subspace screens, hands clasped behind his back. “Anything to say for yourself, Sergeant?” he asked, tone surprisingly calm.
Adriene quickly reset her expression to cowed compliance, and gave a short nod. “Sir, with all due respect,” she began carefully, “I was trying to follow orders. The mission orders—”
“Which were to fucking listen to me,” Blackwell growled.
“Which were to recover the intelligence intact,” she insisted.
Blackwell’s fury rose, his shoulders swelling as his fists clenched, and he turned on her. Her heart leapt along with the whir of a door sliding open behind her.
She turned to see who’d had enough balls to walk straight into the middle of this, and her mouth dropped open.
Major West marched toward them, his metal half gleaming brilliantly in the diodes of the white overheads. The bright, open space of the bridge made him seem both smaller, more concrete and tangible, yet at the same time larger, broader, more imposing.
She blinked, mildly disoriented.
“Dressing someone down without me, gentlemen?” he rumbled.
Thurston finally tore his stoic glare away from the screens and turned around. His single real eye widened as it fell on West, though he did a decent job of concealing his surprise.
“Mira’s end, Julen.” Blackwell crossed his arms over his thick chest, exasperated. “What the hell do you want?”
West descended the stairs toward them. He stopped beside Blackwell and faced Thurston, spine straight, shoulders drawn back, feet together, and Adriene found herself disoriented by his comportment. There was something off, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what.
West cleared his throat. “Commodore, the sergeant was acting under my orders.”
“What orders?” Blackwell sneered. “You have no authority to give her any fucking—”
“Because I knew you’d find a way to fuck it up, Charles,” West snapped.
“Hell—” Blackwell grunted, turning his ire fully onto West. “Shouldn’t you have seen this coming? All you do is sit around and pore over that stupid data—you had to know what we’d find.”
West glowered. “I knew nothing of the sort.”
“Gentlemen, please,” Thurston cut in.
Blackwell’s and West’s glares lingered for another second, then they both turned their attention to the commodore.
Thurston sat against the edge of the console counter, folding his arms over his chest. “We can discuss mission details another time. This is about Sergeant Valero.”
He nodded toward her, and three men’s gazes fell on her. Heat flushed her face, and she wished they’d have just continued to argue it out and forgotten entirely about her.
“Sergeant,” Thurston said, giving a heavy sigh that crackled in his low timbre. “It’s not acceptable to ignore orders or to dictate your own while disregarding chain of command. I think you know that.”
“Yes, sir,” she said as quickly as she could get the words out of her mouth. “I’m sorry, sir.”
He eyed West seriously. “It’s also not acceptable to follow the orders of an undeployed officer over those of your direct CO.”
“I understand, sir.”
“But to be clear, you made the right call in capturing the Mechan instead of killing it.”
Blackwell tensed, fury creasing his brow again, but when Thurston shot him a warning glare, he said nothing.
“We’ve had very few chances to study functioning Mechan in person,” Thurston continued. “The intelligence will be invaluable. West, I want you to get it into analysis ASAP.”
West inclined his head. “Already begun, sir.”
“And, Sergeant…” Thurston’s clipped, resigned tone snapped her focus back to him. “I’m assigning you to mess duty for the next three months.”
A flood of relief washed through her. Working the mess would suck, but it was a manageable punishment—and likely just for show in front of Major Blackwell. She’d probably be able to get West to expunge it later.
“You’re dismissed,” Thurston said.
She snapped a salute and retreated up the stairs and through the door, into the hallway outside.
The door slid closed and she eyed the MPs keeping post. She turned the corner and leaned against the wall. The halls this late, this high up in the ship, were barren.
A few minutes later, West rounded the corner, blowing straight past her. “Are you coming?” he called over his shoulder, already halfway down the corridor. “I require your assistance.”
Adriene pushed off the wall and jogged to catch up with West’s long-legged strides. He turned the next corner, and she followed him onto the command-level lift that would take them down to the main decks.
As the wide door slid shut, a weight melted away from West’s shoulders. He slouched against the wall, letting out a grating sigh, as if the strings holding him up had been severed. He stretched out his cybernetic leg, then arm, then clenched a fist, the real half of his face tightening.
Then it dawned on her: what had seemed off about West as he’d addressed Thurston. The whole time, he’d been standing upright, taller than she’d ever remembered him being. No hand tremors, no groaning in pain, no huffing and puffing.
Now he’d let the facade go, only able to keep it up long enough to put on a show for Thurston and Blackwell.
Blue lights flashed through the grates over his shoulder as the lift descended. She watched him warily for a long moment.
It’d almost make sense if it seemed like the real half of his body was in pain. Like it was finally giving out after having to support all that metal over the years. Yet it was always the mechanical side that seemed to cause him grief.
“You okay?” Her voice came out gentle, yet cut through the silence of the small lift like a razor.
“Fine.”
“What is it? Pain?”
He shook his head, gaze honed on the floor. “I’ve just been having a few bad weeks. It’ll pass.”
“Getting worse?”
“No. It has … always been an issue. Ever since it happened.”
“Ever since what happened?”
His hazel eye raked over her. “Suddenly curious, Sergeant?”
She shook her head slowly. “Not suddenly,” she said quietly.
The lift glided to a stop, and West’s spine straightened again as he exited. Adriene followed him into the bright white corridors of the main decks, as barren as the upper levels.
“It’s ancient history at this point,” he said, continuing his purposeful march. “Twenty years ago.”
“Brownout?” she surmised, and he inclined his head. “Who were you with?”
“The 258th.”
“Really? Don’t they groom High Command?”
“They do.” He exhaled a withering sigh. “They had me on a hard-and-fast path to admiral.”
“What happened?”
“After this…” He gestured absently to the left side of his body. “… Command didn’t want me in front of soldiers. I cannot say I blame them. So I altered my career goals.”
She flashed a small grin. “Let me guess—research and development?”
“Nothing gets past you, Sergeant,” he said dryly, though a hint of amusement played at his lips.
“Seems fortuitous.”
A flicker of something crossed his expression—sadness, maybe remorse.
“All I mean,” she continued quickly, “is that obviously you belonged in R&D. Look at everything you’ve accomplished.”
He stretched out his cybernetic arm, the metal fingers clacking together as he slowly opened his fist. “Maybe. Still can’t find a way to fix this, though.”
They arrived at a lift door marked “Restricted Access.” Adriene’s boots squeaked as she stopped in her tracks.
West pressed the call button and glanced back at her questioningly.
She stared at the lift; metal adorned both sides of the narrow entry. It was the same lift she’d seen when her Rubicon awoke on Cimarosa-IV. When her AI’s new “network” had stretched all the way back to the Aurora.
“Are you all right?” West asked. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Fine,” she replied, voice cracking, throat suddenly dry. “Where are we going?”
“The lower decks,” he replied plainly, as if that might mean something to her.
The lift door slid open. West swept a hand to invite her inside. He stepped in behind her and selected the bottom level.
She eyed West as he winced, his mechanical hand drawing into a tight fist as he exhaled a grating sigh. The lift hummed as it descended, blue lights slowly pulsating beyond the grated metal walls.
“What’s it like?” she asked. “Just pain?”
He shook his head. “Feels like phantom limbs.”
“But it is a limb.”
“Exactly, hence the problem. It feels real to me, but my mind knows it’s not. Not really.”
West waved his real hand dismissively as he leaned into the wall for support, facade slipping away again.
“It causes a … disconnect,” he continued. “It’s disorienting and … difficult to explain.”
Adriene nodded slowly, a sickening mass twisting in the pit of her stomach—it wasn’t at all hard for her to imagine what it must feel like. She’d felt that same way when she’d been hybridized. Like she was an extension of something foreign, or it was an extension of her—impossible to distinguish—until she was slowly overridden, no chance of seizing control again.
She let out a deep breath. Considered telling him just how aptly she could relate. Commiseration, empathy, all that normal human shit. If her Rubicon were active, he’d be goading her into it.
West’s gaze lifted from the floor and onto her wrapped forearms. “Are you okay?”
She wrung her hands. “You saw the playback, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know I’m doing far better than my squadmates.”
He didn’t say anything for a few long moments, his hazel eye glassy as he stared at her bandages and avoided eye contact. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Is it true, what you said to Blackwell? You really didn’t know what we’d find?”
He shook his head, his gaze going unfocused past her. “I knew what intelligence I expected … hoped to find. But I cannot say I thought it would come in this form.”
“And what is this ‘form,’ exactly?”
His eye flitted down briefly, then his brow hardened. “That’s what I’d like you to help me find out.”
The lift shuddered gently to a stop, and West stepped out into a wall of darkness. Adriene squinted into the black, though her eyes had trouble adjusting.
The baritone whir of the subspace accelerator resounded deep in her chest, rattling her teeth at their roots, an onerous, uncomfortable pulse of pressure thrumming against her eardrums.
“With me, Sergeant.” Under the drone, Adriene barely caught the quiet whir of West’s mechanical limbs as he marched away.
She stepped out, angling toward the direction of his voice, hurrying to catch up with his long strides. Her eyes adjusted to the dark corridor, dimly lit by strips of emergency lights lining the floors. West stared straight ahead, chin level, shoulders hunched, with an almost imperceptible limp that favored his augmented side.
The oscillations of the subspace accelerator faded in favor of a low, steady thrum of electricity as they entered a large, open area. Adriene hit a wall of warmth so thick, it felt difficult to walk through. The expansive room hummed with heat, the air pulsing with the low, steady thrum of electricity.
On the far left, a series of rectangular pillars glowed blue behind glass-paned fronts showcasing hundreds of rack-mounted server modules. Dozens more stretched out in rows behind the first. The Rubicon mainframe.
Along the right-hand side, a six-meter-wide half-moon counter sat covered in electronics and holographic displays. The console stretched out under a wall comprised of over two dozen monitors—some kind of command center.
