Rubicon, page 45
Daroga grabbed her wrist and pressed her palm flat to the inner conduit. She held it as steady as she could manage.
“I’m ready,” she croaked, jaw tight, heart thudding fast—too fast. “Do it.”
// Goodbye, Adriene. //
Her palm sparked, then sucked flush to the metal. A lance of electric current fired up her arm, down her nerves—her fake, synthetic nerves. It grew hot and sharp, on the brink of numbness.
A tight, tingling shudder like a silent scream vibrated in the back of her skull. A million tiny bolts of electricity arced between him and every neuron in her brain, every cell in her body.
Then, the void was gone. Not empty, but gone.
Then, blissful nothing.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Fire surged through Adriene’s chest as consciousness crushed back down in an instant.
Adrenaline shot through her veins along with another jolt of power. Hot sweat rained down her forehead, stinging her eyes.
It was too much.
All her senses poured back into her at once. A litany of scents assaulted her: pheromones, oiled metal, wet rock, sour mold. Sharp, thick cracks rang out, metal crushing metal. Every noise grated over the relentless, throbbing bass of pulsating power and a screeching buzz of electronics.
A hard pain pressed deep into her gut as some unseen vise removed the air from her lungs. Unsourced terror surged through her. She couldn’t breathe.
Then lips were on hers, warm and wet—salty with tears or sweat, or both. The shock of it froze her panic, the smells and sounds fleeing her frenzied mind. She inhaled a deep, dizzying breath.
Silence pressed hard against her eardrums as Daroga lifted his lips away. “Adri, you with me?”
When her eyes finally opened, her vision filled with an incomprehensible, teary haze of blooming white. Light fired down from the high ceilings, stark against the exposed black rock.
Though the electric current was gone, phantom traces still sparked along her nerves, and her muscles spasmed and locked up every few seconds.
She managed a short nod. “I’m—yes.”
“I’m sor—” His voice broke, and he looked down at her with dampness in his green eyes, wide with terror. “I almost didn’t…”
She cleared her throat, though it still came out weak. “Almost didn’t what?”
He shook his head. “It was like … twenty-nine seconds.”
She swallowed a mass of thick, iron-tinged saliva. “It’s okay. It worked. That’s all that matters.”
“Are you okay?”
She just blinked at him, aware her horror was painted across her face, but she didn’t have the capacity to moderate the expression. All she could think was fucking no.
Because just as always, there’d been nothing. No in-between, just emptiness. She was back, yes, but she was less than she’d been, no longer whole. The hollowness consumed her, the lack of a gaping void at the base of her skull. Because he wasn’t missing. He wasn’t on hold, paused, waiting to come back to her. He was gone.
Dead.
A biting angst pooled at the base of her rib cage.
Daroga swept a lock of her hair off her sweat-glossed forehead. She met his gaze, still lined with worry, but steadfast.
With a sharp inhale, she pushed aside the overwhelming grief. Drew in deep lungfuls of warm, unfiltered air. There was still a mission to accomplish. She’d have to wait to mourn her loss.
Yes, she’d grown to rely on him, but she’d also learned. Just like he had. She’d evolved along with him.
And now, she could do this without him.
“Is the small commander accounted for?” the Creator’s harsh voice sounded through comms. “Our network is gone.”
“She’s alive, but her Rubicon’s gone,” Daroga said. “West was trying to hack her. We had to … destroy it.”
“I see. I am sorry, small commander.”
Adriene groaned as she sat up. Blood rushed to her head. She went to stand, but her limbs felt almost too heavy to lift.
She slid open her suit’s hyphen and glanced at the power indicator—10 percent. Only about a quarter of the interface displayed properly, the rest jittered, flickering in and out. Unsurprisingly, the three charges that’d hacked her Rubicon, then killed her, then brought her back to life had taken a toll on her suit functions.
She switched into safe mode. The hyphen dimmed, then flashed back on as the suit rebooted. The limbs lightened as the mode activated.
Daroga stood and offered a hand, gripping her arm to help her up.
The Creator loomed at the end of the aisle, his massive frame humming with the sharp buzz of hydraulics. He appeared untouched beneath his shield construct armor, which deactivated a second later in a flash of purple light.
“The remainder have been taken care of.”
Adriene glanced over at the bot. “Right … Good. Thank you.”
“If you are ready, we should continue our mission.”
Daroga shook his head. “We only have four of the fourteen charges we need—it’ll never be enough.”
Adriene crouched to pick up her rifle. “Let’s go see what we’re working with.”
Daroga and the Creator followed as she led the way to the center vestibule. Her gaze flitted across the limp bodies of Flintlock, necks and limbs twisted at unnatural angles.
“Have you guys seen West?” she asked. “Actual West?”
Daroga shook his head. “No.”
“I have not,” the Creator said.
Adriene set her jaw. West was many things, but not a coward. So where the hell was he?
Across the vestibule, she headed down the ramp to the ansible access door. The Creator hovered at the ready as Daroga unlocked the door, which opened into a massive circular chamber. Adriene’s eyes darted into every dim corner, but the room was empty.
“I have no contacts on sensors,” the Creator confirmed.
She took a few steps in, gaze drifting up the length of the primary ansible casing—a seven-meter-wide steel cylinder that rose straight up, disappearing into the black rock of the high ceiling. The base was enclosed by a reinforced alanthum barrier, ringed by dozens of control panels and access screens.
“Shit.” Daroga breezed past her. He jogged down the long ramp to an open metal crate, linked to one of the control panels with a bundle of cabling.
Adriene followed. She ripped the cabling free, disconnecting it from the control panel.
Daroga peered into the crate. He turned toward the nearest console screen, fingers drumming out an anxious beat on the metal counter.
Adriene inspected the crate, outfitted with jumbled cabling, ports, and status lights, radiating warmth. “This is the copy of the mainframe?”
“Yeah, but the data’s already been loaded into the cache.” Daroga angled the screen toward her and shot her a dark look. “The ansible’s spooling now. As soon as it’s done, the data will be sent.”
“How long do we have?”
He shook his head, then pulled his tablet from his belt and tapped at the screen. After a short time, he let out a sigh. “A few minutes. It’s still cycling on and looking for a proper alignment. There’s no signal lock yet.”
“Can you hack it? Interrupt it before it boots up?”
He continued to work, then let out a sharp hiss. “Shit, no. West has a pretty intense firewall set up. Rubicon’s fighting me.” He lowered the tablet, expression tight. “I could get through it, but it’d take hours, not minutes.”
Adriene glanced back at the Creator. “How about you?”
“I am afraid I must concur with civilian human’s assessment. I do not believe I could expedite those efforts appreciably.”
“All right,” she sighed. “What about explosives? What do we have?”
Daroga opened his suit’s storage compartments to take stock, and Adriene looked through her own. Between them, only four of the inadequate deflagration charges, two of their jury-rigged shard grenades, and a half dozen other equally useless grenades.
“That is a pittance compared to what is required for this task.”
“Can we just sever the power?” Adriene asked, jutting a thumb over her shoulder. “Do as much damage as we can to the transformer room?”
Daroga scrubbed a hand down his face. “Destroying the transformers wouldn’t help—the power’s stored in accumulators, like a reservoir. It’d stop it long term, but it’d use up the reserves it’s charged first.”
“I assume it’d have plenty enough to send off the data?”
“More than likely.”
Adriene ground her teeth. “Can we get to the accumulators?”
With the toe of his boot, he kicked at the flooring, giving off a solid, dense thud. “Maybe? If we could get down there, somehow. They’re usually built under layers of concrete and alanthum sheeting, as part of the grounding system…” He stepped over and knocked on the thick alanthum barricade surrounding the cylinder. “The only access point to get down there, that I know of, is beyond this barrier.”
Adriene pinched the bridge of her nose. Her nerves still buzzed with the phantom pains of being electrocuted, muscles spasming lightly. “Any other ideas?”
Daroga pushed aside a few strands of hair that’d escaped the tie. “If we can interrupt the grounding circuitry and redirect enough power from somewhere else, we could potentially fry this whole sector of the facility.” He cleared his throat, then warily added, “We likely wouldn’t survive it—I don’t think our suits could withstand it, even if they weren’t already running on fumes.”
“Not ideal,” she admitted, “but if it’s all we’ve got, it’s all we’ve got. What do we need to do?”
Daroga anxiously retied his hair, then let out a gruff sigh. He paced toward the ramp, but stopped short. “Maybe I could jury-rig a line from the transformers, pull some cabling from somewhere else…”
“There is not time for that,” the Creator interrupted. The grated floor shuddered beneath his heavy steps as he descended the rest of the way down the ramp. With one long, spindly finger, he indicated the screen that detailed the ansible alignment. “There is not time for any of this. As you said, we have minutes.”
Adriene tightened her grip on the rifle. They hadn’t come this far to fail now. To have to stand in a sea of bodies and watch as the “upgrade” and hive mind spread out across the galaxy and infected the rest of the 505th.
“Small commander,” the Creator said suddenly. She turned to face him. His head tilted slightly as he looked down at her hands. “Earlier, when you stopped your heart, how did you elicit unhindered current from the transformer?”
She lowered the rifle and showed him the palm of her hand. “Our gloves.”
“Yeah…” Daroga began, hope flashing across his face. He turned wide eyes onto the Creator. “The gloves would allow you to bypass your resistors.”
“Precisely.”
Daroga nodded. “And your shield constructs…”
“I can reroute their voltage potential through your gloves. I still have 8,217 hours’ worth of stored power.”
Adriene looked to Daroga. “You think it’ll work?”
“Yeah. It should be more than enough. It’s still a two-way street, though,” he added, concern lining his tone. He turned to the Creator. “The gloves will allow you to maintain a connection, but it’ll make you a part of the current. It’ll kill you.”
“That is understood.”
Adriene’s brow creased. “This isn’t even your fight.”
He turned to face her squarely. “It may not be, but it is still my fault. It will be a fitting-enough end, and it is, at least, an end. My life has already gone on far too long. You, I believe, have some understanding of that.”
She managed a nod, then tore her eyes away and turned to Daroga. “Will the gloves work with his systems without modification?”
“I’m not sure, honestly. The voltage might be too high for only one glove.” He glanced down at the palms of his own gloved hands. “I might be able to connect them so they can share the load.”
Adriene unlocked the seals at her wrists and pulled both her gloves off. Daroga did the same, then he laid them out on the console. He started tapping on the hyphen of his suit, and with a series of shrill clicks, the gloves opened at their seams, unfolding into a flat layer of alanthum and wiring.
A section of Daroga’s forearm plating slid open, and a small barrel of metal rose up. The end lit in a flash of blue flame, then he leaned over the gloves and got to work.
“Promise me one thing, small commander.”
She craned her neck to meet the Creator’s glowing yellow gaze. “Anything.”
“Stop your not-master. As someone should have done to me, before it was too late. Kill him, if you must.”
“I’ll try. It may not be in my power to make good on that promise.”
“If nothing else, keep fighting, even if we fail this step. Live to see another day. Your people will need those like you in the days to come.”
She nodded, lips pressing into an appreciative smile.
A minute later, Daroga had connected the circuitry of the opened gloves into a single, larger piece. He lifted the pad of alanthum and loose wiring off the console and passed it to the Creator, worry lining his dark brow. “I have no idea if this is going to work.”
“There is only one way to know for certain.” The Creator set the panel on the alanthum barricade, then pressed his palms against it. Sparks flashed at his fingertips. He tilted his large head, then drew his ocular sensors over to look at them. “You should … leave.”
Adriene drew up her elbow in a formal salute as she backed away slowly. Daroga spun toward the ramp, then gripped her arm and dragged her back with him.
“Thank you,” she called back, then turned and fell in behind Daroga.
The lights dimmed and flickered as they sprinted through the transformer room and into the wide corridors, back out the way they’d came.
As they ran outside, an icy wave of air hit Adriene’s face through her open helmet, her eyes watering from the sudden stark cold. Her boots clanged against the metal decking as she scrambled to follow Daroga down the steps.
They’d barely stepped into the snowpack when a wave of purple electric light erupted from the open door frame. It sent bolts of electricity down the metal stairs and railings. The cliff rumbled, shards of rock slicing off to land silently in the thick snow below.
With a resounding crack, a cascade of rock collapsed across the door frame. A plume of black dust erupted as the mountainside shook beneath their feet.
The shriek of tearing metal rang in the distance from somewhere far over the mountainside. A mini-avalanche of snow tumbled off the edge of the cliff, sending down a sheet of white powder.
The rumbling ceased as the barrage settled and the haze of snow cleared away.
Adriene stared at the collapsed rock in shock for a few long moments. She regained her senses all at once—icy-cold, dry air stinging her bare fingertips and exposed face.
Then a symphony of asynchronous, crackling pops cut across the silence of the snowy forest.
She froze, trying to tell her eyes to look up to the sky and confirm what her ears told her. Because that was the sound of ships entering atmosphere.
Instead, her gaze dropped to her snow-covered boots. She let out a long sigh.
“Scrappers,” Daroga growled.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
As Daroga towed her onward, Adriene’s eyes finally drifted up, past the edge of the cliff face. A dozen small white streaks of fire scarred the flat blue sky. If those really were scrapper ships, they were far away, at least.
Her focus snapped back as she looked to see where Daroga had led her—the parked land speeders.
She leapt on one and powered it up. Daroga climbed on behind her. He locked an arm around her waist as the speeder lurched forward. A shower of snow flew out as she spun the craft around and took off into the narrow pass.
The biting cold cut into her exposed cheeks and knuckles as she sped through the ravine. When they pulled out into the clearing, the Aurora’s massive rear engines flickered to life, casting a wave of synthetic blue light across the snowpack.
“Shit,” Daroga called out over the shrieking wind. “They’re taking off!”
Adriene revved the accelerator, but it was already maxed out. She set the straightest course she could, then leaned into the bitter wind as they tore across the flat expanse.
The access hatch they’d disembarked from was shutting as they pulled up. Adriene slid them to a halt beneath the tilting door, then hopped up to stand on the seat of the speeder and linked her fingers together. Daroga stepped into her waiting hands, and she grunted as she lifted, launching him up onto the moving ledge. He reached back down and pulled her in, and they tumbled into the hatch as it sealed with a hard clang.
A wave of warm, denser oxygen flooded Adriene’s exposed face. She clenched her numbed hands together, knuckles raw and chafed, the skin of her cheeks chapped and burning with the sudden heat. The hatch shook as it began its ascent into the hangar.
Warning beacons flared.
A computerized voice sounded over the loudspeakers, “Warning: atmospheric launch in ten … nine…”
Daroga was already on his feet. He slammed a large yellow button on the wall and a half dozen crash seats descended.
Adriene tried to stand, but the ship lurched and threw her off her feet. She landed hard on her side. Her rifle slid off her back and clattered to the floor.
Daroga gripped her arm and dragged her up into a seat as he slid into one himself. She fumbled the harness over her shoulders and locked it in.
“Two … one…”
The ship lurched and the vibrations intensified. Adriene’s teeth and bones rattled, joints throbbing under the pressure. She clenched her jaw, and her eyes pooled with water as her gut crushed back into her spine.
