Bianca D'Arc (15 page)

“
Has the station dock ever housed any of
the enemy ships? If so, do you still have the pass codes for the
maintenance systems?”
he asked her quickly.

By way of reply, she shunted a list of codes
and their corresponding ship identification data to him. In the
blink of an eye, he was able to go back to the ship, using the
maintenance codes that had never been changed and gain access to
the maintenance systems. From there, it was an easy jaunt through
the computer to the drives section. Weapons were still protected,
but he could at least knock out their propulsion and
maneuverability, stranding them dead in the water, so to speak.

Before waiting to see how his commands worked
on the first ship, his mind raced to the next and the next,
shutting them down one by one. As the pirate fleet began to lose
power, Chip began to feel the strain. It was too much. Finally, too
much for his meager human brain to handle. But he had to stop the
pirates. He had to stop every ship he could so the small group of
defenders stood a chance.

“It’s working!” Lila said excitedly. “The
pirate ships are stopping in their tracks.”

“I can’t keep this up much longer,” he
warned, feeling the strain.

She squeezed his hand. “I believe in you.”
Her simple statement gave him the strength he needed to expand
beyond the burden of one comparatively simple node and out, into
the surrounding space. Expanding his mind beyond what it had been
even a moment before. Beyond the implant. Beyond the brain itself.
He became more than either one, stronger for both of them merging
into one, much more powerful entity.

One by one, he took control of the pirate
ships. One by one, he disabled their drives and locked the pirates
out of their own systems. He didn’t have to drop one to go on to
the next. He could handle them all at once. It took all his effort.
All his concentration, but he was doing it.

He blocked out everything but the ships
surrounding the station. He lost track of his own body there for a
few minutes, but when it was finally over and he’d done all he
could to help the few ships that were on their side, he retracted
his influence, leaving the vast majority of the pirate ships
drifting in space without power. They wouldn’t be going anywhere
for a while. And they certainly wouldn’t be hurting anyone with all
their bays locked down tight and their weapons without power.

He shook his head as he came back to himself,
suddenly aware that he was alone in the office.

“What the—”

Rifle fire from the bar answered his
question. He stumbled to his feet, feeling uncertain in his own
skin after the mental trip he’d been on. But there was no time to
waste. He grabbed one of the pulse rifles he’d brought in with him
and stumbled toward the door. He hit it running, his feet sluggish
as they remembered how to walk.

He took in the scene in two blinks of his
Enhanced vision. Lila was pinned down behind a barricade of
blast-proof tables. Smart girl, turning the tables on their sides
for protection from the attachers who streamed in through the
destroyed door of the bar. A few pirates led the way, but those who
followed behind the more seasoned fighters really got Chip’s
attention. It was a small part of the group of saboteurs they’d
been watching in the bar for the past few weeks, led by Jim
Beezus.

A quick query to Maddie told Chip that she
was dealing with Bjornson, who still held C&C, as best she
could. It was up to Chip to stop Beezus, but two against a good
dozen attackers wasn’t the greatest odds.

“Give it up now, girlie, and I won’t hurt you
too bad,” Beezus sneered from behind the cover of the pirates. He
was a coward, letting the real fighters stand between him and an
untrained girl with a handgun.

Chip’s first shot took out the pirate in
front of Beezus. His second winged the fat bastard who dove for
cover behind a table. Chip was on the move, but his body was
sluggish after the tumult of what had just happened in his brain.
He dropped behind a booth, taking heavy fire. Luckily, all the
furniture in the bar had been designed to take fire, for just such
an occasion.

Lila was across the room, firing well placed
shots that kept the pirates at bay, but she was pinned down just
like him. He wanted to get in front of her. He wanted to shield her
with his own body. To protect her and kill anyone or anything that
threatened her safety. If something happened to Lila, he wouldn’t
be responsible for his actions. Every last one of them would die at
his hands.

His anger found an outlet when a bot trundled
into the middle of the fray. The cleaning machine had no idea a
firefight was in progress. It only knew it was scheduled to clean
now and it would work around any obstacles in its path.

A flicker of thought sent the bot into the
obstacles
. Into the pirates, caustic chemicals spraying from
all its nozzles at full strength. The pirates shrank back from the
chemical spray. The little bot pushed them back and took the focus
off of Lila for a precious moment. Chip sent more instructions to
all the bots in the storage area. They came out in force at Chip’s
command, spraying, grasping and threatening the pirates with mops,
brooms, squeegees and whatever else came to hand.

Chip would’ve laughed at their reaction when
the mechanized army stormed out of the storage area and turned on
the pirates, if the situation hadn’t been so dire. He took the
moments while the pirates were distracted to make his way over to
Lila, still returning fire. He took out another three of the
bastards while crossing the room and Lila got off a few shots that
took out two of them, to her credit.

“Lila!” Chip pushed her behind the bar while
he took her position, closer to the edge, behind the overturned
tables.

“The bots are kicking butt,” she commented,
watching the ongoing battle that had bought them precious time.

Chip laughed as he downed another pirate.
Beezus was nowhere in sight and Chip had the sneaking suspicion
he’d slithered out the door to lick his wounds outside while others
did the fighting.

The remaining pirates kept up the battle with
the bots, rendering most of them useless, but the barrier of soaps
and chemicals had made things slippery and somewhat caustic in the
space that separated the attackers from their quarry. Chip queried
the station, hoping Maddie could tell him where Bezzus had
flown.

What he found when he reached Maddie was
something he hadn’t expected. She’d apparently taken a lesson from
his command of the bots and had decided to directly intervene in
the ongoing battles all over the station. Everywhere there was
gunfire, Maddie was directing mechanical systems to aid the
station’s defenders. He was surprised to realize she hadn’t thought
of doing that until she’d seen his smaller scale battle in the bar.
Score one for the good guys.

As he’d thought, Beezus was outside, waiting
for the pirates to fight the battle for him.

“I’ve got an escape hatch behind the bar,” he
told Lila so that only she could hear. He scanned the camera feeds
installed along that particular escape route before giving the
computer the signal to pop the hatch. Before, that kind of thing
would have taken a considerable part of his concentration. Now, it
was a mere afterthought compared to the kind of computing power
he’d exerted over the pirate ships. “Do you see it?” he asked,
knowing the secret doorway would be open only an inch or so.

“I see it,” she replied over the ongoing
gunfire.

“Go. The path is clear. Follow the passageway
to the cupboard at the end. It’s inside the vid store on the
adjoining concourse. The owner is holed up inside. He’s a vet and
he’s armed. I’ve already sent the signal to tell him we’re using
the passageway. He knows you’ll be there. He’ll protect you. Just
wait in the cupboard for me to join you. You’ll be safe there. It’s
armored.”

“I won’t leave without you,” she protested.
While he appreciated the sentiment, her safety was more important
to him at the moment than his own.

“You have to go, Lila. I’ll cover your
retreat.” He spared her a glance and was caught by the sparkling
emotion in her eyes. Time slowed. “I love you, Lila. Please go. I
need you to be safe. I’ll join you as soon as I can. Do it for me,
sweetheart?”

Her expression changed, morphing from fear
and stubbornness into something like wonder, joy and resignation
all mixed into one. “I love you too, Charles Quartain and you’d
better come for me. I won’t be truly safe until you’re with me, do
you understand?”

He leaned in to press a quick, hard kiss to
her lips, trying to say everything that was in his heart in that
single motion. He tore himself away from her seductive mouth and
fired off a few shots to let the pirates know he was still there
and still ready to kill anyone who stepped out from cover. He
looked at Lila as she positioned herself inside the small opening
under the bar. She fit easily in the small space. It would be a
squeeze for him, but he’d do it. Just as soon as he killed the
bastards gunning for them.

He’d be freer to act if he knew she was out
of the line of fire, in as safe a place as he could find in this
situation. His gaze held hers for a timeless moment before she
disappeared down the passageway. Thank goodness. She’d be safe in
there as long as he could cover her retreat.

But Chip intended to do more than simply
cover it. He was going to go on the attack and he vowed not to quit
until the last of the bastards who’d dared assault them in his own
establishment was dead or down for the count. Only then would he be
satisfied that no one would follow them to that secure, reinforced
cupboard on the adjoining concourse.

That goal in mind, Chip set his hastily
formulated plan in motion. The bots were recalled in favor of
something much bigger. A huge bang followed by repeated booms from
outside the bar started. That would be the securecarts Chip had
commandeered from down the concourse, ramming pirates and saboteurs
who stood outside the bar, looking in. Quite a few of them had been
caught off guard and were either bleeding or dead, run over by the
heavy carts.

Anything that could be programmed into motion
was on the move out in the corridor and inside the bar. Blenders
became projectiles and utter chaos reigned as Chip took every
advantage to gun down the rest of the pirates while his electronic
minions distracted them. He knocked every last one of them out of
the fight and when it was all over, he stalked through the bar, one
thought on his mind.

If Beezus wasn’t already dead, he soon would
be. No longer would he threaten Lila. Chip wouldn’t even let him
breathe the same air—or any air for that matter. Until Beezus was
dead, Chip would not rest easy.

As it turned out, Beezus was pinned under a
securecart and rather than give up when Chip demanded he surrender
so he could be prosecuted and put to death with the other saboteurs
according to station law, he wanted to fight. The fat bastard took
a few shots at Chip, one of which grazed his shoulder, but Chip
didn’t notice. He gunned Beezus down like the dog he was. It was to
the man’s credit, Chip thought, that he went down fighting. At
least he had some courage to go with that pea-sized, avaricious
brain.

The bar was in ruins when the smoke began to
clear, but Chip couldn’t worry about that. He had to get to Lila.
She was the important thing right now. He set his metal minions to
sentry duty near the door and let what few bots were left recharge.
There would be time for cleaning later. For now, he had a battle to
monitor and a woman to protect.

Chip stalked back through the bar, intending
to make his way through the hidden door, but Lila was there, just
disappearing inside the office. Damn. She hadn’t left.

“Before you say anything,” she called from
inside the office, “I did leave, but I came back. There was nothing
for me to do inside a cupboard with no computer access. I figured I
could be of more help here.”

Sure enough, when he joined her in the
office, she’d already brought up views of the ongoing battle.
Things were winding down now that Maddie was involved directly. She
was aiding the defenders by whatever mechanical means were at hand
and the tide had long since turned.

Chip closed and locked the office door behind
him and kept walking until he had Lila in his arms. Damn, she felt
good.

“Oh, Chip, you’re bleeding!” She drew her
soft hand away from his shoulder and he resisted letting her go for
a moment, but she wouldn’t be denied.

“It’s just a graze.” He tried to make light
of it, though now that she mentioned it, his shoulder began to
throb with a dull, annoying pain. Dammit.

“Sit down. There’s a first aid kit back here.
Let me just find it.” She moved around the desk and rummaged in the
bottom drawers for a moment, her perky butt up in the air, giving
him ideas. But he sat in the chair he’d occupied before, and let
his mind take in everything.

Not only could he gaze upon the most
beautiful sight in the universe—Lila—but he could keep track of the
ships flitting around the station and those that were drifting with
no power. Even as he thought about it, boarding parties began to
secure a few of the pirate ships and take the crews into custody.
Julian was organizing things in a style worthy of an admiral. Hell,
he just might get that promotion when the brass heard about his
actions here. He’d done a good job leading the small fleet he’d
managed to scrounge. Chip would personally recommend him for
promotion based on his ingenuity alone.

Maddie was having a good time stopping
pirates inside the station wherever she could. The securecarts were
chasing them down and in a few interesting cases, actually being
used by Maddie to capture miscreants. Maddie was delivering the
offenders directly to the nearest police lockups.