Girl Gone Nova (35 page)

After a pause, he nodded. “I guess I can see that. You gave us quite a scare, Doc.”

“Us?” It unsettled her to think of the General discussing her with anyone. Made her feel exposed and vulnerable. She didn’t like either of those things.

“Kalian assisted.”

The General worked with Kalian? She’d like to have been a bug on that wall.

“As far as the infirmary staff knows, the Garradian Influenza was a false alarm.” He hesitated. “When you disappeared from the infirmary…”

“I can see where that might make you uneasy.” She thought she knew about weird, but she didn’t. She was aware and involved in her conversation with the General, but she felt herself absorbing information at a tremendous rate. The nanites were learning how to communicate with her, though it wasn’t as smooth as either side would have liked and still indirect. She’d think questions and her mind would flood with images or equations or data. Some she understood. A lot she didn’t. That was new, too.

The nanites were taking her questions, the ones she’d had before she got sick and the ones she had now, and processing them as information requests. It felt a bit like ants swarming, but tidier. Each question was in one of the memory lanes, with information flowing both ways. It was…extraordinary and very efficient. She could get used to efficient. She slotted what she was learning into priorities and then got distracted when she wondered how many nanites they’d used to heal her and a HUD popped up between her and the General.

She blinked. It didn’t help. “That’s a lot of nanites, sir. Did you tip the whole test tube in me?”

The general’s grim visage cracked. “You didn’t glow. And you were pretty far gone. Didn’t seem like they were working.”

Doc stiffened. “So you what? You dumped two test tubes in me?” The General didn’t look at her. “Three?”

He twitched.
Three test tubes of nanites?
Doc looked at the HUD, surprised there was room inside there for her. No wonder he was worried about her control. Maybe she should be worried. She was amazed. The little buggers had been dormant for years but had kicked into high without too much trouble.

“Can you control them?” He appeared as fascinated with the view as she was—or he still didn’t want to look at her.

The answer didn’t come in words. They were still trying to integrate their systems with hers, but she felt reassurance, felt her control, though she couldn’t have explained how.

“Yes.” The word sounded hesitant, because she wasn’t sure if she’d stay in control. There were a lot of them buzzing around in her system. The light flickered overhead again.

“Are you doing that?”

“No, but I don’t think it’s a problem.” A control problem is what she meant.

She got his Look. “And you know this how?”

“The…Key interacted with this ship, sir. Installed upgrades. I think those nanites are talking to mine. They’re both learning.” And trying to teach her at the same time. It was multi-tasking gone ballistic.

“Why would they need to learn? They were created by the same person, weren’t they?” His frown was something to see. His hand twitched on his weapon again.

“The Key’s nanites came to her through the womb, from her mother. They experienced things these hadn’t.” Her palms tingled and she looked down, shocked and not shocked, to see golden beads of light emerge from her skin, then sink from sight again. The rate of information exchange sped up and then knowledge…expanded inside her head like a garden bursting into bloom all at once. It hurt, but for Doc it was a “hurts so good” pain.

She sat in a chair in the General’s ready room, but she was also in the ship and on the outpost and riding an invisible shockwave through all the other outposts. She was here, but everywhere. She could feel why and how they’d helped her mental malfunctions but the exchange wasn’t one way. For one, very odd moment, she could “see” how her brain looked to them. If they had a concept of a mother ship, her brain was it. She couldn’t understand everything yet, but they believed she had the capacity.

She felt their—satisfaction wasn’t the right word, because they couldn’t
feel,
well, she was pretty sure they couldn’t feel, but her IQ aided them in ways the Key hadn’t been able to, even enhanced by the nanites. She’d lacked the education and the IQ to process what they were trying to share with Doc.

They were downloading into her brain too fast, but she didn’t stop them because her brain loved having every single data stream maxed out. For the first time in her life,
they
weren’t the enemy. The cacophony settled into a happy hum and with it, the pain dialed back to a faint throb at the temples.

“Doctor?” The General sounded wary.

Doc blinked, peering through streams of data. Was this what it would be like to be inside a computer? “Yes, sir?”

“You’re glowing.”

She tapped into a security camera and studied herself. He was right, though pulsed was a more accurate description.

“Sorry, sir.” She concentrated on dialing that back and saw the beads sink back into her skin. First he wanted her to glow and now he wanted her to stop. There was no pleasing the man. “I thought you wanted me to glow.”

That earned her another Look.

She, or they, and her with them, were deep inside the ship and she sensed a tap on the video line to this room and others. She followed them back to the source. Went into the computer and locked it down just by thinking about it. Genius gone nova. The analogy seemed apt. She’d changed from one thing to something else, something better. Okay, with three test tubes of nanites, maybe she’d gone
super
nova.

“I found your security leak, General. I’ve resolved the problem, and I’m assessing what information has been compromised.”

She was having so much fun, it surprised her when red suffused his face, a mini, less happy version of a star going nova.

“What? Who?”

“Neil Caldwell, assistant to Ambassador Rockley.” She directed some resources to sifting through his computer for any indication of other accomplices. He had to be part of a network. He’d been part of the transfer that brought her to the
Doolittle
,
so he was either a new recruit or replacement.

“You can prove this?”

“I have created a report on the trace and sent it to your computer.” Doc felt an unscientific thrill of pleasure. This was way better than fine. This was ass-kicking cool. Be even better when the General quit wanting to shoot her. It was almost painful to sit so still. She and her new peeps wanted to move, to dance and sway. Maybe do some lip synching. Karaoke was out of the question, unless the peeps had also fixed her inability to carry a tune.

Halliwell keyed on his intercom and sent his own order—one to quietly arrest Caldwell. “Any other security breaches I should know about? Accomplices?”

Doc sent some of her new peeps searching through the ship for other signs of tampering and Caldwell’s accomplices.

“Working on it, sir.”

He tugged at his military knot. “Good. I think.” He swallowed. “You sure you can control them?”

“There is an ethics subroutine in their programming. They can’t attempt me, ship, world, or galaxy domination.” She grinned and felt them quiver in response. Did they have a sense of humor or were they learning it from her? The ache eased some more though she still felt super nova on the inside. Doc wasn’t surprised by the ethics programming. The original Garradians had freaked over their own abilities and how that technology might be used and abused. It was what had prompted them to lock and abandon the outpost and their galaxy.

“Okay.” He tried to smile, hesitated. “Can they help you with the portal problem?”

“We need to talk about that,” she saw something that made her sit up and take notice, “but we have another problem.” She activated a HUD again, this one a view of the galaxy.

“What am I looking at, Doc?”

That he was calling her Doc again seemed promising. She held back a smile, reminding herself she didn’t do warm and fuzzy. She didn’t get attached.

“Doc?”

It was so obvious to Doc what the HUD showed, it took her a minute to realize her clarity came from the peeps. She honed in on one of the outposts and enlarged one of the ships they’d found when they pinged the galaxy during her nova thing. It looked like the one Hel had caught on tracking at Feldstar. The nanites did a compare and confirmed that. All sixteen looked alike, though there were the expected small differences. No two ships could ever be exactly alike. The peeps were able to pull up more data than Hel’s ship had. None of it was good.

“That’s a ship.” Halliwell stood and moved closer to the HUD. She could have shifted the HUD to him, but he’d left the ray gun when he got up. The further he got from the gun, the better for her.

“Sixteen ships, sir. One strategically positioned near fourteen outposts and one incoming to this outpost.” And number sixteen was positioned near the outer edge of the galaxy.

“Why didn’t I know this?”

“They’re cloaked.” Had these ships been in the galaxy as long as Conan? She asked the question and the peeps tried to find an answer. It was nice and also painful. Hopefully they’d work on that. “These are the people who took me, and the other women, captive.”

Halliwell tensed. “You think their arrival here is related to our missing people?”

He’d read her report. That helped.

“Yes, sir.”

“The people you think can’t be retrieved?”

Doc hesitated.

“I need answers, Doc.”

“I’m trying sir. There’s a lot of stuff you need to know, but when you ask me questions, it slows things down.” It hurt, too. Each question sparked a response or responses from the nanites. Those responses launched offshoot thoughts and ruminations. It was orderly, but still a sort of controlled chaos. She was having trouble keeping up with her own brain. Verbally it wasn’t possible to keep up. “I’m sorry to do this, but could you let me talk and not ask questions? I just need some time to process what I’m learning.”

He opened his mouth, must have realized he was about to ask another question and closed it.

“For just a moment, I need to put the portal and your team to the side. I’m working it, though.” For the first time, it seemed possible she could do something about that. Her thoughts, combined with the nanites help, had produced hope. He nodded again and started to pace. At least he wasn’t talking. Data continued to arrive, even as she worked on how to tell him what she was seeing and learning.

“Sixteen ships. There were sixteen guys in the encampment. Only thirteen women missing. That has to be their entire contingent, otherwise more women would be missing. Single life signs per ship except the one.” The HUD changed to show the ship positioned at the outer edge of the galaxy. This one probably held the non-combatants. At least they were trying to keep them safe. But one man per ship? “Ships automated? It’s possible.” Talking was almost painful, even in short hand. It was so
slow.
“Weapons and shields better than ours, but not sure we are a target or the outposts. Could be both.”

Halliwell made a strangled sound.

“Sorry, sir. It’s an odd experience.” Downloading and uploading, processing, filtering, sifting. “There are more hangers, more ships, but we can’t access them unless I can figure out how to unlock the rest of the outpost. Manufacturing facilities, too. I always wondered about that. That stuff didn’t appear out of nothing.”

General Halliwell growled and kicked up the pace of his prowling.

“Sorry, sir. Still processing.”

As the words left her mouth, the nanites delivered another round of data.

“Give me a few more minutes of incoherence and then you can talk again.” She finished with a rueful smile and got a grimace in return. She was ready to talk portal when she got an unexpected warning from the peeps.

“We’re being scanned, sir.” The HUD changed, focusing on the ship now within sensor range of Kikk and their ships. She didn’t need the nanites to postulate that this was Conan’s ship.

“Can they penetrate our shields? Why aren’t I getting a warning from the bridge?”

“They aren’t sensing it—”

Doc stopped as she saw—or felt—the scan hone in on her. Light passed down her body and changed color.

“Did you see that, sir?”

“Yes. What the hell is it?”

He leaned forward, covering her hands with both of his, as if to hold her in place.

The peeps provided the answer.

Scan has found alien compound.

Purpose?

Assessing.
A pause. Possible
marker, identification tag.

Not incapacitating?

No. Eradicate?

Can remote transport be initiated through our shields?

No.

Monitor for now.

“
Doc?”

“Apparently Conan tagged me with some kind of tracking compound sometime during my stay.” She frowned. “I didn’t eat or drink anything of theirs. Was probably in the soap. I did wash my hands several times.” It made a kind of sense. If everyone in the compound was tagged, then mass remote transport could be triggered in an emergency. No hostiles scooped up. And it would shorten the time the cloak would need to be down. For a moment she wondered why they hadn’t found her before Hel, but the answer came with the thought.

Minimal contamination. The storm’s electrical properties masked it.

It was almost clever. Which didn’t fit with their clunky bride hunt. There was nothing to say this was only place they were hunting. If they targeted multiple galaxies, they’d end up with a more diverse DNA mix. It would be interesting to think about if she didn’t have more pressing issues on her front burner.

“Is it dangerous?”

“No, but it means Conan knows I’m back.”

“Is that good or bad?”

Why did he think she’d know? She sighed, bit back what she wanted to say and settled for, “Last time I saw him I rejected his proposal of marriage, used my knee on his groin and shot him with his own gun.”

The General looked like he was trying not to smile. Doc was glad when he managed to suppress it. Smiles weren’t his thing.