Haywire (2 page)

“
I’m more myself than I’ve ever-ever been before,” he replied, grinning like a madman. “Soon you’ll feel the same wa-way too. Take her, Uzume.”

Artemis turned just in time to see a figure leap at her like a feral creature. Uzume, a woman she had once counted among her closest friends, jumped over the heavy fighter and lunged at her from the right. Her former friend’s fingers became razor sharp talons as nanites flowed along her fingers and hardened into claws. In a flash Artemis remembered the day they’d been made into Titans together, remembered the years they’d spent training and fighting, remembered the shared stories and hopes. All of it came to her in a chain reaction of synaptic firings, and it was all she could do to push the memories away and bury them before they got her killed.

When she stepped into Uzume’s lunge and grabbed her wrists, a wave of heat flashed through her as the infected nanites impacted hers. The intensity of the pain shocked her, but unlike the rest of the Titans she knew it was coming and was ready for it. With half her mind she worked to keep her sister Titan from wrestling her to the ground, and with the other she hurriedly erected firewalls within her cybernetic nervous system that would keep the infection at bay, or at least slow it down.

“
Do-don’t resist it,” Uzume said, her demonic expression a sad reflection of who she’d once been. “You can’t imagine the power.” Her hands and infection fought Artemis with equal vigor, proving her words right, but her mania also made her strength unpredictable. When Artemis felt the Titan’s arms spasm she spun her around, pushed her toward Thanatos, and kicked her away with all her strength.

“
I’m sorry,” Artemis said, sorrow choking her words. “What happened isn’t your fault, and I’ll do whatever it takes to save you.”

Thanatos glared at her as Uzume landed at his feet. “We’re st-still your family, Artemis. I offer you a place at my-my side, just as I said I would. Take it, or b-be destroyed.”

Artemis stepped next to her fighter and angled herself toward the rear thruster mount. The engine ticked as it cooled in the breeze of the ruined city, but her eyes saw the thermal image of plasma still circulating in the turbine assembly. It wasn’t much, but it would have to be enough.

“
You’ve been like a father to me, Thanatos,” she said. “I love you. All of you.”

Before he could guess her intent, Artemis spun toward her heavy fighter and envisioned a blade extending from her right arm. As the thought formed, her nanites shifted and flowed. In less than a second a meter-long blade sharper than anything ever forged by man grew from her hand, and with all her strength she sliced into the fighter’s engine. The plasma burned against her armor, but that was nothing compared to what it did to the fusion power core sitting in the engine’s middle. She barely had time to turn and run before the core exploded. The power of the blast lifted her from her feet and hurled her into a shuttlecraft forty meters away.

Alarm lights lit up the status displays in her eyes as she slid to the ground, but her armor held. What little internal damage she’d suffered would heal in time. What concerned her more was the progress of the infection. If it broke through her firewalls, nothing else would matter. Luckily, her internal security measures were holding strong. How long that would last, she didn’t know.

When she pushed herself away from the dented shuttle and turned, she saw the palace hangar was in ruins. The explosion had collapsed the entrance under several hundred tons of rock, and every vessel around it was on fire, smashed to pieces, or both. Thanatos wasn’t stopped, but he was at least slowed down, and she knew she’d need every second.

After several minutes of limping around she found a ship capable of the journey ahead of her. Badly battered though it was, the small craft was still in one piece and had an intact jump engine. When she was airborne she turned and destroyed every remaining ship on the pad, blasting them to bits that no Titan could ever put back together. There were surely other ships somewhere in the city, perhaps in some hangar within the palace, but she couldn’t spend time looking for them. She’d wasted far too many precious seconds already.

Once back in space she opened a wormhole conduit and charted the return to Sol. Though it had taken a century to battle their way to Crucible, the trip back would take less than a month by the most direct route. Her infection, though, meant that every moment of the journey would be a struggle, so she deactivated unnecessary processes in her head one by one until she could devote all her power and attention to keeping the nanite virus at bay. Fortunately the ship could fly itself.

As her mind shut down, tears fell from her eyes like molten steel. Every battle they’d fought, every Titan that had been lost, might now amount to nothing. They’d finally reached the end of their struggle, and somehow their victory had been turned into a new beginning of blood and pain and violence. If there was to be a chance to truly end the war, then she had to hold on to her sanity for as long as possible. She had to.

The shuttlecraft shuddered as it changed speed and heading, yet Shawn Campbell barely noticed. He was only sixteen years old, but he’d traveled through space since he was a baby, so a bit of rough flying didn’t bother him. He was used to the cramped seats, the metallic smell of machine filtered air, and the just-warm-enough-to-be-uncomfortable temperature of the flight cabin. Next to that, a little shaking was nothing.

“
So there I am,” he said, his hands raised and his fingers curled around empty air, “sweating like crazy. My hands are killing me, my eyes are burning, and my throat is drying up, but I don’t stop. It’s what I was born for, ya know? It’s what I do.”

“
You’re a real champ,” the man sitting to his right replied with his eyes squeezed closed and his hands gripping the arms of his seat so tightly his knuckles had turned white.

Shawn shrugged and gave the nervous passenger a half smile before facing forward and lowering his hands. “When it comes to rock, I’ll shred until I’m dead, simple as that.”

To his left, a heavyset man sat sleeping, his seat reclined as far back as it would go and his snores filling the interior of the shuttle like a rumbling wave. Shawn nudged him with his elbow, but the gesture got the same result it had the previous dozen times – nothing.

“
So you like to play music, huh?” the man to his right asked, a slick sheen covering his face. He looked ready to spew any second.

Shawn reached for a call button and put his finger against it without pressing it down. “Hey, man, you want me to get an attendant over here? I mean – don’t take this the wrong way – but you look like hell.”

The passenger shook his head sharply, closed his eyes, and kept his arms locked down. “No, no, I’m fine. I just hate space travel. Always have. Just... uh... keep talking, okay? Takes my mind off it.”

Shawn gave him a skeptical glance, shrugged, and let it go. If the guy wanted to suffer, so be it. It wasn’t his job to take care of anyone but himself, and that was hard enough.

“
Yeah, I love music. Been playing since I was a kid. Me and some friends formed a band about a year ago, called Mother Dark. Early on all we could play were birthday parties and whatnot, but lately we’ve been hitting some actual stages. I mean real stages, man, like The Zeitgeist where Pearls Before Swine got their start. You’ve heard of them, right? Once our demo file gets in the right hands... we’re going to hit the big time. I just know it.”

“
Your parents must be proud.”

Shawn nodded, but the corners of his mouth puckered like he’d bitten into something sour. “My dad and step-mom are, but I doubt my mother gives a crap. All she cares about is her museum. Put me and some dusty old Titan artifact in a room, and I can guarantee you which one she’d fawn over more.”

The passenger’s laugh was a bit too forced and sharp. “Ah, I’m sure that’s not true.”

“
You have no idea.” Shawn looked down at his lap and fiddled with a hole in his jeans. “It’s all she thinks about, night and day. Dr. Groesbeck this and Titans that. It’s why they got divorced.”

The passenger unclenched a hand and patted Shawn’s arm. It would have been a nice gesture if not for his clammy skin. “I doubt it was as simple as that. Divorces rarely are, trust me. I’ve been there. And I’m sure that – despite what you think – your mother loves you. Some people are just bad at showing it.”

Shawn opened his mouth to reply, but the ding of the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign cut him off. A moment later a flight attendant leaned over his snoring neighbor, her dark blue uniform revealing enough to hint at a nice figure but demure enough to chide him for thinking about it. She shook the sleeper, but he resisted her efforts. Not taking no for an answer, she grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard enough to rattle his seat. Seconds later he was awake and sitting upright. The scowl on his large, sleep-reddened face was more than matched by her self-satisfied smirk.

Glancing past his nervous neighbor, Shawn saw a hint of Callisto’s grim lunar surface through the window. In the distance hung Jupiter, its roiling bands of clouds a beautiful counterpoint to Callisto’s rocky, frozen face.

“
Good evening, passengers of BlueShift flight 1121,” a voice said in deep, rich tones through overhead speakers. “This is Captain Eisen speaking. We are currently on approach to Arcadia Spaceport and have been given permission to land. Please remain in your seats, and make sure that all unshielded electronic devices are turned off. Local time is 5:35 in the evening. It has been a pleasure flying with you today, and on behalf of everyone at BlueShift Spaceways, we hope you have a wonderful day.”

Shawn half dozed while waiting for the shuttle to land, his eyes barely fluttering as the ship rocked and rumbled to a heavy landing. When the hatch finally opened he got up, grabbed his backpack from beneath his seat, said goodbye to the passenger on his right, and walked down the enclosed gangway that led to the inner terminal.

Gravity was light over the landing pad, but as he got closer to the spinning superconductors buried deep in the ice beneath Arcadia the gravity increased to a single Earth-standard gee. That was typical for habitats across the solar system, or at least for those that could afford to install and power the massive gyrating machines.

Arcadia Spaceport was small, making the walk to the baggage collection area short and easy. The other passengers from the shuttle shuffled their way over while he stood waiting for the conveyor belt to activate. The only person who looked excited to be there was a little girl dressed in a bright yellow jumper, her soft brown hair tied into pig tails with pink ribbons. She held her parents’ hands tightly, and they swung her up and down with absentminded motions. On their chests were patches bearing the logo of Acqua Industries, the largest ice mining company on Callisto. The patches looked new, as did the uniforms they were stitched to. He figured them for new hires just shipping in.

He smiled as he watched the child gaze around in wonder. In her eyes everything probably seemed magical and made just for her. It would be years before she’d realize she’d been relegated to a dead end moon that once had been important but was now just a shadow clinging to a distant memory. He’d get to leave in a couple of weeks, but she might be stuck there the rest of her life. A shiver went up his back at the thought of it.

The brief thought of home reminded him of his mobile comm. He’d had to keep it powered off during the flight from Mars, but now he was free to use it, so he reached into his backpack and withdrew a pair of tinted glasses. They activated as they settled on his face and established a connection with the local communications network. A second later an icon shaped like a stylized eye appeared in the upper right corner of his vision with the number “1” next to it. There was a video message waiting.

“
Play message,” he said, his words just loud enough for the mobile comm to hear him.

The floating image of Ilona, his girlfriend, appeared on the inside of his glasses. The shadowy wonder of her almond-shaped eyes was lost in the recorded transmission, but nothing could diminish her full lips and the angelic roundness of her face. Pain lanced through his chest at remembering how long he would be separated from her.

“
Hey, baby.” She tilted her head to the right like she always did when leaving a message. It was a cute look for her, and she knew it. “I just checked your flight, and it looks like you’re about to take off, which means you won’t get this until after you land. I just wanted to say that I love you, I already miss you, and every hour you’re gone is going to suck more and more. But, I do have some good news that I think will cheer you up, though it might also make the wait to get back even harder.”

Ilona’s eyes sparkled like an imp that had found a new devilish delight. She loved surprises. Shawn was more a creature of habit, routine, but she always looked for ways to shake him up, and more often than not she succeeded. In spite of that, or maybe even because of it, he loved her.

“
Honey baby, you’re not going to believe this, but we are going to be playing at Minerva’s Den.”

The bottom of Shawn’s stomach dropped out, and he leaned against a wall to stop from falling on his butt. She had to be joking.

“
I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not joking.” Her face beamed with pride. “The guys in their booking office finally listened to our demo file, and they want Mother Dark to play. We won’t be headlining, but
still.
Originally they wanted us to play this weekend because a band dropped out – Gutter Child, I think – but I told them you were out of town for a couple of weeks, so they scheduled us in the next open slot they had. That day also just happens to be the same day you come back. I hope that won’t be an
inconvenience
.”