Heirs of Earth (32 page)

Alander reported from
Selene.
The three of them had reentered the cockpit and were rotating to merge with the main body.

“We’re ready to leave whenever you are,” he said, his image in the foreground of the view on one of
Eledone’
s screens.

“We wouldn’t last a second out there,” Gou Mang argued from behind him, looking nervous.

“There’s no time for a discussion on the matter now,” she said. “Merge the ships, and we’ll talk about it afterward.”

“Merging is a bad idea, Caryl,” said Axford. “If things get ugly, we’ll need to watch each other’s backs.”

“Nothing we’re carrying could possibly hope to make a difference in all of this.”

“Still, I insist you consider it.”

“I
have
considered it, and I say merge the fucking ships!” Sol tensed as she issued the challenge. “Do you have a problem with that, Frank?”

“As a matter of fact, Caryl, yes, I do.”

Behind Alander and Gou Mang, Axford raised his left hand. It was dripping a dark fluid and seemed to be broken. Before Sol could ask what was wrong, there were two sharp, earsplitting cracks, and Alander and Gou Mang were punched to the ground. The view went dead on Axford just as he was turning away to talk to
Selene.

“Peter!” Sol reached to help without thinking, a sickening sensation in her gut. She knew the sound of a PEP discharge when she heard one. “Peter—talk to me!”

Selene
’s cockpit spiraled into the heart of the hole ship, and Sol’s calls went unanswered.

* * *

Alander, too, knew what a lethal PEP sounded like, albeit from
fictional dramas and documentaries. His original had never had one fired at him before. Nothing in his hand-me-down memories could have prepared him for the sheer physicality of the experience.

The flash and the sound came simultaneously with the impact. He felt as though a cannonball had hit him in the back of the neck. His I-suit absorbed the energy that would have otherwise turned his hair, skin, and an inch-deep patch of muscle and bone into plasma, but there was still enough punch remaining to knock him off his feet. As the air behind his head exploded, he was flung forward into the wall, hitting it solidly and sliding bonelessly to the ground.

For a long moment, he couldn’t move, nor could he see or hear. Pain testified that he was still alive, but he couldn’t determine where that pain was coming from. His entire body seamed to be hurting, and it was so intense that he was barely able to think straight. What few thoughts he had he directed toward figuring out what the hell was happening. Clearly he’d been shot from behind, and the fact that Gou Mang had been in eyeshot the whole time meant that Axford must have pulled the trigger. But where had Axford come by a PEP gun, for God’s sake? And
why
had Axford shot him?

He forced himself to open his eyes. At first, all he saw was red. Then his eyes focused, and he realized that what he was seeing was blood: a spreading pool of it all over the cockpit’s floor. In the middle of it lay Gou Mang. She wasn’t moving.

He winced. The first PEP shot must have been aimed at him, for he hadn’t heard a second aimed at her. Although he couldn’t immediately see how badly she was wounded, the sheer quantity of blood indicated that it was serious.

Axford 1313 strode into view, and Alander saw where the blood was actually coming from.

Axford’s lower arm had burst open to reveal not just a stubby PEP weapon at the base of his wrist but several other new limbs that unfolded like legs from an insect’s carapace. Axford knelt on the floor at the center of the cockpit and thrust the ruin of his arm, with the mess of slender, new limbs fully extended, before him. Strange digits slid with surgical precision into the floor. Alander heard the ex-general grunt, followed by a strange sighing sound. When Axford stood again, his arm was part of the hole ship. The floor stretched up with him like white molasses, forming a perfectly geometric line. Knobs and protrusions grew at seemingly random points, and these extended into branches that Alander recognized. Axford had grown himself a control stalk.

Arm and stalk separated with a sucking sound, and blood dripped to the floor from both. Axford seemed in no way inconvenienced by the wound; his face was set in concentration as he worked.

Alander considered his options. Axford obviously wasn’t expecting him to wake so soon, or he would have taken more precautions. That gave him the edge of surprise, if he wanted to take it. But physically overpowering Axford wasn’t something Alander wanted to try in a hurry. He assumed there were more tricks hidden in the ex-general’s body, some perhaps more lethal than a PEP gun.

He could try talking Axford out of whatever he was doing, but his unprovoked attack on Alander and Gou Mang suggested that a verbal approach would be pointless. He clearly wasn’t in a talkative mood.

Alander lay still, trying to work out what to do. If he could access the hole ship, he would be able to wrench control from Axford. But there was no way to access the AI without speaking and thereby giving himself away.

He had to do something soon, though. Gou Mang still wasn’t moving, nor did she appear to be breathing.

“I am receiving a communication from Caryl Hatzis,” the hole ship announced in a voice identical to
Eledone
’s.

“Ignore it,” Axford said. “Give me manual control.”

“I am authorized only to obey only Peter Alander.”

“Well, Peter’s dead, so stop being a pedant and give me control of the ship. I can’t run everything on my own.”

“You are mistaken,”
Selene
cut in. “Peter Alander is not dead. He is perfectly conscious.”

Axford’s eyes snapped to where Alander lay on his side in the spreading pool of blood. The gory crystal eye of the PEP gun came up again, aimed directly at him. Alander lifted and rolled, not fast enough to avoid the shot. It glanced off his shoulder with sufficient force to spin him into the wall, but it lacked the surprise of the first shot. He was only stunned, not knocked out again, as Axford would have no doubt liked.

Smoke boiled from where the deflected energy boiled blood to plasma. That gave him a second to recover before Axford tried again. The laser pulse would be less effective through smoke, and his aim would be impaired. Alander shook his head and told himself to stand up while he had the chance.

He lifted his eyes just as another shot cracked out of the smoke and knocked him back down. He blinked a few times, trying to lose the stars that were blurring his vision.

“Jesus Christ!” he gasped, raising a hand in a vain attempt to ward off another shot. “Enough, already!”

“Then stay the hell down!” Axford loomed out of the smoke and pressed the muzzle of the PEP gun against the back of Alander’s head.

“Listen to me,” Alander started, but stopped when the gun was pushed harder against him.

“You’ve nothing to say that could possibly interest me, Peter.”

The world turned white with pain as a noise like thunder sounded in Alander’s ears. The acrid smell of burning blood filled his nostrils.

Is that mine?
he wondered.
Have my brains been charbroiled?

He would have laughed at the idiocy of the notion had he not been in so much pain. Of course it wasn’t his brain. The fact that he could think at all should have told him that.

He opened his eyes, and through the intense pain he saw Axford turn and move away, grunting with satisfaction.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Alander managed. His arms flailed for purchase on the slippery floor as he forced himself upright.

Axford 1313 swiveled. The eye of the PEP gun fell on him again, but this time it didn’t fire.

“That’s not possible,” the ex-general said. “I designed this to punch through the I-suits. There’s enough residual kinetic energy in each shot to turn your internal organs to jelly. Like hers!”

He kicked Gou Mang’s android body where it lay on the floor by his feet. She didn’t respond.

“She’s dead?” said Alander, freezing in the act of trying to stand.

“Of course she’s dead! I couldn’t afford to have her getting in the way—no more than I can afford to have
you
getting in my way, either. Now do me the favor of
staying down
!”

The eye of the PEP flashed in Alander’s face, and the sudden impact of the blast snapped his head back. He felt the crunch of vertebrae in his neck, tasted blood in his mouth. To his amazement, though, he didn’t fall back down. He’d withstood the shot.

Something was happening to him. He could feel it in his arms and legs. There was something crawling under his skin, twisting into knots and then untangling. He felt his back hunch, then straighten. He blinked and shook his head as if to dispel a dream.

“Looks like you’re going to need a little more firepower,” he said, climbing cautiously to his feet.

“Clearly.” Axford was watching him without fear. His expression was one of wary assessment. “What am I going to do about you, Peter? I could keep shooting you, but I’m not one for pointless gestures.”

Alander felt strength flowing through him, invigorating him. He fought a sense of invulnerability. Just because he could resist PEP bolts at extremely close range didn’t mean he was indestructible.

“If it’s pointless, Frank, why don’t you lower the gun?”

“As a deterrent, it still has some value. Remember, while your body has unanticipated reserves, so does mine. I’d advise against coming any closer.”

Alander paused. The two of them faced off against each other with blood-smoke swirling around them.

“Okay, Frank,” he said. “It’s over, either way
. Selene,
open a line to Caryl Hatzis.”

“Peter!” Sol’s reply was instantaneous. “What the hell’s going on over there?”

“It’s Axford,” he said, adding with a shake of his head, “Again.”

“Jesus, Peter,” said Sol. “What happened to you?”

He realized only then how he would look to her eyes: blood-spattered and knocked around by too many PEP shots. “I’m okay, but Gou Mang’s dead. Axford went off the rails there for a while, but I think everything’s under control now.” He looked at Axford again.
“
Is
it, Frank?”

The ex-general shook his head as though disappointed. “You’re letting yourself be dragged down by her, Peter. I thought you had more sense than that.”

“Well, I guess we’re both full of surprises today, aren’t we?
Selene—
uh!”

That was all he managed to get out. Axford lunged at him with his many-tooled arm; wickedly sharp instruments stabbed with gleaming precision. Nanodrills and cutting lasers flashed. Backed up by the flash and grunt of the PEP weapon, Axford threw himself physically forward, a lethal monster masquerading as human.

Alander felt himself move with near impossible speed. He leaned to his left at the same time as his right forearm came up to deflect the bulk of the attack. They were moves his original had learned in a self-defense course, decades before entrainment, and they’d been instilled in him along with everything else. He had never used them before, yet he moved now with a finesse and ease that suggested he’d practiced the moves every day of his life.

The PEP gun flashed again. It knocked his left shoulder back, nothing more. Whatever was happening to him, it was advancing at a rapid rate. Axford 1313, murderous yet blank-faced, seemed to hang motionless in the air as Alander pivoted around his center of gravity and eased aside the arm with its deadly cargo. His left leg kicked up and out, striking Axford firmly in the chest. The blow wasn’t intended to injure the ex-general, just to ward him off. Nevertheless, there was a loud crack of bones as his foot connected.

Alander’s foot crumpled along with Axford’s chest and the two of them rebounded apart with surprising force. Alander fell to the floor, the pain in his foot hurting more than all of the PEP shots combined. Axford had seemed to weigh
tons.

“
Christ!
” he cried out, rolling away.

As time returned to its usual rate, he clutched his injured leg and wondered at the burning sensations racing along his limbs.

“I’m merging the two ships,” he heard Sol saying somewhere beyond the pain.

“No, wait” Alander said. He wanted to make sure the ex-general was no longer a threat to the others and their mission before the ship conjoined again. “Give me a second, Caryl.”

Axford had fallen face forward to the floor. Alander slid painfully away from him, wary of his shattered foot, expecting the man to get up and attack again at any moment.

“
Selene
—” He hesitated on the brink of ordering the hole ship to eject Axford 1313 from the ship. Instead, he clambered onto his one good leg and limped to where the man lay. He squatted next to the ex-general and reached out to prod his shoulder. There was no response, so he rolled Axford onto his back.

Or tried to, anyway. Axford weighed considerably more than he should. Alander had to brace himself firmly and heave before the body rolled.

That Axford was very dead was obvious once he’d managed to get him onto his back. Where his foot had struck, there was a deep impression left in staved-in ribs and internal armor. Neither skin nor I-suit had been punctured, but the damage couldn’t be hidden. Axford looked as though he’d been crushed by a falling pylon.

How the fuck did I do this? Alander asked himself. What in God’s name am I?

He moved back from Axford’s body. Dead he might be, but Alander still didn’t trust the man. “
Selene,
I want you to isolate him from the rest of us. Don’t let anything in or out unless Caryl Hatzis or I specifically tell you to. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Peter.”

The boundary was already forming when he turned to check Gou Mang. As Axford had said, the PEP blast had killed her—or at least stopped the android that she occupied from working. If the organic circuitry running the android wasn’t too badly damaged, there was a chance her engram could be recovered.

“Peter?” Sol’s voice broke into the cockpit quiet. “Is it safe to merge yet?”

“Yes,” he said, feeling numbness settle over him like an anesthetic. “I guess so.”