Precipice of Darkness Read online

  Except for the eyes. Katrina had always had an old woman’s eyes. Now they were ancient.

  “True enough,” Tangel said. “But you did find him. I left him behind. One of our greatest heroes…abandoned.”

  Katrina shrugged. “There’s no absolution I can offer you. You’ll have to seek that out for yourself.”

  “And seek it I shall.” Tangel sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. “Sometimes it feels like there’s so much to regret, Katrina.”

  A snort burst from the woman’s nose. “Oh believe me, I know that all too well. It’s so easy to let the past become an anchor—and not the sort you want, either. I’ve done a lot…a lot that I regret. But taken individually, I’m at peace with nearly all the decisions I've made.”

  Tangel couldn’t help but notice the caveat. “ ‘Nearly all’.”

  “You have them, I’m sure. The ones that will haunt you forever.”

  A hundred regret-filled memories flashed before Tangel’s eyes as the gantry extended to meet the Voyager’s airlock. “Do I ever.”

  “You never talked about them—even before you became half-AI,” Katrina observed, as a light came on signaling that the airlock was cycling.

  Tangel shrugged. “It’s not really my way to dwell on the past. I can’t do anything about it. All I can do is look to the future and do my best when it comes. I’m a fast study—mostly—when it comes to the lessons of the past. One of those lessons was to not let memory and regret from days gone by rule the present. The ability to forget is one of the greatest gifts humanity has.”

  Katrina cocked her head and caught Tanis’s gaze. “But you’re not human anymore, are you?”

  Tangel shrugged. “Biologically I’m not, no. Sera even finally badgered me into adopting her preference in epidermis—though without the constant sensory stimulation.”

  “I’ve done my time with artificial skin, I’ll pass on that,” Katrina grimaced, a look of far-off pain in her eyes.

  “I fought it for a while,” Tangel replied. “But it was foolish. Having bulletproof, stealth-capable, chameleon skin is a considerable boon in our line of work. You can always get it changed back.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” Katrina replied, her tone laced with a note of humor as she evaded Tangel’s suggestion. “You were about to tell me what new species you are.”

  “Well, I’m not an AI, which we all know to be a misnomer anyway. I know some have categorized AIs—at least the ones with Weapon Born in their lineage—as Homo Quantus-Animo Sapiens. Perhaps I am a Homo Quantus-Penta-Animo Sapiens, or some such.”

  “Sounds like a mouthful—also not what I was getting at,” Katrina said, her lips twisting into a smirk.

  Tangel chuckled. “I know. I don’t really know what I am, or what I’m capable of—classifying myself seems foolish, given that. Stars, every time I push what I think are my boundaries, I just find new vistas.”

  “What’s it like?” Katrina asked.

  Tangel paused before replying, trying to find the right words. “It’s…complex. I can choose to see with only my two-dimensional vision, my eyes, should I choose. When I do that, I can perceive the three dimensions as I always have. However, my other senses keep trickling in. The three dimensions turn into four, then five. I’m…growing, for lack of a better word, new sensory organs. I believe I know how to grow five-dimensional ‘eyes’. Once I do that, I’ll be able to perceive the sixth dimension.”

  “Shit,” Katrina whispered.

  “Yeah, it’s nuts. I can see other types of light and energy. I can touch them, too.” As she spoke, Tangel reached out with her corporeal hand and touched a shimmering stream that was flowing off the Voyager—the fifth-dimensional manifestation of the magnetic field emanating from the fusion reactor’s tokamak coils. The stream flexed under her touch, and she watched that movement transfer into all the other magnetic fields around her, a luminescent web of electromagnetism that filled the docking bay.

  The fields flowed through Katrina, bending the small ones within her body, altering it and her mind in subtle ways. Tangel followed the energy flows, noting one that appeared discordant. From experience, Tangel knew that it was the physical manifestation of an unpleasant memory, of some past pain.

  She reached out and touched it.

  Curious. It’s so embedded.

  “Tangel! What the…!” Katrina cried out, jerking away.

  Tangel started, realizing that as she’d followed the thread, she’d touched Katrina’s face with her corporeal hand.

  “Sorry, I was…ah…following the magnetic fields through the bay, looking at how they interact with you in other dimensions.”

  Katrina was staring at Tangel with a look that was half fear, half worry. “I felt you…inside.”

  Tangel felt a flush rise on her cheeks. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to. Sometimes, realities don’t line up the way I expect them to. I didn’t realize….”

  “That you were probing inside my body?” Katrina’s ire and fear turned into a sardonic smirk.

  “Uh…yeah.”

  “I’ll admit, it felt…good,” Katrina allowed. “Like a tingle running through me.”

  Tangel wondered if she should tell Katrina what she saw, but the sound of the airlock opening caught her attention, and she turned back to the ship, watching as the first figure stepped out, stooping to clear the low overhang.

  “Kara,” Tangel said in greeting as she approached and took the black-winged woman’s hand. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

  Tanis and Angela had only seen Kara and her brother briefly—aboard the Galadrial the day she stormed it with Usef and a team of Marines—but Adrienne’s children had made an impression. She noted that Kara had a face now; no longer was the woman’s head a black oval, devoid of features. The resemblance to her father was clear, which made sense, given what she’d learned of the man who had borne all his own children.

  The fangs, however, made for a marked differentiation.

  “Thank you, Tangel,” Kara said in a quiet voice. “I noticed that these caught your attention.” She pulled her lips back, further baring the long, sharp teeth. “I had them added in memory of him. He was the one who had always pushed for us to have fear-inspiring appearances. The fangs were one of the first alterations he’d suggested.”

  “A fitting homage,” Katrina replied with a solemn nod.

  Behind Kara came a tall man who also looked far younger than the last information Tangel had read on him.

  “Carl,” she said, extending her hand. “I hear you’ve worked hard to keep the Voyager in working condition.”

  “Thank you, Admiral. Been a pleasure. Spent far and away most of my life on this ship, now.”

  A flash of red in the airlock caught Tangel’s attention, and she gave a warm smile, gesturing for the occupant to exit.

  “Katrina told me all about you, Malorie. You’re welcome here.”

  A head with eight eyes peered around the top edge of the airlock. A moment later, the rest of the mechanical spider dropped to the deck. Katrina had explained to Tangel that Malorie still possessed a human brain inside her arachnid body, but over the years, she’d taken her altered form to heart, reveling in the thing she’d become.

  “Admiral Tangel. After hearing Katrina speak of you for so many years…I thought you’d be taller.”

  Tangel considered that to be an amusing statement from a woman whose disturbingly spider-like head—complete with large, fanged chelicerae—was only a meter off the ground.

  “I’m sure she’s told a tall tale or two in her day,” Tangel replied with a shrug. “I’m just a woman trying to get by in this crazy universe.”

  A chittering laugh slipped out of Malorie’s mouth. “From someone who is more ‘just a woman’ than you, I sincerely doubt that.”

  Tangel shrugged and looked back up at the ship looming overhead, her trepidation returning. “Troy? May I come aboard?”

  just live here.>

  “Nonsense,” Katrina said, her brow lowering. “Just because Tanis left this ship to me doesn’t mean the last five hundred years count for nothing.”

  “Time to pay the piper,” Tangel said to the group around her with a slight nod as she slipped past. “Once I’ve chatted with Troy, we’ll see if the Seras are ready, and we can all talk about the mission.”

  Katrina folded her arms. “You’d better have a hell of a plan. It was a suicide run just to rescue Kara when she left High Airtha.”

  Tangel winked at her long-time friend. “We’ll put our heads together. I’m sure we can come up with something.”

  “Very encouraging,” Malorie rasped as Tangel walked toward the Voyager.

  Tangel ran her hands along the hull for a moment before stepping through the airlock and into the corridor that ran to the central shaft.

  “It’s weird, Troy,” Tangel said as she reached the ladder and began to climb.

 

  “That this ship is so old. For me, Kapteyn’s star was just a quarter-century ago. This ship should look no older than, say, the Dresden.”

  Troy replied, his tone still too casual for Tangel’s liking.

  She reached the second to top level and swung off the ladder and onto the deck. “I’m surprised Katrina and her crew never re-aligned the decks to be horizontal—what, with having a-grav for so long.”

 

  “Did she at least add a hot tub?” Tangel asked as she reached the ship’s upper node chamber and palmed open the door.

  A snort sounded in Troy’s mind.

  Tangel stared at the AI’s core, slotted into a receptacle on the bulkhead across the small space.

  “I’m so sorry, Troy,” Tangel’s voice came out in a whisper. “We searched for years, scouring the system for any survivors from the battle. I….” She rested her back against the bulkhead and slid to the deck. “Can you forgive me, Troy?”

  Troy paused for a moment.

  “Because you’re right here in front of me,” Tangel replied quietly. “Those others, they’re all lost, and their ghosts never reply.”

 

  “Do you mean that?” Tangel asked. “I mean the part about no grudge, I get that I’m not a goddess. What a thankless job that would be.”

 

  She nodded silently, letting Troy’s sincerity seep into her. Then she glanced up at him. “You seem to have lost a bit of your hard edge.”

  Troy replied.

  “Thank you for that,” Tangel said.

  Troy let out a long, audible groan that filled the room.

  Tangel’s eyes widened. “Ohhhh…I didn’t realize things were like that between you two.”

  A chuckle sounded around Tangel.

  “Has she been with anyone else?” Tangel asked, curious if perhaps Katrina was remaining chaste for Troy.

 

  Tangel whistled. “That’s a long time to go without love.”

 

  “I know how that works,” she replied, a slight edge to her voice. “I have my family like that, as well—of which you and Katrina are members. But…maybe you should tell her. Things are going to get crazy soon. If you take this mission, you’re going into the lion’s den.”

  Another chuckle sounded around her.

  “Not like this, you haven’t,” Tangel replied as she rose. “Sera just pinged me. They’re coming.”

  AN ANGEL INSIDE

  STELLAR DATE: 09.01.8949 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Damon Silas

  REGION: Interstellar Space, coreward of the Vela Cluster

  Roxy looked down at the hole in her midsection, and a wave of fear washed over her. She’d spent years in her azure body, knowing that she was more machine than woman, but in all that time, she’d never seen the inside of herself. Opened up like she was nothing more than a servitor.

  Maybe Carmen is right. Maybe there’s nothing human left of me anymore.

  The thought brought about a feeling of blackness that reached up to swallow her, an uncontrollable despair and fear that even the meager truths surrounding her existence that she’d clung to were lies.

  Am I nothing? Roxy closed her eyes and shook her head. No, I am me, I know that I am still me.

  “But what am I?” she whispered. “If I don’t know what I am, how can I know who I am?”

  The repair drone—with several of its armatures holding Roxy’s abdomen open—offered no reply as it reached into the fabricator and pulled out a new, smaller bioassimilator. Her old one sat on the workbench next to Carmen’s case, the flexible, curved apparatus until recently having been the thing that digested any organic sustenance Roxy had chosen to eat.

  Since she rarely bothered with food, Carmen suggested that it was the ideal internal system to downsize.

  Roxy looked away as the repair drone inserted the new assimilator into her body, the thing’s dozen armatures working swiftly and deftly.

  The fact that it was not a medical drone was not lost on her, but Carmen assured her that the machine would not be getting anywhere close to her organic systems. Roxy wondered if it was because the AI’s earlier statement was correct, and that she had no organic systems.

  A part of her mind rebelled against the idea, while another part wondered what that would really mean. Carmen’s words reverberated in her mind, over and over.

  ‘Are you an AI?’

  What if I am? Roxy wondered.

  “System check completed,” the drone announced aloud. “Ready to install AI core mount and casing.”

  “Proceed,” Roxy said, doing her best to keep her voice from wavering.

  Carmen still rested in her case, controlling the drone and passing it instructions. The AI hadn’t spoken aloud since the procedure started, but beforehand, she had assured Roxy that it would not be a complicated operation.

  Maybe not for you—an AI who used to run this starship…but for me, this is my only body, Roxy had thought at the time.

  Now she wondered if her body was really so special. If it was just a machine, it could be replaced. She could be replaced.

  The drone inserted the mounting system for the AI core, and then threaded a bundle of optical channel cabling into Roxy’s abdomen. A second later, a new series of systems appeared on her HUD.

  The AI core mount was connected to her power supplies and would be able to piggyback on her Link.

  A part of Roxy knew that sort of connection was risky; it would give Carmen largely unbuffered access to her own mind. But for some reason, she trusted the AI.

  Either that, or the freedom she had tasted, with Justin’s control over her mind slipping, had emboldened her to attempt this greater rebellion.

  Or I’m just being fatalistic. Can an AI be fatalistic?


  “Are you ready?” Carmen’s voice came from the case. “Once I’m in, and the drone seals you up, it’ll take some doing to get me out again.”

  Roxy drew in a deep breath, mentally chiding herself for the affectation. “We never really talked about what’s past this point.”

  “True,” Carmen admitted. “I have a suspicion that you may be having second thoughts about your association with Justin. Is that true?”

  “No.” Roxy spat out the word in defiance, and then paused. “Well, maybe. I know he controls me, and I…I like it, but I’m not sure if I like it, or if I’m made to like it.”

  “I know it may take a while,” the AI began, speaking the words slowly—which had to be for Roxy’s benefit, “But will you eventually help me escape, set me free?”

  “Yes,” Roxy replied with a nod. “I—I really don’t know why I’m doing this, but I swear it’s not to trap you in my stomach forever.”

  Carmen laughed softly. “Well, I suppose that’ll have to do. You need to order the drone to put me in. I’ll be silent for a bit, as I’ll have to re-initialize inside the new core mount and make sure it passes functionality tests before I reach out.”

  “Understood,” Roxy said, drawing another deep breath and feeling stupid for doing it. “Service drone, install Carmen’s core in me.”

  “Proceeding,” the drone replied, and two armatures reached out and hovered over Carmen’s core, waiting for the ‘safe removal’ indicator to come on.

  When it did, the machine lifted the AI out of the case and turned to Roxy, carefully sliding the ten-centimeter cube into her body. Roxy could feel it seat, and then felt a small vibration as the mounting clamps secured the core.

  The drone began to use flowmetal to thread Roxy’s abdominal muscles back together, and within a minute, was carefully sealing her azure skin. When it was done, Roxy bent over and couldn’t tell that she’d been opened up like a faulty automaton. Strangely, the feeling of seeing her body whole once more made her feel even less human.