“Fraxx!” She smacked her hand into the nearest wall without thinking, and the impact left a sizable dent in the reinforced steel. And that gave her an idea. She’d head to the gym and beat up Bessy the spar-bot. She hadn’t worked out properly in a few days, and while sex with Eric certainly counted as cardio, today she needed the satisfaction of hitting something.
She changed into one of the few outfits left in her quarters, a simple set of workout gear marked with the Nova Force logo. It was the same one she’d been wearing the first time Trinity had brought her to the gym…and to Eric.
She bent over to tighten her shoes and nearly fell forward as familiar pain flared across her temples. Contact!
“You are alive!” the thought streaked through her mind like a comet.
She sent back a confirming thought. She’d learned that emotions were easier to convey than specific words.
The fury responded with an outpouring of thoughts and feelings that was almost impossible to understand. She gritted her teeth against the pain and pushed a single thought back. “Calm.”
The torrent became a stream, then a trickle, and finally a pair of simple questions. “How? Where?”
“Nova Force. Free.”
“Free?” The thought was sent with a surge of joy mixed with a bittersweet sense of longing.
“Absalom?”
“Here with him.”
“Where here?” Nyx added layers of urgency to the query, hoping her clone would understand. Keeping a connection open for long was difficult, and neither one of them would be able to maintain it for much longer.
There was no response, but the link between them still held. She knelt on the floor, her head aching, and waited.
“Where?” She asked again.
Instead of emotions or words, her clone answered with an image. Clever. Cyborgs could store memories as if they were data. She’d gotten flashes of her clone’s lives before, but none of the furies had ever deliberately sent her an image this way. It wasn’t much, but at the same time, it was everything. The image showed part of a data screen. Part of it was blocked by the body of a person standing between the clone and the monitor, but there were numbers visible. Coordinates.
Yes! Elation filled her. She had what she needed to put an end to this. No more furies. No more suffering. She could stop Absalom and fulfill her promise to the ones whose lives he’d stolen.
She managed to send a brief sense of gratitude to her clone before the link broke and she was alone inside her head once more. She’d missed that sense of connection, though she didn’t miss the pain that came with it. Eric had a theory that her ability to connect to her clones was a kind of limited telepathy, similar to the bond between naturally born twins, only stronger. He’d sent her several articles documenting the phenomenon in other vat-born cybernetic clones, but the information was sparse, mostly anecdotal reports from technicians. If it was deemed minor, the cyborgs were sent off to fight, if there were any concerns, the subjects were flagged as failures and decommissioned.
Nyx fastened her shoes before standing up and taking stock of what little she owned. There wasn’t much. A data tablet, communicator, some toiletries, and a handful of clothing.
She grabbed the tablet and entered the coordinates. She needed to know where Absalom was so she could make a plan. Weapons. Supplies. A ship. How long would it take her to reach him?
The answer stunned her, and she had to double-check before she believed it. The arrogant bastard was close. According to her clone, she and Absalom were somewhere in the asteroid field beyond the Drift. He must be laughing, knowing he was less than two days travel from the people hunting him.
“You won’t be laughing soon,” she vowed.
She packed a small bag with toiletries and the data tablet, then considered her options. She needed more gear. Weapons, if she could find some, and a ship. A voice in the back of her mind whispered that if she told Eric what she’d learned, he’d make sure she had everything she needed. But talking to him meant…well, talking to him.
She scoffed aloud, amused and annoyed with herself. She was starting to see why the corporations had done their best to repress their cyborg soldiers’ emotions – it made things messy and illogical, and she didn’t have time for either.
Eric’s quarters were one of the few places she could go without attracting attention, though, and he had equipment there, including his spare blaster. He should be on duty for hours, which would give her plenty of time.
That plan held until she turned down the hallway to Eric’s place and saw an IAF soldier stationed outside his open door. The hall was half-blocked by a stack of computer equipment, all of it Eric’s. Fraxx.
She ducked back around the corner, cursing softly. A quick check of the area confirmed she was alone in this part of the hallway, so she took a chance and stayed where she was, extending her senses in an attempt to find out what she could.
“You almost done?” A male voice asked.
“Just doing one more pass. This guy has more gizmos and tech in his place than some of the stores on the concourse.”
“Yeah. I heard he’s some kind of cyber-jockey. Tech is his thing.”
There was a snort of laughter from inside. “That would explain his girlfriend. You hear he’s dating a cyborg?”
“I heard they’re working together. General Halverson wants her for questioning as soon as he’s done with the ensign.”
“You think he did what they’re saying he did?” The one who had been inside must have stepped into the corridor, because his voice was clearer now.
“I doubt it. He’s Nova Force for fraxx sake.”
“So? Everyone’s got their price.”
“That’s not what I meant. Nova Force are experts at finding out what the corporations are doing. Espionage, data theft, that kind of thing. If one of them went rogue, they’d know exactly how to do it to make sure they weren’t caught. And Erben is a cyber-jockey. He’s literally wired to be good at this kind of shit. So, how’d they catch him so easily? This doesn’t feel right, know what I mean?”
She’d heard enough. Nyx turned and went back the way she’d come, her thoughts racing along at light-speed. Eric was in trouble, and they thought she was working with him. She couldn’t go to him for help, and she couldn’t do anything to get him out of trouble, either. Dammit. This was exactly what she’d been trying to warn him about.
She needed a new plan. She already knew the first step. The tracker on her wrist needed to come off, right now. She tried to twist it, but it was snug against her flesh and there wasn’t any way for her to get the leverage she needed. A door opened up ahead and she froze, every muscle primed and ready to react if a threat appeared.
A squat maintenance bot trundled out into the hall, polishing the floor. She darted forward, managing to get her foot in the way of the door as it slid closed. It sensed the obstruction and re-opened, giving her just enough time to slip inside the small maintenance room before the door closed behind her.
The only light source was a faint glow from a control panel on one wall, where indicator lights in various colors marked the progress of the fleet of maintenance bots assigned to this area. She shifted her eyes to low-light mode, and was able to see well enough to find what she needed. The bots could multitask, selecting various attachments set near their recharging bays to suit their assigned tasks. She grabbed the first one that looked like it would suit her needs and slipped the metal tab between the tracker and her wrist. It hurt, but physical pain was something she could deal with. She simply deactivated her pain receptors and kept going, trusting in her medi-bots to manage any injuries she inflicted on herself. It took more force than she expected to snap the tracker's band, but it came off eventually, leaving her with a bruised and bloodied wrist.