Chapter 4
FOUR
The neurofilament swished over my head, slamming into the wall, the metal panel squealing and buckling with the force of the impact.
I rolled to the side seconds before it slammed down to where I had dropped to the floor.
I fired one blast from the gun I deployed down from my right forearm, planting my other hand on the ground to push myself up and launch across the loading bay.
The wild Vaurelcar had gone for the weak points, a necessary tactic given that it was smaller than our ship.
Our ship's core was shelllocked, so we couldn't move it, and it was clear the wild Vaurelcar intended to go for it and rip it right out of the body of the ship.
If it succeeded, we would be stranded until we built new control systems, but that was only if any of us were left alive.
Luckily, it was clear the wild Vaurelcar had no crew.
It had to fight us directly, spreading its attention as we fought off its incursion while strike teams tried to cut through to the center of the wild Vaurelcar.
If we were lucky, it would also be shelllocked, and they would be able to get to the center quickly.
If it wasn't shelllocked and could move its core around wherever it wanted, we were all going to die.
The situation looked grim, given that both strike teams had lost comm contact soon after boarding the wild Vaurelcar.
The neurofilament targeting me was a bundle of smaller ones wrapped together, and a few of the edges fell off as my blast burned them away, but it didn't even flinch.
Those neurofilaments were sensitive, so to ignore that damage, it had to be absolutely enraged, or possibly experienced in attacking Calicium ships.
I hoped it was just enraged.
The Vaurelcar had successfully driven all Plexus clusters out of their territory. If it were an experienced fighter, we would definitely all be dead already.
Despair washed through me, and I stopped moving.
Better to go out now than to keep living like this, a soldier fighting for a goal I didn't believe in, ordered about by commands, forced to keep aliens in cages, to watch them suffer and die over and over again.
The only goal of my life was to create suffering for other beings, and a life like that had no worth.
Biological suppression initiated.
The despair washed away into the grey planes of nothingness.
My martial response algorithm kicked in, moving my body.
The neurofilament sliced through the air in the direction of where I had been when I fired the shot, but I was already in motion, and it missed me by a soft woosh of air between us as I fired a shot into its side before diving to the side in anticipation of its next attack.
Deviant behavior flagged, my control chip reported.
"Keep it away from the deployment shuttle!
" INF-TAR 32896 shouted as she strode up the ramp of the mid-range vessel that was used for mission deployments and retrievals.
The sound of INF-TAR 32896's voice out loud like that startled me like it always did, as did her appearance.
She was a specialty Taygetan infiltration unit, and when she first returned from her mission with a collection of cryo-pods filled with humans, I thought for a brief moment that they were Taygetan.
The species were so similar in appearance, with humans being smaller, but the internal differences were notable.
The humans were biologically primed to be compatible with a large variety of different species, which, along with the speed of their reflex system, made them ideal for crafting infiltration units.
INF-TAR 32896 hadn't located their homeworld yet, but once she did, harvesting humans would become a priority.
The thought made me feel sick, the sudden surge of emotion breaking through the calm I needed to function.
I didn't want to do this. I didn't want my people to win.
For the briefest of milliseconds, I managed to lock my knees and stop myself from moving.
Biological suppres-
The neurofilament slammed into me, catching against my reinforced ribcage, the blow flicking me across the room, over the bow of the shuttle, and into the far wall, my right arm cracking hard against the surface first. Damage reports flickered through my mind as I fell the long way down to the floor, twisting in midair to land on my feet like a primitive feline.
Two cracked ribs, minor musculature bruising, all insignificant problems.
A soft gasp caught my attention.
I looked over to see that the human dross had broken free.
They were standing there, just inside the doorway I had been defending against this segment of the Vaurelcar incursion.
They had left it wide open.
If it found the doorway, it would have an easy path deeper in.
I didn't care.
Lyssa was here.
I'd never seen her awake in person, only on the video feed. She was even more vibrant in person, her entire body radiating life.
"A ship!" one of them cried out, pointing at the deployment shuttle, its main thrusters glowing with soft tones of blue as they warmed up, green boxes surrounding each engine as a warning flashed through my mind.
Main thrusters were for use out in open space. To exit the loading dock, only the smaller, less damaging maneuvering thrusters were to be used.
"The ramp is closing!" Lyssa called out as she moved, fast and decisive. "Quick, we have to get on board! We can make it!"
Not all of them could make it.
The calculations rushed through my mind as I took in their various movement speeds and the warmup stage of the engines. She could make it to the ramp, just barely, but only if INF-TAR 32896 waited the full warm-up cycle to launch.
Even if she did make it, the rest of the dross behind her wouldn’t.
They would get caught in the engine blast.
I sent INF-TAR 32896 a series of emojis:
INF-TAR 32896 sent back:
We'd been using that one to indicate pointing, but INF-TAR 32896 had only joined our Plexus Cluster recently after being on an extensive mission where she found the humans. She tended to speak out loud, a strange trait, and she might not know what I was trying to say or how to respond.
There are biologicals in range of the engines, I sent over to INF-TAR 32896 on a public channel, to ensure she understood. Do not engage main thrusters.
Request denied. INF-TAR 32896 replied.
She was going to kill them.
Even if Plexus Command saw them only as inventory, valuable products to be sliced up and used, I couldn't see them that way.
It was because of the media.
In the downtime between tasks, I was able to access a massive media repository, collected from the different cultures we had interacted with and brought in by infiltrator units who enjoyed it.
I didn’t know why Plexus Command allowed the media to be stored, but it never seemed to acknowledge it.
The control chips couldn't police our thoughts, only our actions.
So while the work continued, carving up unclaimed planets in our controlled territory to harvest their natural resources, consuming new species whose only crime was thinking our gifts of technology came with only the stated cost, I learned about cultures I'd never seen before.
Every episode I watched, every story I consumed, had broadened my mind, making it clear to me that a life lived without choice was no life at all, not when those at the top were using that control to further their goals of environmental destruction and the desecration of free will.
I ran the probabilities through my systems, and I knew what I had to do.
I couldn't let them die.
Not until my control chip forced me.
"There's a kracken!" someone shouted, and Lyssa hesitated as she caught sight of a neurofilament snaking towards the women behind her, turning midstride as if she could single-handedly take on a Vaurelcar with her bare hands.
The likelihood of her making it to the ramp diminished to zero.
I threw myself forward, asking for every ounce of speed my legs could give me.
A different neurofilament swung down toward the front of the ship.
The likelihood of INF-TAR 32896 waiting for the engines to fully warm up also dropped to zero.
The high-pitched whine of cold engines activating was a symphony in the background to the pain I was about to feel.
I couldn't save all of them, but I could save her.
My control chip wouldn't stop me from protecting high-value inventory.
I wrapped my arms around her, hugging her tight against my chest as I tackled her, putting my body in harm's way as I turned my back to the sudden blast of heat.
I curled around her, trying to shield her even as we were thrown into the air, even as searing pain rushed through my sensors.
I couldn't cycle my pain receptors all the way off, I had to keep them active so that I didn't crush her on accident in my arms, so I gritted my teeth and endured it, keeping my arms soft and strong, my body wrapped around her like an eggshell as we crashed into a stack of storage boxes, scattering them as their metal surfaces heated up, another round of damage reports flashing through my mind.
The smell of burnt fabric and flesh filled my nose, and I didn't have to look down to know the flimsy armor that basic units like myself were provided had burned away, leaving the skin of my back exposed.
The sudden rush of vacuum seized the room.
Air screamed toward the breach, a defeating roar that drowned out every other sound.
Loose debris, tools, and shattered fragments of metal ripped across the launch bay as the atmosphere fled into the endless black beyond.
The pull hit me a heartbeat later, grabbing at my clothes, my hair, my skin, dragging me across the floor as though some enormous hand had wrapped itself around us and was trying to toss us out into space.
I rolled Lyssa on top of me.
The movement cost me.