Soulless Victories (Corporate Wars Book 2) Read online

  He grinned openly at the link. "Still here."

  "Are you rated for systems transit, drift charts and such? Can you get us to the exit point and out of here?" A clanking sound like hatches in need of maintenance cut the decibel level in half, removing the background banging and yelling.

  His grin died, replaced by a worried frown. "Well, yes, but where are we going? There's a colony planet here, I thought we'd just... stop there, I guess. Drop everyone off, be heroes-" buy completely new identity chips- "pass this problem to someone else. You know?"

  "Yeah, I was going to do that too." Another clank, this time heard over the radio and behind him at the same time. Aldi turned in time to catch the bridge hatch grinding open to admit a tired, annoyed looking Tinker in a crazily-patched secondhand skinsuit. Bright patches and jury-rigged seals covered every inch, although she had the helmet skinned back and both gloves hooked to her belt. They flopped in zero gravity like tiny greetings. "But now I’m thinking it's a bad idea."

  Aldi held out a hand, giving her an anchor point to grab and rotate gracefully around. She slapped the hatch toggle on the way past, sealing them both in again. "Is it the drones? I don't think they have any propulsion; looks like they have to attach to something to ride it." He nodded at the console images and the growing distance between fleeing ships and the overrun station. "As long as we stay away they can't follow."

  Tinker parked herself on the bench next to him, deftly snagging a restraint and bracing a boot on the console to hold herself down. "Actually I'm thinking they can. The little ones take apart everything they get a grip on to make more of themselves, right? What if the larger versions," she tapped the console, focusing on the huge cloud where three ships used to be. "Does the same thing on a much bigger level?"

  His mouth was suddenly very dry. "Like on a ship scale of big? Small drones make more small drones, but the ships make entire dreadnaughts?" It made a horrible kind of sense. "Who would design something that insane? Is it a Corporate project to ruin entire systems?"

  Tinker made heavy eye contact, then glanced away in annoyance. "As much as I want to pin it on some Corpo idiot... I just can't. Doesn't make sense, even in a twisted fiscal way." She punched the seat lightly, then patted him on the shoulder. "But we need to leave, at least to the next system over. I think this entire neighborhood is about to get drone-ified and hanging around would be bad for our health."

  "Mmm." He brought up navigation in a blur of swipes and taps, indicating the nearest exit point and letting the system plot a gradual automated course. Somewhere nearby their Krepsfield drive fired up, projecting an artificial event horizon close enough to tug the ship into a slow turn. Another tap brought up drift charts and he nodded at a callout list of system names. "Where are we going? Can't be too far— whole cargo hold of people and no food."

  She eyed the list, small fingers tapping a rapid drumbeat on his shoulder the entire time. "Palos."

  "The colony? Good place to drop everyone off, but-" He dragged icons over their course and winced at the result. "Almost three days."

  "We'll deal." Tinker stopped drumming his shoulder and suddenly flicked one finger at his ear. Aldi startled, then laughed when the sudden motion nearly sent him into the air over the seat. She grinned back and hauled him down again, flecked brown eyes returning his amused look with interest. "I know someone there. Well, I think. Maybe."

  He hooked a boot under hers to anchor better on the bench. "You actually know someone that will take, um-"

  "Twenty-one thousand." She pursed both lips and blew a stray hair out of the way. Strawberry scent tickled his nose.

  "We have twenty-one thousand people in cargo?" Aldi reeled in place, picturing it. "They have to be riding up the walls. Every bulkhead, even the overheads."

  "Pretty much." She grinned and bopped him on the nose with a knuckle. "That's gonna be a problem... for Francis. Good luck to that guy."

  He started laughing, then slowly tapered off again when she didn't join in. Tinker just waited, chin tilted slightly up and eyebrows raised, idly drumming slowly on his shoulder again. Implications slowly came together. "So, lot of time coming up."

  "Mhmm."

  "And I'm kind of remembering a kiss...?" Which was understating the effect: It was more like a life-affirming bombshell after a death defying leap into darkness.

  Tinker grinned slowly in a way that suddenly brought to mind an image of her throwing that poor pilot into the deck plates. Dangerously physical and impressive, all at once. "Well, just to keep things honest: I kind of promised myself a couple things if I lived through the last few hours."

  He risked a casual arm over the back of the bench. "Anything to do with me?" He tasted strawberries again, heard a wild scream of triumph and the sound of a helmet bouncing off the bulkhead. Hopes rose.

  She eyed him, taking in a scruffy chin holding up a crooked smile, bent nose leading upwards into hopeful brown eyes and an uncombed mop of hair. "Well, damn. I guess low standards keeps everyone happy."

  Chapter 2

  Interfaces

  The dark made everything worse, somehow.

  Sadie waited in the alternate education classroom, tucked cross-legged on the carpet underneath the administration desk with her students on either side. Aside from the benches this was the only spot that felt even moderately safer that just standing in the open: At least down here everyone had something to lean back against, even if she was the only one conscious of it.

  With the power out and the cheap consoles denied emergency power she had no way of knowing how long they'd been waiting. Probably a while. A long while, actually— Jonas was already beginning some of the physical tics associated with network withdrawal. It wasn't bad, not yet, but he'd gone past compulsively picking his nails and started scratching both arms and legs. That was bad, on multiple levels, because it meant he was already experiencing misfiring nerves.

  Even without her Educator chip Sadie knew the script only went downhill from that point: Cut off from the Medical system's constant corrections the biochips preventing his epilepsy would slowly shut down. Whenever they happened to stop was the exact time a hundred and fifty pounds of slowly convulsing teenager would need medical treatment. There were protocols for that, and she knew them all, but that wasn't a replacement for a working Medical signal. It was heartbreaking and angering all at once because someone should have come by now. Or at least turned the power back on!

  She shifted slightly, trying to get blood flowing back into her left foot. The motion gently bumped the small girl under her other arm, bringing up a new difficulty: Blakely.

  The nine-year-old was the exact opposite of Jonas— network deprivation removed her filters, put her back in the non-responsive shell they'd been working so hard to break through. Where Jonas' constant motion bounced her arm up and down it was Blakely's immobile posture that put a little knot of worry in Sadie's soul. When it came to implants hers were the reverse of the bigger boy: Made to deaden, deafen, slow down and enforce structure on the world around them. Rapid fire stimulus was Blakely's enemy, always raging around the mental fortress she hid inside. Cut off from the biochip's muting effect those mental gates would slam shut immediately. Sadie had no idea how far backward they'd just gone on progress, or even if the little girl would respond again when they got through this.

  Something skittered past the hatch with a buzzing, nasty sound like gouged metal. It was happening more and more often.

  If they got out of this.

  "Shh. Shh." Sadie rubbed Jonas's back, making comforting sounds by reflex. It wouldn't fix anything— they needed a network connection or an active console for that— but it was better than nothing. Her other hand slowly tapped fingers on Blakely's slack palm in mathematical patterns: One finger, pause. Three fingers, pause and wait. Occasionally a slight four-touch response would come back as some part of the girl connected with the simple math. Usually not. She kept trying anyways.

  Where was Security? Where was Maintenance?
Dead stars, what was going on with the ship?

  Hours ago everything was fine, just another day of alternative curriculum. She'd been using the forward workspace to go through a double lesson on the Golden Ratio and art at the same time, with examples pulled from nature to show the relationships. "Seashells! Shells are a perfect example of the Golden Ratio. Take look at the spirals and how they naturally fall into the pattern, even across species with no contact to each other. Can you think of another example? Jonas?"

  "Of seashells?" She'd caught him daydreaming, or possibly messaging through his biochip connection: The gangly boy always looked slightly guilty when he wasn't on task. Derailed, he snuck a glance at the nearest display and made a guess on the subject. "Snails, I guess? Or crabs, there's one that lives in a shell." He glanced around the small room like the walls had inspiration. Which wasn't a bad idea— Sadie usually put examples of the daily topic on every visual surface. "Clams? Can I get a hint?"

  Instead of being upset, she laughed. Some people needed dedicated teaching software to give them patience. Not her. She'd never had to lean on the educational biochips or even ask for modifications to her own implants: Her patience (and amusement) was genuine and never at anyone's expense. She was the rare case of the Corporate education system going right: Diagnosed with brain damage early on, chipped into a functional, normal life and paying it back through teaching. In her particular case a rich Executive father helped... but Sadie liked to think she'd have made it on her own.

  It was also a huge part of why Corporate sponsored her augmentation for the Alternative Student assignment. She'd been one of these kids. Bitter? Irritated? Angry at the world? Those were practically the advertisements on her walls growing up. This didn't even come close. And after years of doing this exact job she'd grown into the sort of gentle, roundly-shaped teaching figure that naturally put children at ease: Average height, barely managed brown ponytails, accessories chosen more for bright colors and discussion than functionality. Only her colorless eyes stood out oddly, a leftover effect from extensive implants. Brightly colored glasses helped with that.

  Sadie kept chuckling all the way to the administrator desk. "We were talking about the number, actually. The Golden Ratio, here." She made a grabbing motion at the workspace icon and flicked it to Jonas' console, giving the nervously smiling teen instant relief as the day's lesson plan rewound his display. "Shells are a good example, but that particular number is everywhere in the universe. Small and large. Take a look at the examples."

  He frowned, carefully sculpted hair angling left and right while he flicked through the example images she sent. "Snowflakes are numbers? And... waves? Leaves?"

  "In a way, sure." Sadie switched over to his desk, using two fingers to pull and group images together. She rotated the shell sideways, overlaying it on the curl of the wave. Then both overlays went on top of the snowflake image, matching perfectly. "Incredible, right? All of them have the same arc, and it's the exact same number from the spiral of a seashell all the way up to entire galaxies. It's one point six-one-eight, every time. But it has other names, too. Like the Golden Ratio, or-"

  "Phi." They almost missed Blakely saying it. She had a tendency to talk directly downwards into her console, long black hair falling forward like a privacy screen.

  Jonas glanced sideways at the small girl, sculpted eyebrows going up and down. "Fight what?"

  One delicate hand came up, blocking out his confused look. "Phi. The number." The other hand slowly drew a symbol on the shared workspace, between waves and seashells. Just a small oval, bisected by a line: ϕ

  Sadie tried extremely hard not to overreact. Contributions from the sensory overloaded Blakely were like finding gold nuggets in your soup— impossibly rare, utterly priceless and gone the moment you shouted about it. Weeks sometimes went by without a verbal response. And follow-up associations? Those were goals on Blakely's lesson plan years from now.

  She mentally flagged this entire session into record while keeping her voice as steady as possible. "That's right. P-H-I, Phi. One point six one eight." Jonas opened his mouth, but she held up a hand. He hushed, eyebrows raised. Then, very gently: "Where else do you find the Golden Ratio?"

  Sadie held her breath.

  A pause long enough to make Jonas fidget. "Triangles. Hexagons." And then, in a whisper like winning every therapy session at the same time: "Molecules."

  Every single educational module and psychology system dumped a load onto Sadie's implant all at once. A dozen different ways to follow up, make more connections, pull more out of the quiet girl before the unexpected breakthrough closed down again. Even Jonas looked impressed, dark eyes flicking back and forth and both hands behind his head. This was huge, it was the exact opportunity years of educational therapy and medical systems strove to create.

  Sadie opened her mouth to capitalize, selecting the best option to draw Blakely into a whole new world-

  -and with an earsplitting howl the ship collision alarms exploded into life. Overheads switched to rapid red strobe lights a moment later, signaling imminent danger.

  Jonas clapped both hands to his ears, jumping away from the console like it bit him. "What!" He seemed stuck on the word. "What??" Blakely just slumped over bonelessly, overcome by too much stimulus at once.

  Implant protocol took over and Sadie cursed, diving to grab his elbow and drag them both downward to cover Blakely. They barely met the carpeted deck before all three were up and flying again as the ship heaved, downward gravity becoming sideways velocity as the ship rebounded away from collision. Local gravity strained against the sudden change of momentum, blunting the worst of the strike until it felt like hitting the solid surface at a walking speed instead of bone-crunching force.

  They landed in a tangle, Sadie taking the worst of it as the combined weight of both kids somehow managed to hit her in the solar plexus. Breath blasted out and refused to come back, stars blossoming in her vision like fireworks. "What!" Jonas kept screaming the word into her ear over and over, competing with the collision alarms for raw volume. Sadie flinched away, blinking hard and finally sucking in a grateful gasp of air. The emergency collision lights made every blink a stutter-step, like looking at the room between freeze frames.

  He wouldn't stop yelling. In fact he was speeding up, still stuck on a single word. "What! Whatwhatwhatwhat-"

  Sadie abruptly realized the problem and twisted hard, slapping a hand over his eyes to block the strobes. Jonas stopped mid-word, then fell over sideways in relief as his implant finally got ahead of the unexpected epilepsy cascade. Laying half across his chest was like being on a tense wire; every muscle twitching as it came down from riding the edge of nerve overload. That was entirely too close.

  She yelled, trying to time the words between siren blasts. "Are! You! Okay!"

  Shaky hands covered hers and pressed hard. After a moment he nodded and grimaced, showing bloody teeth. He'd bitten his lip and hadn't even noticed; one more thing to worry about. A quick check on Blakely added to her immediate concerns: She was completely non-responsive, curled up on her side with the barest sliver of eyelid showing. Not good.

  Leaning close, she shouted "stay! here!" between siren blasts and waited for his nod before getting up and limping for the hatch. Hitting the toggle opened the portal straight into pandemonium: The entire corridor was a madhouse of running people, emergency crews and— alarmingly— some sort of cloying, silvery smoke. To her right a cross corridor seemed to be devolving into a literal fight as workers in orange and black Maintenance coveralls sprinting through the smoke, waving everything from wrenches to cutting torches.

  Frozen in place, Sadie gawped long enough to almost lose her head to a charging Security team. "Out of the way!" She jerked back seconds before a wave of armored skinsuits pounded by, every power-assisted step hitting the deck like thunder and clearing a path through brute force. Technicians and toolkits spun through the air as at least two dozen armed figures halted at the next corridor junction.
"Everyone get inside! Report to a Manager at once for emergency assignments! Clear the corridors, repel boarders!"

  "Boarders?!" That was a bombshell that didn't even come close to making sense to Sadie. This wasn't just a regular ship: This was Fiscal Enforcement. Who boarded Enforcement? No, strike that: Who took on warships at all! It was like finding out your shoes might be capable of overthrowing your feet— the natural order of things wasn't just upended, it functionally didn't exist.

  Security turned away and started running into the smoke one at a time. Belatedly Sadie realized her chance was slipping away. She leaned into the corridor and screamed over the sirens. "Wait! Medical emergency!"

  Two Security suits hesitated, helmets turning back her way and then to each other. Suit communications, maybe? Discussing whether to leave? "I have children with medical situations!" Then, in a flash of insight: "Executive children!"

  That did it: Both of them pivoted and jogged her way like identical armored units. The first one pushed her back into the room and stuck his helmet inside, faceplate aimed around. "What's the injury?"

  She pointed at Blakely, limp on the floor and then Jonas sitting nearby. "Catatonia and epilepsy. Can you call their parents? Their Executive parents?"

  "You've got to be-" he pulled back, mechanical assists whining loud enough to be heard over sirens. "Lady, are you fucking with me? Just walk them home! Or stay here, I don't give a damn, we've got- aw, shit. Larson!"