Dead Space by Kali Wallace (e novels to read online .TXT) 📗

never bothered to find out exactly how widespread it was. “Really?”

“At a guess,” van Arendonk said. “Mostly under other names, but they’re all built on the same design. Parthenope leases the right to brand and modify the system to a company called Asymptote Intelligence, which is functionally little more than a shell. They have several products that are all essentially Overseers. They pay very well for the privilege too.”

I had heard of Asymptote but assumed it was just another AI designer trying to get a toehold in outer systems commerce. “That’s not common knowledge, is it?”

“Oh, not at all. Parthenope claims that would make the clients and their stations too vulnerable. Which is true, I suppose. They are certainly vulnerable.”

I shook my head. He was right, but it was not our immediate problem. “We have to shut it down. We have to stop it before it can do—whatever they want it to do.”

“You’re mad to think it’ll let you get close. Or Sigrah. She’s already killed to protect it.”

“I know. We have to do it anyway.”

“Marley, you don’t know anything about this machine.”

“Well, yes, that is something to consider,” I said. It was dark; he couldn’t see my expression. “It’s too bad we don’t have an AI expert sitting right fucking in front of you with no other commitments for the rest of her day.”

“I— Okay.” Van Arendonk laughed slightly. “That’s fair. I apologize. Does the AI expert have a plan for stopping the homicidal AI and its equally homicidal human keeper?”

“We have to—”

Before I could finish, a loud sound carried through the factory. It was a series of sharp pops: an attack from a beehive drone, but nowhere near us.

There was a scramble in the darkness as van Arendonk stood. “Fuck. I need—fuck, fuck, fuck.” He fumbled briefly, then a light flared, momentarily blinding. He held the flashlight with one hand and grabbed his radio with the other.

I jumped to my feet. “Are you crazy? That thing is going to see us.”

He ignored me to click the radio on. “Mohammad, do not come into the fucking factory. Do you hear me? Please be listening, you stubborn asshole. Do not enter the factory.”

A beat, then a snap of sound. “That warning would have been more useful before we came into the factory, aye?”

“Get out and shut the door,” van Arendonk said.

“Where are—”

Adisa’s question was interrupted by a squeal of sound, followed at once by a deep, concussive boom. I bolted to the door and pulled it open. There was another explosion, and with it came a brilliant flash of light to my left. Van Arendonk shouted something, either in my ear or in the radio, but I couldn’t hear his words over the noise reverberating through the factory.

I switched on my flashlight as I ran and looked for any glint of silver, for any bots or drones. Smoke billowed from the entrance to the cargo tunnel up ahead, with dancing beams of light caught in the drifts.

A bright flash filled the tunnel, startling and blinding, and another boom followed. I saw, for only a second, the silhouette of a beehive drone backlit by the explosion, but when the light faded, I lost sight of it. Glints of silver were racing up the factory wall, toward the mouth of the tunnel. So many sparks of light. So many spiders.

The shape of a person appeared, then another.

One of the figures—a flash of silver hair, it was Hunter— jumped from the tunnel entrance, ignoring the ladder and trusting herself to Nimue’s low gravity. She landed gracefully, then turned to face the tunnel. Adisa stood in the entrance, looking down over the factory.

“Come on!” Hunter’s shadow stretched before her, long and wavering in the yellow light from Sigrah’s control room.

I stopped so abruptly my gecko soles stuck on the floor, and van Arendonk slammed into my back. He caught my pack before I fell—the straps dug into my shoulders—and even as we were righting ourselves, he was demanding, “What are you doing?”

I grabbed his arm to steady myself. “I have to shut down the AI.”

Van Arendonk wasn’t looking at me. He was looking up at the tunnel, where Adisa, with a smooth, sure motion, grabbed a spider from his boot and flung it away. It exploded against a beehive, destroying the drone in a fiery, crackling burst of light.

“Ask him and he’ll fucking lie about spending his childhood throwing grenades at UEN threshers,” van Arendonk said, before he turned to me. “Are you certain you can stop it?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Without help?”

“Oh, you’re going to help,” I said. “You get to be the distraction.”

“You can’t distract an AI.”

Not remotely true, but I wasn’t about to argue the point. “You can distract Sigrah. She might not know I’m here yet.” I let go of his arm and stepped back. “The AI didn’t kill you and the others when it had the chance. All it did was knock them out. And I’m pretty sure it’s not controlling all of these weapons.”

“Pretty sure?”

I huffed in frustration. “Yes, pretty sure! Sigrah’s the one trying to blow us the fuck up.”

“You just said it killed Mary Ping.”

But not me, I thought. It could have killed me so easily. I was right there when Mary Ping died. It ran away instead.

What I said was, “Yeah, well, she was a murderer and a smug piece of shit. I’m not asking for your permission,” I said, when he opened his mouth. “Keep Sigrah and her bots distracted. Make a lot of noise. I’ll take care of the AI.”

TWENTY-THREE

A beehive drone was already arrowing toward me. The lights in its cells flashed as the individual explosives prepared to launch. It circled me, trying to cut me off, its whirring sound loud enough to be heard over the shouts and explosions.

I dodged through an open doorway when the first of the bees burst from the hive. I ducked behind a