Chapter Thirteen

 

There were times in recent days when Leyton could convince himself that he didn't miss his gun at all. This wasn't one of them. Confronted by another eyegee; or, rather, by someone who was still an eyegee, he immediately ran through all the things he would have done were the gun still with him. As things stood, with his being outmatched in terms of technology and firepower, all he could do was dodge and hide and hope that he got lucky, while Boulton had her gun to report his every move and guide her every shot.

Any delusions he might once have entertained about life being fair had been shattered long ago, but this really sealed the deal.

Kyle's effort came completely out of the blue. He would never have had the engineer down for that sort of bravery. Of course the gun saw him coming and of course Boulton was ready for him, but that didn't take anything away from the man's courage. After all, he wasn't to know how futile trying to sneak up on an eyegee was, or how much trouble it would put them both in.

Almost a shame, really, after a noble effort like that. Leyton saw no alternative but to abandon Kyle, to save his own skin and get the hell out of there before the other ULAW operatives or local security - whoever they might be - closed in. It meant the whole trip had been a waste of time, foiled by Boulton, but better that than it should cost him his own life or freedom to boot.

Then Kethi made her move.

No question; it was impossible to sneak up on an eyegee. Unless, of course, you could move like that.

Leyton watched the whole thing and still didn't quite believe what his eyes were reporting. She'd been holding out on him - he'd no inkling she could do anything like this. It wasn't simply a matter of her movements being fast, they were on a completely different level, as if for that brief period, time somehow travelled at a different rate for her. It was over in a split second. The gun wouldn't have had a chance to warn its bearer of the threat. Who or what was he allied with here?

Boulton's body crumbled, the head falling loose like a beach ball knocked from a tilting stand.

He watched her die, this woman he despised, this former colleague, this person he had once spent a violent night with, taking out his anger and frustration on her body even as she sated her own needs on his. Making love had never been a part of their equation, the chemistry between them was all about volatility and aggression. And the fact of her death brought him nothing but a savage sense of joy.

He was moving before Boulton hit the ground, vaulting over the lacquered wood and metal casket which had formed his latest defence and then sprinting to where Kyle still knelt, looking stunned, as if not quite able to accept that he was still alive.

Kethi was crouching down, doing something to Boulton's gun. He hesitated before speaking to her, but pushed the words he really wanted to utter to the back of his mind. That conversation could wait. "Careful of the grenades," was all he said, meaning the twin shells moulded to the gun's chassis.

"Thanks, but I know what I'm doing."

He didn't doubt that, but the comment seemed preferable to an awkward silence.

Kyle was trying to get to his feet. Leyton considered helping him, but reckoned he'd done enough of that for one day.

"Are you okay?"

The smaller man nodded, favouring him with a wide-eyed stare before his attention again focussed on Kethi. In shock, Leyton realised. Aside from that, he looked to be bumped and bruised but essentially sound. Perhaps they might yet salvage something from this trip after all.

In the corner of his eye he caught a bright flash from Kethi's direction and looked across to see her pocket something as she stood up, evidently satisfied. "Dead," she said, referring to the gun's AI brain.

"Good," Leyton replied, "because we've got company."

Dark suited figures were moving towards them. Two groups of three, though doubtless this was just the vanguard.

Leyton fired off a couple of shots, just to encourage them to keep their heads down. He wasn't about to get caught up in another gunfight and allow the locals to gather in numbers, which only left one option. They ran. Kethi led the way, not at any superhuman speed this time but still impressively quick. He brought up the rear, pleased to see that Kyle didn't need any help or motivation; the man was running for all he was worth.

Shouts came from behind them, demands that they stop or face the consequences. Leyton counted the seconds - both of them - before the anticipated gunfire; he was at the back after all, the one most likely to be hit, and felt the cold thrill of that knowledge shiver down his spine. He tensed as the first of a pair of staccato pistol rounds punctuated the slap of their running feet like a giant's handclaps, followed by a brief drumroll of automatic weapon's fire. Crockery on an abandoned stall to his left shattered, urging them on, but nothing hit him.

Then they were out of the market, pelting along a street surprisingly free of people. Evidently the prospect of an ongoing gunfight with stray bullets zipping around was less appealing than a bomb blast which had already done its worst. Solid brick now stood between them and the men behind, although that would only last until the pursuers reached the edge of the covered market. There was a corner directly ahead, but it was going to be touch and go.

Leyton ran hard but not flat out, conscious of Kyle's laboured breathing beside him. As a field operative he kept himself in peak condition, but presumably personal fitness hadn't been a priority for the engineer, who was already showing signs of struggling.

"You're doing fine," he assured him. "Just keep going for a bit longer."

Kethi had forged ahead. Leyton fervently hoped she had something a little more elaborate in mind than simply running. They needed a vehicle, a means of getting ahead of their pursuers long enough for a quick pick-up via a flitter.

He kept expecting to hear the sound of renewed gunfire at any second, but mercifully none came until they'd all but reached the corner. He was just daring to think they might have won that particular race when three shots sounded and bullets slammed into the wall beside him. Kyle cried out and at first Leyton thought he'd been hit; he had, but only by brick shards, shrapnel blasted from the wall.

Leyton bundled him around the corner, then turned to peer back. Three dark-clothed figures were closing in. He raised the gun and steadied his arm, part of him still listening for the voice he knew he'd never hear again, then squeezed off two rounds. The leading figure convulsed and fell, causing the two behind to throw themselves to the ground, but more were already issuing from the market. Leyton didn't wait around. Return fire peppered the corner of the building as he abandoned it, running after the other two, quickly catching up with Kyle, who was now visibly flagging. Leyton could only hope he'd bought them enough time. The engineer couldn't go much further.

"Kethi..."

"I know." She'd stopped before a building that looked no different from any other in the street, and was fiddling with the door. In the second or so it took him to reach her she managed to open it.

A building? Presumably there had to be a back way out, otherwise this was a trap in the making, surely.

She looked around, met Leyton's gaze and must have seen the doubt there. "Trust me." Then she ducked inside. Faces stared at them wide-eyed from the plate glass window of the shop front opposite - anxious to catch every detail to gossip to their friends about later, no doubt.

Trust her? It wasn't as if he had much choice at this point. Leyton followed Kyle into the building, but not before he saw dark figures charging around the corner towards them. Close; too close.

He followed the engineer along a dark and narrow hallway, their feet pounding on an unyielding floor formed by a checkerboard of tiny black and white tiles. The whole place looked and felt old, tired. Kethi was already disappearing up a flight of steps halfway along the hallway. The two men followed.

"I don't... think..." Kyle gasped, faltering partway up the first flight.

"Then don't think," Leyton advised. "Just move. We're nearly there." Kethi had to be making for the roof, nothing else made sense. "A little bit further, that's all. Come on, Kyle, don't give up on me now."

The engineer had stopped, leaning forward, hand resting on his knee, chest heaving to suck in breath. Leyton didn't want to leave him, not after all this, but at the same time he didn't fancy dying on his behalf either. "Come on, Kyle!"

At Leyton's urging the other man started to move forward again. Not fast enough though, not nearly fast enough. A dark shape appeared in the doorway behind them. Leyton didn't hesitate, firing immediately, and then backing up the steps. The shape disappeared, but return fire answered his single round, smashing into the steps as he abandoned them like a wave lapping remorselessly in pursuit of a bather's retreating feet.

The resumption of gunplay evidently inspired Kyle to find his second wind, because suddenly he was moving far more freely again. Leyton fired off a couple more shots at the vacant doorway to discourage pursuit and then headed quickly after him. They had made it along the short landing and started up the second flight before he heard the clatter of feet on the stairway below. Leyton stopped and waited.

The presence of landings meant no stairwell, no opportunity for those below to take pot-shots, at least until they acquired direct line of sight. He crouched at the base of the second flight of steps, listening as the pursuers drew rapidly closer and judging when they reached the top of the first flight. He was already beginning to squeeze the trigger as the first man emerged around the corner. The shot caught him in the leg, just above the knee, punching straight through in a shower of blood and shattered bone. The man screamed and went down. Leyton was already sprinting upwards, taking three steps at a time and rapidly catching Kyle.

The stairs went all the way up to the roof. How Kethi knew that, he had no idea. He was beyond being surprised by her. Somehow, despite Kyle's flagging energy, they made it to the top without the pursuing troopers or agents getting to grips with them; largely thanks to Leyton's dogged rearguard defence.

As they took the final few stairs he heard a familiar rumbling - a craft coming in. He just hoped it was one of theirs. Then they were out of the door, onto a rooftop covered in a mosaic of paving stones. A courtyard garden, complete with slender, brick-built flower beds and metal garden furniture, currently in the process of being flung haphazardly about by the arrival of the craft: a gleaming silver flitter. He watched as a chair was sent skidding across the paving by the downdraft, tipping over before it could plummet off the roof. Joss waved frantically from the flitter's pilot seat as the landing skids touched down and the hatch popped open.

Built for speed, Leyton wasn't even convinced this sleek arrowhead of a craft would take all three of them plus Joss, but who was he to argue?

He covered the others as they scampered across to the flitter, emptying what remained in his final ammo clip down the stairwell blind before sprinting for the gaping doorway. Kethi was clambering in beside Joss, while Kyle made himself comfortable behind them. Leyton wasn't familiar with the habitat's flitters and could only hope there was an empty seat beside the engineer. Thank goodness they hadn't brought anyone else on this mission. He leapt up the short ladder and into the hatchway, half falling on top of Kyle before settling into the vacant seat that was indeed there, and fumbled to strap himself in.

The hatch retracted and sealed even before he'd fully repositioned himself. Dark clad figures erupted from the stairway and bullets pinged off the flitter's hull as she started to lift.

"Hang on," Joss called back above the climbing roar of the engines. "They've got copters closing in and have also scrambled a couple of jets from the military base. So far they only seem to have in-atmosphere fighters, so I'm going to take us as high as I can as quickly as I can. This might get a little rough."

Good tactic. Joss's clipped briefing was exactly the sort of thing Kyle needed to hear, keeping him informed while offering reassurance that the person at the controls knew what they were doing. Initially, Leyton had been a little surprised to see Joss here, certain that she was still grieving Wicksy's loss; then again, he doubted the habitat's native pilots would have had much in-atmosphere flight experience, so her being here made sense. Sentimentality was something they could ill afford.

The craft lifted almost ponderously from the rooftop, or so it seemed to Leyton's adrenaline-pumped senses. Bullets continued to ping impotently off their hull, sounding like hailstones hitting a window. Finally the nose tilted upwards and Joss was able to pour on the juice.

G-force slammed against Leyton's chest, pressing him into the seat. At the same time everything started to pale towards monotone. He knew what was coming, he'd been here before, which didn't stop him fighting it. He wondered how Kyle was coping beside him, but couldn't spare the effort to look. Concentration, that was the key; yet despite his every effort colour continued to leach from the surroundings and the world began to narrow, to close in, as peripheral vision shut down. He refused to accept the inevitable; there was too much going on. They weren't safe yet, he couldn't afford to black out; so he wasn't going to, not this time.

But he did.

 

Coming to again was always the worst part. Muscles turned rebellious, as if they'd enjoyed their lack of supervision and gained confidence from his temporary loss of control. His head twitched and jerked, refusing to either stay still or perform the simplest of tasks such as turning, and his arms flopped uselessly. He felt like a marionette with half the guiding wires cut. Fortunately, the effect passed in a matter of seconds but Leyton hated it, that sense of not being in command of his own body.

Kyle was still out, though doubtless he'd be coming around at any second.

Outside, the sky had lost its blue and Leyton could see stars, so presumably Joss had won her race with the jet fighters.

From beside the pilot, Kethi looked around at him and smiled. "Back with us, I see."

He wondered whether she'd blanked out at all. Probably not, given what he'd seen her do earlier. The smile withered away, presumably in the face of what she saw in his eyes. The fact that he knew; knew who she was, what she was.

When they first met he'd thought the name Kethi sounded familiar, now he remembered why. The sadness in her expression as she turned towards the front was like a door closing; the implication being that she recognised his newfound knowledge and regretted it, which suggested that his opinion mattered to her. Interesting.

A groan from beside him signalled Kyle's return to consciousness. He watched, amused, as the engineer struggled to reassert control over his defiant muscles. Finally the other man shook his head and grinned across at Leyton. "I hate it when that happens."

They reached The Rebellion and slipped inside her without incident. Once out of the shuttle, Leyton cornered Kethi, grabbing her arm before she could slip away. "We need to talk."

She glared at him but then nodded. He read reluctance and resignation in her face as she said, "All right, just let me get us underway before ULAW can muster anything to send after us. I'll meet you in your quarters."

He could hardly object to that. "Fair enough." He let go of her arm. As she walked away, Leyton couldn't help but watch. She moved with such grace. He tried to analyse his feelings towards her and failed.

"So this is where you make your home these days, huh?" Kyle said, joining him. The man had a knack for jovial bonhomie that Leyton could only envy.

"Indeed it is."

"And I take it you're looking for an engineer."

"Good guess."

"Very flattering that you've gone to so much trouble, but I'm guessing there's a reason you needed me in particular."

Leyton didn't want to get involved in this, not now. "Maybe, but time for that later." He wondered where he could find someone to palm Kyle off onto ahead of his meeting with Kethi. Emily Teifer, who had grudgingly taken over engineering after the battle, seemed the logical choice, but he couldn't very well put Kyle to work the moment he arrived and, besides, engineering was a fair trek away.

"Look, let me show you the rec room," he said. There was bound to be somebody around. "You can relax, have a beer or two, and we can take things from there."

"That sounds good to me."

The first person Leyton saw as they entered the room was Joss, sitting on her own, warming down after her timely retrieval flight. Perfect; someone Kyle had already met. Only as he went to leave the two of them together did he register the wounded look Joss gave him and realise that to her Kyle was little more than a direct replacement for Wicksy, a reminder she could doubtless have done without.

Cursing his own preoccupation, Leyton returned to his cabin to wait for Kethi. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all. Life could be a bastard at times and you had to learn to roll with the punches. Joss was an integral part of the crew; the quicker she accepted what had happened and moved on, the better, for all their sakes.

Scant moments after he arrived at his quarters there came a double knock at the door.

"Come in. It isn't locked."

Kethi looked stern faced, as if determined not to be apologetic for anything; neither for what she'd done nor for who she was.

"Well," she said, "here I am."

Okay, the direct approach was fine by him. "Your name, it's not really Kethi, is it?" he said. "It's K-E-T-H-I. Kinetic Entity Twinned with Higher Intelligence. I've heard about it - knew the name rang a bell when I first met you, but couldn't quite place it. Now, having seen what you're capable of, I can. Kethi's an experiment, isn't it? One that was abandoned, or at least so I thought."

"Abandoned by ULAW perhaps, but never by us," she replied. "Those involved came to the habitat and have continued their work ever since. Not with universal success, it has to be said. I'm the one that worked, and they're still trying to figure out why.

Her eyes flashed with... what? Defiance, challenge, suppressed anger? Perhaps a little of all of them.

He tried to reconcile what he knew of the KETHI project with the beautiful, vibrant woman before him. KETHI had been an attempt to produce human-AI synergy - much like the Kaufman Industries project, which had resulted in the needle ships that had engaged and defeated The Noise Within - but it had approached the problem from the opposite direction. Whereas KI had been intent on linking a human mind with the AI of a ship, the KETHI project had sought to introduce a nascent AI into the brain of a human baby at the embryonic level, where it would grow and develop as the child did. The aim had been to produce a more natural gestalt of the two forms of intelligence. It sounded viable in theory but the problems of rejection and the complications that arose in physical and mental development proved insurmountable. At least so Leyton had always believed. Apparently others had persevered, overcoming the obstacles. No wonder Kethi was so brilliant an analyst. She combined the processing capabilities of an AI with the intuition and leaps of logic that only an organic mind could make.

"Your aunt," he said, "the one who died defending the habitat...?"

"Was lovely," she replied, wistfully. "She was a 'near miss,' no deformity or rejection issues but incomplete meshing of the gestalt. The AI part of her brain didn't develop fully. None of which stopped her from being a wonderful person."

Leyton nodded. "You mention deformity," he said, suddenly making a connection and wondering if it was valid. "Is Simon...?"

Her turn to nod. "Yes. His arm is only the most apparent legacy. He nearly died at birth and had an incredibly difficult childhood. Eventually they had to kill the AI part of his brain entirely, with no guarantee how that would work out, but he came through it. Simon's a lot tougher than he looks. I think that's one of the reasons he's always so cheerful, almost as if he takes every day as a gift that he came close to never enjoying."

"That could have happened to you," he said, wondering how many had suffered worse during the course of the project.

"Yes, but it didn't." She took a step closer, her eyes gazing into his. As she stood before him, beautiful, vulnerable but proud, he struggled to think of her as anything other than fully human.

"I am human," she whispered, guessing his thoughts. Her face had drawn very close now.

"Are you? Prove it." He had no idea why he said that. Yes, he did. It was an invitation, but an ambiguous one; deniable and open to interpretation, which left the onus on her to make the next move. If she wanted to.

Evidently, she did.

As her lips moved towards his, he was reminded of another cabin, another unexpected encounter. Boulton. Yet this was totally different. Kethi's lips felt soft, plump and surprisingly cool. When he thought of Boulton, he remembered a body as rigid as steel; with her it had all been about need and dominance, with no room for anything gentle or loving and certainly nothing as feminine as the feel of Kethi's body against his as she pressed against him, encircled by his arms.

She drew back a little, a twinkle in her eye. "Human enough for you?"

"It'll do." He drew her into another kiss.

After all too brief a time she pulled away, easing out of his grip. "Sorry, I have to go. Still on duty."

He stared at her, not believing she meant it. "Surely they can cope without you for a little while?"

She giggled - a very young, girlish sound which surprised him coming from her. "Don't be so impatient. Aren't I worth waiting for?"

"Yes, but..."

"Shhh." She stepped forward, running a dainty fingertip down his lips and chin. "This is all so... Look, one step at a time, all right?" With a final, coy smile, she turned and left.

After the door had closed behind her, Leyton stood for a few seconds and simply stared at the empty space where she'd been. He shook his head and couldn't help but grin. Yes, that seemed all too human to him. Only then did he realise that she'd said nothing to explain the time-defying speed she'd displayed in dispatching Boulton. Had the kiss been intended as a distraction, to prevent him from pursuing the subject? If so, it worked remarkably well.