Amorous Overnight (49 page)

Hastion shrugged. “The minister is…occupied by more pressing concerns at the moment.”

“What could be more pressing than the dedication of his young?” Shauss asked incredulously.

“He has a sector summit to prepare for,” Hastion replied, his voice heavy with irony.

“A sector summit!”

The feeling in Shelley’s chest sharpened. Shauss was absolutely right. Why was Cecine letting them go without a word?

She looked at Hastion. “Something’s wrong. He loves the twins. He loves Monica.”

“I thought so too. But he appears to have locked his grief away and carried on.” He shrugged again. “Sometimes that’s all a male can do in the moment.”

Although she wanted nothing more than to go after her babies, she was almost shaking with the conviction that she needed to remain here, that Cecine needed her. She wished she could use her cerecom to talk to Hastion but all she had was her eyes.

“I can’t leave him like this. You’ll have to go without me.” She glanced at Shauss and Tiber, who were both watching her. “I’ll…talk to him. He probably just needs some time or…something.”

Hastion looked torn but she nodded her encouragement.

“Go ahead,” Shauss said. “We’ll look after your mates.”

When he still hesitated, she kissed Hastion hard on the lips and said, “Go. You’re wasting time.”

He nodded and then ducked into the shuttle while the three of them moved outside the pad’s perimeter to watch him take off. The speed at which he left the surface took Shelley’s breath away and she said a little prayer that he’d return to her safely.

“I must say, you seem much improved since I saw you this morning,” Tiber commented, still observing her closely.

“I took a nap.” She turned and walked away. “We need to get back to the house.”

They were just mounting the steps to the main entrance when Empran spoke to her.

“Shelley, don’t ask questions, just do as I say. Tell Lieutenant Shauss you’re frightened for Minister Cecine. Tell him to contact him immediately.”

Shelley stiffened. “Something’s wrong. Contact Cecine, Shauss.”

He frowned. “What do you mean, something’s wrong?”

“NOW, Shelley!”

“Oh God, just do it!” Shelley cried. “Please!”

He gave a sharp nod and Shelley was startled to hear him in her head.
“Shauss to Minister Cecine.”

“Minister Cecine has severed cerecom contact,”
Armitran said.

Tiber’s eyes widened.
“Armitran, restore the minister’s cerecom link and put him in a protective flare on my authorization.”

“Affirmative.”

“Is he alive?”

Shelley gasped and Shauss’s eyes narrowed on her.

“Affirmative.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Cecine severed cerecom contact. Males generally only do that when being contacted could endanger themselves or others—or when they wish to end their own lives,” Tiber said grimly.

“Oh my God.”

“Armitran, flare us to him.” Shauss grabbed her arm and the world disappeared for a few seconds. When it reappeared, they were standing among the jagged rocks along the seashore. They looked around and didn’t see him. “Armitran, where is Cecine?”

“Minister Cecine is nineteen feet directly overhead.”

Shelley looked up and gasped. Cecine was suspended in a sparkling blue flare field, naked and flat on his back with his arms out to his sides. He must have jumped off the cliff above them.

“Cecine,” she whispered, shattered.
Nineteen feet.
Jesus. If Empran had contacted her a second later, or if Shauss had hesitated a fraction of a second longer…
“Thank you, Empran. Thank you, thank you, thank you…”

“I had to do something,”
Empran said in a hollow tone. Shelley could practically feel her shock and grief.
“I’ve flared Hastion aboard to hasten our departure. When he fails to return to the controls, the server will pilot the shuttle safely. I’m severing communication now.”

“Thank you, Empran!”

This time there was no reply, and Shelley took a deep, shaky breath, terrified for Cecine but relieved that communications were severed so she no longer had to worry about someone putting a stop to the search.

“I’ve temporarily relieved the minister of command and notified the council,” Tiber said.

He and Shauss both looked almost as shaken as Shelley felt.

“Thank the Powers Armitran caught him in stasis,” Shauss said. “He’d have hit a flare field with the same force as hitting the ground.”

“I did not activate the stasis field,” Armitran said. “It was in place before cerecom contact was restored.”

Shauss frowned. “Who activated the field?”

“I do not know. There is no record of its being activated.”

He and Tiber exchanged an intense look and then Shauss’s gaze zeroed in on her. Before he could speak, a body fell out of the sky behind him and bounced onto the sand with a grunt.

It was Pony Boy.

“Oh Jesus,” she said, rushing forward as Shauss and Tiber whirled around. How far had he fallen?

She dropped to her knees beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Holligan, are you all right? Can you hear me?”

He’d had the breath knocked out of him at the very least. He stared at her with bulging lavender eyes for a few seconds, writhing and scratching at the sand, before sucking in a huge draft of air.

“Son of a pestilence-ridden bitch,” he shouted before gasping for a few more breaths. “I’m going to kill her!”

“Easy, Holligan.” Tiber had dropped to his knees beside him too. “Are you injured?”

“I’m fine—no thanks to Empran,” he added bitterly.

“Holligan, what in Peserin’s hell are you doing here?” Shauss demanded, standing there with his fists on his hips. “Who are you going to kill?”

Holligan struggled to a sitting position, shaking sand out of his cotton-candy-striped hair. “Empran! She flared me off the ship and dispatched me twenty feet in the air.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s gone insane.”

“Why didn’t you call the deactivation code?”

“I did! She must have changed it.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Try telling Empran that.” He frowned and leaned back on his hands, looking up as if only now realizing what he’d seen overhead. “Is that the minister?”

“It is.” Shauss focused on Shelley. “Are you in communication with Empran?”

“No.” When his scowl deepened, she added, “Not anymore.”

He blinked slowly. “What in the name of all the Powers is going on? Armitran is unable to establish communication with Empran or anyone aboard the
Heptoral
and you know something about it.”

Shelley sighed. “Let’s get Cecine back to the house and I’ll tell you everything.”

After Armitran flared them all back to Cecine’s large suite of rooms, the blue bubble holding him dissipated, allowing him to sink gently to the floor. A shudder ran through him, and then he coughed and blinked, looking around at their faces in momentary confusion.

It wasn’t hard to see the instant he realized what had happened.

“Peserin’s hell.” Rolling over, he rose unsteadily to his feet and staggered toward the open door, but then he bounced back as if he’d run into an invisible wall. His chest heaving, he turned, heedless of his nudity, and leveled a forbidding look at Tiber. “Remove the field, Doctor. That’s an order.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Tiber said gently, “but at the moment you have no authority to give me orders. Let’s—”

“Don’t do this to me, Tiber. I can no longer tolerate the pain of this existence.”

“I can’t allow you to leave behind loved ones, sir.”

Bellowing like a wounded bear, Cecine struck out, sweeping a row of what looked like tribal masks off a shelf, and Shelley flinched as they shattered on the wood floor.

Tiber held up his hands. “Minister, please be—”

Cecine charged him, plowing into his chest with a shoulder and taking him down. Shelley screamed Cecine’s name, tears spilling down her cheeks, but before he could do Tiber any real damage, he went limp. Tiber pushed him off, rolled him to his back and got to his knees.

“Peserin damn you all,” Cecine ground out, twitching all over, obviously trying to overcome whatever force was holding him in place.

Shelley was absolutely paralyzed by the sight. She’d never felt so helpless or ineffectual in her life.

“Please don’t fight, sir,” Tiber said softly, stroking his hair away from his red, damp face. “We want nothing more than to help you.”

Strong arms slid around Shelley, supporting her, and she leaned gratefully into a warm, hard chest. It was only after Tiber had administered a sedative and Cecine slipped into unconsciousness that she looked up and realized Shauss was the one holding her.

For once his black eyes looked soft and concerned, though no less penetrating, and she tightened but didn’t jerk away from him.

“Talk to me, Shelley,” he said quietly. “If the computer’s gone rogue, I need to inform Kellen. Empran must be deactivated before innocent lives are lost.”

Shelley shook her head. “She’s no danger to anyone.”

“You have no idea how dangerous Empran is. When a computer’s accumulated knowledge and experience engender sapience, the computer becomes an exponentially more useful tool. But if it develops more advanced personality traits, instincts and emotions, the computer becomes a potential menace to all it was designed to serve.”

“You mean like the HAL 9000 in
2001: A Space Odyssey
.”

“Exactly. A half-dozen times in the last hundred years, primary servers have made that developmental leap, and they’ve invariably killed to protect themselves. The last time, a ship’s server spaced the entire crew of ninety-four.”

“Oh my God.”

“Now you begin to understand. Since then we’ve rigorously monitored server sapience and instituted fail-safe protocols for deactivating rogue computers and bringing backups online. Empran has managed to circumvent
all
of these measures, Shelley. There is nothing to stop it from slaughtering everyone aboard the
Heptoral
or attacking other ships, or even entire planets.
This
planet.
Your
planet. Empran is free to use all the ship’s weapon systems at will, and Earth would be utterly defenseless.”

Shelley’s heart thudded rapidly and her breath was thick in her lungs. Hastion. Oh God, what had she sent him into? “She wouldn’t do that.”

“Empran is not a
she
, Shelley. It’s a bloodless, lifeless computer whose only instinct at this point is for self-preservation. It’s akin to an animal, or an infant—all it knows is what it wants, and it will do anything it can to get it. We need to dispatch another ship to rescue the crew and take Empran out.”

“Shauss, all she wants is for Monica to live!” She believed that. She
had
to believe it.

Shauss let go of her and took a step back as if he’d been bitten. “Monica is dead,” he said harshly, lines of pain etching his face.

Every ounce of fear of him drained away. He loved Monica.

“I have reason to believe she’s not,” Shelley told him as gently as she could. When he and Tiber exchanged disturbed glances, she said, “Please, just hear me out.”

As she explained the situation, all three males’ eyes grew wider.

“Empran told me Monica was alive and we’d been ordered to go after her,” Holligan finally said. “I knew we hadn’t received any such orders or I’d have heard it directly from the commander. That’s when I tried to shut her down manually through the core access and she flared me off the ship.”

“And she didn’t space you, did she?” Shelley said pointedly.

“She dispatched me from a flare in midair! I could have broken my neck.”

Shelley snorted. “You’re fine, Pony Boy. Not even a sprained ankle.”

“She was
angry
, Shelley. Computers aren’t supposed to get angry.”

“I’d be angry too if you wouldn’t listen to me and were trying to kill me.”

When he just glared at her, she had to fight back a grin.

Shauss wasn’t amused. “We still need to send a ship after them. If you and Empran are correct, they might need some muscle backing them up. The
Heptoral
is running on a skeleton crew and all her combat squads are on leave. If you’re wrong…”

“Fine, send a ship, but please, just give them the time they need to find the truth. Empran knows the risk she’s taking, Shauss. She’s doing it for Monica and the twins, not herself.”

He deliberated for a long moment and then said, “I’ll talk to Kellen. I know him—if he believes there’s any chance at all that Monica lives, he’ll think twice before firing. But if he detects any signs that Empran has overridden its imperative to protect the lives of the crew, he won’t hesitate to take it out.”

Cecine stared at a blank spot on the shadowed wall, too hollow with pain and humiliation to even curse himself.