“Already on it.”
Brix moved up to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Rust.
“Here.” Rust shoved a laser into the tall blonde cyborg’s hand. “Better to burn out than fade away, right?”
The door opened with a whoosh. A beam shot across the office from Brix’s weapon, scorching a black mark into the wall. The office was empty.
Rust grimaced and pried the weapon from his hand. “Fuck, be careful.” He passed the laser to Benjy. “That could’ve been a bulkhead, man.”
Benjy stepped inside the room. “Where is everyone?”
Following, Doug checked the corners of the office. It was strange that there wasn’t a single guard here, even if Dollard was pulling together the troops for an all-out attack.
The doors to the other labs were closed. “Watch the doors,” Doug said. “There could still be guards in the other rooms.”
He moved to the bank of computers on the desk, reaching out to touch the nearest monitor. This one had access to the ship, but Twerp’s program had overwritten multiple pathways in his circuits, and his old algorithms no longer synced. He was going to have to rebuild from the ground up. Start simple, he told himself, trying not to think about how many years it had taken him to learn to piece the lines of code together.
The easiest hack for him had always been cameras, so he started there, his cybernetic hand clamped on the nearby computer monitor. After a few dead-ends, he managed to access the ship’s hallway camera feeds. Where the hell is Dollard? He envisioned the doctor’s shiny black hair and white lab coat. Feed after feed rolled through his mind, but no sign of the doctor.
Twobit slid into the desk chair next to him and began attempting to hack open the exit to the lift.
Drilling down, Doug found the lab’s security feeds behind another set of firewalls. It took him a few minutes, but he got through and scanned the footage. There’d been a flurry of activity here in the security office less than an hour ago; two guards pushed a mag-lift holding a cryopod toward the lift while Dollard stood by watching.
“What the hell is that?” asked Benjy, looking over Doug’s shoulder. “Did he find the tech?”
Doug hadn’t realized he was broadcasting the images onto the monitor he was touching. But it wasn’t as if it mattered. He no longer had reason to hide anything. These cyborgs were in this together. “I don’t think so. It came from the cloning lab.”
Twobit added, “He’s salvaging what he can before Syndicorp slags the Icarus to space dust.”
Rust gaped, the hand holding the laser sagging to his side. “They wouldn’t obliterate an entire flagship just to get rid of us, would they?”
A sinking feeling filled Doug. “Don’t underestimate how much the corp’ wants Dollard’s projects to remain secret. There’s probably a battle cruiser bearing down on us right now.”
“Fuck, get this door open!” Rust spun to face the door like a puppy waiting to be let out.
“Tia’s in one of these labs. I need to get her out, too.” Esben headed to one of the unmarked doors, veins glowing with lavender light as he touched a biometric panel. The door shuddered, opened a crack, and slid closed again.
Doug understood Esben’s panic. Attie might still be on the ship. He had to make certain she escaped before shit went down. He closed his eyes and concentrated, locating the feed to the flight deck. The shuttle was still in the bay. His stomach turned over. Attie’s still on board.
He quickly switched to the feed in her quarters, but she wasn’t there, either. He rolled the footage back until he saw her leaving, a bag over her shoulder, then followed her path down the hall toward the lift. Two armed guards got in behind her.
His cybernetic heart nearly skipped a beat.
Just then, Esben called, “Uh, Doug, isn’t this your Consort?”
He turned in time to catch a small figure running toward him.
“Doug!” Arms wrapped around his middle and her rose scent wafted toward him.
His arms automatically encircled her shoulders. “Attie? Where did you come from?”
“That horrible doctor locked me in there,” she said.
One of the doors had slid partway open, a mess of dangling wires hanging from the biometric lock. Esben and Brix were prying the next door control loose as he watched.
“I’m so glad you’re alive!” Attie tilted her chin to look up at him. “Twerp couldn’t tell me what had happened to you.”
Dollard had left Attie behind, but wasn’t likely to have done the same with Twerp. Throat tight, Doug asked, “Did he take the AI?”
“Yes,” Attie said. “I couldn’t stop him.” She released her grip around his waist and took a step back. “But that’s not important right now. He set the ship’s self-destruct sequence! You need to turn it off!”
Doug growled. The only one who could authorize the self-destruct was the admiral. “I can’t hack those codes, and even if I could, I couldn’t stop things from here. I’d need the admiral’s keycard.”
Benjy pointed to the video of the hallway near the lift that Doug had left running in real time. “If we’re set to self-destruct, why isn’t the crew evacuating?”
Attie shook her head, one hand clutching Doug’s arm in a death grip. “He wants everyone dead. We need to sound the alarm.”
“Fuck that,” Rust grated. “We need to get out of here.” He grabbed the tool Esben had dropped and started prying at the lock.
Esben got another door open and disappeared down a hallway, shouting, “Tia!”
Attie turned pleading eyes to Doug. “There are hundreds of innocent people on this ship. Families with children.”
Doug sighed. He wasn’t used to giving a netorpok’s ass about anyone except Lisa, but Attie somehow made him want to be a hero. “Twobit, try to hack the alarm system. Rust and I’ll work on the door.”
Twobit nodded grimly and resumed typing.
Stepping toward the exit, Doug placed his hand flat against lock mechanism. In a surge of effort that made his nanites heat to almost unbearable levels, he burned
