Transcendent (9781311909442) (25 page)

She blinked. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

He sighed. “All right, fine, I’ll do
it.”

Shelby’s eyes widened. “You’ll sign it? And
move in?”

He nodded.

She grinned. “This is going to be great!
Trust me, Krys, everything’s going to work out great for us!”

“Okay, let’s do it. But one more
condition.”

Shelby sighed. “What now? I can only risk so
much for us, you know.”

“For us?” Krys repeated. He grinned. “Don’t
worry. What I want is for you to read some books.”

“Some books? Oh, you mean banned books,
don’t you?”

Krys shrugged. “Books I have on my systems.
I don’t know if they’re banned. If they are, shouldn’t they be on a
list somewhere? Otherwise how are we to know?”

“If they were listed that would be as good
as making them avail—oh!”

Krys grinned. “I love your beauty and your
brains.”

She laughed. “Once I get you under my roof,
I’m never letting you go. Consider yourself under house
arrest!”

“Captain Strain?”

Lily sucked in the warm air in surprise. “Go
ahead, Sunshine.”

“Your blood oxygen level has decreased due
to shallow breathing levels and your pulse is dropping below sixty
beats per minute. Are you feeling well?”

“I’m burning up in here,” Lily complained.
She pressed her lips together and exhaled through her nose. “I’ll
focus on taking deeper breaths. Are there no environmental controls
for the cockpit?”

“There are no additional climate controls
available. Ambient temperature is thirty-four point four five
degrees centigrade. Cockpit temperature is thirty-nine point four
four degrees. Your core body temperature is thirty-seven point
eight nine degrees. You are outside of your optimal temperature
range.”

“Thank you,” Lily mumbled. The biomechs were
built with heaters but no one had given thought to providing any
cooling in the cockpit. The musculature of the massive robots was
cooled with the fluids that were pumped through them. They used a
synthetic blood filled with nutrients, a protein-enriched glucose
solution for maintaining optimal energy levels and keeping the
tissue able to repair and maintain itself.

Her own blood felt like it was ready to
boil. She called up the topographical overlay and studied it. They
had a little over sixty-five kilometers to go until they reached
the ag colony she’d been assigned to take her platoon to. They were
on the equatorial line and heading west, towards one of the areas
known for rebel activity. Lily pushed them hard, traveling as fast
as Hawkins’s juggernaut could move in hopes of reaching the
approaching sunset.

Lily almost laughed at herself but managed
to contain the humor. She was afraid her heat-induced hysteria
would trigger an algorithm in Sunshine’s system. Still, the irony
of naming her biomech after something she loved, Sunshine, while
she raced to find darkness so she could cool down was
priceless.

“Private channel requested from Lieutenant
Hawkins,” Sunshine’s smooth and pleasant voice intruded on her dark
humor.

Lily roused herself and took a few deep
breaths of hot air in hopes of waking herself up. “Put him
through.”

“Captain, sorry to bother you, but my bot’s
acting up. We’ve been pushing it hard and I’ve got something
catching in one of my legs.”

“Sunshine, display diagnostics on Lieutenant
Hawkins’s biomech.”

The screen flashed in her field mind’s eye,
showing the juggernaut as it walked. She rotated it and watched as
it took a step and appeared to limp. She focused on the foot and
ankle, making them larger, and saw how the armor plates were
rubbing or catching on each other.

“I see it, Hawkins,” she confirmed. “We’ll
take a break and see if we can’t get it fixed.”

“Acknowledged. Thanks, Captain.”

Lily felt she should be annoyed at the
interruption to their timelines but the thought of getting out of
her biomech and getting some fresh air excited her. “Sunshine, open
platoon channel.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Omega Platoon, come to an immediate halt.
Lieutenant Hawkins’s juggernaut requires technical assistance. All
other support personnel are to perform quick systems checks on all
armor units. Second Squad, set up a perimeter. First Squad will be
on standby.”

She slowed Sunshine to a stop and watched
her aerial overlay as the other four biomechs stopped with her. The
light and medium tanks in Second Squad redeployed, setting up at
five equidistant points around them just like they’d trained. The
final four vehicles, two armored troop transports and two supply
transports, pulled in beside the biomechs.

“Keep your biomechs ready,” Lily said into
the still open comm channel. “Now’s the time to water the grass if
you need to. I’m going to check on Hawkins’s ’bot.”

She heard responses from the leaders of
sections or, in her squad’s case, the individuals. When she was
sure there was nothing that required a response, she spoke.
“Sunshine, commence standby protocol. Reactivate on my command
only.”

“Acknowledged.”

She felt the biomech shift slightly and then
heard the seals on the control cocoon hiss as it opened. Fresh air
caressed her skin and made her desperate to rip her mask and helmet
off. She waited a lifetime in the three seconds it took for the pod
to open enough for her to reach up and disconnect the breathing
mask from her face. She gulped in the fresh air and was swept away
for a moment by the long forgotten scent and taste of Venerian
air.

“Captain, I am detecting a spike in your
heart rate. Are you well?”

Lily jerked herself out of the flurry of
memories and grunted. “Yes, I’m fine.”

She reached up and manually disconnected the
implant. The sudden loss of input left her stunned and empty. Lily
gasped and lurched forward at the intense blindness the abrupt
signal loss caused her.

She reached up after a few moments of
fighting her blind panic and pulled her helmet off. She blinked her
eyes open and had to squint against the sun. Everything looked
different. She saw the world she’d grown up on, but it felt
different than it had a few moments ago.

Lily hung the helmet up on the post and
leaned forward. She kept going, barely catching herself as gravity
tried to pull her out of the cockpit to the ground ten meters
below. She shook her head and heard the droplets of sweat striking
the metal of her robot. She had to lean back until the sudden
dizziness passed.

“What’s going on?” she wondered aloud. She
glanced down at herself and gasped. She was drenched. She spun
around and looked at the padded cocoon she’d been lying in and saw
the puddles of sweat resting in it. “I must be dehydrated,” she
reasoned. She reached up and ran her fingers through her short hair
and came away with a hand dripping with sweat.

She glanced out of the open cockpit at the
members of her platoon that she could see. She watched as Ela began
to climb slowly down from her dreadnaught’s cockpit. Lily wasn’t
sure but the lieutenant looked to be moving a little unsteady
herself. She was glad to see she wasn’t the only one affected by
the warmth.

Lily climbed out and down slowly, taking
care to make sure she had good hand and footholds on her biomech.
She dropped the last meter to the ground and grimaced at the
strength she almost didn’t have to keep from falling. She
straightened and looked around, peering across the road and the
waist-high golden grass of the Venerian plain. She found herself
swaying as a gentle breeze blew against her. It was hot air but it
pulled at the sweat on her skin and cooled her.

A group of four soldiers, three of them men
and one a woman, rushed over to her. “We’re here to check your
biomech, ma’am,” one of the men said.

Lily nodded and offered him a weak smile.
“There’s water in the transport, Captain,” the woman in the group
suggested.

Lily nodded and mumbled, “Thanks.” She
turned and headed towards the transport, her legs slowly gaining
strength as she walked. She met the other four biomech pilots there
and found two of them already guzzling water.

“Nobody said it was going to be this hot!”
Jessa said. “Is your myrmidon bad too?”

Lily shrugged, not wanting to show any
weakness. “It got a little toasty.”

“Toasty?” Kray repeated. “We look like we
all just wore our clothes into the shower!”

Lily smirked and turned to glance back at
Sunshine. “It’s worth it,” she mumbled.

The others were quick to agree and then
offer up suggestions on enhancements to improve airflow and
cooling. Lily half-listened to them as she drank her second pod of
water down and surveyed how her platoon had arranged itself. Her
pod ran out of water and she frowned as she stared at it.

“All right, head on back,” she said. “If
it’s too warm, you can leave the cockpits open until we move out.
I’m going to check on Hawkins’s ’bot.”

They grumbled good-naturedly and split up
again. Lily walked with Hawkins towards his biomech and saw the
techs putting away their tools with practiced maneuvers. She fought
to keep her smile hidden. She’d made them drill time and again,
almost to the point of rebellion, but seeing them behaving in the
field made it worth it.

“He’s all set,” one of the techs said as
they passed them by.

Hawkins walked around the ankle of his
biomech and reached out to touch the scratches on the armor plates.
He nodded. “Looks better.”

“Mount up. We’ve got a couple more hours to
go. Maybe more, if we run into trouble.”

“Hate to think we came all this way for
nothing,” Alex said as he turned to his biomech and started to
climb up its leg.

Lily watched him for a second and then
turned back to where Sunshine waited for her. She strode across the
road with a firm pace now that she’d rehydrated. She smiled to
herself, anxious to plug back into the biomech’s systems and feel
the rush of power again. She glanced around a final time and then
began the ascent up the robot’s leg and side.

She paused before settling into the pod
again. The puddles of sweat were waiting for her. Not that she’d
noticed, but her clothing hadn’t dried in the least. She turned and
looked around, making sure that only Ela had line of sight to her.
She stripped off her shorts and squeezed them, dripping sweat onto
the ground. She turned and used them to mop up the puddles and
squeezed them out twice more before placing them in a small locker
for personal effects. She reached up to her shirt, intending to
take it off, when she realized it might make for an awkward moment
when they reached their destination. She still had her underpants
on, but with the support built into her shirt, she had no
options.

Lily sighed and left her shirt on. She sat
down in the couch and reached for her helmet when an idea came to
her. She reached down and tugged the bottom of her shirt up,
exposing her belly and lower back. She let it gather at the top of
her stomach and leaned back. It was an improvement, but not much.
She’d have to remember to change into either workout clothing or
something similar. She pulled the helmet on and reattached her
mask. The hot air didn’t seem as hot after her brief rest.

“Sunshine, reactivate,” Lily commanded.
“Engage neural interface.”

“Acknowledged,” her biomech said as the pod
began to swing shut and the cockpit hatch moved to seal. The cable
clicked into her implant and stole her breath as the connection to
the biomech was reestablished.

“It’s good to be back,” Lily whispered.

“Good to have you back.” Sunshine offered a
preprogrammed response. “I suggest you initiate proper disconnect
procedure next time.”

Lily smirked. “Thank you, Sunshine. I
forgot. Won’t happen again.”

“All systems returned to active status.
Diagnostics are nominal.”

“Thank you, Sunshine. Open Omega comm
channel.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Break’s over,” Lily said. “Assume
formation. Scouts at the front. We roll in five.”

Lily flashed through the screens in her
biomech again, making sure she hadn’t lost anything, and grinned.
She spun her biomech slowly, reveling in the feeling of how massive
and powerful she felt. She almost hoped there were rebels ahead.
She couldn’t wait to prove just how dangerous she was.

Krys’s phone chirped, alerting him to a
call. He frowned. It was still early during the first work cycle of
the day. He’d just finished fixing the almond processing machine
and he’d hoped to swing by the ranch to see if Mr. Strain needed
anything. Now that the army had arrived, things were a lot more
complicated.

He pulled it out and saw that Shelby was
calling him. He sighed and considered putting it back in his
pocket. She confused him. She went on and on forever about drawing
up a social contract so they could be together. Then, when he
finally agreed to play by her rules, she didn’t turn it in to get
it recognized.

Not answering the phone, he knew, would end
up with him being in far worse trouble. He connected the call and
greeted her. “Hey Sh—”

She used her command voice to cut him off.
“Mr. Evans, please report to the command post immediately.”

“Uh, okay. Be there in five,” Krys said.

The line went dead without explanation. He
stared at it for a moment and frowned. He turned and looked to the
east, where the distant mountains were little more than a blur
against the sky, and sighed. “Life seemed easier on the run,” he
muttered before he turned back and started walking towards the
village.

Six minutes later, he knocked on the door to
her office. He’d seen four soldiers lounging around town and two
more were stationed outside the command building. They were all new
soldiers, not the faces he’d grown familiar with.