Striking Freedom (Mechanical Advantage Book 6) Read online

  Lacey nodded. “It does turn into a memory. Some parts wake you in the night, some merely keep you alert all day.”

  “I am guessing that you are in the second category.”

  “Generally. The beer helps.” She chuckled and activated the entertainment projection.

  “How is that working while the storm is on?”

  “Generators under the warehouse, recorded vids from around the colonies and worlds that I have on my subscription list. When the weather is good, they get downloaded from satellites above. So, what do you want to see? Sports? Arena fighting? Dance?”

  He spoke wryly. “Do you have any porn?”

  She snickered. “We could watch some, but there is stuff out there far too freaky for anyone Earthborn.”

  She turned to look at him. “Now, do you have any questions for me?”

  “You are in touch with your friends?”

  “Yes. I send them luxury goods so that they know it is still me out here. I keep tabs on Windy and talk to her as often as I can. Cracker, well, I can see Cracker is working and doing well whenever I want.”

  “What?”

  She smiled and brought the vid up where a young woman was physically carried into an arena, and while there was a spike through her leg that attached to a cable, she worked with the wounded man in the center of the arena.

  Lacey watched his expression when he saw the surgery in the open air and the installation of a nanite generator. The bloody efficiency was amazing to watch.

  She ended the vid and displayed a series of small goats romping through a field.

  “Anyway, that was Cracker. She has been recovered and is back with the other three. Windy has had contact with her hunter, and I have been found by you.”

  He blinked. “You send them gifts?”

  “If they can be delivered, yes.” She chuckled. “I just had some custom bodysuits made up for Windy. She is going to need a bit of a boost when she’s ready.”

  He nodded. “So, Cracker. What was she doing to that wounded man?”

  “She patched in a new nanite generator and was helping to inflate his lungs. He had been compressed by one of his opponents.”

  “Compressed?”

  She chuckled. “Beaten flat by a cyborg’s arm with a piston booster. Like yours. He only has the one side though. They call him Hammer.”

  He laughed. “I thought I saw him before I left.”

  “You were right. How long did you look for me?”

  “Months. You move around a lot. Everyone knows of the Tall One, but few actually know you.”

  She chuckled. “It is easier that way. My interactions with folks are discreet and paid for. I have connections with organized crime all over this quadrant. No one would turn me into the Splice if they valued their lives or families. I am so enmeshed in this area’s finances, I am a protected asset to most of the worlds I work with.”

  “What are you doing?” Yurik sipped at his beer.

  She laughed. “I am plotting to take over a world.”

  “What? Which one?”

  She leaned toward him with a grin. “Earth.”

  She laughed at the expression of astonishment on his face. “What do you think this is for? We can eliminate the Splice fairly easily with the armaments I have arranged. Windy even has a new weapon against them that works marvellously at a great distance.”

  “Why Earth?”

  “What happens when the Splice are gone?”

  “We go home.”

  She cocked her head. “They didn’t tell you that the Earth has been locked behind an electric screen?”

  He shook his head. “No. That wasn’t disclosed to me, and I didn’t look it up.”

  “Your lack of curiosity is a problem.”

  She sighed and got up, pacing behind the bucolic fun of the animals springing around. She laced her hands behind her head and kept pacing. “I am about to give you a short form of information you have missed. First, we are still at war with the Splice.”

  He nodded. “That I knew.”

  “Second, Earth Defense planted the bomb that blew up the administration party at Adaptation Station. We were getting too good at making cyborgs. They were almost becoming human again, and the administration had never counted on that.”

  He lifted his hand and flexed it. “I did feel different after I woke.”

  “They gave you an overhaul. They replaced every part of you that didn’t match. Each joint was customized, and you are as whole as you can be. Lucky has even been working on alterations to the nanites that can blend skin tones. It is an expansion of her tattoo program. The cyborgs that could be pitied as wounded and weak are now being transformed back into humans, and that wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “This is getting complicated.”

  She turned toward him, her hands still at the back of her head, the metal fully exposed. “It is.”

  “From what I have learned from my grandfather, General Adams, the Splice contacted Earth decades ago, willing to trade advanced tech for bodies. Human bodies. The trade seemed innocuous enough, so our administrations began to send the dead into the stars. With healthcare on the rise and our populations stable, we could not supply the dead that they wanted, so they demanded the living. First to go were the homeless and disenfranchised; then, entire towns were destroyed in natural disasters and their bodies sent to the Splice.” She continued pacing. “I have all the files retrieved from Splice databases, and all the correspondence from the Earth Defense and human representatives.”

  “What happened then?”

  “They came to collect their tithe six years ago, their age-delaying treatments were ready, but there were no bodies. Earth Defense sent up ships to take what they wanted, but the Splice were far more experienced at battle in space. They sent ships down and took the humans that they wanted before they retreated back to the stars.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Oh, it gets worse. We go to war, everyone volunteers. Cyborgs are abused as slaves, locked in chains of programming and torment, they were put into stasis until a safe method of disposal could be worked out. That was Alpha Base. That was where you were.”

  He blinked. “They gave me rage. I remember that.”

  “Rage, and it was Earth Defense and not the Splice that took your arms and gave you weapons. They didn’t balance your body, and the pain you felt was intense, but you fought and kept going back for repairs.”

  “Why freeze us?”

  “The Splice and Earth made an agreement. They agreed to reduce their weaponized combatants. They put you in cold storage until they could find a safe and unrecorded way to dispose of you. Alpha Base began taking fire, and then, the Earth Defense shut off all support. They were suddenly on their own. That is when they woke Stitch up, and that is when this whole thing got rolling.”

  “What does Stitch do?”

  “Physiological analysis. She is the one who looked at you and made sure that your arms fit your fingers and your shoulders were reinforced to hold up the weight. She counter-balanced you, so the weight doesn’t pull you off balance, and then, Lucky went in and made sure that every nanite in every muscle strand was active and working to capacity when you needed it.”

  He held out his hands and flexed his fingers. “They feel like mine. What do you mean that they took my arms?”

  She winced. “This is the hard part with older models. When you enlisted, they didn’t want men, they wanted cyborgs. Now that there was a war on, no one would notice missing men here and there. So, some went to bribe the Splice and others who were being kept for Earth Defense were changed into weapons. That included you.”

  “I remember being taken by the Splice.”

  She gave him a pitying look. “You don’t remember the torture of having your limbs removed. The Splice don’t have anaesthetic in their ships. They want the nerves alive so that they can line them up with their own bodies. If you had been taken apart by the Splice, you would remember, and it would be clear eve
ry moment of every day that you are awake, aware, and alive.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My grandfather’s files. General Adams had meticulous records, and like many dictators, it was the written word that showed just how malicious and avaricious he was.”

  Yurik was blinking rapidly. “How can you be so sure?”

  “He had a video of my arms and legs being removed while I screamed. It had been accessed by him thirty-two times when I finally managed to hack his systems.”

  The implications were not good, and she knew it. Yurik seemed to catch on as well.

  She nodded and kept pacing. “Once the new crews were installed, we were in an actual war. Better cyborgs increased survival, but now, there was a problem. Back on Earth, the enlisted had handed everything they owned to the cause. That had all been spent, and there was nothing left to give them when they returned. Earth Defense began to worry. There were too many, and survivors were being found and repaired, increasing the draw on resources. They didn’t want that. They were trying to run the war at a profit.”

  She released her head and linked her arms behind her back, continuing her rounds. “They cut off the cyborgs, sealed the Earth behind a shield, and pretended that we didn’t exist out here. Those who took the money found worlds out here and lived like kings.”

  “Now, the bits of cyborgs have been gathered into an ever-growing force. We need ships, we need supplies, we need communications, we need allies. I have them already. I just have one more thing to do.”

  Yurik was staring at her with a dazed expression. “What else is there?”

  She walked up to him and crouched in front of him. “I have to kill my grandfather. It is only fair.”

  He looked at her in dazed acknowledgement. “Is there anywhere I can verify any of this?”

  “I have a terminal in the corner. You are welcome to it. The files I have stored are yours to access, but if you wish to, you can wait until the storm is over and use the satellite link to seek out what you want.”

  “I can verify a document if I need to.”

  She nodded. “I am going to have to get some rest. Getting here to meet you has been the work of three days. I am a little wiped out.”

  She stood and smiled. “I have to wash the silt out of my joints and then do some maintenance. I will be about twenty minutes, and then, you can have a shower if you like.”

  Lacey paused and nodded to a bucket in the corner. “If you start watching the Splice videos. Keep that handy. Your dinner might be in danger.”

  She could see the look in his eyes as he thought about it. “And if you do, keep the sound down. I have heard the screaming before, and it plays through my dreams. I don’t want it embedding itself in yours. After you are done with the restroom, you can take the couch, it folds out big enough to hold me.”

  She walked away and spoke over her shoulder. “Don’t watch too much of it. Oh, and if you are watching your own file, definitely get the bucket.”

  Chapter Five

  She heard the retching four hours later, and she got up, put on one of her robes, and walked into the living area. She held his head as a second round went through him.

  She reached up and turned off the video of her alteration. He had made it through her natural limbs being removed, but it was the robotic limbs being placed that had made him ill. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  She crooned to him, and when he was exhausted, she lifted him up and walked him over to the couch. With one foot, she flipped the mechanism that made the couch into a bed, and she set him on it.

  A few minutes were spent cleaning up after him and putting compresses on his face and chest. He wrapped his hand around her wrist as she smoothed her hand through his hair.

  She looked at the metal rods that he was holding, and he met her gaze. “How can you be sane after that was done to you?”

  Lacey smiled at him. “Because I knew it was going to happen. I blanked my mind, went past the pain, and focused on what needed to happen next. I needed to live, and I needed to get off that world.”

  He kept his grip on her wrist, and he slowly sat up. “How did you escape?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “First, I had to goad them into giving me arms and legs. It isn’t tech that the Splice are used to, so I was in agony, but I managed my escape and stole an Earth Defense shuttle after I destroyed the lab and the Splice who had taken me apart.”

  Lacey sat there and answered his questions about how she got to safety and how she came up with her plan. They talked their way through the storm.

  “You did all this on your own?”

  “Alphy helped me with the location of some of the worlds. She was in communication with me the moment that she walked out of that nanite tank.”

  He blinked. “Nanite tank?”

  “Yeah. She was the worst injury that we had. Catastrophic cellular failure. Her body was mush. Only her brain and a short portion of her spinal cord survived.”

  Yurik shook his head. “Why are you telling me all your secrets?”

  She laughed. “Oh, honey. These aren’t things that you couldn’t find out in twenty minutes on the new station. Secrets got us this far. Disclosure is the new watchword.”

  “Do you work that way with the criminals you associate with?”

  She cackled, there was no other word for it. “I treat them with the same blunt directness that I do you. However, I only tell them what I need them to know. Otherwise, the subject is avoided.”

  Lacey looked down, and he was rubbing his thumb on her arm rod. “I can’t feel that.”

  He looked at his hand, and his cheeks grew warm. “Sorry. You looked like you needed contact.”

  Lacey patted his hand. “I do, but that is something I have to wait for. Patience is something that I have learned over this process.”

  He reached up and touched her cheek. Lacey nearly jumped out of her skin.

  She leaned back in shock. The heat and slight roughness of his touch surprised her. She looked at him, and he laughed.

  She blinked rapidly, and she whispered. “Please, let go.”

  A fat tear made its way down her cheek, and Yurik’s thumb wiped it away.

  She repeated her request. “Please, let go.”

  He slowly removed his hand. “Why does such a little touch upset you?”

  She got to her feet and brushed the front of her robes with her metal hands. “I haven’t touched anything or been touched by anything other than my clothing in more than four years.”

  He blinked. “I am so sorry.”

  She nodded. “It is fine. I have my natural skin on my torso and face. I can feel there, but even getting changed, there is cold contact every time I dress or touch my cheek or comb my hair. My limbs are cold, heavy, and they hurt. My body isn’t my own and hasn’t been for some time. It also won’t be back to normal until the final stage is being enacted, but thankfully, we are almost there.”

  She turned and said over her shoulder. “You can clean up in the lavatory. I am heading back to bed. Now that the storm is over, it will take them six hours to dig us out. Get some rest or use the autochef. There are quite a few nearly human foods available.”

  Lacey headed to her room and forced herself into her sleep cycle with the smooth repetition of her list of things to do. The list was getting shorter and shorter, but she could rest with a smile on her face, knowing that getting her body back was the final step.

  * * * *

  Yurik went back to the computer after he showered, and he looked up his own file. He was expecting Lacey to be wrong. He wanted her to be wrong, but as he flicked through the recordings of his interview and enlistment, the first press conference where he and others of what became the first generation sat, spoke, and then, were whisked up to the stars and into battle.

  He always thought that the first thing he did was go on a mission, but the file labeled Experiment 14 was attached to his files. He opened the file and saw his unconscious body, a tray with what he
now knew to be a nanite generator, and several members of a surgical team. He didn’t watch what came next but fast-forwarded it to the end of the procedure when his nanites were generating soft tissue around the framework they had installed.

  He watched his own transformation from human to cyborg, and it wasn’t in the hazy holding cells of a Splice lab. A deep-seated rage took hold of him for an instant, and he recognized it. They had seeded that rage in him, in all of their first-gen. They had turned them into maddened killing machines, and now, he knew it was all to simply teach the Splice who they were dealing with in order to broker a better deal.

  He was a pawn. The entire first generation were pawns. The women who acted as administrators were supposed to be a publicity stunt, the women entering the war. They had transformed the station into a functioning weapon of war, and they had to be stopped.

  Yurik looked at the other files from the first-gen, and he learned who had survived and who had died in action. He committed those names to his memory and hoped that he could meet more of the survivors one day. They might not know what had started their journey, but he did. He could remember and respect them for their ability to survive. He was currently doing the same for Lacey.

  When she had mentioned her grandfather handing her over, he had imagined that it was a surprise, not that she had been chained next to her grandparent and hauled off by laughing Splice in front of half the command structure of Earth Defense. When she was pulled out of sight, the men congratulated themselves on a bargain well-struck. No care or comment for the woman who was wrapped in metal and pinned to an operating table a few minutes later. She was human, just like they were, but they had discarded her the moment the opportunity for advancement had presented itself.

  Yurik wasn’t quite sure what exactly it was that the generals received from the Splice, but Lacey had mentioned something akin to youth. He went through the files, and he found the name of every man and three women who had betrayed their own species. They were not going to live long enough to enjoy whatever it was that they had been given.