Tyche's Ghosts: A Space Opera Military Science Fiction Epic (Ezeroc Wars Book 5) by Richard Parry

Author:Richard Parry [Parry, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mondegreen
Published: 2018-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HOPE’S ENTIRE BODY vibrated. She hadn’t been able to sleep, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual is she didn’t know what to do. She’d hurt El, like really hurt her. She’d made a machine because of all the broken love inside Hope’s chest, and the machine had removed El’s arm with a plasma cutter.

It should have been obvious. The last time Reiko and El had been in the same room, Hope’s wife had hit El over the back of the head with a bottle. And Hope, like an idiot, had put that memory into the Reiko 2.0 she’d built. Hope thought it wouldn’t be Reiko unless it was complete.

Reiko had woken, stripped the Tyche’s databanks of all the information they held, and almost killed El. Which was, as far as Reiko went, two for two.

“I should have known,” said Hope, the words sounding odd to her own ears. She touched a finger to her lips, feeling the cracking and chapping. When was the last time she’d had a sip of water? Hope couldn’t remember.

“Should have known what?” said Providence. They were in Engineering, both staring at their respective displays.

Providence was curled up next to the reactor. She’d used the Tyche’s fabricator to upgrade her personal console, then connected to the ship’s comm net. The girl did the same trick as Reiko, downloading data and consuming it, but a lot, lot slower. Hope sat in front of her console, knees bunched up on her acceleration couch. The holo stage had Reiko’s schematics on it, and she’d been trying to work out where she’d gone wrong.

“I should have done the design better,” said Hope. She pointed at the holo. “I mean, I should have made it less likely to hurt El.”

“No,” said Providence. “You shouldn’t have used the person you did. The design is fine.”

Hope sighed. “But if I’d done it the same but different—”

“It wouldn’t have been who it was,” said Providence. “What you want to work out is how to do it again, but with the right person.”

“How?” said Hope. “We’re all so broken.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Providence, but she looked down, her false bravado running out of reactants, the fire out.

The Tyche chirped, alerting her of incoming people. RETURNING TEAM, the ship said. Hope leaned forward, switching the holo to the cam feed outside. On the blasted surface of Mercury, four people walked toward the ship. Hope saw Saveria first, her heart giving a small flutter, and she pressed down on the feeling, because her heart was already doing overtime, and it didn’t need more work. Next to Saveria, the golden robot, walking as if the scorching sunlight was a balm to his skin. Beside Algernon strode two large armored figures, golden like Algernon.

No Reiko. Not unless she was in a suit of golden power armor, which made no sense, because Hope had made her beautiful and perfect and given her self-healing polyimide skin. The two figures must be October Kohl and Ebony Drake. Once the Emperor’s Black, now … the Emperor’s Gold?

Hope traced a finger through the holo’s light.

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