A little more loudly than necessary, Jack said, “Jethro Tull is a group, not a person.”
Haley scowled. “Sorry. Just curious.”
Then she shut off the comm, and looked back at Flick. “I’m not going be able to talk to him much longer.”
“Sorry, hon, but you might like him better once he changes.”
To judge from Haley’s expression, she doubted that. “Once he changes into what?” Continue reading Picking Up Pieces: Part 4
Text appeared below the screen that showed our position and that of the other planes.
[You’re making yourself completely vulnerable. I’m not suggesting you attack, but landing and turning off your shields represents an unacceptable risk.]
I shut off the comm, and quietly asked, “What would you suggest?”
[If you have to appear vulnerable, lower the jet, but don’t land, and give me permission to turn on the shields whenever I think it’s necessary.]
“You need my permission?”
[Yes. My makers wanted artificial intelligences limited to minimize their risk.]
As much as I might want to assume Sean was wrong on the grounds that he was talking, I wished we could fly away.
Whatever I might think, Haley’s console had the flight controls for the moment, and unless I felt I should say something, she could make the decision without me.
My console only showed the weapons and shields at the moment.
Haley began to turn her head around. It was obvious she was going to ask someone for advice.
Keeping her voice low, Flick said, “I’ve got to make some calls. Cooperate, but stall.” Continue reading Picking Up Pieces: Part 2
The good point about owning a “jet” created from the remains of alien spacecraft is that it does surprisingly well even in the presence of enormous explosions.
The engines, meant for sending the ship into orbit, shot us far out of the range of the blast. Its shields absorbed what little of the blast could reach us.
The ship’s inertial dampers did well enough that I felt a little pull, but kept standing as the ship shot forward, creating huge sonic booms.
Given that we were in northern Manitoba near Nunavut, the noise probably wasn’t bothering many people. We might have upset more polar bears. Continue reading Picking Up Pieces: Part 1
Flick threw a ball into the main group of heavy bird bots as they began to run across the floor toward us.
The ball punctured the bird bot’s chest, coming out the other side, and continuing through each bot behind it.
I’d never known for sure what her power was, but it had something to do with controlling mass and momentum. I’d heard that there were very specific rules about how it worked, but I’d never seen her in action, so I didn’t know what they were. Continue reading Breaking & Entering: Part 12
Much like in the control room, the second floor mostly stayed together. Spots of concrete fell and the nearest section of floor simply bent downward toward us, giving us a view of storage rooms.
A file cabinet slid sideways, and fell into the room, landing on the melted remains of the cloning tanks.
It would have been great if that had been the end of it.
It wasn’t, but it looked like it for a second.
Cassie lowered the gun. “Let’s get out of here.”
The fan increased its power by the second.
The whirring noise came from deeper in the building—possibly pulling it directly outside. That meant instead of being something that Rook’s people had done, it might be ours.
Instead of drifting away, the smoke streamed toward the smashed door, pulled by the fan, but behind it came cold air from outside.
A glance upward showed that the section of the room’s ceiling that had reached up to the roof now opened to the sky. Izzy had taken it completely off.
If she hadn’t taken it off, the part she did remove included the middle.
Anyway, it was pretty impressive. I wouldn’t have been able to do it in the Rocket armor.
Beyond a brief sense of awe, I didn’t think about it much then. I had other things to worry about.
An alarm went off. Continue reading Breaking & Entering: Part 10
Casting a last look at the dead people on the floor, I ran.
Only a few steps of the Rocket suit took me away from the scene, and that was good. I didn’t want to look at them.
They’d probably died when I broke the barrier between the core and the rest of the base.
Still, even if out of sight wasn’t really out of mind, they were at least out of sight.
Unfortunately, the next room was worse. Continue reading Breaking & Entering: Part 9
Rook’s control room sat near the middle of the dome, and like the other rooms at the center, the ceiling rose to the top of the dome.
The rooms on the second floor shared a transparent wall with the corridor below. People on the second floor could look down into the labs and control, but they weren’t just then.
I gave the Rocket suit a little thrust, and I hovered a little higher, out of the Rook suit’s reach.
On the second floor, people in blue jumpsuits and masks lay down or crawled on all fours.
Out in the first floor’s hall, pieces of concrete fell. On the second floor, a monitor fell off a desk, throwing sparks as the screen shattered.