HAWK

CHAPTER NINETEEN: INFERNO (2/6)

'She'll come around,' he said. 'Sounds like you guys have had quite the adventure already.'

Kas sat down in front of the controls and stared out of the viewport. 'Worm was with me when we found Selva. What was left of it. I picked her up on Chantos where she was a slave. She came from a convent before that.'

'I kinda figured she was convent, but a slave, too? Poor kid.'

'Exactly. And I wasn't about to then abandon her on Eidol with that woman.'

Kas couldn't bring herself to say Swanne's name. Her blood was still simmering from everything the governor had put her through. She had been behind everything: the Black Chains hacking Hik and Sae-Quin Lor's murder; Astell's attempts to recapture them and the databeam virus that infected X1's. And though she had denied it, Kas was certain Swanne was responsible for Selva.

'She's one evil lady, that's for sure,' Mack nodded.

'What was your sudden hurry to get away, anyway? I mean, surely you could have boarded a ship and got away some other time.'

'I'd have left Eidol months ago if I could have, but I couldn't leave without Astrid. You can't just download an AI like her onto a portable hard-drive; she needs a powerful computer, and this ship is one of the only things on Eidol capable of holding her. I've been waiting for months for the engineers to finish building it. I'd planned on waiting a couple more weeks, but then your arrival with the X1 kind of sped things along.'

'Thank you, Captain,' Astrid said. Kas looked at the viewport where the firefly had reappeared. 'I appreciate all the risks you have taken to rescue me.'

'I wasn't going to leave without you,' he replied. 'But saving Kas and the girl nearly got us all killed.'

'I didn't ask you to save me,' Kas said.

'Don't take it personally, Balera. I've left plenty of good people behind on Eidol that I wish I could have taken with us. I only helped you because Astrid asked me to.'

'Yeah, you've already made that clear.' Kas turned to the viewport to look at the firefly. 'Thank you, Astrid.'

'You're welcome.'

Kas was suddenly struck by the absurdity of the situation: she was thanking an AI for saving her life. She'd encountered countless AI's over the years, but Astrid was something new. She remembered what Astrid had said about having a soul and wondered if that was possible. Kas had never thought much about the philosophical aspects of life and its meaning, but she had sometimes wondered what the difference would be between an AI and a human if one ever became advanced enough. Thinking was one thing - every AI could think faster than a human - but feeling was something else. Astrid had helped her, not because she had been ordered to or because it was in her programming, but because they were friends. What was that if not human?

'So how did you get past Swanne?' Mack asked, tearing Kas from her thoughts.

'I trapped her in an amniotic tank,' Astrid replied.

'You what?'

'She had the Black Chains,' Kas said as the memory returned to her. The vision of Swanne thrashing in the tank beside her former captives was all too vivid. 'She said she was going to turn them into bio-mechs.'

Mack said nothing but he didn't seem surprised. Kas frowned.

'Did you know about this?' she asked.

Mack nodded. 'Astrid kept me informed of everything Swanne was up to.'

'Why didn't you stop her?'

'What was I supposed to do? You saw that place. She's got an army of panthers patrolling the whole goddamn station. Besides, Astrid said she'd never actually manage it!'

'I never expected her to get hold of Sae-quin Lor's research,' Astrid defended.

'So how long will it be till she's ready to move ahead?'

'Not long. It would seem she's already completed phase one.'

'She's completed phase one?!'

'What's phase one?' Kas asked.

'It's writing the software required to run a bio-mech. It's usually the hardest phase to complete. Metal-grafting and reanimation will be next.'

'But there is no guarantee it will work,' Astrid added. 'Reanimation is often where things go wrong. She still has a long way to go.'

'Assuming she is successful,' Kas said, 'what does she intend to do with human bio-mechs?'

'She can't do anything with them,' Mack replied. 'But that's not the point. She doesn't care about what's moral; she only cares about what's possible.'

'Swanne has wanted to create human bio-mechs for a long time,' Astrid explained, 'but she has so far lacked the expertise to do it. That's why she created me. None of her scientists were able to crack human coding, so she decided to create an AI. With the power of Eidol's mainframe, I could solve problems in a fraction of the time of humans. I had started to make good progress, but when I became self-aware, I began to question the morality of the experiment. When I voiced my opinion, Swanne killed me.'

'Which is exactly what she'll do to us if she catches us,' Mack said. Kas looked at him and had a feeling she was going to regret her next words, but she said them anyway.

'Xeo, huh?'

He nodded. 'Xeo.'

Kas slouched in her seat and shook her head. 'I'd better not regret this, Captain.'