“An upgrade,” he murmurs. The astonishment he feels must be close to the human emotion of wonder. “You’ve been upgraded. Your intelligence—you’re more like me.”
“Not like you,” the Queen spits back. “Only smart enough to catch you.”
“But how—?”
“Mansfield transmitted all the necessary subroutines.” The Queen’s long-fingered hand taps the place a few centimeters behind her ragged right ear, the location of one of the most sophisticated processors a mech has.
Mansfield is not only alive, but he now also knows Abel is free and wants him back badly enough to break cybernetics law. The vindication Abel feels now is almost as sweet as the moment he realized he would escape the equipment pod bay at last.
Yet somehow, this fact does not sort at the top of his priorities. Instead he is captivated by the new knowledge that there is one other mech in the world like him… at least, a little bit like him.
Abel had not understood until this moment that the feeling he experienced whenever he thought of himself as singular—as one of a kind—was loneliness.
The Queen stalks forward a few more steps, clearly reveling in her ability to track down the only mech in the galaxy more sophisticated than herself. “I’ll free you now,” she says. “And then you can go home.”
With that, she aims her blaster at Noemi.
Abel grabs the Queen’s forearm with one hand, pulling her out of aim and off-balance, then spins around, jerking that arm back so far that a human’s would be torn from the shoulder socket. Her hand spasms, releasing the blaster to clatter to the ground.
But Queens are built to take that much punishment and more. She kicks him in the gut, which hurts, but is proof of the limitations of her upgrade. That blow is effective against humans, but doesn’t do much to Abel.
Unlike what he’s about to do to her.
He brings the heel of his hand up sharply beneath the Queen’s chin, snapping her head back. That should put her into crisis mode, her circuitry demanding an operations slowdown.
She staggers back, but she doesn’t stop. Her thick brown hair, mussed and loose, frames her face like a lion’s mane. “Mansfield gave us a message for you,” she says.
When her mouth moves again, it is no longer her voice. It is Mansfield’s.
“Abel. My dear boy.” Mansfield’s voice has changed with age, become raspy and creaky, but the tremble in his voice is mostly one of emotion. “I set up the automatic protocols to find you decades ago, and I’d given up hope—but you always were the answer to all my hopes. You know that, don’t you?”
Surely no human father could sound more loving toward his son. Once again Abel feels that tightness in his throat, the hint that someday he may be able to shed tears.
Mansfield continues, “I hear a trick of your programming’s keeping you tied to your finder. All my fault, of course. So as of this moment, Abel, you are released from your duty to obey your commander. You’re free.” The old man’s voice cracks with feeling. “Now, here’s a direct order for you. Come back home.”
A flush of warmth suffuses Abel, the physical proof of his release.
“There.” The Queen smiles. “You are now freed from any authority besides that of Burton Mansfield. You can come with me, back to Earth.”
He doesn’t have to continue on this mission. He doesn’t have to consent to his own destruction. He can go back to his father and fulfill the dream he held on to every day of those cold thirty years alone in space.
It should be glorious. It should change everything.
But Abel doesn’t budge.
He doesn’t know how he can resist Mansfield’s order. All Abel knows is that he still feels the need to protect Noemi Vidal.
Without telegraphing the movement too far in advance, Abel clasps his hands together and slams them into the Queen’s side, sending her spinning. She catches herself against the wall and stares at him. “What are you doing?”
“Exactly what I was doing before.”
“The message should have freed you.” The Queen balls her fists in a very human sign of frustration—another sign of the upgrade within. “You must be broken.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Then you can still only be freed by the girl’s death.”
Abel doesn’t bother replying. He just attacks.
They grapple with each other without any finesse, any form. Those proper fighting techniques are ones they share, which means they can each predict the movements and block accordingly. If they fight by the rules, they will fight forever without one ever gaining advantage over the other. So Abel tries to fight dirty—to find whatever it is in him that could be called instinct.
“We’ll fix you,” the Queen promises in the second before his fist makes contact with her face. Her head snaps back immediately, and she continues as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “You’ll be restored to the way you should be. Brought back to Mansfield.”
Abel wants that so much. What it would mean to him even to see Mansfield one more time! Mansfield must believe Abel to be in incredible danger; otherwise he would never have given orders that could lead to a human being killed. His creator has broken every rule in an effort to bring Abel home, vindicating all those years Abel told himself Mansfield would come back for him if he could.
And yet Abel keeps fighting. As much as he wants to return to his father, he wants something else even more.
The Queen swings at him; Abel blocks the blow. He punches her, only to have her grab his arm and use it to shove him against the wall. He grapples with her, unable to push himself out of this corner, wondering whether one of them will ever be able to overpower the other—
Which is when something large, black, and heavy slams into the Queen from behind.
The Queen’s eyes dim. Finally, she goes into regeneration mode and slumps to the floor unconscious. Noemi stands just behind her, hanging on to one of the blankets—into which she’d knotted the heavy cube of computer equipment Abel saw earlier.
In other words, she created a makeshift sling that brought the Queen down faster than Abel could.
As he stares at her, Noemi shrugs and lets the sling drop with a clunk. “You were both so impressed with each other, you forgot all about me.”
“You’re welcome,” Abel says. Is he using sarcasm? He’ll have to consider that later. “The Queen’s damage is temporary. She’ll regenerate within half an hour at most, and we have to assume the Charlie model is on its way.”
“Then let’s go.” Noemi hurries to grab the heavy backpack, which Abel takes from her, slinging it over his shoulders. She looks over at Virginia, who’s sitting upright, holding a cloth to a bloody cut at her temple, and staring at them in a daze. Her psyche appears to have been completely unprepared for any element of real danger in her life.