Inherited War 3: Retaliation Read Online Free PDF Page A

was away, being tortured and forgotten about, I had a visitor. He took great pleasure in hurting me while he was there.”
    “What does this have to do with us, Cole?” Sky asked wearily.
    “He was a Nixa and he will pay for what he did. Your father has one week to find him and imprison him. I will be there in one week’s time to pick him up.”
    “And if we can find him?” She asked.
    “Then I start killing every last one of you until I am sure he is dead. NOW GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!” he screamed at her.
    Sky fled the room with Thalo and Jeth on her heels. She didn’t stop her mad flight until she reached her room. She ignored Thalo and Jeth, and closed and locked the door behind her. She glanced around at her small room with her meager belongings.  Not much to show for the last twenty years of her life. She didn’t waste time packing, She moved to the room’s only piece of furniture. A link chair, one that would give her access to the base.
    She sat and connected to the base; her conscious mind left her body and flowed into the bases neural receptors.  Cole had set up the parameters of linking to the base on their first visit. She had a virtual body and all the bases systems were arrayed in front of her like a security screening room. She could access almost any system from here. She reached her hand out and touched the screen that showed a wire frame schematic, nothing happened. She reached out and touched it again. Still nothing, she randomly tried to activate another part of the base. No response.
    “Sorry Doctor, you have been denied access to the system. Any requests for access have to be approved by someone in the human chain of command,” the bases AI responded to her repeated attempts to access the system.
    The base’s AI or Bain (base artificial intelligence node) was a good AI. It, along with the base defense AI, had kept the base safe from outside influence while Cole had been held prisoner. Sky had never spent much time with Bain, but like all AI’s, he had seemed to be eager to help and responded well to praise.
    “Hi Bain,” Sky said. “Can I talk to you, just between us?” she asked.
    “Hello Sky, and no we cannot. I have very specific orders regarding interactions with non-humans. To include you,” Bain replied.
    “Please Bain, I need help and you know me. I have no intention of harming Cole or anyone for that matter. I just want to help and I need your help to do that.”
    “I know Sky. I don’t know what’s wrong. But I am scared, if I go against his orders and he finds out…” the AI left the sentence unfinished. “So far Cole has kept his attention to living aliens not us artificial ones. It is harder for us to get away compared to you. We are all worried but don’t know what to do. We are just laying low and trying to ride this out.”
    “Help or not, I am not leaving. I am going to hide here with or without your help. The chances of my being caught go way up, but I can’t abandon him again. I won’t, even if it means my death. I will find out what is going on and fix it, I promise you that.” Sky gathered her thoughts and began to focus on returning to her own body when a quiet voice spoke.
    “What do you need from me?” Sky paused and looked around. A small boy slowly materialized and walked toward her. Her breath caught in her throat. The twelve-year-old boy was a human but not just any human, he looked just like Cole at that age. Sky had forgotten how skinny and sickly he had looked back then. Another reminder of the accusations Cole had thrown in her face.
    “Why him? Why him then?” she asked.
    “Because I admired him, for who he was and what he did. I was the first to volunteer when he came to the station. He came alone and he defied us all. He was willing to sacrifice himself to save Hal from his punishment. I spent much of my time alone here going over the records you kept and the stories I heard you telling. He doesn’t know, and please don’t tell him.