Khar threw everything he had into buying Aros the time he needed to get Lily out. He knew she would fight him every step of the way, but he desperately hoped his brother would be strong enough to drag her off the Vitro if he had to. Once they were aboard Helios and under way, the Colossus would never be able to track them. It was almost certainly running on some ancient protocol imprinted during the Ancient Artificial Intelligence Uprisings. Without directives, a Colossus would destroy any intelligent life it deemed a threat in its immediate radius, then return into hibernation.
He had heard tales of other Colossi that somehow survived the war’s last brutal waves ages ago, only to be found by one IMPERIUM species or another. Usually no discoverers survived. Only the rescue teams sent after them returned to tell what they had faced. And no one ever deployed infantry to face a Colossus. They were destroyed from a distance by cruisers, never by living soldiers.
He would not give up. If anything, the threat cracked open reserves he had never known he possessed. If by some miracle he lived through this, he would brag about it to anyone who would listen. No one would believe him, and that thought amused him as he waltzed with death.
Right up until the music ended and the machine’s weight crushed him to the deck.
He heard a scream. Too close. Far too close.
No. Please. Lily.
What was Aros doing? Why was she still here?
The Colossus and Khar locked eyes. The long slit pupil measured him without the slightest flicker of emotion, as if he were nothing more than a pest to be crushed. The machine drew its arm back for the killing blow.
Khar’s last conscious thought was painfully simple.
Buy her time. One heartbeat. Just one. She could not die here.
He could not track the motion. Instinct or luck tipped his head at the last possible instant before impact. The strike slammed into the deck beside him, leaving a smoking crater in the metal. A sudden iron grip closed around one of his horns. The Colossus pinned him flat, erasing every path of escape.
Khar kicked, twisted, roared his defiance. It made no difference. The Colossus raised its fist again, then paused.
Gold-and-black optics dimmed. When the light returned, the pupil had changed shape.
No longer a predatory slit.
Round, like a human’s.
Round, like Lily’s.
The Colossus rose, lifting Khar by his horn as if he weighed nothing at all. It hurled him aside and turned toward the girl Aros had failed to drag from the hangar in time.
Khar heard the voice then, familiar down to its smallest cadence, a voice Lily had crafted over hours until it reminded her of her home.
“Lily.”
Her eyes filled and she began to sob, softly at first, then with a shaking breath that grew. The towering machine and the small, fragile-looking woman faced each other. The Colossus raised avast hand, slow and careful, and brushed away the tears running down her cheeks.
Lily looked up, gratitude breaking through her smile.
“Helios.”
“But…how?” Khar thought.
Chapter 27
You Are Me, and I Am You
Helios
“The soul of every Herion-class vessel is its artificial intelligence. It evolves by observing your needs, flawlessly. It will not only anticipate what you say, but what you truly desire, and what you may one chrono-cycle come to desire.”
From the Herion showroom introduction
“How did life come into being?
This chrono-cycle, every young star-citizen learns that all intelligent life traces back to the Cradle of Life, an origin world lost to a cosmic cataclysm. Its scattered bio-fragments drifted through the void and seeded distant worlds, giving rise to every species now under the IMPERIUM.”
