Hakusan Angel by Alex Powell Read Free Book Online Page A

crumpling noise from outside audible even from the bridge. The whole machine shook as the immovable wall of the cavern abruptly halted its progress. Mari half fell out of her seat, jarred by the collision. She grasped at the controls, managing to get the machine to pull back a little before it lunged forward and smashed against the side of the cavern again.
    "Oh jeez," Mari said, taking her hands away from the controls.
    The machine groaned as it settled in its position against the wall.
    "Ishigaki! Report! What the hell is going on up there?"
    She pressed her comm button and replied, "We seem to have a few energy distribution problems, sir."
    "Shut it down. Before you do more damage!"
    "Is the machine damaged?"
    "It's not the machine I'm worried about."
    Mari did as he said and powered down, and behind her, she could hear Kaede starting to groan slightly as she came out of her source-trance.
    "Ishigaki, explain what went wrong."
    She tried to explain that it really wasn't her fault at all because it was Kaede's job to regulate the energy flow and she'd failed. Mari went through all the ways that the power failure had adversely affected her controls.
    "You dolt, Ishigaki. You have three monitors dedicated to energy distribution. You could have checked the levels yourself before moving. Moreover, upon losing visual contact with the outside world, you should have stopped forward motion! Don't tell me you didn't hear the alarm from the navigation consoles indicating a proximity alert?"
    She stopped to listen and found that actually, yes, there was a background alert going off. Fancy that.
    Kaede was groggily looking around to see what was going on and Mari snapped at her in irritation. This was her fault. If she had just held up her end of the deal, they'd have been fine.
    She was waiting for orders when she heard Kaede struggling to move behind her and remembered that she couldn't because she was still plugged in. Mari snorted in annoyance, stomping over to her, she reached back around the chair and unceremoniously yanked out the lowest plug.
    It completely shocked her when Kaede let out a high-pitched whimper and flinched as the plug slid free from the port. She'd seen sources disconnecting from their machines hundreds of times, and not once had they reacted like that. Mari paused and frowned, plug still in hand. She rubbed at it thoughtfully with her thumb, trying to puzzle it out.
    With slowly-dawning horror, she realized that the metal beneath her fingers was slick and sticky. Very carefully, she lowered her head down to look, and it was just as bad as she'd feared. The plug was coated in blood, and the other two were much the same. Her spine was dripping down congealing blood from underneath the ports.
    Mari felt a tad ill, and she was glad that Kaede couldn't see her own back.
    "I'm going to need source technicians on stand-by," Mari reported, voice flat. "Nomura is in a bad way. There's something wrong with her ports."
    "Copy that. We're sending down a rescue crew. Open the hatch and we'll get you out."
    Mari did, then went back to Kaede. She'd seemed alert when she'd first disengaged from the mainframe, but now that she was coming down off her power-high, she looked wrecked. Kaede was starting to shiver, and her entire body was grimy with sweat. Mari realized that there were tear-tracks down her face and that her eyelashes had clumped together.
    "Can I remove the other two plugs?" she asked quietly.
    Kaede jerked her head in a sharp nod, eyes unfocused. She closed them again and waited.
    Mari knelt down behind the chair and placed her palm carefully against Kaede's lower back, bracing the area around the plug before slowly removing it. Kaede let out a sharp breath, but otherwise didn't make a sound. Mari removed the other one as well, and then drew back.
    "Others," Kaede slurred, body slumped and eyes lidded.
    It took Mari a moment before she realized that Kaede meant the rest of the plugs. Thankfully, the other plugs