Love and Whiskers

by Olivia Myers

  “Of course. I will answer any question you ask to the best of my ability, unless it poses a security risk to the station, the company, or my partner.”

  He checked in with Jessa again, noting her slower, deeper breathing and steady heart rate.

  God rubbed his palms together. “I’d have to run some tests to be sure, but I suspect your quirk, MCK-397, is a little extra inquisitiveness.”

  Mack cocked his head, processing that information. “The drive to understand my environment and surroundings is hardwired into my BCI.”

  “True, true. But I’ve never encountered a cy unit with such a sense of curiosity before. Most of them only feel the need to acquire as much information as is required to perform their duties.”

  “As do I,” Mack replied, brow furrowed.

  God cracked each of his bony knuckles with a loud pop. “You told me that one of the mothers taught you a lullaby to calm the infants during the nursery evacuation.”

  “Yes. That is true. She did.”

  “Why did she teach it to you?”

  Mack shifted against the wall, a sudden curl of uneasiness in his belly. He checked in one Jessa again, but she was fine.

  “Many of the infants were scared and crying. It was adding to the chaos of the situation. The mother was singing to her child and it calmed. Calming the others in a similar manner seemed beneficial.”

  “And?”

  Mack’s fingers dug into the firm muscle of his biceps. He felt a sudden, irrational spurt of anger at God for his question and shut it down. “And I asked her to teach me the lullaby in order to calm the rest of the infants. Teaching me calmed her as well.”

  God said nothing. Mack scowled.

  “It was very effective.”

  The tech twirled a soldering iron between his fingers as he laughed.

  “I’ve no doubt. But you asked her, is my point, my boy. You could have simply used your BCI to record, source, and download the lullaby to your brain. Hell, you could have played a recording from the ‘net.”

  Mack opened his mouth to argue, but God was right. He could have done any of those things. He also could have ignored the crying infants. Their distress didn’t prevent them from being relocated in a safe and timely manner.

  It was true it had added to the chaos of alarms and spraying water and hurrying people, but it hadn’t hindered his ability to do his job.

  The truth was, that had been one of the few occasions he’d been in the presence of humans who were not full grown adults and he found them puzzling and fascinating. So, he’d asked the mother about the lullaby.

  God was correct. He was inquisitive. Still…

  “I do not think this is a quirk.”

  The wiry tech huffed a laugh through his hooked nose. “Obviously. But I answered your question, will you answer mine now? Or do you want me to hook you up to the God machine?”

  Mack eyed the small, complex machine that was Godfrey’s creation. Other techs had diagnostic scanners, but nothing on par with the tiny white plastic box God used. The man was a genius.

  He shook his head. “No. I believe you. What is your question?”

  God steepled his fingers beneath his chin.

  “Why did you really come here tonight?”

  Once again, Mack felt his forehead crease with his frown. But, he realized, reading his internal routines, God was right. There was something else he wanted to know.

  His BCI provided him with a playback of the scene from the storage compartment. The man — Christof, a grade 4 botanist — was above average in height, with pale skin and red hair. He’d been almost fully clothed, though both his regulation shirt and his pants were undone.

  The woman — Padma, a grade 2 engineer — had been nude, with light brown skin and dark brown hair. Her physique was slender compared to Jessa’s. His partner’s arms, legs, and torso were more muscled. Her hips and breasts were fuller as well.

  He remembered Jessa’s odd reaction, the way her cheeks had flushed pink. She dug her fingers into his chest, and for a moment she had stared at him with an intense look that he could not interpret. He’d searched his neuralnet for a comparable expression and found nothing.

  Mack didn’t like not knowing. And in order to understand Jessa’s reactions, he needed to know more about the incident.

  “Does sexual intercourse between humans serve a purpose other than procreation?”

  For the first time in the eight months that he’d known him, Mack watched the tech go still.

  ***

  Jessa finished her sweep of Sector 317 and marked it clear on her wristlet just as her comm pinged in her ear. Mack’s deep voice slid inside her head.

  “The Oubliette is nearly in docking range.”

  She did one last visual check of the high-security vault before closing the bulkhead door and rekeying the lock with her personal code. Mack stood at the end of the wide corridor, broad back rigidly straight as he blocked the only point of entry.

  At the chunk of the door sealing shut, he turned to her, handsome face as placid and unreadable as ever.

  She’d been a little worried after the incident in the storage room. Mack watched her closely for the rest of that night. Jessa had no doubt he’d pinged her vitals more than once. The intense scrutiny had put her on edge, but she’d brought herself off a few times in the shower with only her fingers and her fantasies and that had calmed her right down.

  Unlike her, the questions she’d expected had never come.

  Mack always asked questions. It was one of his abiding traits. It had taken her awhile to get used to, but now that she was, she found it kind of endearing. Mack was this perfect physical specimen, a combination of the ideal soldier and a hyper-intelligent machine. But, about some things, he was adorably naïve.

  But when she’d awoken the next morning, he’d been as stoic and silent as the Apollo Monolith on Centauri 2.

  She found herself somewhat relieved she didn’t have to have the sex talk with her cy. And despite her worries, the awkward incident hadn’t affected the way they worked together.

  Jessa nodded. “Let’s go.”

  He turned without another word. She fell into step beside him. Jessa might allow him to take point when they were entering a dangerous or unknown situation, given that he could withstand much more damage than her, but in all other things, they were equal.

  Martinez and his cy, TSE-938, greeted them both with nods as the stepped onto the loading bay. Martinez was short and broad with dark hair and a goatee. He was also a damn good officer. As was TSE-938.

  The other cy appeared waifish at barely 5’4, but Jessa knew the almost willowy frame was misleading. 938 possessed one of the new allow skeletons, lighter and more flexible than the tungsten and just as durable.

  If you didn’t know she was a cy, 938 (Martinez called her ‘Tessie’ but she refused to answer to any name but her number designation) could pass for an average twenty-something Japanese woman. But she was far from it. She’d seen combat planetside and bore the scars to prove it.

  Jessa nodded to them both in return and crossed to Martinez.

  “Mack says Oubliette is nearly here. We all set?”

  “You know it. Tessie and I got this.”

  She caught the female cy shooting Martinez a narrow-eyed look at the use of the name, her irises almost as black as her short cropped hair. Jessa tapped her fist against his shoulder.

  “Yeah you do. Central’s just jumpy since that last run to Polaris got hit. Mack and I will just stand back and watch in awe while you two —”

  A red light strobed across the room and the proximity claxon buzzed. 938’s eyes snapped toward the loading bay doors.

  “They shouldn’t be that close yet.”

  Martinez frowned, pink lips folding into his dark goatee.

  “Oubliette, this is Lyra Station Officer MZ-313. Do you copy?”

  They all heard the garbled crackle over their comms. Jessa’s gaze slid to Mack. She jerked her chin toward to c
ontrol room. He nodded, lashes doing to stutter-flutter thing they did when he accessed his neuralnet with his eyes open.

  Jessa hoofed it up the short staircase that led to the loading bay control room. “Central, this is Officer JS-824 in Loading Bay 6. We’ve got a possible situation. Officers MCK-397, TSE-938, and MZ-313 on premises.”

  Central Command, Lyra Station’s security hub, crackled in her ear. They had no other reports of activity and no readings showing anything but the supply trawler Oubliette approaching.

  “Let’s hope we’ve just got a faulty sensor then,” she replied as she straight-armed the control room door opened. The single harried-looking Bay Operator raised wild eyes to her and jammed a shaking hand into his curly brown hair.

  “It’s not showing up on anything! I don’t understand.”

  Down below in the bay, Martinez was having no luck raising a response from the Oubliette. Jessa crossed the long, narrow control room in three great strides.

  “What isn’t showing up? Talk to me.” She glanced at the name on his uniform shirt. “Talk to me, Greg.”

  He blinked at her and then turned to point at the screen in front of him.

  “I can see it right there. It’s a Bug. I know that’s what’s tripping the proximity sensor on the loading bay door. But it’s not showing up anywhere else! It’s like it’s invisible!”

  Ice filled Jessa’s veins at the sight of the small but vicious looking pirate vessel clinging to the side of the station, spidery-like pincer legs digging into the hull.

  She relayed what she was seeing to Mack and the others, trying to tamp down on the questions swirling through her frantic brain. Adrenaline flooded through her, metallic on the back of her tongue. It made her stomach churn.

  As soon as she finished speaking, Mack’s rumbling bass was in her ear.

  “They likely only sent one ship for a station this small, so we should be fine. I’ve already alerted Central to send down more Officers for back-up.”

  “Why —”

  “The hull is slightly thinner on the loading bay doors than elsewhere. That’s why the sensors are extra sensitive. God programmed them,” Mack replied.

  Jessa allowed a faint smile to tip up the curve of her lips, pleased with how in tune she and her partner were. That had been exactly what she was wondering.

  “They’re just waiting there.” The Bay Operator tapped his screen as if he could knock the ship off that way. His voice shook. Jessa patted his shoulder.

  “Most likely they’ve already boarded the Oubliette and were waiting for entry that way. Then they could take the supplies, plus anything they could scavenge here. That’s what they tried on Polaris.”

  He made a little choked gasping noise in the back of his throat, but Jessa grinned.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ve got this.”

  In her ear, she heard 938’s firm, sweet voice.

  “313 has the Oubliette. It seems they experienced some ‘technical difficulties,’ but are now ready to dock.”

  Jessa was surprised by the wry note in the female cy’s voice, but she nodded at the Bay Operator.

  “Open the doors like normal.”

  His eyes were round, but he began working his console with shaking hands.

  “I —” Martinez began, but 938 cut him off.

  “I’m going out.”

  Jessa said a momentary prayer of thanks to Apollo that she and her cy got along well, and then the bay doors began to open.

  Things happened quickly then, as they always did in combat. Most of her job was endless boredom waiting for a few frantic, scrambling minutes of crazy intensity. The pirate attack was no different.

  938 slipped silently out the bay doors as it opened. Mack and Martinez arranged themselves at casual attention as if nothing was wrong. She took position behind the control room door, angling her body so she could aim down at the bay below, and unholstered the weapon at her thigh.

  The Oubliette’s dingy brown hull loomed into view, drifting easily and smoothly into the locking ports.

  The trawler’s cargo door sprang open and bodies poured out. They were shouting something she couldn’t understand and rushing toward Mack and Martinez. Her heart thumped quickly, but both men had their weapons up and had begun to fire.

  One of the pirates rushed for the stairs, sweat gleaming on his dirty face as he barreled toward her.

  Jessa picked him off with a single shot. Behind her, the Bay Operator whimpered.

  Another pirate made a break for the corridor, but Jessa took him down as well. She kept half an eye on the group near the trawler, but Mack and Martinez seemed to have them under control.

  A bulky looking man with a bald head was shooting wildly at the two officers. He kept glancing over his shoulder, toward the still open bay doors, as if expecting back-up. None came.

  Jessa didn’t bother to hold back the smile that split her lips. 938 had obviously taken care of that situation.

  “How are you doing, 938?”

  Her comm buzzed for a second and then she heard a grunt. “Just peachy,” the female cy answered.

  Jessa snorted. “Need any help out here? Looks like the boys have this — Fuck.”

  She pushed herself out of her crouch and leapt down the stairs in two strides as Martinez went down, crimson blood pouring from his head. From her angle, she couldn’t tell how bad it was. She prayed it was just a graze.

  “Mack!”

  His pale grey eyes flicked to her, took in her position, and then swung back to the remaining dozen or so attackers. He spun, putting himself between her and them. Jessa didn’t argue or hesitate.

  She dropped to her knees and slid, catching herself against Mack’s braced legs with her left hand. He didn’t so much as sway at the impact, bless him.

  Sitting back on her heels, Jessa used him like a blind, sighting through and around his legs to pick off the pirates one-by-one while their attention was on the massive, intimidating hulk of her partner.

  Shouts of pain and anger filled the air, along with the screech of metal, the mineral smell of blood and the stench of burning flesh. Sweat slicked Jessa’s entire body underneath her body armor and plastered stray wisps of hair to her face.

  “Ammo,” barked Mack.

  “Here!”

  She ripped one of the spare magazines from his side clip and thrust her hand up just as he swung his arm down. The movement was perfect, as if they were one well-oiled machine. The magazine she held slid into place in his weapon with a satisfying click.

  Mack raised it again, firing off three more shots in quick succession. Then, there was silence.

  Panting, Jessa pushed to her feet and glanced around. 938 was on her knees beside Martinez, a wad of gauze pressed to his temple. Mack waded into the mound of bodies, checking pulses.

  Once again, 938 surprised her, fingers stroking Martinez’s dark hair back from his forehead. His eyes were closed.

  Jessa swallowed, her throat sore as if she’d been the one yelling. “How is he?”

  The cy woman gave a short nod. “He’ll be fine. It’s just a flesh wound.”

  “They’re all dead,” Mack said, returning to her side. “I had hoped to be able to question one of them.”

  Jessa rolled her eyes. “I’ll remember that next time I’m saving my friend’s life.”

  He frowned at her, but it was 938 who spoke.

  “I left one alive on the ship. She is bound. You may question her, 397. I will help.”

  Mack nodded. The sound of tromping boots echoed down the corridor.

  Jessa blew out a breath. “Back-up’s here.”

  She gave Mack a wide smile.

  ***

  Mack stepped into the living quarters he shared with Jessa, making sure to reset the security system behind himself. The common area his partner referred to as the ‘living room’ was empty, as was the kitchen and their bunks.

  He could hear the soft shushing sound of the shower running in the bathroom, and sur
mised that Jessa was bathing.

  She would be unclothed, water turning her gold hair dark. When she wore it loose, which was not often, it reached the middle of her back. The muscles of her back were long and lean, her spine a depression between them.

  Mack had only ever seen the woman in the storage compartment naked in the flesh, but after the very interesting and enlightening talk he’d had with God the other evening, he’d done much research.

  It turned out there was another reason for humans to engage in sexual contact after all.

  Pleasure.

  It felt good. Really, really good, according to the tech. “Better than anything you can even imagine in that box of bolts and synapses you call a brain, boy.”

  God had explained all about genitals and their role in sexual gratification. And when Mack had asked why cyborgs had no genitals, that’s when things had gotten really interesting.

  Mack shifted, still unaccustomed to the extra flesh between his legs.

  With Godfrey’s expertise, the procedure had been simple. He said he’d been wanting to try it anyway. All it took was scheduling Mack for some routine maintenance, and adding the upgrades.

  Not just software, though his BCI now possessed the knowledge of myriad sexual positions and techniques, but the hardware as well.

  His skin felt sensitive, the cotton of his undershorts rubbing against the soft sack of his testicles. The sensation was both odd and pleasant. Above his testicles, the length of his penis thickened slightly as blood rushed in that direction.

  Mack stripped out of his clothes, save for the blue cotton undershorts, and climbed onto his bunk, still running an internal assessment on his new equipment.

  Because of his talk with Godfrey and subsequent research, he understood what the purpose of this new flesh was, but he was finding the abstract and the reality quite different.

  Merely stroking his own hand over the covered bulge of his penis sent tingles of feeling throughout his body. His hands explored the contours of his chest, and when his calloused fingers brushed the small peaks of his nipples, a dart of sensation arrowed straight to his groin.

  He frowned. He knew there was no actual connection between the two, but somehow toying with the tiny bud sent more blood rushing to his penis. He pinched the two stiff buds between thumb and forefinger and gasped at the increased pleasure.