by Mina Carter
Alien AI’s Marine
Warriors of the Lathar
Mina Carter
New York Times & USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Copyright © 2021 by Mina Carter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Also by Mina Carter
About the Author
Prologue
“I would have killed you! All because my programming favors saving Lathar life over any other!” Keris’s mechanical voice rang with anguish as she turned to face him, the lights on her faceplate a chaotic frenzy.
If she’d had hair, Jay was sure she’d be pulling it out. But AIs didn’t have hair. They shouldn’t have bodies, not even the worker model Keris currently “wore.” The only reason she’d been allowed to keep it was because she was part of Xaandril M’rlin, the Emperor’s Champion’s family.
“But you didn’t.”
“I could have!”
She paced, metal feet clunking against the thick carpet. Jay watched her, a frown between his brows. His heart ached for her. A sentient AI formerly attached to a ship; she had more behavioral modifications hard-coded than most humans had psyche issues.
“You didn’t… I don’t think you would have,” he tried to reassure her. Sure, it had been a shock to turn and find her leveling a blaster at his head, but it wasn’t her fault. Her reactions, even in the bot body, were not her own.
“If we got you an actual body, the—”
“No.” She lifted her hand sharply. “I am not biological. Not a real person, I can’t…”
She trailed off, looking around a second before the door slid open to reveal an agitated Indra, one of the two human women in their group. She practically vibrated with purpose and determination.
“Come on,” she ordered, motioning to them both. “Let’s go boot this flesh thingy up and get Keris a body.”
Stephens was on his feet in a heartbeat. “Hell yeah!”
Keris backed away a little. “No, the subcommander was quite right. I am… an abomination. I should not even be in this body—much less be granted a real one.”
“The subcommander can kiss my fucking ass,” Indra hissed, her temper exploding through her voice. “He’s an asshole. Did you know he’s been talking to those pirates? He knows them. He’s been lying to us. All along. I bet he was a plant, and he was going to hand that AI over anyway.”
Jay was speechless for a second but saved from answering by a snarl from the doorway.
“What!”
Two more of their small group stood there—a Latharian warrior and another woman. A look of surprise and anger was already forming on the Lathar warrior’s face. “He is Vesh. I should have known.”
“Someone is going to have to tell me what the fuck Vesh means someday,” Indra growled. “But not right now. One issue at a time. First we need to get Keris a body before Mr. Fucking Traitor finishes what was started in there and destroys that machine.”
“Right behind you,” Jay replied, his voice a low rasp as he turned to Keris. Determination rolled through him at the obstinate lights on her faceplate. “Either you walk, sweetheart,” he growled, meaning every word, “or I’ll put you over my goddamn shoulder and carry you. I’ll probably put my back out, but one way or another, you are going to that printer.”
Keris didn’t reply. She looked around the small group in silence. Then, with a soft sigh lifting her chest plate, she gave in to the inevitable. “I will go… I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I will go.”
“Halle-fucking-lujah,” Indra said, walking out of the room.
Jay motioned for Keris to precede him. He wouldn’t put it past her to walk the opposite way. But she didn’t. She walked along in silence until they reached the lab and clustered around the airport-like gate of the printer.
“Okay… does anyone know how this works?” Indra asked.
“I think I can figure it out,” Seren replied, a frown on his face as he stood at the control console. His hands moved over the screen in front of him. “I’ve triggered the settings for an expedition-variant female. It’s the last code in the system,” he explained, looking up at them. “It should be the swiftest to print and mature.”
Keris nodded, her metal feet clunking softly against the deck as she walked across toward another area with loungers set in a semi-circle. Jay followed her, nerves running through him. She was so quiet. Was this what she actually wanted?
She sat on the first couch, the furniture groaning under her weight.
“Once the body starts printing, I can download directly into the neural net, leaving this metal skin. I should awaken in the new body,” she said, her robotic voice ringing with nerves and excitement. She stopped and looked at him. After weeks in her company, he could tell from the lights of her “eye” that she was nervous. The violet streaks in the red were a dead giveaway.
“I may be… diminished,” she said softly.
“What do you consider ‘diminished’?” he asked with a small smile, crouching by the side of the couch and reaching for her hand. It was more like a metal club, the three fingers thick and powerful, but he knew she could feel it when he touched her. He’d woken her up from sleep—or whatever passed for it for AIs—by touching her arm before.
“I will be… I won’t be as strong. No sensors. Limited by a biological design. The expedition variant was smaller and less physically powerful than a normal Lathar.”
His lips quirked as he ignored the group behind them, concentrating on her. “You’ll be human, you mean? Or something close to it.”
Her lights warmed, the soft mechanical rattle that passed for a laugh emerging from her throat panels. “Yes… I will be human.”
“Just so you know,” he winked. “That’s not all bad. And we’re not as weak as these assholes think. Sometimes it’s not about the body. It’s about the brain. And you are about the smartest person I’ve ever met.”
“I’m a Miisan-level advanced AI,” she said huffily. “Of course I’m intelligent.”
“You got this,” he reassured her, squeezing her hand. “And I’ll be waiting for you when you wake up.”
“Promise?”
“Absolutely.” He smiled. “Trust me.”
“Okay.” She nodded and reached for something that looked like a headset. Fitting it over her head, she glanced at him and her lights pulsed for a second. A smile. Then they faded. Even before then, he knew she was gone, the vitality disappearing from her touch as the metal body slumped on the couch.
“Good luck,” he whispered, reaching up to brush his fingertips over the blank faceplate. “Come back to me soon.”
1
“Do humans let runts into their special forces?”
“Fuck you,” Jay snarled and clocked the alien warrior in the jaw with a heavy right
hook. It connected with a meaty smack, sending his opponent reeling. He’d put all of his weight and frustration behind it. It had been a week since they’d arrived, and they were no further forward now than the moment they’d been brought here by a rogue AI.
Seren chuckled, rubbing at his jaw as he circled Jay in the training arena. “Not bad… for a human. Perhaps you’re not a runt after all. I dunno, never seen another human male. Are you small for your species?”
“You’re an asshole. You know that?” Jay chuckled, shaking his head as he raised his s’tovik again, twirling the staff-like alien weapon around his hands. “Trying to get an emotional reaction… you think I don’t see what you’re doing? It’s not going to work.”
“Really?” Seren rubbed his jaw, spinning his weapon in his free hand. During the last week, Jay had realized just how good the alien was with the bladed staff, and he had the bruises to prove it. “So telling me to go draanth myself isn’t an emotional reaction?”
“Nah.” Jay grinned, circling the big alien and looking for an opening. “That just means I like you.”
The alien was much bigger than Jay, which he always had to take into account, and as fast as hell. They all were, a lesson he’d learned hard the first time he’d encountered them. He and his unit had been veterans, marines… the best of the best. And the D’Corr had ripped through them like they were children.
Shaking himself out of the bad memories, he looked at the alien warrior again. “If I didn’t like you, I’d be more polite.”
Seren shook his head, snorting with laughter. “You humans make no sense whatsoever. So, you’re nice to people you hate and treat people you like as if they were trallshit?”
“That’s about the size of it, yes.”
Jay nodded, creeping closer to launch a flurry of blows forcing Seren to block hard and fast. He hissed as the last strike got through. Sparks flew as he blocked with his replacement arm, and the s’tovik cut a thin line in the hardened metal.
“Fuck!” Instantly Jay pulled back. “Sorry, mate, I didn’t mean to wallop you so hard.”
The alien extended his arm and flexed his fingers. They all worked fine. The damage seemed limited to the plates of his arm. The replacement was so good, and the covering material so skin-like that half the time Jay forgot it wasn’t organic.
“War wounds need tending,” Seren said with a grin, a sly light in his eyes.
Jay’s matched his. “Oh, really now? Planning on asking a certain little lady to help you with that?”
The big alien warrior gave him an innocent look. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Bullshit.” Jay laughed, spinning the s’tovik and heading to the weapons storage rack. “You’ve been sniffing around Gracie ever since you guys pulled us off that planet with the octopus from fucking hell. Why don’t you tell her how you feel?”
For the first time since Jay had met him, Seren’s confident expression slipped and he got a glimpse of the uncertainty beneath. “I… I don’t think I’m her type. And I didn’t manage to protect her,” he admitted. “When the S’Vaan came.”
Jay’s eyebrow winged up sharply. “They shot you. Remember? Your guts were showing, mate. No one will hold that one against you, least of all Gracie. Fuck, they rattled my noggin as well. Scrambled my brains.”
And he had. The asshole alien fanatics that had stormed the base and kidnapped the two human women had hit him so hard he’d finished up with brain damage. Fortunately, it was the kind of damage that Latharian medical tech was easily able to sort out.
Seren grumbled as he put away his practice blade. “I will never get used to the way humans use that word for friendship. I am not your mate.”
“Mate, brother, bro, buddy…” Jay chuckled. “Take your pick, or we can just go with asshole?”
“Draanthic,” Seren threw back as the two of them left the practice hall, emerging into the corridors of the VIP area of the base.
It had been abandoned for years before they’d arrived, led here by an AI they’d been trying to recover. Even now, a week later, they’d still only managed to get a small section of it operational. The rest would have to wait until more ships got here, with engineers capable of assessing the damage and the systems.
Their conversation fell silent as they spotted Nyek, the commander of their little expedition, up ahead with his mate, Indra, in his arms. The two were totally into each other, so much so that neither looked up as Seren and Jay turned left toward the residential quarters.
He cast a glance over his shoulder at the happy couple. The way Indra looked at the alien speared him to the core. Jealousy hit hard and fast. Not because he wanted Indra. She was pretty and all, and he liked her as a friend, but that was as far as it went. He wasn’t interested in her romantically. But he’d give anything to have a woman look at him like that.
The problem was, the one woman he wanted to look at him that way… well, it was complicated.
“How did a stick-up-the-ass prude like that manage to land a female?” Seren grumbled when they were out of earshot.
Jay shrugged. “No accounting for taste. I mean, someone liked you enough to pop your cherry, so…”
Seren slid him a sideways glance. “Can you put that in plain Latharian for those of us who don’t speak weird-ass Terran?”
Jay grinned. “Someone found you attractive enough to fuck, bro.”
Seren punched him in the arm.
“Draanthic. Of course they did. Her name was…” His eyes went unfocused for a moment, and then he shrugged. “I can’t remember. It was at a pleasure house after my first battle.”
“Pleasure house?” Jay’s ears picked up. “Your first time was with a prostitute? Fucking lucky bastard. Mine was with Sophie Jenkins, in the back of her dad’s old car. Neither of us knew what the fuck we were doing. Barely managed to get it in before it was over.”
Seren’s laugh of amusement bounced off the metal walls as they reached the corridor with their quarters. “One day, when we’re free of all this, I’ll take you to a pleasure house. I’m sure one of the girls there will take pity on you, even if you are a runt.”
Jay flicked him the bird with a grin. “Yeah, yeah… why don’t you get your little boo-boo taken care of, asshole?”
He had a feeling that pleasure houses were not going to be a large fixture in Seren’s future, not the way the warrior’s gaze followed Gracie, the other human female in their group, around.
“Perhaps Gracie will take pity on you and kiss it better.”
He laughed and danced away as Seren swung for him again. His speed was the one thing he had going for him against the Lathar. Sure, they were shit hot warriors and fast as fuck. But he was smaller, lighter, and faster. Just. It would have to be enough.
“I might just do that,” Seren threw back, turning on his heels to head up the corridor to the main section where the lady in question would be on duty. Then he paused, swinging round. “By the way, I labeled all the raw ingredients in the galley.”
“Oh, cheers, bud. That will make it easier finding the coffee in the morning!”
He gave Seren a thumbs up, clocking the eagerness in the warrior’s step as he headed off up the corridor. Jay kept his smile to himself, only allowing it to break out as he walked in the opposite direction. But his expression fell flat as he made his way down to the lab on sector four.
Even now, more than a week since they’d found this place, it gave him the creeps. They’d cleaned out the bio-tubes, their contents flushed to space. At least, he hoped they had been. The remains had been… well, he hadn’t sure what they’d been. Some mad scientists’ version of evolution certainly. 3-D printed bodies, all different variants of the Lathar. Even a smaller version that was supposedly human. Or what would eventually have become human.
They hadn’t been alive but they’d still given him the creeps. The thought of them packed away in a storage chest somewhere was even worse. What if they were alive and got out? Would they be pissed at being loc
ked away? He was too proud to admit to the others he’d been having nightmares about that.
He shivered as he walked past the empty tubes and into the main area. His gaze cut to the seating area and the large metallic figure that still occupied one of the couches.
It was a Latharian bot. Worker model HC-seven-four-nine, B class to be exact. But that wasn’t all it was. It was, had been Keris, the alien AI that had saved his life.
He had no idea how long he’d been a “guest” of the Lathar. His ship had been patrolling the front lines of Terran space, on high alert after the attacks on Sentinel Five.
Filled to the brim with Marines, they’d been all gung-ho, arrogant in their belief that the Sentinel Five marines had gotten sloppy. Life in one place must have made them soft. They were different. Frontier marines, they were as tough as they came. There was no way any aliens would be able to take them on and win.
Pride came before a fall, and fuck had they fallen fast.
They hadn’t even seen the attack coming until it was happening all around them. Resistance was… impossible. The Lathar had hit them so hard and fast, and the battle had been over practically before it had begun. All he could remember was chaos and gunfire. Then the blackness of a D’Corr holding cell. And pain.
He closed his eyes, body rigid.
They’d been tortured. Killed.
His unit was gone.
He was the only one left. And he’d prayed for death. Begged for it. When the self-destruct countdown had begun, he’d known it was over. Even though he didn’t speak Latharian, he’d realised what the alarm was. So, in pain and alone, he’d prepared himself to meet his maker.
