by Elsa Jade
“In the evening,” she said. If there were any alien shenanigans, hopefully the early winter darkness of Big Sky Country would hide it. “Bring some of the cheesecakes.”
“For the chance to become the inspiration for a sex robot? I think that demands wine and chocolate, don’t you?”
God, they had to get out of here. “Oh yeah, definitely,” she squeaked. “Welp, see you then. Super excited to be working with you.” She grabbed Cosmo’s arm. Maybe she couldn’t actually move him, but there was enough nervous energy quivering through her to disrupt a city power grid.
He took one step at her tugging before turning around to face Troy. “Why didn’t you come find us?”
The Theta lifted his chin. He wasn’t as tall as Cosmo but there was some untouched remoteness to him that gave him the same impact as a lone volcanic cinder cone out on a barren ocean. “A Theta is always sent away from the matrix, to scout, to reconnoiter. If I’d had anything to give you, I’d have come back. But I kept an eye on the Alpha, from a distance, and for a hundred and fifty years he’s kept you all close. In the absence of other commands, that was his mission. Anything else was”—he shrugged—”inconsequential.”
Mach had found love with Lun-mei. Delta and Lindy had a one-third-shroud child. They’d fought off aliens trying to abduct them. All that was inconsequential?
She didn’t want to know what the Theta thought was consequential.
But he had come back to the ranch, even though he’d been hiding in Cross’s truck. So he was lying about something. And one grifter to another, she’d find out what.
Chapter 6
Cosmo drove them back toward the Strix Springs Ranch, his mind churning with everything that had happened. Their Theta hadn’t died in the crash landing.
But Troy Lehigh wanted nothing to do with them. Instead, he’d seemed to bond with Vic, the two of them chatting confusingly. Thetas were designed and programmed to blend in more easily with the local population, so it made sense that he could interact with Vic in a way that Cosmo never could.
But she’d been lying to him. In some way Cosmo didn’t quite understand, she’d been toying with the Theta.
But she’d been brought in to help the shrouds, while the Theta had abandoned them. But then she said she had ulterior motives, not to obtain the Alpha’s help in reaching planetary authorities, but somehow working with the Intergalactic Dating Agency to make sex robots?
What did it all mean?
He’d thought he was coming to understand Vic. Maybe not all Earthers, but he’d been starting to catalog her little gestures, her glances, her grin when she thought he was being funny even though he knew he just didn’t understand.
He wanted to understand. Normally he would demand answers. But maybe his Omega protocol wasn’t the best way to get answers.
Unless the question was how big did an explosion need to be to destroy the world.
The instructional voices generated by the new archives in his database offered no suggestions. He was on his own.
Even when he’d been alone in the badlands, avoiding bringing any suspicion to the Alpha and the Delta or the Fallen A, he’d never felt so isolated. Even with Vic right there.
He could only be what he was.
“You lied to the Theta,” he said. “Why?”
“He is dangerous,” she said.
He didn’t look away from the road. “So am I.”
She shook her head. “But you’re honest about it. Troy means something bad, I’m sure of it, even though he’s pretending to be a friend.”
Cosmo scowled to himself. How could anything be worse than him?
And…was it wrong that he wanted to argue with her that he was still the worst shroud of the matrix?
“Why did you tell him about sex robots?” He tightened his grip on the wheel, avoiding the part he’d broken off earlier. “I reviewed your pornography folder and there is no indication that Earthers want robots. The idea is only referenced as a joke.”
She sighed and rubbed both hands over her head, jostling the Rudolph head so that the decorative eyes seemed to roll in consternation. “When I worked for the IDA, I found that most beings, no matter where they are from, transgalactically speaking, are disarmed by talk of sex. Prudish cultures are embarrassed, and exhibitionist cultures are excited, but everyone stops paying attention to the dangers and only cares about the pleasures when it comes to sex.”
That did seem to fit with what he’d learned from her good pr0n files. “But why?”
She shrugged. “It’s adaptive evolution. The shroud consortium builds people, but most beings don’t have those resources. So they procreate the old-fashioned way: they boink or swap egg sacks or excrete their genetic material into the galactic winds or whatever. The species that focus their attention on that—even sometimes to the exclusion of other things—tend to be more successful than ones that hole up in the basement learning esoteric programming languages.” She jerked her head up. “Uh, not that I want to excrete my genetic material anywhere. I like basements. I just…” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, on Earth, there are insects where the female eats the male while they copulate. Not that the IDA ever worked with any species like that,” she hastened to add.
Cosmo sighed. “None of this is covered in the pornography archive.”
“Basically, I knew if I talked about sex, he’d be distracted from his nefarious thoughts and we could make our getaway.”
In his frustration, another chunk of steering wheel disintegrated under his grip. “That makes no sense to me.”
“See! It works.” She beamed at him. “It doesn’t make any sense to anyone. That’s why there’s an Intergalactic Dating Agency, because the complexities of sex and love spans entire galaxies. It’s okay that you don’t understand yet but you’re learning. I like that you’re not a nefarious schemer, and you just say what you think.”
He stared at the road—not that it had gone anywhere, and anyway his nanites would tell him if he was wandering astray. If only finding his path through these strange Earther interactions was as clear. “I will never be able to walk among the Earthers if I don’t understand,” he murmured. “Even if you find a way to hack into our systems, to turn off the keyholder imprinting and the Omega protocol, I’ll forever be outside like Wog.”
When she drew a breath to reply, he finally turned his head to look at her.
“I’m not looking for an answer this time,” he said.
As the rest of the shrouds were seeing their freedom in sight, the only world burning down was his.
The winter sun was starting to set, breaking through the low clouds on the western horizon, when they returned to Strix Springs. The second longest shadow in the yard belonged to the Alpha. In his sleek black CWBOI armor, the big shroud male looked even bigger than usual.
Cosmo hadn’t had a name for the strange seething in his gut when he’d compared himself to the Theta. But looking at his Alpha, he had a designation now: jealousy.
From the very start, with the wreckage of the transport still smoking around them, Mach had taken charge like the Alpha he was. He’d salvaged what he could from the ship, been the first to make contact with the Earthers, found a way for them to exist marooned on a planet that didn’t know about aliens, in a universe that made what they were an illegal abomination. Mach had even been the first one to choose an Earther to imprint on, saving himself from any lesser keyholder who tried to take possession of him, even before he’d gone looking for Vic to make it possible for the rest of his matrix—for all shrouds—to be freed. According to the movies in Vic’s database, Mach was a big damn hero.
Even the Delta V, least distinguished of their matrix, had fought off scavengers with superior firepower in defense of his keyholder and her offspring, thus proving himself in a way no other shroud ever had.
Cosmo forced himself not to rip the entire wheel off the truck. Compared to them, he was nothing but a big zero.
Maybe this was why Omegas wer
e never awakened early—no one wanted to listen to them whine.
The longest shadow across the ranch belonged to the yurk. The battle-beast had hatched from a damaged stasis egg only a few months ago, but due to its built-in enhancements, it was already vastly more developed than little Stella. Preening next to Mach, the creature spread its huge wings, blocking the sun, becoming its own chunk of burning night with its glossy black vanes highlighted in glimmering red.
Vic gasped in delight. “I’ve only seen her in the barn at the Fallen A, not out in daylight. She’s beautiful.”
Not sure why he felt the need to remind her, Cosmos said, “The yurk is deadly too.”
“She’s both,” Vic said. “Anything can be more than one thing at a time, remember?”
When he got out of the truck, the yurk swiveled her triangular head to glare toward him. She stretched her neck straight up into the sky and gave a harsh call, rattling her wings with a sound like distant thunder.
Vic stopped in her tracks. “Oh. I guess that’s the danger part.”
“She doesn’t like me,” he said. “She knows I am only one thing: the end.”
Angling away from the yurk and Mach, he headed for the house. Delta was in the kitchen with Stella, as if the intervening hours had not happened, as if they hadn’t just discovered another of their matrix hiding from them with nefarious purpose, if Vic was to be believed.
Cosmo looked at the small Earther/Delta hybrid that he had created. Would she some day understand that she should hate him the way the yurk did?
He diverted his gaze back to his matrix-brother. “You will protect her.”
Delta inclined his head. “With all that I am.”
And he had already proven himself to be more than the only surviving Delta of their matrix. But what if he’d been only one thing? Would that have been enough?
Mach walked through the doorway, Vic at his side. “What did you find?”
The direct question was simple, should be soothing, but Cosmo bristled at the lack of niceties. Not that he needed the Alpha to touch their mouths together as he did with the little Earther female he’d imprinted on, but was it so hard to say hello?
“Cosmo tracked the Theta to Tanner Cross’s house,” Vic started to explain.
With a huff, Cosmo expelled a small cloud of nanites from the port in his hand. The amorphous fog coalesced into three small gray figures that mimicked the movements as he began to recite the interaction with Troy Lehigh.
When he was done, Vic murmured, “I didn’t know you could do that, word for word and with little figurines like that.”
“I bet the sex robot talk distracted the Theta,” Delta said. “Theta programming includes a seduction protocol as part of their infiltration and sabotage subroutine.” He chuckled. “The idea that he might be replaced by common Earther toys must have shut him right up.”
Cosmo glared at the Delta. “Maybe he liked the idea of someone else doing the things he didn’t want to have to do.” Aware of their questioning glances amongst themselves—was it so surprising that he didn’t want to be a time bomb himself?—he sucked the nanites back to him.
“Why would he avoid us?” Mach paced the perimeter of the kitchen. “Yes, a Theta’s role during a mission is to stay to the outside, to bring that perspective to the matrix. But we weren’t activated so there wasn’t anything to keep him away.”
Cosmo waited until his Alpha had passed the kitchen door that led outside before edging that direction himself. “Maybe not everyone can change what they are.”
Mach stopped next to Delta, pivoting to face Cosmo. “We are more than our programming. I think we’ve proven that.”
“Have we? Or did we just add more lines to the code?” The weight of Vic’s stare pushed against him, making it easy to push open the door. “I’ve given you what I saw. I’ll return before the Theta comes tomorrow evening.” Consulting the database of movies, he paused for a dramatic beat. “Let me know if you need anything exploded before that.”
He stepped out into the gray winter before anyone could reply.
Not that there was anything they could say.
Though he didn’t hide his route anymore, now that Lindy knew he was trespassing in her badlands, even the direct path to his hideaway was a twenty-minute brisk walk. He could run it in much less, but then he risked falling into the bogs that still bubbled under the coating of ice and snow.
Not that falling in would hurt him, but his nanites weren’t keen on laundry duty, not when their real task was supposed to be destroying worlds.
How could he explain to the other shrouds, who’d modified their programming for heroism and fatherhood, that he’d never be anything more than this?
They should put him in the yurk’s failed stasis chamber that he’d repaired to incubate Stella. The pyramid was no longer secure enough to hold a reluctant prisoner like the yurk, but he would be willing to sleep again, like the baby.
Imagining how they’d look at him if they realized how much of a zero he was… It was worse than the memory of watching the transport ship flaking away in fiery chunks around him.
The rocky badlands occupied only a small corner of the Strix Springs lands, but the curving, dead-end box canyons and tangles of willows and tamarisk made a complex maze that had served as a refuge for hundreds of years of Diamond Valley delinquents. He was just the latest. And the most alive, considering his closest neighbors were the bone fragments of a lost cow and the cowboy who’d been looking for it—or who’d rustled it, depending on the interpretation.
The bones were barely distinguishable even on a good day, and with the snow that gusted into drifts around the canyons, any bits of white could just be seasonal décor. But he knew they were there and he nodded in their direction just as he did every time he passed.
Their lives had ended but it hadn’t been his doing or fault, and that was kind of the best friendship he could aspire to right now.
As he slipped through the crack in the limestone—partially cracked by him to access the cavern system below—his thoughts seemed to echo in the hollow rock.
Friendship? Since when did an Omega think about friends?
Since the cats. No, before that. Since the first time he saw Mach look at his little Earther female, Lun-mei. Even from a distance, that look had sent a shiver through his nanites, some strange fluctuation of energy.
Now he knew what it was: the Alpha imprinting on his keyholder.
But Lun-mei wasn’t even a true shroud keyholder. She hadn’t paid a significant fortune to own a private cyborg army, and she didn’t have the activation code to unleash them on her enemies. In fact, she’d been at Mach’s side, trying to find someone who could break the codes that chained them, willingly giving up even the appearance of command.
Because she already knew she didn’t need a key. She had the Alpha because he’d given himself to her, whole and unbidden.
Cosmo had…bones. And cat claw scars. And a burning wish.
He plunged into the chill of the cave to get away from it all.
After he’d revealed himself to Lindy, hoping to reclaim Delta from her, and then fought off the scavengers in the badlands above, perhaps it was pointless to keep his hideaway. But nothing was as pointless as an awakened Omega, so he still retreated here, leaving the others to the new lives they were building. Mach and Delta had moved most of the salvage of the downed transport from the Fallen A to the caves, to take advantage of the remote location, and it seemed they were forgetting what they had been in favor of what they could be.
At least the Theta was still living the mission.
As he wandered through the wreckage, low-powered nano pathways in the walls illuminated as he passed. Not that he needed the dim glow. He knew everything here.
He touched a scorched panel that had ripped away from the transport during the crash landing. Tougher than almost anything on this planet, still the plasteel had succumbed to the cosmically weak force of gravity and the nearly imperceptibl
e friction of atmosphere—brought down by the very influences it had been built to defy.
He hissed out a breath as the jagged edge sliced his fingertip. Sluggish from the replay of the encounter with the Theta, his nanites didn’t immediately seal the wound, and he watched impassively as the gray fluid pooled in the gape of flesh.
“Cosmo?”
The sound of his name drifting through the cavern made the microscopic slackers race through his body. The cut silvered over, and he shook off the remaining drops of expended nanites as he strode back toward the surface.
Vic stood in the limestone crack, peering through. The sky was almost fully dark behind her, but there were enough clouds bouncing the starlight for him to see her wary expression.
Why was she even here?
Impatiently, he touched the wall, sending a nano pulse to brighten the inner glow. Her expression brightened the same way, and he forced himself to remember the burning ship when he met her dark eyes.
The lightest touch could rip apart plasteel if applied at the right wrong moment.
She glanced behind her, waving to someone, then stepped inside. “Mach said you’d be here, but it looks so abandoned, I was afraid… Well, here you are.”
Cosmo curled his lip. “He brought you here?”
“On the yurk.” She grinned. “I flew on an alien battle-beast.” Abruptly, her smile vanished. “Oh. It wasn’t that cool or anything.” She slanted a careful glance at him.
Despite his annoyance, he sighed. “You can tell me. Just because she won’t let me near her doesn’t mean I can’t hear how good it was.”
“So cool!” She practically skipped toward him. Someone—Lindy, he guessed from the size differential—had given her sturdier clothing, and her shin-high, fleece-topped boots thumped on the stone, echoing the wayward beat of his heart, as if his pulse wanted to match itself to her exhilaration.
Despite the sturdy canvas overalls and heavy work coat, her brown cheeks were shiny from the cold. And under a thick knit hat that didn’t have a musical red reindeer nose, the dark locks of her hair were tangled from the wind.
