Acquired Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 1)

by Cari Silverwood

  “I have questions for you. You said you knew Emery was on the roof the other day – the day she left.”

  It nodded.

  “So I assume that means you can sort of feel where she is?”

  Again it nodded.

  “Well, I want you to do it now. See if you can tell where she is, and if you can point that little trunk of yours in her direction.”

  Was it smart enough to understand? Could it even detect her?

  This was the most insane idea he’d ever had, even if it fit the facts. If he’d told the Governance they’d never have given him the Ramm. Probably would’ve sent him for a medical check.

  His whole enterprise depended on this mechling. If it couldn’t sense her, he was blind. He’d head for warmer territory and scan for the JI-mech in that case. Though the other recce scouts were also checking ahead of the Swathe for them, there was no sensible reason for that to be their course.

  The creature waved its trunk at the armored glass but to the far right.

  He grinned and let out a whistle. “I’d kiss you but I’m afraid of where that trunk has been. Let’s set a course for that way.” He swung the wheel hard over, flicked on the scanner, and started a zigzag course.

  Problem would come if the JI-mech could also detect him. What it had self-repaired was a big fat unknown.

  For a whole day of sleepless piloting, he found nothing, despite resetting the course several times after checking with the previously purple mechling. His eyelids were actually drooping when the alarm buzzed – bleary-minded as he was, he had to search the dash to find where the scanner was. To the right. There. Big circular bleeping thing, with dots.

  Mako squinted then read off the numbers next to a moving blob.

  He had a hit and it was the right mass and signal for a JI-mech.

  “Got you, Emery.” He whistled through his teeth.

  He’d found her...them. Now he just had to outwit them both and not blow up himself and her when he caught up. The DRAC was as selective at killing as a Swathe ship was at avoiding trees in its path. It was a launch-and-run weapon – a fire it then get as far away from the blast zone as you can sort of weapon.

  The contract he’d signed with the Governance didn’t give him a lot of room to write this scene how he wanted to, but he was going to do it anyway.

  The mechling made a weird, excited noise, and he cocked an eyebrow at it. “Good work, man.”

  “My name is Mammoth,” it stated rather pompously. “Miss Emery gave me the name.”

  “Mammoth? What does that mean?”

  “A very big hairy mammal, she said.”

  The Governance members had warned him this Mammoth thing might be on the verge of sun-madness. If he didn’t need it, he’d stick it in a box and lock it in.

  Except he did need it.

  Best alternative – watch it carefully. Very carefully. And make sure all the guns were out of reach.

  “You’re behaving oddly, Mammoth, so here’s my rule. Touch any knobs or buttons...anything you shouldn’t, and I’ll chop off that trunk of yours. Got that?”

  He’d just threatened a mechling. He really needed sleep.

  “Yes.” It nodded vigorously, its trunk flopping. “I comprehend.”

  Dubious, he decided to add to his rule. “That means levers, buttons, dials, screens, handles too. Wait. And triggers!”

  It repeated the words, tapping the dashboard with each syllable, and finished with a maniacal grin on its mechling face.

  Taken aback, he froze. Definitely going to lock it away when he slept.

  The view through the glass drew him and he forgot his worries about the mechling, or how to apprehend the JI-mech safely, because this was...

  “The Outside.” Mako smiled and leaned back in his creaking seat. Nothing beat this.

  Except maybe chasing after a woman he’d decided was his and having a chance at winning her. If he was still alive after that, he wasn’t ever letting her go.

  He popped a squishy vial of concentrated Factor H, swallowed. Never as good as the fresh stuff. There were rumors of illegal orgies where slaves had it sucked straight from their neck ports. The name for those slaves – blood snacks. If the rumor was correct, they wouldn’t live long. Sepsis would set in. It was a recreation for those who could afford to buy slaves and toss them aside like garbage. Ormrad was said to participate. He was a petty, vengeful, powerful man.

  Something to remember for when he returned. He had a feeling Ormrad was going to be furious he wanted to keep Emery alive.

  Chapter 33

  That first day she’d slept more than been awake. A fever had probably been the cause, according to JI-mech. He’d monitored her and noted her shivering, her flushed face, and decided she was best left to recover. There was nothing resembling antibiotics on this world that Emery knew of. Maybe they could make enormous land ships, suck out blood, but hadn’t conquered modern medicine?

  It was just as likely a slave never saw such things. Though her punishment had involved what she would term torture, she’d never had more than bruises and welts, until the spear.

  In any case, she was recovering. The cockpit of the JI-mech was small and contained little more than a tiny bathroom, her comfy seat that was easily the best bed she’d ever had, and a huge, sweeping green, glass-like console. It was a touchscreen, though with fanciful metal scrolling at the edges and a few levers as well. The view to the outside was a one-eighty-degree slew in a tiered curve, from to left and right as well as overhead. She rarely felt claustrophobic, just awed by the land undulating past as JI-mech negotiated the terrain with a mixture of walking, gallops, and jumps.

  Her main question after waking: If she leaned on the wrong spot on the console, would she do something irreversible?

  JI-mech had laughed. No, the console was very touch specific about who could control it. She could eat off it and do no harm.

  Eating... One of those things that became more of a worry as the days went past. The food she’d brought from the kitchen had been what was nearest at hand and unlikely to rot. Cookies, a few pieces of fruit, a packet of something with nuts in it, like a breakfast cereal, some rock-hard bread, and that was it. The supplies might last a week, if she went hungry.

  On the first day, she’d asked where they were going.

  Away from the ice fields, Emery. Your organic body will do better away from the ice.

  And are there people we can try to be friends with?

  This whole world couldn’t be as violent as the Mekkers.

  I believe so, though all my information is garnered from the ship’s system and what little the mechlings had in their minds. There are Scavs, who are a migrating warrior people, and Grounders or townfolk, who trade with and are more amiable with the Mekkers, and I hope will also be nicer to us. My main concern is that they will think me evil, an aberration. Mechlings are not known to be self-aware. I’m not sure what tech the other peoples of this world possess, currently.

  She’d left the Swathe only to be plunged into another unknown, but this wasn’t news.

  Guilt had surfaced – that she’d done something bad to Mako. This unwanted emotion surprised and vexed her.

  Why she cared about him was not completely a puzzle – he had done right by her at the end, the very end, when if he hadn’t she’d be dead.

  Should that make her debt to him greater? Did she owe him at all?

  Even after she’d decided she hadn’t hurt him more than he’d hurt himself, the guilt lingered. Her betrayal of his disobedience to the owner had sort of been cancelled out by what he had done. When he took her back to House Oren, he’d advertised his rescue of her from the spear.

  So she didn’t owe him.

  The guilt went around and around, only slowly dwindling, like water going down a plughole.

  That she’d brought too few mechlings should have been more of a concern. JI-mech decided he would have to stop regularly, as in once daily, to let his power recharge. That made them v
ulnerable, though she did get to exercise her legs.

  When she’d walked on the ground of Aerthe, for the first time, an old projectile weapon similar in appearance to a rifle was her comfort.

  Today the air was still cold, but after five days of travel, it was much warmer than when they’d begun.

  She stretched to tiptoes, hearing her joints crack, holding the Fryger rifle overhead as if this were a military calisthenics exercise. The weapon was heavy but not horribly so. Rather than smooth, gray steel, the thick double-barreled device had a Swiss cheese appearance and a shiny gold color. The butt end was black. All she needed to know was how to turn it on, that she needn’t panic at the low whine it then made, and how to fire it. The extra buttons on it, she left alone.

  The bliss of stretching after being inside JI-mech for a day was beyond belief. This journey was like a car trip multiplied by ten.

  The ground under her feet was like any old dirt, if cold, and the sparse, grasslike plants looked exactly like grass. No trees had appeared, yet, though JI had said they were close to where they must grow. She shivered, rubbing at her sleeved arms then knelt to pluck some grass blades.

  With her eyes closed, she crushed the grass beneath her nose and the faint lemon scent transported her. It smelled like Earth.

  She stayed for a while, pretending, with her head bowed until finally she had to rise and open her eyes, brushing the grass from her fingers and letting it fall. There was promise here.

  A promise of freedom and more.

  This might’ve been her world if not for the sky, the orange color to some of the dirt, the weird tech like JI, and the slightly weird animals. A herd of some furred cattle bounded across the plain a mile away. Four-legs but they jumped better than any cows ever did, and they were a speckled orange-brown. Good camouflage, she guessed.

  The native people might be orange too.

  Emery ran her finger around and under the black collar on her neck – the one thing left on her that said slave. Maybe some sort of doctor could be found to remove it?

  Her stomach rumbled.

  Anything here I can eat? She’d asked him this a few times.

  You could shoot something?

  Could. If they’d come closer.

  How far does this Fryger gun shoot? That far? She nodded toward the orange cows.

  Not that far. It shoots high-velocity rounds, but not accurate past a hundred yards.

  Not to be dinner today then.

  Time to leave, Emery. Next time we stop, you should practice with it. You might need it, when we find a town.

  Her eyebrows rose. JI worried about the native people more than the animals. Disquieting.

  Have you ever shot anything, Emery? Beast or people?

  No.

  I’m sure it can’t be that hard to do? I have done it, but that was before my brain was damaged. Before I changed also.

  Yes. When the people here were killing each other. War.

  Before he knew what he was or that the world was beautiful...before he discovered laughter. She wondered if he could create art, make poetry or paintings, and she dearly hoped he’d get a chance to find out. The world had better be nice to JI.

  JI didn’t seem to lie but he did sometimes express statistical likelihoods as doubts.

  Stats on how difficult it is to shoot a person, JI?

  She’d started calling him JI. He seemed to like her nickname for him.

  Ohhh. The answer vacillates. Not enough data.

  Just what she thought. How could anyone know what it was like until they did it?

  Hope I don’t have to then.

  Me too.

  Chapter 34

  The town they came to was smaller than anything she’d have called a town, but this wasn’t Earth it was Aerthe. A population of two thousand was possibly a metropolis here. They’d come over the peaks of a crescent of a mountain range and found the town of Widdin below.

  So they’d parked the main mech outside the town and walked in with JI inside the brain of his aux-mech. He could swap brain spaces, though it was cramped, he told her. And he hated leaving his body with his baby aux-mech inside. Neither could communicate with the other past a quarter of a mile, but the aux body was the best choice for in town. Its feet only left dents and cracks in the stone pavement and roads if he walked with too much force.

  They intended to be as incognito as possible.

  Everyone eyed them and gaped as they went past.

  “Not working is it, JI?”

  “No, Emery. It is not.”

  Least they could talk with sounds now. It gave her a headache if they used telepathy, or whatever it was called, too often.

  Vehicles trundled past that reminded her of open cars from the beginning of the automobile age on earth, only with less paint, more bare metal, and the engines purred and clicked rather than roared. Yet carts and horses of a sort were here too – eight-legged horses with white fur and eye-thingies on small stalks.

  “If they have spiders here that size, I am hiding in a cave, JI.”

  “Spiders?” His neck joint made a subtle humm as he turned to look down at her. His square, blue eyes glowed. Having an eight-foot robot peering down at her still gave her a small fit, now and then. The rest of him would make a mechanic grin, she supposed – what with all the gleaming red steel with golden rivets, grilles, and bolts.

  “Never mind. Just something that makes my skin crawl and makes me want to burn down my house.”

  “Burning these people’s houses would make them angry.”

  “Yes, indeed. So let’s not do it.”

  She adjusted the strap of the Fryger rifle where it was slung over her shoulder and pretended being stared at was nothing. Well, it was in a way, after what Mako had done to her. Horrible but true, she couldn’t forget the man, to the extent of thinking of him when she masturbated. Which wasn’t often – living inside a creature made getting aroused a strange thing. That only meant her dirty thoughts went around and around, most days. It wasn’t that she liked him, just that he loomed large, male, and dominant in her erotic dreams.

  Emery sighed and pulled her thoughts out of her pants.

  The plan was to approach the local man or woman who was in charge and discuss staying. With JI backing her up not much could go wrong?

  She stopped at a stall that abutted the pavement. The stall owner’s black eyebrows and moustache were in stark contrast to a totally bald head. The Grounders, who seemed to be most of the townsfolk, were darker-skinned than her and darker haired too.

  Fruit and breads were stacked on his table. Her mouth watered at the smell and her stomach pinched tight, but she had none of the local currency. She was so hungry. The scavenging she’d done, the small creatures she’d shot for food, hadn’t been enough. Half the time her weapon blew the prey into tiny pieces. This is what they had to sort out – how to live in peace, make some sort of income, fit in. If she had to, she could live inside JI, for a time, but he worried the Mekkers would eventually track down his large form. Somehow he would hide himself...another problem to solve.

  “Excuse me, sir, is there some person who heads your town? An official?”

  “Mayor Spine? Yes? That way.” A moment before he’d been staring, like many of the others, but he spoke plainly, as if she and JI were nothing special. He pointed deeper into the town where a low spire reached to the sky. “Is our church and hall.”

  Mayor? Only that was the word in this world’s language, she realized.

  “That building? Thank you.”

  On the way, she noticed more men and women crossing their path who were a different people. Fairer haired, a little more muscular, as if they made their way in the world fighting or trekking across the country, maybe lifting eight-legged horses and hurling them. They wore tailored layers of cloth and fur – coats, high boots, pants, and weapons that ranged from swords, knives, and spears, to pistols and rifles. The latter were closer in exterior finish and flourishes to guns of the flintlock
era on Earth than the modern age. Pretty, she supposed.

  Her Fryger rifle seemed higher tech, less raw, less ornamented. Even if it wasn’t a better gun, she had JI. She edged closer to his side.

  She made a guess. “Are those Scavs, JI?”

  “Yes. They are. We shall avoid them.”

  They reached the church hall – a wide and squarish stone building, which had a wooden star at the pinnacle of the spire.

  “I like that.” She smiled. “If that’s the symbol of their religion. A star is perfect.”

  “I believe that’s the Gorr religion. They believe in many gods who live in the faraway stars. I don’t know the details.”

  “Mmm.” She was still smiling as they made their way through the timber doors and into a foyer. There, a receptionist directed them down a hallway and out through another door into a walled garden. One border of the garden was the building behind them and the other three sides were fence.

  Over the top of the white-painted stone she could see people moving about in the town streets. In the middle of the garden two men kneeled before a small spire topped with a star. Praying outside also seemed a lovely idea. She had a feeling this town would be a good place to stay.

  Until the mayor rose and turned, and his expression hit her like a club. She jolted to a halt, her smile melting. Not friendly dinged on her internal alarm. Not smiling, vigilant, and his mouth seemed cruel with those fat, sneering lips. She assumed this man with a trimmed beard and neat brown-on-brown clothes was the mayor.

  The man beside him was definitely a Scav. Fair-hair dragged across his shoulders. His face was clean of hair and his eyes were dark and burning. They might’ve been black for all she could tell. As he’d stood, he’d picked up a long gun of some sort from the ground, but what was in his other hand drew her more – a pair of leg and wrist irons or manacles.

  At his whistle, double gates yawned open and a band of Scavs trailed in – ten or so.

  The mayor spoke but stepped aside. “These men wish to speak with you, human. Please listen. You have no choice in this, unless death is on your menu.”