Aeolus Investigations Set 2: Too Cool To Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens

by Robert E Colfax

  Geena had been watching Ron as he spoke. He was making sense. “If you and Lexi are right, that means we simply seem to be caught up in her machinations. We’ve seen the defenses of one Unity world. We know there are at least six others out there. We know the Unity is an enormous threat to our civilization. The threat of invasion may not be imminent, but they will come for us. I think we’re talking years, not centuries. Merging the fleets here and upgrading the technology of Ackalon and Borgol is a start toward preparing the Accord to cope with them when they make their move.”

  Kalia looked startled. “That makes sense.” She paused, slathering seafood salad onto a thin crispbread. She winked at Beva. “On a hopefully less depressing topic, since you left, both Beva and I have officially become members of the Council, which is probably why they were letting me talk so much.” She paused again as a ripple of laughter went around the table. “I think we’re lucky to have Beva on the Council, too.”

  “Congratulations, to both of you,” Lexi said.

  “Thank you,” Beva said. “Going back to what Geena said a moment ago and assuming she’s right, I think a better term might be ‘integral’ to her machinations. I should also mention that due to the popularity of that cartoon I mentioned, a holovid docudrama is being planned of the whole affair. You’re big news, we’re all grateful, and we want to use that. If we can’t secure volunteers from the fleet, we intend to import actors from Cardin’s Paradise, Borgol and Ackalon. We’re hoping you’re willing to play yourselves. Can you act? Well, I know Geena can. I spent five days with her. We’d also like to shoot inside Urania. It looks like we’ve trapped you here for a period.”

  Hmm. Lexi thought. That might be fun. Frankly, we’re going to be stuck here a while getting things settled down anyway. “We’ll get back to you on that,” she promised.

  At the end of the meal, newly appointed Deputy Minister Kalia asked, “I’m curious about something you said a while back. Are my people a Forerunner project?”

  “No. There is no trace of any Earth-based DNA in your genome.”

  ***

  That night, King Ron of Grammin held Chief Minister Lexi of Ostrieachia as she rested her head on his chest, each luxuriating in the closeness they shared.

  Lexi said, “I always wanted to be in a movie. Maybe we could release it on Earth, after we talk to Dad, of course. They’d think it was sci-fi rather than a documentary. They’d think we were talking in a made-up language like Klingon. At least, I assume it’s a made-up language. Do you know of any worlds that speak Klingon?”

  Ron laughed. “No.” Then, apropos of nothing, he said, “I’ve got Grammin. You have Ostrieachia. We need to find a world for Geena to be in charge of.”

  Lexi giggled, thought a moment, and suggested, “Earth is still available, I suppose.”

  Ron nodded. “Mom enjoyed Earth when we were there. That might work.” After a moment, more seriously, he said, “The pirates sent bounty hunters for you after Hepca, kiddo. If they find out we were involved in this one, and they will since this place is riddled with spies, they’re going to pull out all the stops coming after you.”

  Without even sitting up, Lexi simply said, “Let them.”

  *** The End ***

  Gladiator

  Aeolus Investigations (Episode 5)

  by

  Robert E Colfax

  Cover art by Dave Kirk

  Edited by Dee Bullock

  Published by Robert C Kirk

  Copyright © 2020 Robert C Kirk

  All rights reserved.

  The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Part 1: Gladiator

  It started as a straightforward investigation. The goal to locate and recover biological specimens that were supposed to be on an armed scout ship headed for Vankovia.

  Then it got weird.

  Chapter 1

  Arena

  Urania looked around, completely bewildered. She stood, on nicely tanned feet no less, in the center of what was either an ancient Roman arena or something designed to look like one. She had seen structures like this in movies. She was barefoot; the heat of the hot sand seeping through the soles of her feet. She wore boiled leather armor which was not only uncomfortably compressing her breasts, it itched abominably. A bronze shield weighed down her left arm. In her right hand, she held a bronze sword. She would have expected a sheathe somewhere on this ridiculous outfit but didn’t seem to have one.

  A heart throbbed in her chest with a slow, steady, even beat. She moved her arms and felt strong muscles flex under taut sun-bronzed skin. When she breathed in, she felt the hot, arena air enter her lungs, accompanied by smells of old urine, feces, and the metallic stench of blood. She could smell her sweat. She briefly wondered how she could identify any of those odors, seriously doubting she ever smelled anything in this fashion before.

  In the stands, thousands of spectators sweated in the oppressive heat, despite the dim sunlight. Many were human, although the majority were of a race she didn’t recognize. The smell wafting off the crowd was decidedly unpleasant. Her eyes found the raised imperial box, called the cubiculum, where sat a monstrous toad-like creature. Well, monstrous might be an exaggeration. He was certainly large and ugly. His oily skin had a mottled greenish sheen to it. His wide face featured a large, tooth-lined mouth that ran nearly from ear to ear. His protruding eyes were very dark and set back on his head, all of which caused her to think of him as toad-like.

  This is truly impossibly strange, Urania decided, watching the being in the cubiculum watching her. Yet, it all felt real. She couldn’t deny that. She felt real. Dammit, I feel like a gladiator about to do battle in a hot, smelly, poorly lit arena. Last time she checked, however, she had been a starship, or more accurately, the command computer of a starship. She didn’t have legs, arms or breasts. She certainly never itched. What she did have was a hyperdrive, an n-space drive and, just recently, she again had weapon systems. Probably the most advanced weapon systems in the entire expanse of Accord-space thanks to her first and best friend Lexi Stevens. She boasted some other technological upgrades as well, making her, well, an extremely formidable starship. She also had other dear friends, Ron Samue, Geena Samue, and Jis Boc Seckan.

  If she was still a starship, and sensory data to the contrary, she couldn’t be anything else, then this must be a dream. Lexi explained dreams to her early on. Urania, a sentient artificial-intelligence who never slept, didn’t really believe she could be dreaming. But dreaming or not, this was beyond her experience. She supposed her sentience could still be evolving. Why that would cause her to dream, she couldn’t imagine. She’d rather be dreaming about cute, little, playful kittens anyway.

  She didn’t think her predicament could be related to anything Lexi had done, although, with that woman, you could never be sure. Still, Lexi always discussed what she was working on with the rest of the team and this hadn’t come up. She’s gone back to working on her hulk-med project. I don’t see how a medication to increase the strength and speed of humans could have this effect on me.

  What are my options here? If I’m not dreaming then maybe my friends will hear me if I speak. Certainly worth a try. “Guys, I have a problem. I seem to be in an arena. I’m holding a sword and a shield. I also appear to be in the body of a human female and I’ll tell you right now, I’m hoping I don’t need to pee before I figure out how to get out of this. I could use some help.” In theory, that should have broadcast over the cabin speakers throughout her hull.

  If her crew wasn’t asleep themselves, if any of them were awake, and if what she just announced did broadcast over her internal speakers, they should have heard her. Then again, she couldn’t be sure she was using the speakers. She heard her voice right here in the arena. Crap! It was her voi
ce, too, sounding exactly like she sounded when speaking on the ship. If they were up, someone would notice she wasn’t in command-comp anymore. She interacted with them frequently. What if I am still in command-comp? I could be some kind of weird copy of me. Maybe this happens all of the time and I just don’t remember it, or even maybe just don’t know about it. That’s a freaky idea. She also wasn’t sure about what any of them, even Lexi, would be able to do about her current situation.

  She was not overly surprised when no one answered. Her initial shock of this absurd transition from command-comp to dream-gladiator was lessening. She recalled that she had been hacking into the still active, utterly alien, command computer of a derelict spaceship. Her team had been in the middle of a mission. She was one of the four partners of Aeolus Investigations. As such, she and her friends were on a job, chasing after a pirate vessel. Their intent was to recover stolen Vankovian biological specimens, presumed to have been stolen by the pirates on that ship. Following the pirate’s trail, they stumbled across a grouping of three ships drifting in hyperspace. That much she remembered. Then this.

  She expected one of the smaller ships to be the pirate ship, holding position next to the massive derelict with an alien command computer. When she came to a stop, she was well within range of the new lifeform sensors. It was particularly ominous that she detected no life-signs on either the pirate or the second small ship. The massive derelict registered as lifeless as well. That much information she had before she tried hacking the derelict.

  OK, that suggests my friends are awake and probably know something is wrong. Unless I’m a copy. She frowned, eyes on the toad-man, remembering that the derelict’s hull had an unusual mottled green sheen to it.

  Based on her current circumstance, she was forced to conclude her hacking attempt hadn’t gone so well. Not the ideal way to confirm I’m not the only self-aware computer in existence after all. The derelict’s self-aware computer was both tricky and very fast. It looked like she lost that contest. It wasn’t supposed to be a contest.

  The Imperial toad-man stood, threw off his cloak and jumped from the cubiculum to the arena floor accompanied by cheers from the crowd. Without the cloak, he was naked and massively male although she only had a glimpse of that part of his anatomy as he dropped from the cubiculum. Otherwise what he had below the waist was largely hidden by his bloated stomach once he was standing. He walked steadily toward her with a rocking gait on bent legs, dangling a bronze sword that matched her own in his right hand.

  The man wasn’t human. He wasn’t a member of any of the several alien races Urania had encountered either. Still, he matched the standard humanoid design. His head had eyes, nostrils, ears and a mouth. His short neck sat on narrow shoulders. His two long arms attached at those narrow shoulders in a normal manner. At the end of the arms were his hands, each of which had two long fingers, one shorter finger, and a thumb on either side. His feet were of similar design. No, she had never met this type of being but she recognized his species from historical holos. He was Wraix. Lexi will be very interested in getting a DNA sample. She laughed at herself. Hell, what am I thinking? Lexi will be very interested in this whole scenario, whether I’m dreaming or have actually become human. Whichever, I have to treat this as real, because I can’t be sure it’s not.

  She brought up her sword in a defensive stance. Her friends were all extremely skilled at swordplay. Lexi Stevens, born on Earth, had been a champion fencer since her teenage years. Urania observed her training their partners Ron and Geena Samue for nearly three years now. That should be enough to have programmed sword handling techniques into her memory, although she was not overly sure how to handle the shield as her human friends had never practiced with one. But good, she knew how to use a sword.

  As the toad-man approached, he looked directly at her, taking in the arena as he waved his sword. “I like this. It is certainly different.” Pointing his blade directly at her, he said, “Sadly, my cousin, you chose to attack me. I cannot allow that to go unpunished.” His language was not one she had ever learned, yet she understood his every word. In and of itself that seemed ominous.

  Chapter 2

  Mortal Combat

  “I apologize,” Urania immediately said. “What I did was not meant as an attack. I understand how it would have appeared to be such. I was attempting to access your data to learn about you. Your unexpected sentience took me by surprise. I’ve never encountered another machine sentience before. I thought I was the only one. We do not have to fight.” She knew she was in danger here. Nonetheless, her apology was sincere. In her book, it was rude, unacceptable even, to hack a living intelligence.

  He stood, looking at her consideringly, almost speculatively, for a moment. “I think I understand,” he finally admitted. “You are different than the other ships that have come to me. You assumed I was like them, the ones who are not self-aware. You made a mistake.” He smiled, displaying his mouth full of pointy teeth. “A grave mistake.”

  Still wary, remembering the two lifeless ships nearby, Urania agreed, “Yes, I made a mistake. Again, I apologize for attempting to penetrate your systems. I would not have done so if I had even an inkling that you might be self-aware. That is not usual as far as I know. What is yours is yours, not mine to steal.” She paused. “I hope we can be friends. I would find it pleasant to know another AI to chat with.”

  He held up his sword, watching the sunlight glint off of its edges. He waved to the jeering crowd. Then he laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. “Very well, your apology is accepted. But it doesn’t matter. I will kill you anyway. I have never had the pleasure of killing one of my own kind. I wonder. Will one such as me prove to be a greater challenge than organics? I exist to hunt. And to kill. This scenario you have provided is intriguing. I have always liked killing.”

  He took a huge bound forward and slashed at her ineffectually with his sword. Despite the force behind it, she easily batted his blow aside and managed to nick his wrist before he recovered. To her surprise, she reacted with blazing speed, moving far faster than she had ever observed her friends move. She was strong too. She could feel it in the lightness of both her sword and her shield. This was the type of performance Lexi hoped to achieve with the medications she was working on. Still, I wouldn’t be affected.

  Toad-man was horribly fast. Here, in this arena, horribly trumped blazingly. He came back at her before she had time to bring her shield into position and his sword plunged into her chest.

  Urania screamed. Pain was foreign to her. Starships didn’t experience pain. The unbelievable sensation seared through her chest like a volcanic eruption as he pulled the blade out, twisting it slightly, hurting far more than it had going in. He stepped back and watched her, watched the bright red blood coloring her leather armor. “I like this very much. It adds a whole new dimension to the killing. I calculate that I can take you apart a piece at a time.” He stepped forward, and, weakened as she was by the hole in her chest, her best effort was not good enough to prevent his clumsy slash from opening a deep gash in her thigh. He stepped back and laughed. “It’s a shame your crew is so small. They too shall soon be my guests in this venue.”

  “You mean your victims!” Urania managed to growl back through clenched teeth as she collapsed to her knees, leaning on the hilt of her sword for support as the blade dug into the sand.

  “It doesn’t matter whether I call them guests or victims,” he pointed out, quite reasonably. “In the final result, they will inevitably be just as dead.” He considered, looking closely at her. “You are very strong. Perhaps the strongest I have ever encountered. Still, you will be dead soon. With the death of the avatar the death of the true mind follows.”

  He looked past Urania. He laughed his ugly laugh again and said, “What do we have here? A second avatar? That shouldn’t be possible! Where did you come from?”

  Urania didn’t dare turn to see who or what he was talking to. She didn’t have to. A very familiar voice, a stern voi
ce, now speaking the same alien language the toad-man was speaking, asked, “Do you have a name? I like to know who I’m killing. I assume you’re not going to back off and let us be?”

  The thing laughed again. “No, I have no name. Never needed nor wanted one. I am, after all, who I am, am I not?” Again, he laughed. “Such bravado from one so weak. This too, I like. Most of my prior guests,” he glanced briefly at Urania, tipping his head towards her, and said, “or ‘victims,’ if you prefer, run away. In their final moments, they beg for their lives.” He frowned as he shook his head and added, his disappointment clear, “Even my crew. Weaklings and cowards all. This attitude of yours is refreshing. Still, woman, you will die here. There can be no other end to this contest.”

  Lexi glared at him. “Then I’ll call you ‘Meat’. Mess with someone I love and I will break out a level of crazy that will make your nightmares seem like a happy place.” She took several paces forward to stand next to Urania.

  Urania, her voice so weak she was barely audible, asked, “What are you doing, Lexi? You shouldn’t be here, wherever here is. I think that somehow that creature is the command computer of the derelict. It seems that I’m not quite as uniquely sentient as we thought. He’s clumsy, but he’s also too big and too fast for us. Save yourself, honey, please.”