by C. Gockel
“Not your fault, Hatchling,” Carl declared. He was standing in the doorway on his back four paw pairs. The rest of his paws were crossed, and his ears were back. His eyes narrowed and his necklace crackled. “It was Isssh’s fault!”
Ran stood up. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Hello, Carl,” said the archbishop.
“Hi, Kenji,” said Carl, walking in his direction. “I just want you to know, I consider you a hatchling, too.”
“I thank you for that,” said Archbishop Sato. “Ran, you may sit down. Carl means me no harm.” The archbishop arched an eyebrow. “Or should I call you Fluffy?”
That was Carl’s name when he used to be Archbishop Kenji’s and Admiral Sato’s pet werfle. Volka smiled ruefully. At last she was “in” on something discussed in the room.
“Whatever makes you happy,” Carl declared. “Isssh, I see you pretending to be asleep on Kenji’s lap! What were you doing, not letting my pet sleep or eat!”
“I can no longer be surprised by anything,” Alaric said under his breath.
Isssh was still out of view, but the werfle’s voice hissed in Volka’s mind. “Is that a collar around your neck?”
Sniffing, Carl grasped the medallion hanging against his chest. “This is a necklace.” He put a paw on Sixty’s chair and gazed up at the android, his whiskers twitching. “Given to me by my other hatchling. How are you doing, Sixty?”
“I keep imagining everyone at this table except Volka and Isssh naked. I really need to reboot.”
Volka’s ears twitched, not insulted, but wondering if she should be insulted.
“How did Volka escape that dubious honor?” James muttered.
“She’s monogamous,” Sixty replied. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass her. So I made myself stop when my processors wanted to go that way.”
Volka’s lips pursed. That was oddly…chivalrous?
“I’m not monogamous?” James rumbled.
“You’re only monogamous by choice,” Sixty snipped.
Meanwhile, Isssh and Carl were having their own conversation.
“You’re coddling them by using the ethernet-to-speech device,” Isssh declared, still invisible beneath the table—and silent to anyone not telepathic, or empathic, or whatever Volka was.
Carl shook three little fists in Isssh’s general direction. “They can’t help being ignorant. I’m not too snooty and uppity to talk at their level like you! Why didn’t you feed Volka and give her a chance to sleep? Why hasn’t Sixty been given a chance to reboot? Being a higher lifeform means taking care of the lesser lifeforms around you. But maybe you aren’t a higher lifeform, Isssh, much as you like to pretend you’re so above everyone—”
A white streak shot out from beneath the table toward Carl Sagan. The two werfles collided and rolled into a spitting, hissing ball of white and golden fur that tumbled right out the door. Volka and everyone else at the table gaped except Alaric. He stood up and closed the door, but even with solid Luddeccean metal between the conference room and the hallway, the howling werfles could still be heard.
“I love it when a man takes charge,” Sixty said, eyes on Alaric.
“Show some respect!” Ran snapped.
“Oh, I am, I will…” Sixty replied, tongue flicking out of his mouth.
Volka’s lips curled up, ready to growl at Sixty. Maybe she did growl because Alaric looked at her with comically wide eyes. Scrunching her eyes shut and slapping her hands over her mouth, Volka mumbled, “Sixty…”
“Nebulas, did I say that aloud?” Sixty asked.
“Yes,” said James, Young, the archbishop, Ran, Trina, and John in perfect unison.
“I need to reboot,” Sixty said, running a hand through his hair. “There are billions of lives at stake and all I can think about is sex.”
Volka couldn’t sense Sixty’s emotions, but she didn’t have to. To lose control of one’s urges—she’d felt that before. She purposefully didn’t look in Alaric’s direction. Leaning around James, Volka tried to put a reassuring hand on Sixty’s arm, but her friend shied away. “Don’t. I’ll probably have a hardware malfunction.”
There was a knock at the door. “Captain, it’s urgent.”
Alaric opened the door, and Carl hopped between his feet, Isssh sulking two hops behind, ears back. An apologetic-looking guard said to Alaric, “They wanted in.”
“Right,” said Alaric, narrowing his eyes on the werfles.
Rising to his hind paws, Carl said, “Volka, you should go to sickbay and have Walker look at you and give you something to eat before you sleep. Sixty, go with her and reboot.”
“Sixty can’t reboot,” James said, his voice flat.
Sixty said snippily, “Let me tell you about the scenario currently looping through my mind, wherein you, Noa, and I finally have our threesome. Noa’s going to be so pleased with me for bringing you home safely—”
“He has to leave,” Archbishop Sato said icily.
“No,” snapped James.
Throwing back his head, eyes closed, Sixty continued, his voice becoming deeper and more languid. “She’ll invite me over to dinner, as the two of you have been known to do. ‘Sixty,’ she’ll say, giving me a deep embrace that lingers longer than normal, her body, though fully clothed, pressing—”
“Leave, Sixty,” said James. Sixty hopped out of his chair as though he’d been released from a chain.
“Go with him, Volka,” said Carl gently. “You’re tired.”
Volka opened her mouth to argue and yawned instead.
Carl put a paw on her leg. “You won’t be harmed by the captain’s men. Captain Darmadi has a reputation for not suffering fools or insubordination. And Sixty will keep his mitts off you as well.”
Volka’s lips parted, about to protest angrily that she knew the last, but then she noticed that Carl’s nose was pointed in Alaric’s direction. Alaric was focused on the group at the table, his face as unreadable as James’s, but at the werfle’s words, his shoulders relaxed as though a weight had fallen from them. Alaric wasn’t looking at her, but she knew he felt for her. A lot.
She got up. The door had just opened when James said, “Sixty, you cannot reboot.”
Sixty’s head went back as though it had been hit and then his tic came back. “Fine,” he said, stepping into the hallway, his head still jerking to the side…she’d seen it do that before, but her head was too foggy to remember where.
6T9 needed to reboot, but James had told him not to. James had been captured by Luddecceans before and wanted 6T9 to be ready to upload at a millisecond notice. 6T9 wouldn’t think it illogical, except Carl was here, and Carl would know if the Luddecceans were considering some sort of sabotage.
So he’d accompanied Volka to sickbay and Walker, then used his three minutes of allowed shower time, and was now back in the sickbay, leaning against a wall in the small, cramped space, staring at the gap between a curtain and the floor at Volka’s bare feet. Her suit had been ported away for cleaning, and Walker was giving her a final once over behind the screen. Volka didn’t have perfect feet, the kind that people had augmentation to achieve—her toes went straight across, so the tips of her smallest toe and her big toe were almost in line. It was, his Q-comm helpfully informed him, a characteristic of people descended from the Picts, and was still common in Wales, and maybe in weere. Her feet were, relative to everyone else aboard, tiny feet with tiny toes, and the nails of her toes were nearly black, with gray moons toward the cuticles. 6T9 didn’t have any fetishes—his job was to accommodate fetishes—but he wanted to suck them, and from there…
He jerked his head away. He couldn’t stop thinking about sex. This sometimes happened when he hadn’t rebooted in a while and his primary programming started to interfere with the higher logic functions of his Q-comm processor. The desire was so incessant at this point, it was annoying to him. But he was physically unable to reboot. James had ordered him not to, and 6T9’s core programming had James identified as a human b
efore he had his Q-comm. 6T9 couldn’t deny a human in distress, even though his Q-comm told him James was being an idiot.
Crossing his arms, he looked away and saw Lang and Isaacs. The two researchers from Time Gate 33 were off in the corner of the sickbay. Dr. Lang was asleep on a bed, and Isaacs was sleeping next to her on a chair. A medical assistant went over and checked a screen showing Lang’s vitals. 6T9 caught his eye and winked. The young human’s face went red, and his lips turned up in disgust.
Q-comm sparking hot enough to cut through his original processes, 6T9 began rubbing the offending eye as though he had something in it. He needed a distraction.
To the ship’s doctor, a man with gray hair at his temples and eyeglasses who appeared to be in his late thirties—and considering this was a Luddeccean vessel, probably was—6T9 said, “Are you sure I can’t help?” The doctor and medical assistants were running around like mad. Some men had received burns working on the “outriggers” and the “nets.” The doctor shook his head. “They’d accept help from you after they accepted help from your cyborg doctor, and they won’t accept help from her.” He huffed. “I wish I could take you up on the offer.”
6T9’s eyes shot right back to Volka’s toes. The doctor paused, followed his eyes, and called out, “Jacobi, get the weere girl some clothes from supply!” And then he muttered under his breath, “Can’t have the captain’s weere running around naked.”
Volka’s ears were quite sensitive. She’d probably heard that. Her toes curled, and 6T9 tilted his head. Dr. Walker was speaking in almost a whisper, but 6T9 heard her say, “When was the start of your last cycle?” and Volka’s even more hushed, “About fourteen Earth months ago.”
“You’re taking some sort of hormones to suppress it. Do you need refills or—?”
“No, it’s just, I’m weere...we don’t,” Volka replied. “Just once a year.”
6T9 blinked, and behind the curtain, Walker said what he was thinking. “That isn’t in my databanks.”
Once a year—that was every twelve months. Other implications to Volka’s statement sparked in 6T9’s processor. He pulled away from the wall and took a step toward the curtain.
“I’m not pregnant,” Volka said, her voice steadier. “You don’t have to worry about that. It’s just sometimes, under stress, we skip a season.”
That answered the spark in his consciousness and his processors went dark. He fell back against the wall, barely listening to what Walker said next. He trained his eyes on a spot on the floor, and then Walker threw the curtain back, and there was Volka wearing only a hospital shift with a single tie on the side.
He would never untie that tiny little bow, but his mind couldn’t help imagining such contingencies. Just a quick pull, and the enormous gown would slip from her shoulders and pool beside her dark toenails. “Sixty, are you all right?” Volka asked.
He lifted his head, his mouth dropped open, but he was afraid to speak. All the answers in his head were laced with innuendo. And why did he care? He was what he was; he shouldn’t have to apologize for it because it might make her uncomfortable.
Before he could formulate an answer to Volka’s or his own question, the Luddeccean doctor was back, standing between them. “You can’t be walking about the halls like that! The captain would have my hide.” Putting a hand on Volka’s shoulder, he peered around the sickbay. “Where is Jacobi? I asked him to get you some clothing from the quartermaster.” He huffed. “Would you like a shower? A bath?”
“Warships have bathtubs?” Volka asked, eyes getting wide.
The doctor’s voice turned wry. “They do when they have a century-old archbishop aboard with aching joints.”
“Oh,” Volka said. “I would like that, but—” Her yellow eyes that were too dilated for the light level, or rather, more dilated than a human’s eyes would be, met 6T9’s. “Are you really all right, Sixty? I know you needed to reboot...” Her lips parted. He’d seen those lips suck the raw meat off a rat bone. “...And you seem...not yourself.”
That is why he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. It wasn’t just that she would charge onto a ship full of pirates to save his buggy, malfunctioning hardware—James would, too. But she cared for more than his hardware. She cared for his comfort.
He took a deep breath, shut down the offers, come-ons, and innuendos that wanted to come out of his mouth, and replied, “I’ll be fine. Go ahead.”
There was a little crease between her brows, but she nodded, and let the doctor lead her to a door at the other side of the cramped room.
Walker approached him, one eyebrow arched. “Hardware issues?”
6T9 arched an eyebrow of his own, lifted his chin, and smirked. “None of my hardware has issues,” he said, even though it did. It was just a pre-programmed line.
Walker rubbed her eyes. “I have ‘software’ issues.”
6T9’s medical functioning, a function he’d had long before his Q-comm, took over. “Having trouble with your augments?”
She tapped her temple. “Biological software issues. I have trouble sleeping, but don’t want to take the drugs they have here. All of them would leave me groggy. I’ve got nanos to flush my mind, but sleep is better. Especially when I have a feeling I’ll be needed here again soon.” She frowned, and her eyes became unfocused. “I have trouble relaxing.”
“I have functions that can help you relax,” 6T9 said, his core programming taking over again.
She looked at him with tired eyes and smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Every circuit that was not his Q-comm fired, and his synth skin heated. Medicinal sex! He could fulfill two of his primary functions at once.
“Miss Volka? Miss Volka?”
Volka sat upright, cooling bathwater sloshing around her, a dream of Sundancer, hidden in shadow, longing for the sun, dark in her mind, and tears barely held back in her eyes.
“Miss Volka?” said a man, followed by pounding. More hopefully, the man said, “I have clothing for you.”
Twice she’d fallen asleep at inopportune times. Flustered, Volka swallowed the painful dream of her friend, stood, wrapped a towel around herself, took the single step to the door in the tight space, and realized she had a predicament. “Is there a way to open the door just a crack?” she asked.
“Ah…well…ah…yes. Just a minute,” the man stammered. The door slid open a fraction, and a man in a medical assistant uniform pushed a cloth bundle into the bathing room. He had his eyes scrunched shut so tight it looked painful.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the garments from his hand.
His eyes shut tighter and he flushed. “Yes, ma’am. You’re welcome.”
The door slid shut, and on the other side, he said, “I’m sorry, it’s only refugee clothing. We, ah, don’t usually have, ah…ladies…aboard.”
Ma’am? Lady? Luddecceans did not usually call weere women by either title. So, this is what it felt like to be a human’s weere? Being one’s own weere wasn’t enough to bring respect, she thought bitterly.
Volka opened the bundle. There was a simple knit dress of heavy-weight Luddeccean silk. Luddeccean women, even in the sparsely colonized larger asteroids and moons, were expected to be either pregnant or nursing, and the cut reflected that and Luddeccean modesty. It had long sleeves and a hem that would go to Volka’s calves. There was an empire waist with a belt that could be tied above a wide belly. It was high necked, but there was a teardrop opening plunging to mid-chest held closed beneath the chin with a single button that could be released for easy nursing. Volka bit her lip. It was actually nicer than anything she’d been allowed to wear as a maid to Alaric’s uncle. Domestic weere were only allowed to wear simple tunics and baggy pants so as not to stir human lusts. She huffed. As though it were that simple.
She slipped on the simple underclothes that came with the bundle, the dress, a pair of little slippers, and Bracelet, the only thing she’d worn beneath her suit. “Bracelet,” she whispered. “Would you please
tell me the time?”
“It is now 11:37 Earth GST,” Bracelet replied.
“Nebulas,” Volka whispered. She’d been out in the bathtub for over an hour. Smoothing out the dress, she headed out into the sickbay. There were more Luddecceans there, and Volka smelled burned flesh and clothing. The doctor was busy with a Guardsman, but came over to her and said, “You’ve been given a berth with the other women in your party. Berth 3, in the officers’ wing, on the third deck adjacent to the bridge.” To an unburned Guardsman who was helping a grimacing comrade down onto a bed, he said, “You there, take her there!”
“Yes, sir,” said the Guardsman.
The injured man was moaning. There were obviously not enough medical assistants in the sickbay, and Volka tried to protest. “No, it’s really—”
“Nonsense,” said the doctor. “Huang, get her out of here.”
Huang gave a last worried look at his friend, and then said, “This way,” while walking stiffly past Volka.
She followed, but as soon as they got to the third deck and she saw the numbers on the doors, she said, “I can read numbers. Please go back to your friend.”
The man didn’t argue. He just turned around and stepped briskly back down the stairs.
The officers’ wing looked like every other corridor on the ship, except that the doors running along the side were closer together. Volka found the door labeled Berth 3 and pressed the button beside it. The door slid open. The first thing she saw was the packet that contained Eliza’s ashes lying on top of a pile of what looked like medical tape and clothes. She smelled Walker, sex and…her eyes slid to the left, and the middle bed in a stack of beds three high. Lying there was Sixty. He was naked, and over his chest and just below his waist were long, metal tentacles. Her mouth dropped open. A robotic pentapus! She’d read about the man-eating alien-monsters in her paperbacks.
Eyes meeting hers, Sixty gently put a finger to his lips.
