Rita’s expression grew solemn, same as it had earlier at her suite.
“Tiana, darlin’, I know Tom hurt you and that he wasn’t worthy of your love, but please don’t let this gut-wrenching, life-challenging experience twist you all up for the rest of your life. When you meet that special someone and the two of you bond, truly, truly join the way men and women were meant to be together since the beginning of time, there is no amount of pain that can ever make you regret the time that you did have together. Tom clearly wasn’t for you, but I’ll bet your life mate is out there somewhere and you will eventually find each other.”
How dare she! Tiana felt anger coursing through her veins, and before she knew it her anger had spilled forth from her mouth.
“Okay, Miss Smarty Pants, Miss Give Me a Jack Daniels Neat, what makes you such an expert on love? If you are so knowledgeable on the subject, then where the hell is your life mate? I haven’t seen you on that rosy garden path. Why aren’t you married?”
A soft, sad, regretful smile shaped the edges of Rita’s mouth as she quietly answered her friend’s question.
“What makes you think we never found each other? We were together for a little while. Life ripped him from me, but I tell you, I wouldn’t trade that time with him for eternity with any other man.”
Ashamed of her tirade, Tiana said, “Rita, I am so sorry. I didn’t know. You never told me.”
Her breath catching, Rita replied, “I didn’t mention it because it pains me to talk about it, but I treasure that man’s love in my heart. A simple brush of his lips across mine and the ground would shake and the stars would fall from the sky. His smile could warm me better than any bottle of whiskey ever could. Tiana, what I shared with him, the one man who was made and predestined exclusively for me, was precious beyond words. Any pain I feel at no longer having him with me pales when compared to the privilege of having known him and rejoiced in our union. The kind of love that I’m talking about is selfless to the point that even altering time for selfish gain is not an option if it means taking happiness away from the one you love.
“You ought to talk to Marcus sometime. He might surprise you and dissipate some of your bitterness.”
Chapter 8
Renewed Pursuit
Several days into the flight, Captain John Maverick was livid. His strong and rugged six-foot-two frame stood straight and imposing. His normally gentle brown eyes focused on his Security Officer with an intense glare that could have breached the hull of a battle cruiser a light year away. Being a kind and fair man, he typically did not let his temper get the best of him, but this was not a typical situation.
He was tired of excuses. The safety of the 1,200 passengers on board and the ship’s crew rested upon his broad shoulders. To make matters worse, they were entering a sector of space that was not fully colonized by the Galactic Alliance. In many ways, the sector resembled the proverbial wild and lawless West of ancient American history. Protecting the people under his care was his job, his sworn duty, and he was not one to take the protection of his wards lightly.
“What do you mean you can’t locate its source?” Maverick demanded as he ran his fingers through his still-full head of thick brown hair lightly dusted with gray. “Someone has been tapping into our central computer, opening up a com link through the galactic-net, mind you, not just a com link, but a secured com link that we can’t intercept, and downloading information, and now we have an intermittent beacon sending out signals that a Chihuahua with a cold could follow and you can’t locate the source of any of it? Commander, maybe I need to offer your job to whoever is responsible for creating havoc with my communications!”
Commander Cathy Hollinger, an Amazon of a woman who could almost look at the captain eye to eye, understood her superior’s concern. She was an attractive woman in her mid-twenties, smart, tough and, having served her career to date under the captain’s tutelage, was fiercely devoted and loyal to her mentor.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, showing signs of a rarely seen nervousness, “but whoever is doing this is covering his or her tracks very well. We don’t know the origin, can’t decipher the message and have yet to identify the method.”
“Listen very carefully. I have a thousand alarms going off in my head, all telling me to be extraordinarily concerned. My gut is screaming at me and I’m listening. I want you to leave this room and do not come back until you know who’s doing this. Run background checks, check the logs on legitimate communications, hell, get dressed as a maid and run manual scans of each individual room and occupant, but find out where these transmissions are originating. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes sir,” she barked, availing herself of the opportunity to leave the bridge.
As his Security Officer headed out the door with a new urgency to discover the source of the strange signals, Captain Maverick, a veteran of the Terrilian war and the recipient of multiple decorations, hoped he hadn’t been too rough on the younger officer. She was one of his best, just like the rest of his officers. They were all one of his best. He had no doubt she would get to the bottom of this. He just hoped it would be before anyone got hurt.
“Captain, we are being hailed by a Galactic Alliance Law Enforcement cruiser,” reported the Communications Officer “They have ordered us to drop out of hyperspace and prepare to receive a Space Marshall, sir.”
“They’re not giving us much room to refuse, are they? My hunch is that this surprise visit is probably related to the strange transmissions. Acknowledge the request and provide them with docking instructions. Helmsman, drop us out of hyperspace. Commander, bring me my sidearm, I don’t like this breach of protocol. As soon as the good Marshall is aboard, I want us back in hyperspace and on course. Let’s attempt to keep to our schedule. I’ll go down to the shuttle bay and receive our new passenger.”
Making his way through the brightly lit, metal decked service corridors, the Captain pondered the puzzle before him. Unauthorized communications were one thing. He could easily envision a paranoid passenger not trusting the ship’s on-board communications system for conversations of a discreet nature. But now, somewhere on board there was a homing device that on a daily basis transmitted a purposely scrambled and cloaked signal. To make it harder to locate, each time, after transmitting for a few minutes, the beacon would shut down. The ship’s itinerary and flight plan were well documented and available for public review, so it made no sense to plant such a device to track the ship itself. It was simply not necessary. The device was targeting the location of one of his passengers. Someone on his ship, either knowingly or unknowingly, was being tracked and reasons for doing so were rarely honorable. Which one of his 1,200 charges was being targeted, he wondered. And, more importantly, why?
As he walked into the shuttle bay, the smell of exhaust and the sound of the giant external bay doors locking shut alerted Captain Maverick that the shuttle bearing his uninvited guest had already docked. Before he could search the faces moving about, a distinguished-looking middle-aged man approached him with an extended hand.
“You must be Captain Maverick. I am Marshall Troy Delaney.”
“Marshall, welcome aboard. Your hail and order to stand down was most unusual. I don’t mean to be short, but what the hell is going on?”
“Please accept my apologies for interrupting your flight, Captain. I would not have done so had it not been deemed necessary. I have reason to believe that an escaped convict is hiding aboard your ship.”
Captain Maverick’s eyebrows rose fractionally. “What are we dealing with, Marshall? How dangerous is this person?”
“Fortunately for all involved, I don’t believe he’s dangerous at all.” Delaney took out a picture of Derek Hart and showed it to the Captain. “He’s a white-collar criminal. Actually, at one point in his life he was a bit of a celebrity amongst the eggheads in the scientific community. Seems he’s some kind of a genius in the field of holography. Probably owns the patents to a good portion of the componen
ts used to design the holographic suites on this ship.
“The guy is loaded, yet it wasn’t enough for him. Seems he programmed a Trojan horse into the higher-end home-use holographic chambers his company was selling. Customers would pay through the nose for one of his chambers, and innocently install them at home. The chamber’s AI would watch the occupants, determining by their actions when they would be gone for a length of time, communicate the fact to him and, having learned the home’s security codes, would unlock it when his cronies showed up to ransack it. Every job, in essence, was an inside job.”
“If he was that smart, why did he bother with petty theft and breaking and entering? Why not something more challenging? I assume he didn’t do it for the money since it sounds like he already had plenty.”
“That’s a good question that was never answered during the trial. Maybe he just wanted to experience power over his customers. Who knows? The point is that he was found guilty and computer crime being what it is these days, he and the moon are going to become very well acquainted during the next twenty years.”
“Marshall, something has been going on that perhaps is related in some way to the search for your escaped convict. Since we left Earth several days ago, my Security Officer has detected several unauthorized transmissions over the galactic-net between our ship and Earth. As you can imagine, that in itself is not so strange. During my tenure as Captain of this vessel, I have encountered such transmissions before and relatively easily traced them back to their source. This time, however, the transmissions are untraceable. Whoever is riding piggyback on the ship’s communications network is cleverly hiding their location. My security people are very, very good, yet they are no closer to finding the source of the signals. In addition, a homing device has been activated and is intermittently issuing its signal. We are currently assuming, or at least hoping, that the two separate anomalies are in some way related.”
“Well, if my man is the one issuing the signals, rest assured you will not find their source. He’s that good. We’ll have to find him directly through more conventional means. He is a master of technology.”
Chapter 9
Vacationing at Sundes II
The twin suns showered their rays upon Tiana’s skin. She had never experienced anything quite as freeing as sunbathing in the nude before. She had simply mentioned to Derek that she had always wanted to vacation on Sundes II, a tropical ocean planet with a smattering of islands where the indigenous population worshipped the planet’s two suns. Next thing she knew, he had written a holographic simulation of the planet for her. She tried explaining to him that even her generous expense account didn’t cover customized programming but he had insisted it would be complimentary. Who was she to argue?
He had done an admirable job. She could feel the cool breeze caressing her sun-warmed breasts. The gentle roar of the waves came and went as they, in typical sporadic fashion, rolled upon the beach. She could even smell the vast ocean’s salt and seaweed.
Tiana slowly opened her eyes. Men and women, all as naked as she was, wandered to and fro along the wide expanse of beach. Looking at the ocean, she watched a familiar figure slowly walking out of the water. With every step, more of his body became exposed to her gaze as it rose out of the water. The pads of muscle over his shoulders and chest were unmistakably Derek’s. Another few steps brought his tight abdomen out of the water for her perusal. Her patience was finally rewarded as another few steps revealed the blackness of his curls followed by his manhood. Tiana watched mesmerized as drops of water made their way down the length of his body flowing in free-form patterns that she imagined tracing with her tongue.
As Derek approached his lounge chair, adjacent to hers, his eyes diverted from the chair and fixed upon her body as the look of a man who had not eaten in days filled his handsome mug. Tiana just watched him looking at her, saying nothing for fear of breaking the spell of the moment.
“Nice outfit,” he finally said.
“Glad you approve, particularly since you wrote the program void of bathing suits,” she retorted tartly.
“I simply wrote the program as true to the planet and its customs as possible,” he defended. “The Sundesians are sunworshippers. They believe that the rays emanating from their two suns carry their gods’ messages to them. For this reason, their laws forbid the covering of their bodies. That way they can be as in tune with their deities’ desires as possible.”
“How convenient. I’ll bet they are a male-dominated society, aren’t they?”
“Quite the opposite. It is their women who govern and legislate most of their laws.”
Typical snotty AI, she thought, thinks it knows everything.
“Cut out the history lessons and pass me the sunscreen nanos,” Tiana told Derek abruptly.
“Sorry, we are on Sundes II. Nanos are not allowed because—”
“No, no, don’t tell me. They interfere with the sun gods’ ability to communicate their will to their people.”
“Right. Now you’re getting the hang of it.” Derek smiled.
Oh no! The smile, she thought. I’m melting, I’m melting. If clothes are going to be outlawed, then that damned smile should be outlawed too.
“Derek, I am a fair-skinned redhead. I don’t tan. I burn and I freckle, but I don’t tan. I need my nanos.”
“No you don’t. What you do need, however, is milk from the cuidian aloe plant. It grows in most tropical climates except for Earth.”
“I am not drinking some plant’s milk. That sounds gross.”
“No, silly girl, you don’t drink it. You apply it to your skin,” Derek corrected her and chuckled. She was such a provincial city girl.
“Oh yeah, well, how am I going to get it on my back, huh? Nanos are way easier. You just need to …”
“No, Tiana, you just need to relax and I’ll apply it to your skin.”
Unconsciously squeezing her legs together, Tiana felt an agonizing twinge between her legs at the thought of Derek’s hands rubbing her body. The memory of what had happened the last time he had massaged her was still fresh in her mind.
“I’m naked, I’m not going to let you rub some gooey plant crap all over me,” she reasoned.
“I’m an AI, it’s not like I am going to enjoy it or anything. My purpose is to see that you are well cared for, and allowing you to burn while in paradise would not be caring for you. Besides, if you don’t like the way it feels you can always stop running the program. You’re not scared of me touching you, are you?”
“Of course not. I don’t know why I’m even discussing this with you. You don’t exist. You are a set of ones and zeros on the chamber’s active memory. You will do the part of my back that I can’t reach.”
“Computer, materialize a bowl of cuidian aloe milk,” Derek ordered.
A bowl containing a thick, white-green substance materialized in Derek’s hand.
Smiling as he bent down to her, Derek handed the bowl to Tiana and warned, “Make sure you don’t get any on your beautiful hair because—”
“I know how to apply lotion to my skin without messing up my hair, I don’t need some stupid computer program to tell me what to do,” she curtly cut him off.
A little self-consciously, Tiana started applying the concoction to her unclothed body as Derek watched.
The stupid hologram is staring at me with a stupid grin on his stupid face.
Quickly rubbing the aloe milk into every square inch of the front of her body, Tiana stopped, quite satisfied with herself.
“If I need you to do my back, I’ll let you know when I flip over later on. In the meantime, please notice Mr. Human Wanna-be, that I didn’t get any on my hair or anywhere other than those parts of my body that actually required it.”
“You rubbed it into your pubic hair,” he stated, as if pleased he’d caught her on a technicality. AI’s were so darn literal.
“Yes, but I meant to do that. That part of my body has never seen the sun and I am not about to bur
n it,” she retorted snottily. Why am I even bothering to explain myself to this thing?
“Well, if you had allowed me to finish what I was saying earlier, I would have explained that aside from protecting the skin from the rays of the sun, the milk from this particular aloe plant disintegrates hair upon contact.”
“Disintegrates hair?” Tiana looked down at her now totally bald pussy. “Shit! You are a dead man!” She jumped out of her lounge chair and swung an angry fist that just missed Derek’s face. “And don’t go making yourself disappear, either, or so help me I’ll delete your sorry ass.”
Derek ran as fast as he could straight for the water and, taking a few steps into it, dove in and disappeared under the surf. Tiana followed just a second or two behind him.
Where the hell is he? I’m going to tear him apart limb by limb, starting with his dick.
She stopped all motion, neck deep in the refreshing ocean water. Tiana listened intently for any sound that would give away Derek’s position. He wasn’t human so he could probably stay underwater as long as he needed to without having to come up for air. Still, she would find him. He had made a fool of her and she would make his electronic body pay. She was mad as a hornet. She was so angry that she couldn’t see straight. She was so … very … horny. The stupid program seemed to have that effect on her. No matter what either one of them ever did, it eventually made her hot for him. Not him, it. It is not real.
“Ungh!” Tiana cried out as she felt a pair of hands reach from behind her and caress her breasts, holding each nipple between a thumb and index finger. The hands simultaneously pulled her back into a rock-hard chest.
“Damn you, Derek,” she half whispered and half cried out. Tiana tried to extricate herself from Derek’s hold, but with each squeeze of her breasts and each pinch of her nipples, a portion of her energy fled her. Her body was too weak to fight. It was as if she was under a magic spell and her muscles refused to obey her.
The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 6
