The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Nikki Sinclaire

  “Darius, I’m crushed. I was convinced that if anyone could, you would find a legal solution to Mr. Hart’s highly unfair situation.”

  “Well, I researched the problem from the angle that you asked me to, and there is very little there to provide any hope. Mr. Hart could pursue an appeal, but all it would do is draw out the process and, after his attempt to escape, he’ll wind up incarcerated while he awaits resolution, so there is not much to be gained from pursuing this option.

  “However, since I am one of the galaxy’s finest legal minds, I pursued other more, shall we say, creative alternatives for handling Mr. Hart’s situation. I can share these with you if you would like.”

  Okay, make me suck up some more and beg you, tin-head.

  “Oh, Darius, I knew I could count on you. Please tell me what you found.”

  “Well, it may not exactly be what you were looking for, but I did find one provision in the newly adopted intergalactic law that might accomplish the desired result, which, as I understand it, is to keep Mr. Hart from going to prison.”

  “As always, you are correct.” All this sweetness is going to make me vomit.

  “Mr. Hart was convicted of grand theft. Intergalactic law considers grand theft a non-violent crime and is not viewed as harshly in other worlds as it is on Earth. To simplify the issue for you, my dear, in most other worlds if your neighbor catches you stealing from him, he would simply kill you, within his rights under the law, or code, as they refer to it, and it would never go to court, whereas on Earth things are viewed a little differently. There are more pressing legal needs in lesser developed frontier planets such as cannibalism, slavery, etcetera, which make better use of their legal systems.”

  “But Darius, how does this help Mr. Hart? He was found guilty and sentenced on Earth.”

  “Well, there is a little-known provision in intergalactic law that allows a convict of a lesser, non-violent crime to be redeemed.”

  “Redeemed? How is that to be done?”

  “You have to find a woman on a planet classified by the Galactic Alliance as a frontier planet and have her agree to wed Mr. Hart.”

  “What!”

  “I can hear you, Ms. Weiss, there is no need for yelling, and you heard me correctly. Life on frontier planets is very tough, so for decades, Class 1 and 2 frontier planets have held to a law that provides for a person to ‘redeem’ a member of the opposite sex who has been convicted of a non-violent crime by marrying them. In the case of Mr. Hart, you would need to have a woman claim that she requires his help in order to survive the grueling rigors of colonizing a frontier planet. She would also need to vouch for him that he would not repeat his crimes. The specific code that I’m referring to is found on Title 251, Part 10, Chapter 43, Section 2 of the Intergalactic Code.”

  “Does this woman have to live on a frontier planet before the marriage?”

  “That is the beauty of it. No, she would not. She would simply have to live within the jurisdiction of one of these planets with her new helpmate, in this case Mr. Hart, after the marriage takes place. If I understand your itinerary correctly, the closest government-classified frontier planets to your current position are Arcadia 10 and Tarsus, where the Magellan Outpost is located.” Darius sounded quite pleased with itself. “Eventually the Alliance will figure out this loophole in the law and remove it, but as of right now, it is an integral part of galactic law. I must say, this is merely one of the many kinks and wrinkles I have discovered in the Intergalactic Code.”

  “What’s to keep Mr. Hart from marrying and then divorcing?”

  “The law does require that the marriage stay in force for a minimum period of two years, after which point it may be terminated.”

  “Darius, you’re a genius. I’m in your debt.”

  “Well, I will debit my fees from your account and we will consider the debt paid in full. Goodbye, Ms. Weiss.”

  Tiana’s head was spinning. She had found a way for Derek to retain his freedom. He just needed someone to marry him and redeem him. He was financially well off, so he could certainly hire a woman to marry him if he chose to.

  What if he hired a prostitute for the job? What if they wound up actually consummating the marriage? Why did these thoughts bother her so?

  For some reason she wasn’t able to think of an acceptable way for Derek to secure a wife. Any way she looked at it, there were dangers involved for him. The wrong kind of woman could blackmail him, threatening not to fulfill the two-year waiting period. He could wind up with another conniving, slime-sucking, belly-crawling, maggot-eating snake in the grass bitch like the one he had been dating prior to being incarcerated. Such an unscrupulous female would likely abuse her position and seduce him. He could wind up having sex with his wife! What’s worse, what if Derek fell for this ‘wife’!

  He had been very kind to her. He was innocent. She owed him her life. It was her moral duty to help him. She knew she would never resort to blackmail, the sex would be great, and besides, it would not be much of an inconvenience. Darius had just said Tarsus, the planet that the Magellan Outpost was on, was a government-classified frontier planet. She was going to be working there for the next two years anyway, so it wasn’t like she would need to change her plans. In addition, her work day would consist of very long hours seven days a week, so they would probably rarely see each other.

  Her mind was made up. She had come up with a reasonable solution to Derek’s dilemma. She would just have to marry him.

  * * * *

  “Woman, are you nuts?” Rita asked Tiana as they shopped their way down the Promenade Deck.

  “Probably.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, of course not.”

  “You are nuts, aren’t you? You’ve known him for less than two weeks and you’re prepared to marry him so he won’t have to go to jail for crimes that as far as you know he might have committed.”

  “Rita, I want to help him like he helped me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was a basket case when I came on board. He took care of me, gave me strength and self-assurance and even though he knew I was willing to sleep with him, he respected me knowing that the timing wasn’t right. He’s a good man. He is not a criminal, I am totally convinced of it. Besides, being married, even if it is a marriage of convenience, will hopefully provide me with an additional barrier from potential suitors, not that I expect there to be many at the outpost. After two years we can then go our separate ways. Oh, look at that cute top …”

  “Don’t change the subject, girlfriend. How many liters of Jack Daniels is it going to take me to get you over him after you go your separate ways?”

  “It’s under control. We are just friends who help each other out.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Asked and answered, girlfriend! All I can do at this— Rita? Where are you going?”

  Tiana watched as Rita, without another word, rapidly walked away from her. She seemed totally focused on something or someone at a shoe store across the Promenade.

  “Rita, hey, Rita! What’s going on? See a good pair of shoes or are you just trying to end our discussion?”

  * * * *

  Rita walked into the small shoe store and looked around the sales floor for the face she had seen out of the corner of her eye. What is that bitch doing here? I thought she was dead. Turning to one of the Sale-Bots she asked, “There was a woman in here just now, she looked to be in her early twenties. She was a brunette, tall, wearing a black T-shirt. Where did she go?”

  “I am sorry, madam, but I did not see anyone fitting that—excuse me, you cannot go in there, that area is off-limits to passengers. Madam?”

  Ignoring the robot, Rita headed for the back room where the merchandise was stored and began searching through it, ripping boxes open, looking in supply cabinets, emptying out closets, and frantically searching any place where a person could possibly hide.

  “Madam, if you do not leave this minute I will be fo
rced to call security,” the Sale-Bot warned from outside, apparently too afraid to follow her into the back room. Guess that along with artificial intelligence comes artificial chickenhood, Rita reasoned.

  Feeling little guilt over what others would perceive as strange behavior on her part, Rita turned to answer the cowardly robot. As she did, she felt a sharp pain in the back of her head. Her legs gave out and she felt herself falling, falling into a deep, dark void of unconsciousness.

  * * * *

  Rita saw what appeared to be a bright light coming at her. She must be dead. A Southern Baptist all her life, she knew that eventually she would meet her maker, and while she had no doubt that the good Lord would let her into Heaven, she also knew he’d be confronting her on some rather questionable behavior.

  I sure hope God is not pissed at me.

  Little by little she opened her eyes. A handsome and distinguished face was staring at her; a familiar handsome and quite distinguished face. A face that sent shivers up and down her spine, set her heart to racing and made her stomach weak. As a matter of fact, her stomach was so weak that she threw up on him.

  Oh, no, I must have gone out drinking and went and got myself dead. To make matters worse, I think I just hurled on God. Oooh, this is not a good start to eternity.

  As she kept trying to open and focus her eyes, Rita recognized the face. It wasn’t God after all.

  “Jonathan, what the hell are you doing in heaven?”

  “You’re not in heaven, Rita.”

  “Oh, shit! You mean I got demoted? I thought me and Jesus had an understandin’?”

  She tried to get up and, as pain shot through her head, she quickly changed her mind and lay back down. Captain Maverick carefully put his arms around Rita to help her gain her balance.

  “Relax. You’re not dead, sweetheart. At least, not yet, anyway. To my everlasting delight, apparently you’re too mean and ornery to die before a ripe old age.”

  “Well, if I’m not dead, what the hell happened to me? Where am I?”

  Rita’s eyes continued trying to focus as she scanned the room and noticed she wasn’t alone with the handsome man who was now busy trying to get himself cleaned up after her little ‘accident.’ Sitting on a couch across from her was Tiana with a very puzzled look written all over her face.

  “Captain, you two know each other?”

  “In the Biblical sense,” Rita answered for him.

  Crap, Tiana is staring at me with a stupid Cheshire cat grin on her face.

  “What are you looking at? Haven’t you ever seen a dying woman before?”

  Tiana just kept smiling and staring.

  Was she making a fool of herself in some way? Perhaps she ought to just shut up.

  “Ms. Andrews and I knew each other a long time ago during the war.”

  “In the Biblical sense,” Rita clarified once more, soliciting a bout of hysterical laughter out of Tiana and a blush out of the rough-and-tough former military man. Confused as to what was going on, Rita decided for a second time that her best course of action might be to shut up.

  “Rita, it’s been fifteen years since I last saw you,” the Captain began. “The Alliance declared you dead. What the hell are you still doing alive, battered, and on my ship?”

  “What, the Alliance got something wrong? Well, glory be,” she responded rather tartly.

  “Well, that explains it. I feel much better now. I guess I’ll have to read the passenger list more carefully from now on. Damn it, woman, I’ve mourned you for fifteen years! What did you think you were doing in that shoe store, anyway? Couldn’t find your shoe size?”

  It was all coming back to her now.

  “Jonathan, I saw her.”

  “Who? The Easter Bunny? Here I always thought he was a boy bunny!”

  “No. I saw Lieutenant Hammonds. That’s who I was chasing. Damn bitch hasn’t aged a day since the war. It’s just not fair, you know.”

  * * * *

  Captain Maverick shouldn’t have been surprised. In fact, he fully expected the Terrilian agent to be on board, but suspecting and knowing were two different things. Now he knew for sure, and the fact added a deeper dimension to the danger his passengers were in.

  “I suspected she might be the one who attempted to kill your buddy here.”

  Tiana grimaced as if she expected Rita to be mad at her. “I haven’t had a chance to fill her in on all the details yet. I was getting to it when she ran off.”

  “Somebody tried to kill you and you didn’t tell me right away?” Rita raised her blond eyebrows, making them nearly disappear into her hair.

  Defensively, Tiana responded, “It’s not like I didn’t have other pressing things to discuss with you first. Besides, what about you? You never told me you were in the military.”

  “You never asked. Besides, I was very young. I must have only been three or four at the very most. In doggie years.”

  Captain Maverick smiled affectionately at Rita and shook his head. “I’d forgotten how stubborn you became when cornered.”

  “What else haven’t you told me about your past?” Tiana pursued, apparently aghast that the Captain knew her best friend better than she did.

  “Ladies, let’s all take a deep breath and relax. Rita, you need some rest. You’re in my office and you’ll be safe here. I’ll post a guard outside. The medic said you’ll be fine as long as you rest, so Ms. Weiss and I will leave you alone so you can take a nap.”

  “I don’t need a stinkin’ nap! Just who do you think you are, telling me …” Rita began, trying to sit up.

  “Rita, while I’m thrilled to have you back from the netherworld I’m also mad enough to throttle you for letting me think you were dead all this time, so it’s either resting here or in the brig!”

  “You know, you used to be a lot nicer.”

  “That was fifteen years ago. Now I’m a grumpy old fart.”

  “You’re not old,” Rita responded, shooting a sexy little smile back at him that he knew would melt him and turn him into a drooling, infatuated idiot if he didn’t immediately leave the room.

  “Would you please just heed my simple request and rest, you dadburn female,” Captain Maverick said as he and Tiana left the room.

  Nodding to the doctor and confirming his order to the guards that no one was to disturb Ms. Andrews, the Captain shut his office door and escorted Tiana, at her request, to the brig to visit Derek.

  Chapter 18

  The Proposal

  Still reeling from the exchange she had just witnessed between the Captain and her dearest friend, Tiana stood in front of Derek’s cell. She could feel the static from the energy field protecting the opening wreak havoc on the small hairs on her arms. If she got too close it would make for a really bad hair day.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi, yourself. As always, you’re a sight for sore eyes, beautiful.”

  If he calls me beautiful one more time I will have to get myself arrested, locked up in the brig naked with him and … ARRRGHHHH! If desire burns calories, I’m sure I just lost ten pounds. Deep breaths, Tiana, deep breaths.

  Tamping down her desire for Derek, Tiana opted for confident camaraderie and told him, “I’ve got sort of good news for you. I heard back from my Legal-Bot.”

  “What did it say?”

  “He said you could file an appeal, but that it probably wouldn’t do you any good. It appears everything was done by the book in your case. Your conviction would more than likely not be overturned.”

  “I thought you said you had good news.”

  “As I was saying before you rudely interrupted me, I said sort of good news. Though the appeal looks bad, he did find a way for you to retain your freedom. In perusing his legal knowledgebase, Darius 20 …”

  “Don’t keep me in suspense,” snapped Derek.

  “You know, I think it’s that darn Y chromosome,” she snapped back.

  “I’m sorry? Y chromosome? Tiana, you are not making any sense.”

&nbs
p; Crossing her arms and cocking her head to one side, Tiana gave Derek her ‘I am now removing your testicles with a cheese grater’ look until he quieted down.

  “I think it is that darn Y chromosome that renders all males genetically unable to wait or listen. Now hush and let me finish.”

  Taking a deep breath, Tiana pondered for a few seconds how to say it, and then just blurted it out.

  “You need to find a single woman residing on a legally classified frontier planet. She needs to marry you and, in return for aiding her in her efforts to forge a life on said planet for two years, your sentence will be commuted. Essentially, in exchange for your freedom, you would be agreeing to voluntary servitude to help in the Galactic Alliance’s efforts to colonize this sector of space.”

  Tiana smiled, quite pleased with herself, as Derek stared at her with a confused expression on his handsome mug.

  “Frontier woman? Marry? Tiana, sweetie, what are you talking about?”

  “Damn Y chromosome! There’s a provision in intergalactic law, which Earth, as I assume you’re well aware of, has recently adopted, that might be of interest to you. If a woman who needs a husband is willing to redeem you, which means she is willing to make herself responsible for you and marry you, then you are allowed to go free so you can help her with the rigors of life on a frontier planet.”

  Tiana gathered up all her courage, and fought back all her insecurities. Okay, here goes nothing.

  “As it happens, with my job transfer, I am considered a registered occupant on the Magellan Outpost, which is classified as a frontier planet by the Galactic Alliance. I would be willing to help you out by redeeming you and marrying you in order to keep you from going to prison.”

  “How long would we need to stay married?” he asked abruptly.

  Tiana immediately regretted having made herself vulnerable. No good deed goes unpunished, she thought. Her heart ached at Derek’s callousness. He was willing to let her help him, but he wanted to make sure he could dump her and move on as quickly as possible. Obviously he didn’t harbor any feelings for her.