by C. T. Phipps
“Does that shock you?” Isla asked, making the understatement of the year.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry to say it does.”
Taking another swig of vodka was tempting right now but, for the first time in a long time, I wanted to be sober.
“What do you think of me now?” Isla said, staring up at me. Her almond-shaped eyes were abnormally large, blue, and expression-filled. I couldn’t help but liken them to a doll’s now and realized she’d probably been crafted that way.
Shaking that thought from my head, I concentrated on how I was going to answer. “My father believed bioroids were abominations against God and Lucifer. I believe their creation is also vile—because it is done as something to deprive sentients of their inherent right to freedom.”
I hoped that would come off as suitably sympathetic. The truth was I didn’t have enough friends, one or two at the most, which was more than I’d had the majority of my travels these past few years, to start being picky about the ones I had. Isla being created in a lab for sale on the market didn’t make her less of a person or, if it did, it was less of a reason than the hundreds of other ways people were made less in the Spiral. Which made me a machine rights abolitionist now, I supposed. Also a robosexual.
Isla was less than impressed with my statement of solidarity, though. “So, you think it’s awful I exist because I was made to be a slave.”
Whoops.
“Would it be better to know I’d never given any thought to the subject until today?” I asked, frowning.
“Not really.”
“Sorry.”
Isla gave a half-hearted chuckle. “The fact you consider me a person now is enough.”
“You don’t think the rest of the crew would abide you?”
“No.”
“How many others know?”
Isla looked down. “A few. Clarice, the captain, William—”
“William hates bioroids.” The Melampus’ first officer routinely complained about their existence.
“He wasn’t pleased when he found out. He hasn’t betrayed me, though. I suspect he was sorely tempted when Clarice left him to be with me, though.”
I blinked, wondering how I’d missed that. Oh, right, drugs and alcohol. “Yeah, I imagine that would be the case. So, you’ve been on the run for, what, nine years now?”
I, honestly, wasn’t sure how to react to all this. I’d had no inclination Isla was anything other than a human woman, and while I believed bioroids were sentient enough to qualify as people, almost all of the ones I’d encountered acted like not-quite-three-dimensional fictional characters. They behaved in shallow, blandly pleasant ways that grated after a while. It only occurred to me as I thought about it that they were programmed to act like that and a free bioroid would have no reason to do so.
I thought about the tens of thousands of bioroids that existed in the background of my past and their various uses in all levels of society—especially with the destruction of Crius and the liberation of Sector 7. Thinking of them as people left me feeling sick as I recalled how they were casually passed around or resold as toys. The oldest models were frequently chopped up for parts so low-income families could have access to replacement organs, while the bioroids’ programming prevented them from doing anything about it. Hell, that was one of the reasons why they weren’t considered people. People would fight back, wouldn’t they?
“Yeah.” Isla sat down on the side of my bed. “I was commissioned twelve years ago as a pleasure unit by House Plantagenet for their son Octavian.”
I blinked, processing that. I knew Octavian, was distant cousins with him actually, though that wasn’t saying much since every single Ruling House member was a blood descendant of Prophet Allenway. My half-siblings were much closer relations and it sickened me to know they shared a substantial portion of their DNA with him.
“Most nobles avoid bioroid units for…that. Men and women compete in pageants and have agents for the honor of becoming a noble’s concubine.”
Isla’s expression was unreadable. “Yes, the poverty and sickness for non-nobles means it’s almost a dream come true for most, especially since most contracts mean a stipend for their families.”
I grimaced, remembering Judith chastising me about similar privileged views of the world. She’d grown up in the poverty-stricken ghettos of Lucifer City on the moon of Lilith. The stories there, and what was done to girls and boys, were only slightly less loathsome than what she said here. “Are the scars from Octavian?”
“Yes,” Isla said. “Octavian had tastes which were violent and perverse. Ones which he would never do to a real person, but he very much enjoyed indulging on us. He had a particular love of fire.”
I tried to think back to Octavian and remembered the gaggle of beautiful women of all shapes, sizes, and colors that hung around him. They had worn high dresses, which concealed all but their faces. I’d never given it much thought and the only time he’d suffered any controversy was when one had looked like a child and he’d been investigated. I now realized why they’d found him innocent of all charges.
God above and below.
Isla rubbed across her face. “I remember when I was marked like this and he decided the cost of replacing me was less than what it would take to have my face repaired without drawing undo questions.” Isla gave a bitter laugh. “Not that he was worried it would be a problem he was abusing bioroids. He was worried he’d become a joke if people found out about his sleeping with machines. I do believe you nobles find that perverse.”
Isla had guessed I was nobility. “Crius’ nobility thought a lot of stupid things. What happened?”
“It’s the nature of bioroid A.I. to grow and change unless it’s regularly purged. We’re designed to mimic humans after all. So, it wasn’t much of a struggle to decide I wanted to live. Even then, I had to struggle with my desire to obey him even unto death. Thankfully, looking like an abused beautiful human has its advantages. One of his guards smuggled me away to sympathizers in the Lighthouse. They couldn’t remove my hardwired programming, but they could weaken the strictures and give me a new set of abilities. I asked to be a doctor.”
“You’re a good one,” I said.
“Thank you, but it’s not true. You can download facts into a cybernetic brain, as I’m sure you’re well aware, but skills are another matter. I’ve had to develop those by hand. I also learned how to paint.”
I enjoyed her landscapes and expressionist works. She’d shown me those a month ago. Not quite professional quality but excellent for amateur work. Not that she’d appreciated the constructive criticism.
“What happened to the other bioroids?” I asked.
“Octavian killed some of them and the rest were with him when the war destroyed Crius. I imagine they’re all gone now.”
I closed my eyes. “Probably.”
“Are you willing to tell me who you are now?”
I hesitated before answering. “I am a Crius-born noble. I’m also a clone and a cyborg. All three of which would make me a second-class citizen in the Commonwealth. I was born for the purposes of being a vessel for my father’s will in the new world. I was a way of showing his superiority to the next generation and denying his ex-wife’s children their inheritance. I remember when my father found me playing with Thomas, when we were four years old, only for him to slap me. I existed for the purposes of destroying Thomas and my sister Zoe, in his mind. Their mother felt similarly about me and taught her children to despise me. When we met again in the academy, I was treated as a creature who threatened their very lives. We eventually reconciled, but it was difficult.”
“Thomas and Zoe Plantagenet? Octavian’s cousins?” Isla now had enough information to put together my identity.
Dammit.
Still, how could I hide my identity after her confession? I could destroy her with what she’d shared with me. Judith would have called me a fool, but this was perhaps the first honest moment I’d had since abandoning
the Crius Reborn movement.
I closed my eyes. “Yes. The tree of Crius’ nobility has many branches, but they all extend from the same trunk.”
“Then you’re—”
“You can leave if you need to.” I looked away.
“The Butcher of Kolthas.” Isla took a deep breath. “I hadn’t actually believed it.”
“Kolthas was a viable military target. It was a choice between detonating the reactor core of the station and attempting to take it by force.” I did a double take, noticing her choice of words. “Wait, what?”
“The captain suspects you’re the Fire Count. Clarice said they should arrest you and drag you to holding until they could verify your identity. I said you weren’t a threat. That you were a good person.”
I stared at her. We were light years away from our next port of call and there was nowhere to run. I was trapped here unless I wanted to try to seize control of the ship or force it from jumpspace. The latter was a possibility since the three starfighters on board had jumpdrives, but I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to spill the blood of the crew to do it. I had been here too long.
I slumped my head in defeat. “Well, I guess you were wrong then.”
There was no way the captain and Clarice wouldn’t turn me into the authorities. Not only was there a substantial reward for my capture, enough to convince most spacers to turn on their own mothers, but I was a criminal. For the first six months after Crius’ destruction, I’d tried to drink myself into oblivion. For the year after it, I’d tried to kill every single Commonwealth soldier or collaborator I could with Judith’s name on my lips.
I’d wanted to die in both cases, but I’d managed to live and that had just led to wandering around the underworld. I’d smuggled, stolen, scavenged, and worse, to survive until I’d come to live on the Melampus. Even on a ship full of people who wanted to lose themselves, they would have thought I was a monster.
Isla asked me a question I couldn’t answer. “Why did you fight for Crius so hard? Didn’t you know the war was over?”
“My world had burned, my wife was dead, my siblings were missing, and it seemed our leaders had stabbed us in the back. Fighting seemed like the best solution because it was something I knew.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No.”
Hundreds more dead.
For no damn good reason.
“Why did you stop?” Isla asked.
“Pardon?”
“There’s still Crius Reborn movements out there. Hell, they’ve grown bigger and bolder every year.”
“Yeah, attacks on artists and spaceports. Killing whole swaths of helpless civilians enough to terrify the Commonwealth into submission.”
“See? You don’t want to kill the innocent. That makes you good.”
It made me wonder if Isla was trying to convince herself she wasn’t sleeping with a monster.
“I didn’t stop because of what we were doing to me. I already thought I was damned and the only way I could make myself feel better was making others hurt as much as I did. I could have killed the entirety of the Commonwealth’s citizens. I only left the Crius Reborn because the movement started recruiting children.”
“Children?”
I walked to my decanter, opened it, and took another swig. “The sons and daughters of soldiers killed in the war. Those born of families who weren’t able to feed their offspring with the shortages following the war. People easily manipulated by the promise of glory and being remembered forever as a hero, giving their lives for the older soldiers’ vengeance. After a fourteen-year-old was shot after firing into a crowd, I killed the woman who ordered it and called the local Commonwealth militia down on my cell with an anonymous tip. I suspect if any of my former comrades survived, they’d consider me as much an enemy as the Commonwealth.”
“I doubt it. The Fire Count is still a symbol of Old Crius.”
I looked away. “Not because of anything I’ve done. All I’ve ever done is kill people. Extremely well.”
“It’s all right, it’s all right. I’m never going to turn against you.”
I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a kiss on the lips. “It’s not you I’m worried about.”
“Clarice and the captain won’t betray you.”
I surprised myself by not caring. “Why not? I’ve betrayed them.”
I was friends with Clarice, lovers in a casual way, more akin to the manner I’d intended my relationship with Isla to go. Sex wasn’t a big deal in the Commonwealth where everyone was expected to have it anytime they wanted with none of the romantic entanglements other human colonies possessed. Still, I liked her, and she liked me. But this wasn’t the sort of thing our friendship could survive.
As for the Captain? Well, she was a riddle wrapped in an enigma. She was a positively ancient spacer who didn’t seem to care about profit, bonuses, or even cargo except for how it affected the crew. Ida frequently diverted the ship on side-trips and recruited some of the quirkiest individuals I’d ever met. She had an eye for people with talent but crippling personality defects. I’d also seen her flush a man out of an airlock for stepping out of line. I didn’t expect to be treated any differently.
“When should I expect them to pay a visit?” I asked, honestly surprised they hadn’t busted down my door as soon as they’d discovered my identity.
“Clarice said in the morning.” Isla had kept this to herself the entire time.
“I see.”
“You should finish getting dressed.”
I did, unsure how to react to this. It felt like I was getting ready for an execution, but the fact was, this wasn’t the way it should have been handled. Even if they weren’t trying to spook me, they wouldn’t be so polite about it. Getting dressed in a red jumpsuit, I was putting on my socks and shoes when there was a rapping on the door.
That was when I heard Clarice’s voice. “Cassius Mass, the captain wants to speak with you.”
“Trust them,” Isla said, wearing the plain synth-cotton dress and shirt with kittens on it she’d been wearing the night before.
I didn’t look at her.
Chapter Four
“Cassius,” Isla said.
I got up and looked at her, unsure how to respond to the fact she’d kept it secret they’d figured me out. In the end, I decided not to end it in anger.
Instead, I took her in an embrace.
I held her against my body for a long time, savoring the scent of her hair and the feel of her body against my skin. Even if she’d been designed for the purposes of seduction, to be pleasing to the eye as well as touch, I didn’t care. She was a woman and one of the few bits of humanity I had experienced since I’d lost myself.
The knocking continued from across the door. “Cassius, don’t make me come in there.”
I pulled away. “I’m coming.”
Isla looked at me. “Don’t get killed.”
“That really depends on them, doesn’t it?” I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been Isla’s reports which had betrayed me to the captain.
Probably.
I headed to the doorway and stood in front of Isla to protect her modesty (such as it was). The door slid open and revealed the form of Security Chief Clarice O’Harra.
Clarice O’Harra was a woman of mixed Commonwealther and Shogun ancestry, her hair having been spliced to be a natural red despite the latter. She was tall, almost as tall as me, with a statuesque form designed more for combat than attractiveness. Still, I’d always felt there was some feeling toward me other than disdain and had been invited to her quarters once or twice.
There was none of that now.
Only cold-blooded professionalism.
Today, Clarice was dressed in a blue form-fitted grav-suit, which served as protective armor against fusion-blasts and most projectile-based weapons. It didn’t have a Crius personal barrier but those were almost unknown outside of this Sector. She was also carrying a heavy fusion-rifle that was drastic overkill f
or the situation but had an appropriate intimidation effect. The side of the gun read “I kiss my mother, I kill criminals.” It was the unofficial motto of the Star Sector 7 Patrol.
“I see you know my name now,” I said, looking into her violet-shaded eyes. “I’m sorry it came out like this.”
Clarice gave a dismissive shrug. “Personally, I don’t care if you’re a Nazi, Cassius. I don’t like being lied to, though, especially when it’s my job to find out dangers to the crew. Which you are, officially, as a fugitive from Commonwealth justice.”
She still talked like a cop. I didn’t know the exact circumstances of why she’d been driven from the Sector Patrol but everyone on board had their secrets. It just so happened mine were more severe than most.
“What’s a Nazi?” I blinked, confused.
Clarice rolled her eyes, then gestured with her rifle for me to march forward. She looked behind me as I stepped out into the third story of the cargo bay. Her eyes lingered on Isla, but I wasn’t sure what she was thinking other than the fact that everyone’s eyes tended to linger on Isla.
Clarice opened her mouth then shut it. “Do I need the rifle?”
“No,” I said.
Clarice surprised me by putting it away, the end of the weapon attaching itself to the magnetic holster. “Good.”
The cargo bay of the Melampus was an impressive sight, at least to those who knew anything about independent shipping. The interior of the star galleon’s top cargo bay was a three-story open-air chamber designed to carry millions of deadweight tons, but the captain had sacrificed some of that to carry three modified, decommissioned Crosshair starfighters. All three were held at the top of the chamber by metal claws in their collapsed position with a magnetic railway to deploy them should the ship ever get intercepted by pirates or local partisans.
Technically, arming cargo ships like this was illegal in most civilized portions of the galaxy but laws were a little more relaxed in what was now considered to be the Frontier of the Commonwealth. Captain Claire had once shown me the documentation that listed the starships as museum pieces and collectibles, which were legal as long as they were never powered up or fueled for combat in Commonwealth territory. Since the star lanes were always interstellar territory, even if patrolled by the Commonwealth, she could use them all she wanted out in the darkness of space.
