by Marie Dry
Did he really think they’d let her walk around the spaceship asking questions? She clutched her arms around her middle. Oh God, she was going to be taken to the aliens on their spaceship. Dread paralyzed her and stole her senses. She tried to speak, to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. “Do you think they’d let me close enough to one of them to inject?”
“He will if you seduce him.”
“And, of course, I would be the person for the job.” She didn’t care that her voice dripped bitterness. “How do I report my findings to you? I doubt he’d just let me come home to talk to you every now and then.” It was more likely that she’d be dead the moment she passed on any information she managed to get her hands on. She suppressed a shudder.
“I told him I would only hand you over if I can talk to you every week.”
“And he agreed to that?”
“Yes.”
Aurora could see the same suspicion, that she felt at the tinner’s agreement, on the president’s face.
“During a visit last month to the hearing-impaired school in upstate New York, you used sign language.”
“You want to communicate with sign language during those once a week calls?” It sounded like a plan that could get her killed or tortured. “The aliens are clever enough to build spaceships and travel to Earth from who knows how many miles away. Sign language won’t fool them.” She shook her head. “They won’t fall for it.”
“We do not have a choice. My first lesson starts tomorrow. Be very careful, just chat normally a few times before you start reporting. Let them relax their vigilance, start to trust you.” The president smiled, a grim satisfied smile, his campaign smile. “We may yet prevail.”
If he thought that smile reassured her, he was very much mistaken. She’d dealt with politicians in her duties as grand master of the Phoenix Foundation. No, he didn’t fool her at all. At this stage, he’d sacrifice his own mother if it meant finding a weapon against the tinners.
“How soon do I need to go?”
“He’s coming for you in the next few minutes.”
Aurora stood and started for the door, her legs trying to take her to safety. Again, that roaring in her ears deafened her. She clenched her trembling hands into tight fists and forced back the urge to flee. She turned around on trembling legs and faced the pity in the president’s eyes. Coming from the man willing to sacrifice her, she didn’t appreciate it. At all. “I have to let my assistant know.”
“Already done.”
She couldn’t do this.
Aurora took several deep breaths and returned to her chair, trying not to look as if her shaking knees would give way under her at any moment.
She had to do this.
CHAPTER 2
Balthazar stood on the observation deck of the Rising Sun. The Tunrians had called the ship 7XXX54m, but after he and his cyborgs stole it, he’d named it. He traced the outline of the number embedded in his temple under his skin. The Tunrians never named their machines. But although they might not have named him, either, he was not a machine.
A slight buzzing in his veins signaled that his palm-sized ryhov--what the humans called a tattoo--was moving to cover his chest. Why did the Tunrians’ God’s gift him with the remnants of ryhov? He bared his teeth at his reflection. His ryhov might be small and without blue, but it had horrified the Tunrians that their machine, their slave, had one. None of the other cyborgs had ryhov. It had saved them from slaughter.
Far below him, the human planet sparkled blue, like a giant soul. He held out his cupped hands until it appeared as if he held the planet in his palms. Earth, rich in water and minerals, inhabited by a race called humans. They may not have ryhov, but the Humans had strict laws against the creation of cyborgs or any form of artificial life. Their prejudice sickened him.
Would she, the woman who moved like the finest Tunrian music, look at him with loathing? He placed his fist against the wall, and the ship sent him soothing pulses. Trying to calm his rage? Did it accept him, sense a soul in him? The ship was as much organic and sentient as it was machine. Balthazar’s pulse sped up, and he had to regulate his heart. Did Bunrika tell him the truth all those years ago? Would the human woman give him his soul?
Every day when he came to the observation desk, he activated the file. In it, his human ran toward the street, pushing other humans out of the way. With her hair coming loose and streaming behind her, she grabbed the short male seconds before the vehicle that would’ve hit him sped past. Balthazar’s body came alive. His ryhov moved faster, rushing between his heart and his groin. His blood pumped through his veins with lightheaded speed. His penis, that had been dormant for decades, stood to attention. His heartbeat sped up again and, this time, he failed to regulate it. His ryhov moved to his groin, and Balthazar planted his palm against the wall to support his weight.
He pressed play.
And again.
“General,” Nebuchadnezzar said from behind him.
“Report,” Balthazar said. Programming his Bunrika technology with command knowledge had been easy. Commanding four understaffed spaceships and taking responsibility for seventy cyborgs was a challenge.
“We have an anomaly in the cryo chamber, General,” Nebuchadnezzar said.
“You don’t have to call me general.”
The two of them had started the cyborg rebellion and escaped in the Tunrians’ brand new spaceships.
Nebuchadnezzar simply waited.
Suppressing a sigh, Balthazar asked, “What kind of anomaly?”
“Amelagar reported a discrepancy in the oxygen used in the cryo chamber. He ran several diagnostics, but it shows the same anomaly every time.”
“Find the reason for the anomaly.”
They couldn’t afford any leaks in the hull. The humans were resourceful. It was only a matter of time before they built weapons that could reach the Rising Sun and the other ships. Balthazar had to ensure his ship functioned at optimum efficiency at all times. The safety of his cyborgs rested with him.
“Amelagar will solve the problem,” Nebuchadnezzar said.
“Keep me updated.”
“Yes, General.” Nebuchadnezzar stiffened and stared at Balthazar’s neck. “Your ryhov is bigger.”
“Zero point two millimeters,” Balthazar agreed.
“Because you found your human?”
The humans were technologically advanced, but millions of years behind the Tunrian civilization. The ship Balthazar used to command the fleet of four ships could house a thousand families. Only seventy cyborgs managed to escape. It took all of them, working triple shifts, to keep the ships running at minimal levels. “We need more people to run the ships,” he said, ignoring Nebuchadnezzar’s question.
“Maybe we should’ve kept some of the Tunrians alive,” Nebuchadnezzar said.
“They would have become too big a problem in the end. They would never have accepted our dominance.” No Tunrian would accept commands from a soulless cyborg.
Far beneath him, Earth sparkled blue like the pebbles in a riverbed on Tunria. Today he didn’t marvel at how blue and water blessed Earth was. A human nature program he’d seen kept coming into his mind. As part of an experiment to see if a wasp’s actions were by choice or mindless instinct, a human had moved a worm, meant as a food source for the wasp’s hatched eggs. The image of the mindless way the wasp kept moving back the worm and rechecking its lair wouldn’t leave him alone. Did the wasp think? Was it capable of acting outside its programming?
“We could convert some of the humans into drones,” Nebuchadnezzar said.
Balthazar clasped the safety rail against the hull. He had a memory of the time shortly after Bunrika brought him online. The metal beneath his hands screamed as it bent, and he eased his grip. Maybe it was merely stored data, but it felt like a memory. A memory of hitting a wall and walking mindlessly in place, not having enough sentience to realize he should turn in another direction in order to continue. Bunrika, his creator, swore viciously a
t him, calling him a worthless, mindless machine. Sometimes at night, Balthazar woke, convinced he was still walking mindlessly into that wall.
What was he? He tightened his hold on the railing installed along the hull of the ship. When he saw her, the human woman with the shiny dark hair, his body had reacted. He’d experienced a strange tingling in his circuits. His organic matter reacted as well. His blood flowed faster through his organic veins whenever he looked at the recording of her--the human woman with the long dresses and the beautiful hair. Did his reaction to her make him a person? Would she give him a soul, like Bunrika said would happen? Balthazar had to find out.
“If we make them drones, we would be the same as Bunrika.” The betrayal of their creator would always haunt Balthazar. He couldn’t allow himself to be as evil as Bunrika.
They were not that desperate yet.
Nebuchadnezzar came to stand next to him and stared down at the planet sparkling below them. “It could almost be Tunria. Even the continents are similarly shaped.”
“They have a brutal history that rivals that of the Tunrian dark era. And yet they pray.”
“I have tried to pray,” Nebuchadnezzar said.
“Do you feel different? Are you developing a soul?” Even while Balthazar denied the need for a soul to himself, he thought of the way his body reacted to his woman running to save the short human.
“No, maybe it only works for full organics with souls,” Nebuchadnezzar said.
“That is what they would like us to believe.” Balthazar walked to the door. “I am going to collect my human now. After I have studied her, I will understand the illogical concepts better.” The feeling going through his organics might be excitement. It was one of the emotions he’d researched.
“Do you think Bunrika told the truth? That a human mate will give us souls? Maybe they don’t have souls. They don’t have ryhov.”
Balthazar heard the longing in his friend’s voice. He and the others thought themselves lacking because they didn’t even have a small piece of ryhov like Balthazar.
“I will make her show me her soul.” Balthazar had his doubts about Bunrika’s promise of souls if they found a human mate. The logic was flawed. Where would this soul come from?
“Do you suppose we’ll share our human’s soul?” Nebuchadnezzar asked.
“I will find out when I have my human.”
“The humans are going to hand her over?”
“Yes.”
Balthazar flexed his hand and stared down at it. It was the shape of a Tunrian’s hand with a thumb and three fingers, but larger than a Tunrian’s. His body was also much bigger, his skeleton made of a strong alloy, with built in weapons only Bunrika, the creator of the Cyborg program, knew about. Would his human think it a person’s hand? Would she be willing to share her soul with a cyborg without blue in his ryhov, with only a small ryhov covering his body? “The humans say we are machines,” he said. “They call us tinners.”
Nebuchadnezzar fell into step next to him.
“We will force their respect,” Balthazar continued.
“That high priest on Tunria said we are abominations because we have no souls and were not created by their God,” Nebuchadnezzar said. Of all Balthazar’s cyborgs, Nebuchadnezzar obsessed about their lack of blue ryhov, their lack of a soul, the most. He’d been reading human religious works, comparing it to that of the Tunrians. “Most Tunrians are copies of their former selves, so I don’t see how they could claim to be created by their elusive God,” he continued.
“I heard Bunrika talk about it to the ruling twelve. Their cloning technology failed them.”
They’d started cloning themselves nine hundred Tunrian years ago, at that time no longer having natural children.
“Is that why he created us?”
“No, he was instructed to create us to repress the naturals.” That was what the Tunrians called the few Tunrians who refused to clone themselves and reproduced through sex. Balthazar suspected they were created for more than that. Bunrika had feared a powerful enemy.
They turned toward the launch bay, Nebuchadnezzar keeping pace with him, their footsteps echoing metallically on the deck.
“Why did he want us to find souls?”
“I do not know.” Balthazar had never told the others that their maker had betrayed them. They needed to believe that Bunrika helped them. Nobody should live with the knowledge that their creator ordered their annihilation.
Balthazar and Nebuchadnezzar turned into the corridor leading to the launch bay.
“Monitor the humans while I collect her,” Balthazar said. “If they try anything, bomb the area I sent you. Do not harm my human.”
Balthazar believed the feeling he had that day when they escaped with the Tunrian ships was euphoria. When he’d watched Aurora run, he’d come close to that feeling. He rarely felt anything. That was until he saw his human.
He moved to the door, Nebuchadnezzar by his side. It was time to claim her and study her. Find out if she could give him a soul.
CHAPTER 3
Aurora sat back down.
The president nodded his approval. “I do not want to force you to do this.”
But you will, she thought. If I’d stand still long enough, you’d gift wrap me.
Outside the protesters still chanted, their voices a dull buzzing. Inside the Oval Office, Aurora could hear a pin drop.
For a long time, they stared at each other, Aurora willing him to say she was too valuable to be given away like a sack of groceries. Her fingers trembled and caused a soft rustling as her dress shifted around her hands. Please let him say he’ll go to war before he’d hand me over to the aliens. It was irrational to expect him to put her welfare above everyone else’s, but, still, she hoped.
“But you will,” she said at last.
“Yes.” His lips firmed, but lines appeared on his forehead, the grooves deepening in his cheeks. “Don’t force me to detain you until I have to hand you over.”
Now she saw the soldier behind the politician who did what he had to do to finish a mission. “Find my sister or--”
Something crawled down her spine--an awful feeling of danger so intense she couldn’t breathe. The president turned with a jerky movement, his own breathing harsh and strained.
The air changed, and a shimmering rectangle appeared--as if something from another dimension tried to walk through the very fabric of space. Pressure built in Aurora’s chest, and the oxygen in the room expanded until it felt as if the air molecules she inhaled were the size of golf balls. Time’s up, she thought.
The president swore under his breath. “I’d hoped we’d have more time to talk.” The light brightened until she had to look away. “We seeded your luggage with recording devices and explosives,” the president said hurriedly, barely above a whisper. “Recording devices in your hair products. Explosives in the makeup.”
She barely heard him. A large creature stepped out of the rectangle, something with an aura of menace--something that came for her.
It stepped into the Oval Office, each step an odd doof-hiss cadence as his booted feet struck the carpet then lifted with a soft hiss. One look at that alien face, and it took all her will power not to recoil, to stand with her chin raised, her trembling hands hidden in the folds of her dress. He wore a black uniform molded to an extremely tall and muscular frame. On the right side of his neck was a colorful yellow, orange, and brown tattoo. It pulsed, moved, and changed colors underneath his skin. His skin didn’t resemble that of any living thing on Earth.
His eyes were deep set, exotically shaped sloe eyes, with oval-shaped pupils. The irises were thin vertical slits embedded in the pupils. As she looked into those alien eyes, a membrane blinked sideways over them. Aurora suppressed a shudder and forced herself to keep looking at him. His lashes were coarse brown with a hint of orange on the tips. Instead of making him look colorful, it added to the aura of danger surrounding him. He rarely blinked. The savage eyes, staring straight at he
r from that face with its sharply delineated bone structure, looked angry. Or maybe he really wanted to pound her into a messy pulp.
His thin reptilian lips made his smile look cruel. His massive hands had only three fingers and a thumb. The black hair, that appeared brittle and dry, pulled into a ponytail on top of his head, didn’t soften his appearance.
He stayed honed in on her, their gazes locked. Those long black reptilian-like irises held her mesmerized. Every hair on her body stood upright. Her muscles knotted as if she’d run for miles without resting. She wanted to run, beg for mercy, but he pinned her in place, like a deer shot with an arrow, with only his gaze. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t look away. Her swallow was loud in the charged silence. She had to seduce this? Dead silence fell over the Oval Office until all she heard was the buzzing in her ears.
He marched up to her, his footsteps hissing with every step he took, as if his boots clamped onto the carpeted floor and released with each step. Step hiss, step hiss, a refrain singing her doom.
Aurora forced her shoulders back, her chin up a little more. She wouldn’t give the president or the alien the satisfaction of seeing her run.
“Are you the individual I spoke with earlier?” the president asked.
The alien stood head and shoulders above the president, an immense creature dominating the space in the Oval Office--massive in the sense of presence as well as size. He exuded a wild fragrance that made her think of unknown spices on a planet never seen by man. He never took his eyes off Aurora. “I am the person who spoke with you.”
His voice reminded her of bass drums, of something metallic scraping over gravel, with a rhythmic cadence that gave it a pleasing almost hypnotic quality.
She wanted to be back home, safe in her bedroom. That alien gaze pinning her like a bug in a specimen tray brought home the situation--what her priorities were. Earth belonged to humans and, no matter what she had to do, she’d do it to rid their world of these things.
He reached out, clamped his three fingered hands on her upper arms, and drew her closer. She inhaled wild spices, exotic seas, and leather--a curiously pleasant smell, considering that she’d expected him to smell like a reptile cage, or metal, or machine oil...or something.
