by Marie Dry
“She talks to everyone, trying to gain their trust and to get information about our numbers and resources,” Nebuchadnezzar said.
Balthazar knew what she did, and it amused him to watch her and the president doing their finger talk, thinking they were so clever, that he wouldn’t work out their simplistic code.
Now that they had shared sex, she had to accept that her loyalty was with him. Not with Earth and not with her sister.
“Any progress with your mission.”
“No, but I will be successful.”
“She must not know. I do not want her to hope for the impossible.”
“I will not speak of it,” Nebuchadnezzar assured him.
They arrived in the infirmary in what Aurora would have called record time. He enjoyed the human languages. They were not as evolved as the Tunrian language, but the sheer diversity could intrigue him for another century.
As with the rest of the ship, the doctor had more space than they’d ever need. What Balthazar needed was more cyborgs. Even with the advanced equipment, the doctor would struggle to heal their wounded if many of their cyborgs had to be treated. They were free, but their species was also on the brink of extinction. One prolonged war or illness, and they wouldn’t have enough cyborgs to run the ships.
Hamurabi waited for them outside the infirmary doors. Their lips were not as pliable as the humans, but Hamurabi managed to pull his down in disgust. “I can’t stand breathing the same air as that thing.”
“Take me to it,” Balthazar told the doctor.
Hamurabi led them toward a bed in the back of the room. He was not created to be a doctor. Shortly after they’d reached Earth, he’d requested to be appointed ship’s doctor. Balthazar had been looking at the profiles of all the cyborgs, trying to decide which one would be a good choice for the ship’s doctor, when Hamurabi indicated his interest.
Balthazar stopped in his tracks and glared at the thing in the bed. Something went wrong with his systems. He had tunnel vision and his hearing, that was superior to humans and Tunrians, became defective until all he could hear was a buzzing sound. Dizziness overtook him for one fraction of a second. Their enemy was here.
“It’s a female?”
Smaller than the average Tunrian female, it was painfully thin. They’d been as vicious as the male Tunrians in dealing with the cyborgs they owned. Her emaciated appearance didn’t fool him into relaxing his guard.
“Yes, a natural.”
She was small enough. The clones were smaller now, each copy weaker. But the first-generation clones had their DNA altered to make them bigger and stronger. Even now, with the new copies degrading, they were still noticeably bigger than the naturals. “Are you sure she’s a natural? She’s small to be one of them.”
“They rarely held positions of power on Tunria, and none of them had been allowed to work on the ships,” Nebuchadnezzar said.
“It’s a natural. Look at her skin,” Amelagar said and held up the arm he gripped.
The Tunrian tried to shrink into a small ball on the bed.
Her long black hair dull, she was so thin her skin stretched over bones like those of a deceased clone slated for termination. Unlike most Tunrians whose skin grayed more with each cloning, hers was light brown under the unhealthy paleness, her ryhov dulled.
Balthazar wasn’t fooled by her fragile appearance. She and her kind called him a soulless machine. She was one of the creatures who thought they were better than him. “Is she diseased?”
The woman whimpered. Even though she was weak and not a threat, Amelagar had a secure grip on her emaciated arm. His single-minded focus on such a trivial task had saved them a lot of problems. She could’ve sabotaged them for years before they caught her. Balthazar filed away his dedication for later consideration.
“No, she is starving,” Hamurabi said.
“Are you sure she is the reason for the anomaly in the cryo chamber?”
“Yes,” Amelagar answered. He sneered at the female. “She thought she could elude me.”
Balthazar went to the bed and leaned over her, wanting to scare her, to intimidate the Tunrian who thought to make a slave of them, who thought that, because they had a soul, it gave them the right to enslave cyborgs. “You, Tunrian scum, why are you on our ship?” he asked her.
She shivered and burrowed into the bed.
“Look at me and answer,” he said.
“I will make her talk.” Anatu took a step forward, her eyes narrowed. She’d been standing guard against the wall, glaring at their captive.
They’d managed to save only five of their women. When the kill order was issued, the Tunrians had killed their females first. Cyborg women might be stronger than the average Tunrian women, but they were still female and physically weaker than males. By the time he reached the facility where the Tunrians kept the cyborg women, the Tunrians had already slaughtered most of them, using the off switch code and heavy weapons. Seeing them lying there, in their own blood, still came to his thoughts. It did not sit well with him that he couldn’t give them a proper send off.
Balthazar held up a hand to stop Anatu. He knew how she felt. He wanted to kill the Tunrian with every fiber of his being. “Get her to optimum working condition. Then call me.” He turned to Amelagar. “Make sure she had no access to any of the ship’s functions. Find out if she gave our location to the Tunrians.”
They’d spent months going through each ship, disabling anything that would allow the Tunrians to track them. The moment they’d taken the ships, they’d shut the Tunrians out of the on-board computers. Cutting the link had taken days. The organic component had made taking total control of the ship extremely difficult. It had never completely accepted him.
“If she gave them our coordinates, I will kill her,” Amelagar said.
If she had alerted the Tunrians to their location, Balthazar would kill her himself. “Make very sure,” he instructed.
Amelagar saluted. “It will be done.”
Balthazar left them in the infirmary and went to his office. Tonight when they did conversation, he had something interesting to tell Aurora. But should he tell her? He might still decide to kill the Tunrian, even if Amelagar found no proof she’d given out their location. He wanted to kill the Tunrian anyway. He was not a slave anymore. He did not have to endure her presence. He rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t know what to do with their stowaway.
After he became self-aware, it had taken him a long time to make decisions. Souled people, the Tunrians and humans, took their ability to make decisions for granted--what they wanted to eat and wear and do in their leisure time. Balthazar looked down at his uniform, the same uniform he’d always worn. He’d never had a choice in what he ate or wore and didn’t have free time before. It was only when Aurora asked him about his uniform that he realized he’d simply continued to wear what they were previously given.
He’d told Aurora he’d never be programmed with the three laws of robotics. What he didn’t tell her was that he was programmed to never harm a Tunrian. During the bloody hours when they escaped, many of his cyborgs had died because it took precious minutes to get past the code that stopped them from harming their makers. They’d managed to remove most of the commands, but he battled the strong urge to free the Tunrians. He would tell Aurora about the stowaway, and if he had to kill the Tunrian, Aurora would have to accept that she was not the cyborg making the decisions on this ship.
Amelagar walked in and came to attention in front of Balthazar’s desk. “It won’t talk. It’s too frightened of us. I don’t think it can speak when we are near.”
“It probably saw us killing the others when we took the ship,” Balthazar said.
When they’d erased the code that stopped them from harming Tunrians, they’d gone on a killing frenzy he knew would horrify his human. Something had come over him. A rage he thought only people with souls were capable of. Once he started, he couldn’t stop killing the people who treated them as if they were less
than the equipment they used to build their ships and buildings, who created them to be mindless and then punished them for it.
He’d killed most of them before it even occurred to them to use the shutdown code. “Are you experiencing any problems with the God code?” They called the code that prevented them from harming Tunrians that, mainly to remind themselves that Tunrians were not Gods.
“I am running diagnostics and filtering out the code,” Amelagar said.
“Make sure all the cyborgs run the diagnostics.”
“It will be done. No records existed of her contacting the Tunrians, but if she was a technician, she’d know how to alter the records.”
“The clones would never allow a natural onto the ships. She must’ve been a stowaway when we took over.”
“How did she survive the journey here?”
Nebuchadnezzar entered the cabin. “We were in the cryo-chambers for fifteen years while we traveled here. What did she do in that time?”
The thought of a Tunrian loose on board the ship while they were in stasis caused Balthazar’s eyes to loose functionality.
“We found a cryo-chamber on the Rising War. She constructed it in the cargo hold, hidden by supplies.” The Rising War was a battleship, carrying all the heavy weapons. Weapons that could destroy a planet until all that remained were particles drifting in space. The thought of a Tunrian on-board it almost gave him the ability for abstract thought--what Aurora would call imagination.
“If she can do that, she could’ve sent a message to the Tunrians and wiped out the records of what she’d done.”
“She is capable of sabotaging the ship or us,” Amelagar said.
“Agreed. She needs to be restrained and guarded at all times.”
Amelagar nodded. “It will be done.”
“I have to oversee the search,” Nebuchadnezzar said and left.
Balthazar motioned for Amelagar to stay. “I want you to win the Tunrian’s trust.”
“Why? She is she our captive and can’t harm us,” Amelagar sneered.
Balthazar didn’t know what the Tunrians did to him, but Amelagar hated them more than the rest of the cyborgs.
“You will guard her and allow her to befriend you. At first, only guard her. Let her try and befriend you to get you to help her get free. Then you find out all her secrets.”
“How do you know to do this?” Amelagar asked, obviously impressed.
“You know my running human?”
“Yes.”
“She is doing the same thing to me.” Balthazar knew she enjoyed sharing sex with him. All the physical signs of a woman experiencing pleasure were hard to miss. But he also knew she was on a mission to save her people. That, eventually, she’d betray him.
Amelagar stepped back. “I’m not sleeping with it.”
Balthazar suppressed a shudder. “You do not have to do that.”
“Is your human sleeping with you only to find out our secrets?”
Balthazar wouldn’t discuss that. “Stay with the Tunrian, try and get her to talk. Check all the weapons and programs on the Rising War.” He hadn’t meant to tell Amelagar about Aurora, how she used him.
Amelagar shook his head, his loose black hair swinging around his shoulders. They were supposed to be bald and easily distinguished from the Tunrians. To the Tunrians’ horror, the cyborgs hair grew like those of a normal Tunrian. Balthazar had been forced to shave his head every day. He’d stopped the day they escaped and would never do it again. But the Tunrians’ horror over the cyborgs’ hair hadn’t come close to their horror when their machines developed ryhov.
“She won’t talk. The doctor injected her with truth serum, and she nearly died, her body was too weak to handle it.” Amelagar sounded angry. Because Hamurabi used a truth serum or because the woman was weak?
Balthazar now had four persons on his ship who were not cyborg, two who could be a serious risk to them. Balthazar contacted Nebuchadnezzar. “Make sure the human cook has no training in computers. Without understanding our language, she shouldn’t be able to do harm, but make sure.”
Aurora tried to hide it from him, but she was deciphering the ship language at an alarming rate. He suspected she was above average intelligence for a human.
“It will be done,” Nebuchadnezzar said.
Balthazar turned back to Amelagar. “She might talk to another female who is not a cyborg. I will bring my human to her.”
Once when he had still been in Bunrika’s laboratory, Balthazar had seen him interrogate a junior scientist, trying to gain his research for his own. He’d used friendship to interrogate the man. Aurora could do that.
“After that, you will be the only one she sees for at least a month.”
“Your human is good at making people talk. Maybe I will not have to spend a month with it.”
“Maybe,” Balthazar agreed, but they both knew a Tunrian would not give in that easily.
Amelagar left.
Balthazar leaned back and activated the nature program he’d found in the human database soon after their arrival. He looked at the footage of the wasp. A human hand moved the caterpillar slightly to the left. He wanted to glance away from the wasp endlessly moving the caterpillar back to the exact spot in front his nest and checking the nest to ensure everything was all right. Wanted to stop the program, but, as always, it held him captive.
“Why are you always watching that?” Aurora asked from the doorway.
He’d heard her come down the corridor, her soft footsteps distinctive. He’d thought maybe he was developing an imagination.
“How did you get out?” Did the ship accept her?
She frowned at him. “I thought you ordered the doors to open.”
He didn’t want to tell her that the ship probably accepted her because she had a soul. He had to override the ship’s programming every day to ensure the organic component of the ship accepted him.
CHAPTER 12
“So why the fascination with the nature program?” she asked when the silence had stretched for several Earth minutes.
“I have a memory from when I first woke.” He shouldn’t be telling her this, but the words escaped him before he even realized he was going to talk.
“You mean when Bunrika created you?”
“Yes.”
“What do you remember?” Aurora came to stand in front of him and gently cupped his chin to turn his head to her. “Tell me.”
As always she smelled good, like the Earth flowers they took to study when they first arrived. Her soft hair, arranged in intricate braids around her head with glass and silver pins stuck into it, flattered her odd human face.
“When I first came online, Bunrika used to give me a command. ‘Take the box on the floor and move it to the other side of the room.’” He shouldn’t tell her this. He didn’t want to see disrespect in her eyes. Sometimes, when he thought of how Bunrika talked to him, Balthazar had much anger. Dangerous anger.
“You were fully grown when you became self-aware?”
She’d seen the footage of the wasp, but still she didn’t understand. Still thought of him as a being who was born with a soul, a being who grew from a child.
He tried to smile, but from her slight recoil, he knew his lips did it wrong. “Yes, I was fully grown.”
“What happened after he gave you the command?”
“I walked toward the box and then into a large steel crate that obstructed my path.”
She rubbed her thumbs over his cheekbones, a soft soothing motion that strangely rubbed the sting of the memory away. “What happened?” Her eyes were kind. It had taken him a long time to distinguish emotions in her odd eyes. At first, they’d appeared rounded and flat, like the eyes of the cattle on Tunria.
“Nothing, I kept moving, or trying to move.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t realize there was a problem. I carried out the instructions.” He remembered not thinking, not feeling, and not questioning
the reason for his existence.
She placed her arms around his waist and hugged him. “Balthazar, that means nothing. If you were still there, mindlessly obeying orders, you would’ve had reason to worry.” She gestured around them, and he missed her hands on him. “Look how far you’ve come. You command a spaceship, you could rule Earth if you wanted to.” She frowned at him. “But you don’t want to?” She leaned close, spoke slowly, as if he was incapable of understanding. “You don’t want to rule Earth?”
“Yes.” He took her hands and put it back on his jaw. When she just held his face in her hands, he nudged her thumb with his forefinger, and she rubbed his cheeks, her lips curling at the corners, making him want to kiss them. “I will rule Earth.”
“When did you become self-aware?” He could see she decided to change the subject. He also knew she wouldn’t let go of it for long. Humans were stubborn.
What if he told her, and she looked at him with dislike? That cold, gray, Tunrian winter’s day was burned into his memory banks. Walking in full gear, his sensors registering the cold and his Bunrika technology adjusting his heat levels. Even now, he could feel the snowflakes raining down and going into his eyes until he’d had to put up his visor. “The Tunrian government contracted Bunrika to clear out sector Twenty-Three-Zero-Five-A-Twenty-Three-E.”
“That’s the scientist who created you?”
“He was also very powerful with many connections in their ruling council.”
She moved closer to him and frowned down at him. “What exactly do you have to do to clear out a sector?”
At the time, money and the concept of being paid hadn’t registered with Balthazar. Now he knew that what five of them would have taken many more Tunrian soldiers. Intellectually, he knew the world functioned on a commercial level, but he’d never had to buy anything, didn’t feel desire for any pretty baubles or even the basics like food and boots. Bunrika supplied them with clothes, boots, and what they needed to consume to function optimally.
“We moved naturals to alternate accommodations. We only had to shoot a few civilians before the rest voluntarily climbed into the transports.”
