by Marie Dry
She made a strange sound, as if she lost air and clasped her hand in front of her mouth to avoid losing her breath. Balthazar moved his shoulders. He should feel bad about those people he shot. He knew shooting them was wrong on some level in his circuits, but, at the time, he didn’t feel remorse or shame. Even now, he had trouble understanding why that day always came back into his thoughts.
“How old were you when Bunrika sent you to do such a terrible thing?”
“I had been created for thirty years. Programmed to be thorough, I ended up in a deserted alley to ensure every single Tunrian in that sector was on the transports.”
“What happened, Balthazar?”
“A woman and two small Tunrians were going through the trash for food. They were thin and clearly starved.”
Until that moment, the Tunrians in sector 2305A23E had simply been the enemy. The woman and children didn’t look like an enemy. She froze and pissed herself when she saw him, and her fear had made him feel strange. At the time, he thought his systems malfunctioned. He didn’t know to classify feelings. Any kind of emotion had been a new and unpleasant experience.
“I thought maybe the Tunrians had overcome poverty,” Aurora said, something strange in her voice. As if she remembered some sadness.
“I got them on the transports, the small Tunrians cried and pleaded.”
“Small Tunrians, you mean children?”
“That was the first time I had seen what you call children. I knew they procreated the old way, but this was the first time I had seen the result.”
“Didn’t you think it was wrong to put them on the transports?”
Did she not like him for doing that? Would she now refuse to share sex with him?
“What happened to them?” She sounded strange, as if she asked the question but didn’t really want to know.
“The social workers gave the woman and the offspring food, clothes, and blankets, and they calmed down.” Even now, he remembered the relief on the mother’s face.
Aurora’s breath warmed his face when she expelled her breath. “That’s good. Were they taking them to better accommodations?”
“The Tunrians took them to an incinerator and killed them. Any naturals caught were killed.”
He couldn’t compute why the Tunrians would make the mother believe that everything would be all right. It bothered him at odd times. When he slept, thoughts about them came to him. While he was awake, sometimes he thought of the people they pretended to relocate.
Aurora stepped back from him, a look on her face he hadn’t seen before. He thought it might be horror. “Why would they do that?”
“The Tunrians wanted a society without sick or poor people and without naturals.”
“The clones were exterminating naturals? But you said they became copies of copies and were deteriorating. Didn’t they look toward the naturals to fix that?”
“No, they saw them as a threat.”
“That’s terrible. I thought because they cloned themselves, maybe they were too advanced to have poor people or to act savagely.”
After that incident with the naturals, he’d begun to notice the structure among the Tunrians, and it hadn’t taken him long to make the connection on where he and his fellow soldiers were on the food chain.
When Bunrika revealed they were not mere machines, but enhanced with Bunrika technology, their organics made up of natural DNA, there had been outrage. Balthazar had thought everything through to its logical conclusion and realized that he and the other cyborgs would have to escape.
“I believe anyone is capable of that.”
“And that’s what made you self-aware, seeing those people suffer?”
“I could not compute the logic of lying to them. Making them believe they would be all right.” He’d started to make comparisons, had realized that they were considered less important than the people they were sent to round up.
Given their strength and loyalty, they should’ve been richly rewarded. Instead, they were stashed in tubes and put into stasis between assignments. He’d quietly adjusted his tube and used the down time to compute the logic, realizing they were capable of being more. Sometimes when he looked at the actions of the Tunrians and humans, he wondered if the part of him that was machine wasn’t the better part.
“I do not wish to talk about this anymore.” It wouldn’t change anything.
She stepped closer to him again, cupped his cheeks. “We can talk about it another time. It’s good to talk about things that bother you.”
“Nothing bothers me.”
Amelagar contacted him on their internal system.
“A moment,” Balthazar said to Aurora.
They remained like that, him sitting with her cupping his jaw in her small spidery hands while Amelagar reported that he still hadn’t gotten the Tunrian to talk. At the same time, Nebuchadnezzar contacted him to tell him that the humans’ president was trying to contact them. “Amelagar, I am on my way with Aurora. Nebuchadnezzar, tell the president to contact us in one Earth hour.
Balthazar took Aurora’s strange malformed hands in his. With their many fingers, they reminded him of the spiders found on Tunria. He would never tell her that, if not for the graceful way she moved, she would have been unattractive with her skin lacking ryhov and her flat, smashed-in face. “We have to go to the medical room.”
“Why?”
“The anomaly with the oxygen was caused by a stowaway.” It gave him satisfaction to tell her that before his fellow cyborgs could inform her in conversation news at dinner.
Her eyes became bigger and rounder. “Really, what kind of a stowaway?”
“A Tunrian female. We missed it when we killed the others.”
“Don’t call her ‘it,’ Balthazar. You harm yourself more than you could ever harm her with your hatred.”
He got up and took her arm to steer her to the infirmary. She said illogical things like that quite often. He’d learned not to discuss it, because he could end up talking many hours instead of making sex with her.
“You have to get her to talk. Find out if she sent a message to the Tunrians.”
“Why would I do that?”
Balthazar stopped and turned her so he could make sure she understood. “The Tunrians are much more advanced than humans. They have weapons you cannot defend yourself against. They wouldn’t have to land on Earth. They can bomb your Earth until no living beings walk on it anymore. Like you said. We have to know if she gave our location to the Tunrians. They are desperate to find a new fertile planet. They would plunder your Earth.”
“Do you have weapons that could destroy my planet?”
“If I wanted to destroy your planet, I would have done it by now.”
Aurora nodded. “I’ll ask her.” She didn’t miss the fact that he didn’t answer her. Maybe the stowaway would know if they have planet-destroying weapons on board.
When they reached the infirmary, she immediately went and took its hand. He didn’t like the sympathy she showed their enemy. Balthazar controlled his lip that wanted to curl. Aurora leaned over and stroked its hair. Balthazar shuddered and had to clench his fists to stop himself from grabbing her away from it.
“I’m Aurora. Can you tell me your name?” Aurora looked up at Balthazar. “Maybe she won’t understand English.”
“She understands. We found records that she taught herself.”
It had the same disturbing intelligence even the weakest Tunrian had. They’d found her clever footprints all over the ships computers.
“Oh.” Aurora turned back to face it. “Please tell me your name, I promise, we won’t hurt you.”
The woman flicked a glance at Amelagar and then focused on Aurora with desperate hope. “You are human,” she asked in a soft, slightly sibilant voice.
“Yes, I am human, and you are a Tunrian. I never thought I’d get to meet aliens in my lifetime,” Aurora said. “My name is Aurora.”
“Agrippa,” the Tunrian said after a long ti
me of staring at Aurora.
“Your human is good at making people talk,” Amelagar said.
Balthazar nodded. “She is soft hearted. I will ensure the natural does not take advantage of her.”
“Agrippa, please tell me if you contacted your home planet. Did you give them this location?” Aurora asked this in a soft pleading voice.
Agrippa flicked another look at Amelagar. “I activated a beacon soon after the ships took off, but the cyborgs found it and deactivated it.” She shrugged. “At first, I thought they’d found me, but they assumed it was activated by the clones they killed.”
Talking that much seemed to have exhausted Agrippa. She closed her eyes and fell asleep, her hands going slack and slipping out of Aurora’s.
Aurora shook her head. “I cannot understand how all of you can hate this poor defenseless woman and want to hurt her.”
“She lied to you,” he told her.
“What?”
“No Tunrian is defenseless.”
“Balthazar, the president is insisting there is an emergency. He wants to talk to you and your human,” Nebuchadnezzar said from the doorway.
They went to his office, Aurora clenching and unclenching her hands. She’d tried to convince him to treat the Tunrian more humanely.
***
Aurora stood in Balthazar’s office and waited for the president to make contact. They weren’t scheduled to talk until next week, so something must’ve happened. She laid her hand on her chest, hope surging. Her blood careened through her veins. Maybe he found Ter.
The president appeared on the wall that now pulsed with life. Life-sized, it was almost as if he was in the room with them.
“Did you find Ter?”
“No, I’m sorry, Aurora, I called to warn you and Balthazar that the traditionalists have heard about the trading with the cyborgs, and they’re up in arms.”
The traditionalists had started up in the twenty and thirties after the oil ran out and population control became a huge issue. Everyone had known that Earth’s oil resources were exhausted, but somehow no one had expected the fallout--the riots, the food rotting in the farmer’s fields because it couldn’t get to the market. Hard decisions were made.
Balthazar made that threatening noise in his chest, and Aurora put her hand over his heart. “Please stay calm. They’re a pain but--”
“Shit,” the president said.
Aurora turned to face the president who’d turned white. “What’s the matter, what happened?” She scowled up at Balthazar. “Did you bomb us again?” He’d better not have done that.
“I did not, running human.”
The president turned away from them and stepped off screen so they only saw a part of his arm. At the same time Balthazar stiffened against her.
The president came back into view. “The traditionalists planted a bomb in New York in protest about us sanctioning trade with the cyborgs. If we don’t agree to stop trade with the cyborgs, they’ll detonate it.” He rubbed his forehead. “We won’t be able to evacuate everybody in time. As it is, they made sure to make their announcement public. People are panicking.”
“Not New York,” she whispered. Her last intel said Ter was being held in New York.
CHAPTER 13
“Did you agree to stop the trade,” Aurora asked the president. “You have to agree.”
If he refused, and these bombs went off in a building where Ter was, Aurora might never find out what happened to her. If she was even still alive.
“Yes, I did, but they claim not to trust me. I know fanatics. They want to detonate that bomb.”
Aurora turned to Balthazar. “You can find the bomb, right? You said your technology is way more advanced than ours.”
“It will be done.” The connection was severed, and Balthazar stood still. Aurora didn’t move, she knew he was talking to his fellow cyborgs and didn’t want to interrupt. She’d been playing with the idea of brokering a truce between the president and Balthazar. Get them to agree to coexist in peace. This bomb would destroy any hope of peace.
Balthazar turned to her. “We found it.”
“So fast?” Their technology was even more advanced than she’d realized.
“Yes, several of the buildings have bombs planted in them. I have dispatched cyborgs to find and disarm them.”
“Several? They only told the president about one.”
“There are several bombs set to detonate minutes apart. It will destroy a significant part of the city.”
“You’d better tell the president. He might not like your soldiers running around on Earth.” She’d have to get him to agree to some kind of protocol when this crisis was over. Sending cyborgs to Earth without notification was a human-cyborg war waiting to happen. Averting a war had become the most important thing she wanted to accomplish after saving Ter.
“He needs me to help with the bombs,” Balthazar said.
The president appeared on the wall again, obviously not happy about the way Balthazar cut him off.
“I have sent my cyborgs to disarm the bombs.”
The president stiffened, and Aurora saw him clench his hands into fists and then relax them. Then he blinked. “Bombs?”
“At last count, six, we are searching for more. My soldiers will disarm the bombs we find.”
“I appreciate your help with the bombs, but next time, contact me first before you send soldiers down here.” The president turned away and disappeared from view. He must’ve turned off the sound because she didn’t hear anything. He returned five minutes later.
“I told my people to stand down,” the president said pointedly.
“The bombs have been diff--”
The president held up a hand, paled, and turned away. Aurora would’ve laughed at the impressive swearing coming from off-screen, if next to her, Balthazar wasn’t making that threatening sound in his chest. He’d gone absolutely still, like a snake ready to strike. A news program sprang up on the wall, next to the president’s image.
The president turned back to them. “Turn on--”
“We see,” Balthazar interrupted.
A journalist appeared, trying to look professional, but unable to hide her excitement. “A member of the traditionalist movement is sighting down on what we believe is a tinner, with what looks like a rocket launcher. Yes, it is definitely a rocket launcher.” The camera zoomed in on the drama unfolding. The man with the rocket launcher wore a T-shirt with the traditionalist logo displayed on the front. “This is the first footage ever recorded of the tinners.”
As they watched, the traditionalists shot one of the cyborgs with the rocket gun. The human soldiers stood by and didn’t even try to stop them. “Why aren’t the soldiers helping him?” Her voice sounded loud in the control room.
“We help you, and your soldiers stand by while we are killed?” Balthazar spoke in a soft almost sibilant voice, but it raised goose bumps all over her body.
“Balthazar, I--”
The president cut her off. “I will deal with this.” His image winked out.
Aurora stared at the image on the wall. Not the news cast, but the cyborg feed. The fallen cyborg, the rest of the cyborgs in another part of the city halting in their tracks, then walking into a dimensional doorway and reappearing next to the fallen cyborg. They went to the fallen cyborg, and Aurora could see the mood of the crowd change. A teenager threw something at the cyborgs, and as if that was a signal, the crowd surged toward the cyborgs.
Aurora held her breath as they stepped into the dimensional doorway, their backs pelted with whatever the crowd could lay their hands on. She saw a high heeled shoe hit a cyborg at the back of his head. He froze for a fraction of a second, something chilling in that small movement. If she hadn’t lived with them, she would’ve missed it.
The humans bearing down on them had no idea how lucky they were that the cyborgs decided to leave. The door closed just as the crowd reached them. One man stuck his hand into the door and screamed, withdra
wing his cauterized stump.
Aurora turned to Balthazar and nearly whimpered, the man’s screams still echoing in her ears. Balthazar’s tattoo was going crazy, pulsing, changing colors. It even looked as if it rose from his skin. Was it bigger?
His eyes blazed at her. “Get away from me, Aurora, I have much anger.”
He picked up a chair, tearing it out of the floor, and she clasped her hand in front of her mouth at the sound it made--as if Balthazar had wounded the chair. He threw it against the bulkhead. His scream echoed off the walls as the ship joined in. Before her eyes, the wall pulsed and undulated. What made the scream of the ship something from a nightmare was that it was an anguished cry without sound.
Aurora clutched her ears and ran.
When she first came on board, she’d been frightened, isolated. That feeling was nothing compared to the fear she felt now. Balthazar had looked capable of murdering her with his bare three-fingered hands.
The doors of their cabin loomed, and she ran inside, flinching as the angry symbols flashing on the wall kept pace with her as she ran.
Aurora looked around the cabin. There was no place to hide. Symbols still flashed at her. If she managed to hide, would this unnatural ship spit her out for Balthazar if he came looking for her with murder in his heart?
Hours later, the wall in her cabin came alive, and Balthazar’s image appeared. Eerily calm, his cold voice sent chills down her spine. “Surrender the humans who dared hurt a cyborg, or I will bomb your cities. You have twenty four hours to comply.”
CHAPTER 14
“This can’t be happening.” What if Ter was in a building he bombed? She’d never forgive him for that. Yet she couldn’t imagine a life without him in it. She needed to talk to him. Maybe now that he was calm, he’d listen to reason. She walked to the door and frowned when it wouldn’t open.
“Let me out. Let me out right now.” She would’ve liked to hammer her fists against the wall, but was afraid the ship would suck in her hands. She shuddered at the thought.
