Cyborg Legacy: A Fallen Empire Novel

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Hello?” Jasim called.

  “Here, here!” came an enthusiastic young cry from a walkway above the cargo hold. A little girl of three or four ran out a doorway and into sight, her dark brown pigtails dancing.

  “Me too,” another young voice yelled, and a very similar-looking girl, this one with her hair up in a flip-flopping knot, charged out.

  “You girls aren’t going anywhere,” said the man behind the crates. “This is a space station, not a place to ride horses.”

  He strode into view, this time holding two chickens. He headed toward the coop, or maybe the stairs to the walkway, so he could block the exit. Those determined kids hadn’t slowed down at all.

  A tall, broad-shouldered man strode out onto the walkway after the children, and Jasim, who had once again been wondering if he had the right place, snapped to attention, his heels clicking together. Colonel Adler still appeared every bit the cyborg soldier, even if he wore khaki trousers and a brown snagor-hide jacket instead of a uniform. He didn’t look like he’d lost any muscle—or any of his ability to kill people.

  The children only made it down two stairs before he swooped them up, one in each arm.

  “Nooo,” one protested, an arm stretching toward the open hatch.

  “Foiled,” the second one said. “Rats!”

  Adler, his hands full, nodded once toward Jasim, as if he’d known he was there all along. Maybe he’d heard that hello.

  The armored man stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at the colonel. “Does it bother you that she’s quoting the mad scientist villain from the cartoon instead of the hero?”

  “No,” Adler said. “Does it bother you that you’re wrangling chickens?”

  “Not anymore, no. Yumi has me trained.”

  “I think she has us all trained.” Adler looked back along the walkway toward the corridor.

  Jasim heard someone else’s footsteps before the person appeared, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties. She smiled at Adler or perhaps at the children, and her eyes gleamed with good humor. Somehow, Jasim suspected that the kids plotting escapes was not uncommon.

  “I believe these are staying with you,” Adler said, turning toward her with his cargo.

  One of the girls stuck a finger in his ear and giggled. He removed it, gave her a stern look, and murmured something. She nodded solemnly, but as soon as he looked away, the finger went back in his ear.

  Jasim realized his mouth was hanging open and shut it. The whole situation stunned him. He’d never seen Adler with children and had somehow assumed they would be as terrified of him as all of the lower enlisted soldiers were. Hells, he’d never seen any of the cyborgs with children. It wasn’t as if they could have any of their own. Unfortunately. Knowing that was part of what had drawn Jasim to get a degree in education. He’d imagined himself coaching or teaching children, even if he couldn’t have his own. He’d also thought that maybe, even if he couldn’t make up for all those he’d killed during the war, helping young people might be a way to do something good going forward. He would have loved it if a friendly soldier had taken him under his arm when he’d been a kid. Maybe then, he would have known what to do when the gangs came for his sisters.

  “Yes,” the woman said, coming close enough to rest her hands on Adler’s chest. “We’ll miss you.”

  She kissed him on the mouth, and Jasim’s thoughts of his past fled. He nearly fell over. Especially when Adler seemed to return the kiss. It was hard to tell around the children’s heads, but yes, that was definitely a kiss. They didn’t hold it overly long, but Jasim could only stare, stunned. Adler couldn’t have gotten anything out of that, could he? And—by the holy Suns Trinity— those couldn’t be his children, could they? How could that be possible? Hadn’t he had the same surgery that Jasim had undergone? That all the imperial cyborgs had undergone?

  Adler handed the children to the woman, who lowered them to the walkway and clasped their hands. She looked down to Jasim, gave him a quick smile, then turned a slightly worried look back onto Adler.

  “Are you sure you don’t want my father to go with you?” she asked.

  Adler shook his head. “Yes, I’m sure, and I already told you why. Besides, whatever this is, I doubt it’s Starseer business.”

  Jasim stared. Starseers?

  He looked uneasily around the cargo hold. There wasn’t one here, was there? All he saw was the armored man returning those two chickens to their fenced-in area, but who knew what the rest of the ship held?

  “I know that—though some of them want you cyborgs dead, too, you know,” the woman said.

  “Most of them, I’d imagine. But they wouldn’t use poison to kill us. They would diddle with our minds.” Adler tapped a finger to his temple.

  “Probably. But Stan would go along just to help you. I’m sure he doesn’t want me to become a single mother again.”

  “I don’t want that either.” He leaned close and kissed her on the cheek. “But I also don’t want to deprive you of your security on the next leg of your journey.”

  The man by the chicken coop cleared his throat loudly and tapped a fist against his chest piece. “Did we forget that I am the original security officer around here?”

  “Beck, you’re too busy cooking to notice when pirates are invading the ship,” the woman said, “and you know it.”

  “I notice them,” the man—Beck—protested. “I just wait to see if Leonidas and Stanislav are going to handle things before I go for my weapons.”

  “Go get your groceries,” the woman said, shooing him toward the airlock hatch where Jasim stood. “And don’t get yourself shot at. You seem to be dressed for trouble rather than a shopping trip.”

  “You never know what you’ll find on a station full of drunks, Captain. I like to be prepared. Besides, I can lift more groceries in my armor.” Beck pretended to flex his biceps.

  Adler touched the woman’s face and headed down the stairs. “Oh,” he said, halfway down, looking at Jasim. “Introductions. Corporal Antar, this is the captain of the Star Nomad and my wife, Alisa Marchenko. Alisa, Corporal Antar, formerly of Bravo Company.”

  Wife?

  Jasim didn’t want to ask how that could be—corporals, even former corporals, didn’t ask their commanding officers about their personal lives—but he couldn’t help but wonder. And an inkling that he should feel betrayed came to mind. Had some cyborgs not had to undergo that aspect of the surgery?

  “Ask him for his doctor’s card,” Beck said, smirking at Jasim as he walked into the airlock tube with an empty hoverboard turned on its side and trailing after him.

  “I… ah…” Jasim cleared his throat. This wasn’t why he had come, and it didn’t matter, not when cyborgs were being killed. “You can call me Jasim, ma’am,” he told Adler’s wife. “And, ah, you can too… sir.” He looked at Adler, not sure if that would be awkward or inappropriate, but neither of them were soldiers anymore. They were civilians. Just people.

  “Mm,” was all Adler said.

  He waved to his wife—Alisa—and headed over to join Jasim. Jasim tried not to feel scrawny with him standing more than six inches taller than he. He hadn’t struggled to meet height requirements at any point in his life.

  “Is my armor case coming?” Adler called back toward the walkway.

  His wife smirked, and started toward the corridor with the two little girls ambling to either side of her. A few seconds passed, and a tall, gangly girl with her brown hair back in a braid led a red armor case down the walkway, whistling, or trying to. Her grin must have made it hard to blow properly. Alisa and the little ones stood aside to allow the girl and the case floating after her to pass.

  “She offered to get it for me,” Adler told Jasim. “I suspect foul play.”

  “Sir?” Jasim asked, not comfortable calling him anything else unless invited to do so.

  The girl reached the stairs leading down from the walkway and hopped onto the armor case, sitting cross-legged. It bobbed
under her weight, but soon leveled back to its typical hover height, a few inches off the deck. Then, seemingly of its own accord, it zipped down the stairs, like a sled cruising down a snowy hill. The girl’s grin widened as she rode it down, then leaned right and left to take advantage of the momentum and zipped around the cargo hold. She missed the stack of crates by inches before the case slowed to a stop next to Adler.

  She hopped off, saying, “Here it is.”

  She tilted her head to look at Jasim, smiled shyly, and waved. Was this one Adler’s child too? She was tall and lanky, and after that display, he wagered she would be good at sports.

  “What is this?” Adler asked.

  Jasim snapped his hand down. Maybe the colonel didn’t want strange men waving at his daughter.

  But he was looking at the armor case, not Jasim, and pointing to one of several decals and stickers adorning the outside. Their presence surprised Jasim, both because they were childish—he was pointing at a pink horse—and because there were regulations about keeping one’s armor and case in pristine condition. Decorations weren’t allowed. Even if the empire that had made those regulations was gone, it was hard to imagine Adler breaking the rules.

  “That’s a sticker,” the girl said blandly.

  “It’s a fifth sticker,” Adler said sternly, though he didn’t truly sound very threatening. Jasim had heard him using his no-nonsense command tone, the one that could make grown men trip over themselves in their haste to obey. This wasn’t it. “The deal is four on the case and two on the armor. Max.”

  “Maya and Nika were afraid one might fall off while you’re on your journey.”

  Some of the sternness, which seemed to be mock sternness anyway, faded. “Ah.”

  “I kept them from putting a whole sheet of stickers on,” the girl said. “You should thank me.”

  “We’ll see.” He eyed his case as if it might contain booby traps. “Antar, this is Jelena, my step-daughter. Jelena, Antar—Jasim.”

  “Hi, Jasim.” She waved shyly again, then hugged Adler. “Mom is worried about you going off after a cyborg murderer.”

  “I know.” Adler returned the hug. “Take care of her, all right?”

  “Of course.” Jelena waved to both of them the second time, then ran toward the back of the cargo hold. “Erick, Mom said to refuel the tanks. We’re only staying here long enough for Uncle Tommy to shop.”

  Adler turned to face Jasim. “Have you heard anything new?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Alvarado died on Perun, Albrecht on Demeter, Adams on Targos, and Abadi on Starfall Station, right?” Adler asked. “So our murderer or murderers are willing to travel, or send minions to travel for them, and seem more interested in going down the roster in alphabetical order than in batch processing targets.”

  Jasim grimaced at the idea of his former colleagues being “batch processed,” but said, “Yes, sir. It’s surprising they skipped you and moved on to the next one.”

  “We’ve been out near the Trajean Asteroid Belt, and we’re not in the habit of announcing our routes or destinations to the entire system,” Adler said.

  “That’s fortunate for you then. I’ve realized that I’m next on the list. I’ve thought about being open with my travel plans and then staying awake through the nights to try to catch whatever form of attack comes through the door. I don’t sleep much anyway.”

  Adler’s stern face softened slightly. “Nightmares?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Jasim wasn’t surprised he knew. Most of the men had suffered from them to some extent or another, whether they were remorseless killing machines or not. He’d never known if they were a side effect of the surgeries or just a result of the work the cyborgs did. “I’ve alarmed a few of my pilots by banging on the walls in my sleep. Maddy—the pilot of my employer’s ship—pretends she sleeps up in NavCom so she can keep an eye on things, but it may just be because her cabin is next to mine.” Jasim forced a smile, even if the subject was not an amusing one. He suspected Adler remembered him as a whiner, if he remembered Jasim at all. Either way, he hoped to show that he’d changed. He’d been in a rough place mentally that first year of the war, but he’d like to think that he’d grown up since then, learned to take responsibility for his choices. He had no idea how to show Adler that. Funny that it even mattered all these years later.

  “I’ve disturbed my pilot too,” Adler said wryly. “The surgery helped a bit, and I can give you Dr. Tiang’s contact information if you want to look him up on Arkadius, but my children’s tutor, Yumi, was the one to find a weird little headband for me. It monitors my dreams, and if they turn distressing, it kicks me into another sleep cycle to end them.”

  “That sounds wonderful.” Jasim pushed aside the comment about a surgery—what surgery?—and fixated on the rest of his words. Why hadn’t he ever thought to look for such a thing?

  “Sort of. It’s a bit like this all night.” Adler poked Jasim in the shoulder rhythmically several times. “But it lets me sleep with my wife without worrying about… worrying.” He must not have wanted to talk about the details of that, because he quickly went on to say, “She wanted me to invite you to dinner when this is all done.” His eyes narrowed to slits, as if he did not agree with the notion.

  “Really? Because we’re former, ah—” Jasim stopped himself, not wanting to presume to call them peers or colleagues, especially when he detected a hint of disapproval emanating from Adler. “Because we were in the same battalion?”

  “Because I mentioned your propensity for whoopee cushions,” Adler said.

  “Oh.” Heat flushed Jasim’s cheeks. He’d hoped the colonel had forgotten about that incident, along with that day Jasim had gone to his office, asking to be discharged.

  The blue earstar that Jasim wore draped over his right ear beeped softly, alerting him to a message. He almost ignored it so he wouldn’t make the colonel wait, but the device deemed it a priority and projected a holo to the side of his eyes. He skimmed it quickly.

  “Er, this is actually about the murders,” he said, pointing to it. “Or I assume it is.”

  Adler nodded. “Take it.”

  “Answer,” Jasim murmured, and Arlen McCall’s tangled brown hair and freckled face appeared on the floating display. She always looked like she’d just gotten out of bed. “Did you comm to tell me how much I owe you for the cyborg information?” Jasim asked. It was a live transmission with little lag—McCall must have flown away from Bronos Moon to some nearby destination.

  She blinked. “No, that was just a matter of looking at some news feeds. If you feel grateful, you can bring Meathead a bone sometime.”

  “I didn’t think you allowed people on your ship.”

  “Not many,” she agreed. “You can leave the bone outside of the hatch.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “I commed because someone offered me a job, not one of my usual clients.”

  “Oh?” Jasim asked, assuming this had something to do with him. She wasn’t in the habit of discussing clients with him.

  “The person wanted to know where Colonel Hieronymus Adler is. I thought it was odd that someone else was looking for him this week.”

  Jasim looked over the top of McCall’s floating head to meet Adler’s sharp blue eyes. His ears were as enhanced as Jasim’s, so he must have heard that.

  “Yes,” Jasim said. “Did you tell this person where to find him? And do you know who this person is?”

  “I told him or her or them—the message was text-based and routed through different nodes to keep the sender’s identity and location secret—I’d think about accepting the assignment. They weren’t offering a great many tindarks, and I’m not eager to piss off cyborgs, especially those with connections to powerful government officials on both sides.”

  Both sides? Alliance and empire? Who did Adler know in the Alliance? Jasim looked at him again, but his face didn’t give anything away.

  “Who is this?” Adler asked quietly, waving at the ho
lodisplay.

  “A skip tracer. She can find anyone.”

  “If you bribe her dog with bones?”

  “She likes money too.”

  McCall snorted. “Just gotta make enough to pay my taxes, like anyone else.”

  “I’ve seen your ship,” Jasim said. “It’s new and nice and fast enough for the Tri-Suns races.” He could only dream of having enough money to buy his own ship. He would settle for a job that made him proud to wake up and go to work each morning.

  “When you’re hunting down dangerous people and pointing them out to even more dangerous people, it’s always useful to be able to run away afterward. You want to make a counteroffer on this?”

  “Yes,” Adler said before Jasim could ask what she meant. “How much does she want to look up the party who tried to hire her?”

  “She said they hid themselves.”

  “And you just said she could find anyone.”

  “McCall?” Jasim asked. “Did you hear that? Can you—”

  “Of course, I can. And I already did, because I don’t like working for anonymous anyones. I could share the information for—how much do you make in that repo gig?”

  “Not much.”

  “All right. Five hundred tindarks.”

  “You get paid that much to sit in a room and look things up?” Jasim asked, gaping.

  “Actually, I’m giving you a discount because we’ve done business together before.”

  “We agree to the amount,” Adler said before Jasim could do the math and figure out if he could make his loan payment this month if he took out that much. Maybe his wife’s freight business did better than the aged ship implied.

  “The person who wanted to hire me is Terrance Dufour,” McCall said. “There’s no home address registered anywhere, but he gets his mail on Dustor. I can’t promise you he gets it often, but it should be a starting point.”

  “I understand,” Jasim said. It was just like any other gig. He might have to ask around and bribe some people—or use some force—to find the target’s ultimate location. “Out of curiosity, how much did he offer for the colonel’s information?”