by Mina Carter
Stephens looked up in surprise. He was sitting on the couch, rifle within easy reach. From the set of his shoulder and the way he looked at Keris, standing over the other side of the room, they’d been having a “discussion.”
“Come on,” she ordered, motioning to them both. “Let’s go get this flesh thingy booted up and get Keris a body.”
Stephens was on his feet in a heartbeat. “Hell yeah!”
Keris backed away a little. “No, the sub-commander was quite right. I am… an abomination. I should not even be in this body much less be granted a real one.”
“The sub-commander can kiss my fucking ass,” Indra hissed, her temper exploding through her voice. “He’s an asshole. Did you know he’s been talking to those pirates? He knows them. He’s been lying to us. All along. I bet he was a plant and he was going to hand that AI over all along.”
“What…!?”
She turned to find Seren and Gracie in the doorway, a look of surprise and anger already forming on the big Lathar warrior’s face. “He is Vesh. I should have known.”
“Someone is going to have to tell me what the fuck Vesh means someday,” Indra growled. “But not right now. One issue at a time and first we need to get Keris a body, before Mr. Fucking Traitor finishes what was started in there and destroys that machine.”
“Right behind you,” Stephens replied, his voice a low rasp as he turned to Keris. “Either you walk, sweetheart, or I’ll put you over my goddamn shoulder and carry you. I’ll probably put my back out, but one way or another, you are going to that printer.”
The AI didn’t reply. She simply looked around the small group. With a sigh, she gave in to the inevitable.
“I will go… I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I will go.”
“Halle-fucking-lujah,” Indra said, already walking out of the room and turning to head toward Sector Four.
They reached it in silence, the small group clustered around the airport-like gate of the printer.
“Okay… does anyone know how this works?” Indra asked.
“I think I can figure it out,” Seren replied, a frown on his face as he stood at the control console. His hands moved over the screen in front of him. “I’ve triggered the settings for an expedition-variant female. It’s the last code in the system,” he explained, looking up at them. “It should be the swiftest to print and mature.”
Keris nodded, her metal feet clunking softly against the deck as she walked across toward another area with loungers set in a semi-circle. She sat in the first one, the furniture groaning under her weight.
“Once the body is printed, I can download directly into the neural net, leaving this metal skin. I should awaken in the new body,” she said, her robotic voice ringing with nerves and excitement. She stopped and looked at Stephens. “I may be… diminished,” she said softly.
Indra and the rest turned away to give them some privacy as the big marine knelt down in front of the AI, their soft voices barely on the edge of hearing. She had no idea what the deal was with the pair of them but, fuck it, everyone deserved a chance at happiness.
“Do it,” she nodded to Seren and watched as he set the machine in motion.
The lights on the “gate” brightened until they were almost blinding. With the sound of mechanisms moving under the deck beneath their feet and a clunk, a circular hatch opened at the bottom of the gate. A large cylinder like those in the bio-tubes slid up and into place. It began to fill with fluid, viscous, sticky fluid, burbling from the bottom. Rapidly the level rose until the tube was full.
“Whoa…”
She wasn’t sure who said it, but a sense of awe filled the room as the gate split in two. The separate sections began to rotate, opposite to each other. They crisscrossed, the lights on the inside of the “blades” lighting consecutively, from bottom to top, over and over. The lights increased speed at the same time as the blades until they drew lines on the side of the tube and… something… began to form.
Indra’s mouth dropped open as a rough pair of feet appeared, a little more each time the blades passed by. Millimeter by millimeter a humanoid form began to take shape—a form that would soon house Keris. It wasn’t identifiable as female, or even human, at the moment. It was merely a hunk of flesh and bone, like an organic sculpture awaiting the finishing touches. The face was flat and unformed with depressions where the eyes would eventually be and the slight ridge of a nose.
But… it was beautiful. Like she was watching life form right there in front of her.
She tore her eyes away to look over to the couches. Keris had lain down now, some kind of apparatus over her head. Stephens hadn’t left her, sitting by her thigh and his hand on hers as he watched the body form in the tube.
“Blasphemy!”
The snarl came from behind them. Indra looked over her shoulder and sighed. Nyek stood in the doorway, a furious expression on his face.
“Fuck off and take your outdated beliefs with you,” she hissed, turning her back on him. This was happening, whether he liked it or not, and there was nothing he could do about it. “You’re not welcome here.”
“Oh, I am absolutely positive about that.”
Something about the way he spoke, some minute quality in his voice, made Indra turn. She watched as he walked toward them, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“You’re not Nyek. Who are you?”
He chuckled, dark eyes alight with amusement. The smirk that on Nyek sent heat shimmering through her blood left her cold on this man’s face. “I had been told human females were dull little things, barely intelligent. But I see now my information was incorrect.”
He came to a stop a few feet away from her, warriors spilling out of the doorway behind to fan out around the room.
“Now… the usual line here is, come quietly and no one gets hurt.” He pursed his lips as his gaze flicked to Seren and Stephens. “But you know what, that’s boring. Guards, take them. Get rid of the males.”
Indra screamed in fury as they were swarmed by Latharian warriors, fighting back as the pretend Nyek grabbed her arm and yanked her up against him.
“You’re the one. Aren’t you?” he murmured.
“Not a clue what you’re on about, asshole!” she hissed and kneed him in the balls. Unlike Nyek, he didn’t see it coming and she clocked him good and hard. Pushing him away from her as he wheezed and staggered, she ran for the door.
She made it three steps before something hit her hard in the back of the head, and she tumbled down into black emptiness.
Indra woke with Gracie leaning over her, a worried look on her face.
“Oh, thank god,” she breathed in relief. “I didn’t think you were going to wake up. They hit you pretty hard.”
The lump on the back of Indra’s head made its presence known with long fingers of pain and faint nausea. She winced as Gracie helped her to sit up. She had a touch of concussion for sure.
They were sitting on a hard metal deck, her ass complaining and her left leg full of pins and needles as the blood rushed back to it. She eyed the bars in front of them. Metal walls, metal floors, bars…
“A cell. How original,” she muttered. “Where are we?”
One thing was for sure. They weren’t anywhere on the base. From what she could see of the cell and the corridor beyond, the walls and floor were a different design. She took a lungful of air. It even smelled different. Less… dead and dormant. People lived here, moved around, breathed the air. It had a vitality that the base hadn’t had.
“On the pirate ship that chased us, I think.”
Indra nodded, leaning against the back wall of the cell next to Gracie as she concentrated on not throwing up. She’d been in enough cells to know the last thing you wanted to do was foul it up in any way. Most people who kept others in cells weren’t that hot on their cleaning regimes, which meant you were stuck living with your own stink.
“You were unconscious for a long time. I thought they’d killed you. Hit you too hard.
”
“I’m harder to kill than that. Did they say why they’ve taken us?”
The answer to that question was fairly obvious, but Indra asked it anyway. They might get lucky and their captors had decided they needed a two-week all-expense-paid trip to whatever counted as a high-class luxury resort for the Lathar. Then again, given the cell, probably not.
She stood slowly, testing her balance every step of the way, ready to sit her ass back down if her body decided it wasn’t ready to stand up yet, thank you very much. A sigh of relief escaped her when she made it to her feet and tipped her head back. Thanks to her life on the streets, she was more than familiar with operating with a concussion. The streets weren’t any place you could take a nice lie down if you felt a little unwell. You got on with it, or you died and someone else took your place.
Sauntering slowly to the front of the cell, she looked both ways down the corridor. The left was empty, the corridor dark. Other cells maybe, possibly empty since the lights in front of them weren’t lit like theirs. Looking to the right was more fruitful.
Two Lathar stood guarding a door. But they were not like any Lathar she’d seen so far. Most of the ones on the Izal’vias had watched her, often circumspectly, curiosity and a healthy dose of desire and longing in their eyes. That they hadn’t ever seen a woman was obvious.
These Lathar were different. Even when she moved into their line of sight, they didn’t move a muscle. Nothing in their expressions so much as flickered. Instead, they remained looking straight ahead, their gazes fixed on something she couldn’t see.
“Pssst…” she hissed to get their attention. They didn’t move.
“Hey… handsome. Wanna come talk to me?”
“What are you doing?” Gracie hissed, trying to drag her away from the bars. Indra batted her hands away, nodding toward the two guards.
“Look. That’s not normal. Not for this sex-deprived lot. Did they say anything while I was out of it?”
Gracie shook her head. Her expression was tight, and controlled panic showed in the backs of her eyes. Indra didn’t blame her. Like her, Gracie had been through a lot before she’d arrived on the Izal’vias. Being captured by pirates at this point, after all they’d been through, was just taking the piss.
“Not really. They keep saying, ‘for the glory of Ursal-Kai,’ though.”
Indra sighed, her head thunking back against the metal wall. “Great. Fanatics. I thought I recognized the look. We had a problem with Brothers back on the streets for a while.”
“Oh?” Gracie looked at her, interest in her eyes. “What happened to them?”
Indra didn’t blame her for the sudden focused interest. The Brothers of Grace movement were among the worst of the cults that had grown out of the old religions from Earth. Cutting and splicing together the worst parts of several religions, they’d created something new and hideous, warping the minds of their followers and turning them into blind sheep. They preyed on the outer colonies usually and once they got a foothold were very hard to eradicate. But, although they could be violent, they often didn’t try and move into ganger territory.
“One of the gangs in our territory imploded. Leadership used to be cousins who had opposing views on how things should be run. Gossip said they killed each other. The Brothers tried to move into their territory and fill the power vacuum but the rest of us weren’t having that. No one wanted assholes like that on the streets. Not with their leanings toward breeding their women.”
She told the story absently. It had been during her initiation period and the only time other than the assassin in her quarters that she’d killed anyone. But what was a gal to do when she found three of the assholes about to “convert” a little girl in the most brutal way possible?
“First time the gangs on Talax-Four had worked together. Took us six months to get rid of the fuckers. Most of ‘em went into the reclamation units. Didn’t want ‘em stinking up the streets.”
Gracie eyed her with admiration and concern. Mostly admiration. “Remind me never to piss you off, okay?”
She sighed as she leaned against the wall next to Indra. “Wish we could’ve done that to those fucking scavengers instead of having to compile evidence to make a case. We knew what the assholes were as soon as we hit dirtside.”
Indra made a small sound in the back of her throat. Talax-Four might have been well-established but even they’d heard about colony scavengers. The worst of the worst, they hit outlying colonies and took them over, killing and stealing resources before they moved onto their next target. People like that should be in Mirax Ruas, but the authorities had a hard time catching and convicting them thanks to the law.
“Might not have lost Niall and Dave then.”
There was real pain in Gracie’s voice and Indra reached out to cover the other woman’s hand with her own in silent support. The movement surprised her. Look at her getting all touchy feely and down with the emotional crap. A few weeks among the “normals” and she was getting soft.
“Members of your team?” she asked in a soft voice, sensing the other woman needed to let some of that pain out. “What happened to them?”
Gracie barked a small laugh. “Same thing that happened to the scavengers. They got taken by that bastard Krin thing and eaten.”
Indra looked over at the guards, still stoic and unmoving. “Could do with something like that here right about now.”
Gracie shuddered, the look in her eyes haunted. “No. You do not. You really do not.
Movement by the door caught both their attention and they pulled back toward the back wall as a new warrior entered the corridor. His black-on-black gaze swept over them dispassionately, and he threw something on the floor through the bars. When Gracie picked it up, the bundle of slippery fabric revealed itself to be two gowns.
“Put them on.” The warrior ordered in a hard voice. “The prophet has summoned you.”
16
When Nyek returned to the rooms he shared with Indra, they were empty. That was not a surprise, not with the way he’d abruptly left the lab in Sector Four. Plus he’d made Stephens look like an idiot again. And if humans were anything like Lathar, as he’d seen so far, they wouldn’t appreciate that at all.
Which meant Indra was probably in one of the other rooms with her friends, being annoyed with him on behalf of the human male. He would have to wait until she came back, and then he could apologize for walking away from her. He didn’t plan on apologizing for saying no to their plans or pointing out the truth. The truth was often tough, but they’d just have to get over it.
Until then, though, he had larger considerations. Not least the fact that his brother and a branch of the purist movement were active in this area. He didn’t think they’d found the base yet, but he knew Tavik. It would only be a matter of time.
“Miisan K’Saan?” he asked the empty air. “Are you online and monitoring?”
There was a pause, and then the air in front of him shimmered. When it cleared, Miisan’s holographic form stood right in front of him. For a moment he was caught, pinned by her gaze. That she was a K’Saan was obvious. She had the same deep green eyes and dark hair as the emperor, her litaan, but the small quirk of her lips nailed it more than anything else. The last time he’d seen that half-smirk, it had been on Daaynal, the Latharian emperor.
But it was more than that. There was an alertness and ruthlessness lurking in the backs of her eyes that said, even in AI form, Miisan K’Saan would do absolutely whatever was necessary to achieve her aims.
“I am indeed,” she replied, looking him over. He wasn’t sure what she saw, but she seemed to approve and smiled at him. “But I have only had that capacity within the last few minutes and only in certain areas of this facility.”
He folded his arms, rubbing at his jaw as he thought. She’d mentioned before that the generators were still spooling up and he’d seen the damage in certain areas of the base himself. Given that someone had obviously tried to destroy the labs in Se
ctor Four, it would stand to reason that other areas, ones more critical to the base’s operation, would have been targeted as well.
“Do you still have access to the imperial databases?” he asked.
Her gaze didn’t leave his. The holographic projectors on board were excellent, far better than any he’d seen anywhere else. Apart from a slight head tilt to the side, she could well have been mortal. But, as much as she was beautiful, it was a cold beauty compared to Indra’s. Sure, his little human was not as classically beautiful as the Latharian royal standing in front of him, but she was warm and sharp, and her slightly crooked smile lit him up more than a thousand sunrises. When he looked at her, all his guilt and anger fell away. He was a better male just for having her in his life.
“I can only access my local copy of the database,” she replied. “Anything that was added after I left Lathar Prime on my last mission will be missing. Would that be sufficient for your needs?”
His eyes narrowed by a tiny margin, certainly nothing a normal warrior would register. For an AI that was likely monitoring everything about him down to his blood pressure and endocrine levels, though, he might as well have waved a banner.
“You’re not a standard AI, even an advanced model. Are you?”
She shook her head. “Do you think I’d let a little thing like my own death stand in the way of my work?”
“So why hide yourself?”
She arched a delicate holographic eyebrow. “Do you blame me given the prejudice against AIs within the empire? One hint of what I was truly capable of and I’d have been wiped immediately.”
He grunted. While he might not know the emperor well, that one brief glimpse he’d gotten when Daaynal’s mask had slipped had been telling. Nyek doubted Daaynal would let his sister get away a second time, no matter what form she now inhabited.
Miisan leveled him with a hard look. “You didn’t wake me to ask about the nature of my existence. So, what did you wish to ask me?”
