“I was doing you and Ash a favor. It’s not my fault they changed their mind about taking you.”
“Who changed their minds? The UCN?”
“The powers that be—the people who pay our salaries. When it comes down through a whole line of World Security Generals, you don’t ask too many questions. You do as you’re told and cash your paychecks.”
“Fuck their money. Do you think I give a rat’s ass about my salary? I was working and saving enough to buy my husband out of the Cyber Husband program, which was another shitty thing the UCN did to Cyber Soldiers. You fucking listened to me recount every cent I put into the bank for that purpose. You handed me tissues and took me to dinner. You patted my back and offered sympathy. But that whole time you knew exactly where he was and didn’t say shit.”
“They only asked for thirty humans, Dia. We gave them cyborgs to spare the rest of humanity. Yes, they wanted at least one pilot. Yes, you were supposed to be in the program. But after the war, World Security decided they couldn’t sacrifice a global hero. People needed to feel safe again. They told the program no pilot was willing to volunteer. They had their thirty humans, so they stopped asking for astronauts.”
Dia perched on his desk. “So ‘the powers that be’ enslaved most of the male cyborgs and made millions on renting them out. Then ‘the powers that be’ tortured and mutilated the female Cyber Soldiers, many of whom are still walking vegetables because of what was done to them. Who in hell thought one pissed-off, grieving female astronaut with a missing cyborg husband could distract the entire world from the pain of wondering if their soldiers were ever coming home? You and everyone involved need your nuts cut off. Damn you, Scott. Ash was the hero, not me. You had no right to lie to him. I thought you were our friend.”
“They changed their mind about you, Dia. They didn’t want me to tell you for the same reason they wanted Ash to be in it.”
The light bulb finally dawned. Dia smacked her forehead. “Shit—I get it. They put Ash in it as bait in case they took me after all. They figured I’d go to be with him. They fucked with my life—and Ash’s life—to make sure the program didn’t inconvenience the world reconstruction efforts.”
“Yes,” Scott hissed through gritted teeth.
“Except Ash doesn’t want me anymore… and now it’s too late to change things. Hybridization is not reversible.”
Dia made a weapon from her thumb and finger to point at Scott and pulled an imaginary trigger.
“You see, Scott, when the ‘powers that be’ decided to keep me in the dark, that was when you, as our friend, should have fessed up. If you’re really the good guy you’re trying to convince me you are, you would have told me. They genetically altered Ash two fucking years ago, not ten. It took eight years for them to grow back each soldier's human body parts. I could have stopped Ash from being altered if you’d told me. Now? Well now, it’s too damn late, and it’s your fault. I will never, ever forgive you for that.”
“I’m sorry.”
Dia slid off the desk. “It’s way too late to be sorry, but I’m still glad we had this chat.”
“Don’t leave me like this, Dia. You’re not that kind of person.”
“I’m a person without a country, friends, or anything to live for you, Scott. That’s why I have to leave. I’m getting ready to fly a suicide mission—one I’ve never coming back from. My death needs to happen quickly now that you know my plans. Like I said, no one is ever fucking with my life again. Not you. Not ‘the powers that be’ or the UCN or whoever the hell you thought more highly of than you did me and Ash—your so-called friends.”
“Dia… please… don’t do this. Time will make this better.”
She stopped at the door. “No, it won’t... and you are one sorry motherfucker for thinking that shit. The injection I gave you is for a person who’s succumbed to space madness. I always carry one dose with me for trainees who succumb to it. It’ll wear off in about six hours—well, sometimes it takes a little longer. Maybe I’ll get lucky and you’ll die from it. Some people die from it.”
“Don’t… kill… yourself…”
Dia shrugged as she glared. “Don’t you get it? I have no Ash, no Sergei, and no real friends. What in hell do I have to live for?”
Giving Scott a middle finger salute, Dia spun on her heel and headed out of the hangar. She headed off someone on their way to see him and said Scott was sick and going home.
Dia waited until she was in the air to make a call. “I’m done with my revenge. You can kill me now.”
Peyton’s husky chuckle came through the secure com. “I wish like hell you’d quit saying that.”
Dia laughed. “Why? I’m serious. Have I thanked you?”
“A gazillion times and it’s still unnecessary. Kyra and I are just doing the right thing.”
“Glad you two are sticking around down here. There aren’t too many good guys left on this giant blue marble.”
“There are more than you realize,” Peyton said. “Swing by the house and pick up Kyra. She’s going back to talk to Sarek. She may ask you to fly a transport there.”
“Without you?”
Peyton laughed again. “Yeah. I’ve obviously got nothing to fight aliens with and Kyra needs Sarek’s help. I learned years ago not to get in her way when she’s saving someone. She’s convinced she might persuade Sarek to help her restore the rest of the female soldiers.”
“I see what’s she’s thinking. Okay. I’ll be there in three hours. Here’s the zillionth and one thank you coming… thanks for everything, Peyton.”
“It’s been an honor, Colonel Daniels. Fly straight and well.”
“Oorah, Marine. Watch your ass.”
10
“Is there any craft you can’t fly?” Kyra asked.
Dia grinned as she prepared the scientific cargo ship for landing. It had been a while since she’d flown one of these transports.
“I carry supplies to the Moon on a regular basis. The space shuttle is about twice as big as this metal beast.”
“Peyton said this thing was a beast to fly. That must be a military metaphor.”
Dia laughed at Kyra’s snarky comment. Peyton’s military background seemed to frustrate the scientist. She had enjoyed the dynamic between them… and had envied it.
“I have a question,” Dia said with smile. “Did you really need to bring them in stasis pods? You could probably ship people to Mars in those things. No, wait… this alien I know said we couldn’t go back to Mars because humans had already destroyed it once. My bad.”
Kyra smiled as she chuckled. Astronaut humor and military sarcasm had a lot in common. “We stole this transport monstrosity from my ex-husband. Every stasis pod in it contained one of his botched experiments.”
“Do I want to know about them?”
Kyra turned her gaze to the window. “No. It’s best you don’t. Most of the atrocities Jackson made were passed along to Earth’s best genetic experts to try to resolve. I only kept the cybernetic ones.”
“And this sweet transport. Way to break the rules. Good for you,” Dia teased.
“Peyton thought it best for us to keep the craft for our work. It certainly came in handy today. Like everything else my insane ex received from the UCN, this transport ship was top of the line.”
Following the directions they were given, Dia set the transport down in the same hangar Peyton had landed inside of before. Turning off the engines set a flurry of hangar activity into motion.
The same stoic officer they’d seen during their initial visit greeted them again with no smile of welcome or even a hello. At the man’s nod and hand signal to some waiting soldiers, stasis pods containing six women were efficiently offloaded into a fossil-fuel truck and driven off.
After that was accomplished, their stoic escort deposited both of them into the backseat of his land vehicle. He handed them blind-folds and snarkily asked if they needed to hear the speech again about why they needed to wear them.
Kyra giggled a little when Dia colorfully swore under her breath, but they both placed the blind-folds over their eyes. As soon as they’d satisfied him with their compliance, the ancient gas-powered vehicle revved into motion and shot out of the receiving station.
Dia waited a minute, pondered her remaining questions, then decided she and Kyra Winters were beyond polite games. She had no reason to hold back her curiosity from the only scientist who’d ever told her the truth.
“What’s wrong with the women you brought here, Kyra? As spooked as we all were by Sarek’s existence, I know you wouldn’t bring them here without a damn good reason.”
Kyra nodded, then chuckled at herself when she remembered Dia couldn’t see her head going up and down. “I meant to tell you about them on the flight here, but I was enjoying our other conversation. I don’t get to hang around with other females very often.”
Dia laughed. “Yeah, I’m all about girl talk. Between my haircut and my job, I don’t get to keep much of my femininity. That wasn’t the case when Ash was with me. He made me happy to be female, if you know what I mean.”
Kyra chuckled. “I’m a scientist. I know exactly what you mean. And before Peyton, I didn’t even know I could feel the way he makes me feel.
“Now that we’ve bonded for life…”
Kyra laughed again.
“Tell me about the women,” Dia ordered softly. “I’d really like to know.”
“Two of the women are members of the original female Cyber Soldier group that my ex converted for his experiments. They escaped my ex and his military helpers several times, but were always re-captured. The last time they were caught Jackson decided to eradicate the female cyborgs he considered to be failed experiments.”
Dia grunted. “This is going to make me hate him more, isn’t it?”
Kyra turned toward Dia’s voice. “Yes. Jackson programmed the women to destroy their processor compartments—basically to commit cybernetic suicide. Other than their captain who was also being held in captivity, only the two female soldiers I brought with me survived that destruction order. The women I brought both suffered massive brain damage that doesn’t want to heal. They’re barely alive by most standards, but I haven’t been willing to give up hope of restoring them yet.”
“So your ex made all the female Cyber Soldiers and then later killed them?”
“Yes. Most of them,” Kyra admitted.
“What a complete waste of intelligence. He was a bastard.”
“And ultimately a scientific failure in ways he refused to acknowledge. Unlike Captain Lucille Pennington and the two soldiers in stasis that I brought with me, there were two other remarkable soldiers in her group who managed to save themselves from being recaptured. They proved what I warned Jackson about over a decade ago. Those two women discovered what was wrong with their code and hired black market hackers to alter their processors.”
“Were they scientists?”
Kyra chuckled dryly. “No—just very motivated to staying alive. Once they’d established as much control as they could over their cybernetic freedom, they immediately returned to rescue their captain and the other female soldiers my ex-husband tried to destroy.”
“That’s incredible—and inspiring.”
“Yes. You met one of them.”
“Really? When was that?” Dia asked with a laugh.
“Aja Kapur is the current head of security at Norton. Well, now she’s actually Aja Bastion. She married my assistant who is like a son to me. I am a blessed woman.”
“Right… I did meet her. Wow,” Dia said. “How about the other one?”
“Meara MacDonald—she and Aja are like two halves of a whole. Meara and Captain William Talon carry out the other half of our cyborg rescue missions. Peyton and I do the political parts. Will and Meara go in and get the soldiers out.”
“What happened to their captain?”
“Lucy lives, but she’s a work in progress. Some of her damage is unrepairable, but you’d never know it. She’s fought hard for every ounce of her own humanity. I’m sorry you never got to meet her. I consider her a walking miracle and a total testament to a human’s will to survive.”
“She’s Blondie’s woman,” Dia stated, putting the various story pieces together.
“Who’s Blondie?” Kyra asked.
Dia laughed at the question. “Blondie is my name for the guy who helped Peyton kill those trackers Scott put in me. I never got his real name. He’s damn lucky I didn’t punch his lights out for zapping me so many times.”
Kyra smiled. “He’d probably have let you. Eric Anderson is one of good guys. He had to deal with Lucy when she accidentally flipped into her companion programming which came with an assassin mode. He had to turn down her advances while trying to keep her from killing anyone she considered a threat. Somewhere in that mess he fell in love and decided to save her from herself.”
“Okay… well, maybe I owe Blondie an apology or two…”
“In many ways, it was Eric’s love for her that brought Lucy back to us. She was always formidable, but in my opinion, Lucy remains the most dangerous woman walking the Earth—perhaps even the most dangerous cyborg. Jackson had no idea what he’d accomplished in creating her and I’m forever grateful for it. If people knew about her extensive cyber skills, Lucy wouldn’t be allowed to walk around alone.”
“Now I’m curious about the rest. Tell me about the other four women in stasis pods, but talk fast. I don’t want the trip to end until I know. The other four are artificially beautiful and look like they’ve been sculpted out of plastic.”
Sighing, Kyra cleared her throat. “The Cyber Husband program was a huge success for the UCN, but the Cyber Wife program was a bust. Unfortunately, Jackson’s failure with constraining the female cyborgs never stopped him from pushing forward with his more devious plans.”
“And what were those?” Dia asked to keep Kyra talking.
“While I was doing my original restoration experiments, I discovered Jackson’s primary claim was the creation of what he called New World Companions. His customized females were pricey to create and not without flaws, but each woman was programmed to be a fantasy come true for the male who bought her. However, the monthly bombardment of hormones through a woman’s body naturally disrupted all Jackson’s careful programming. That’s how Aja and Meara escaped Jackson. They obeyed their raging hormones instead of their code, and being soldiers both were willing to kill to free themselves.”
“Well, yay for being female and badass. Stories like that make all the cramps and periods worth it.”
“Yes, but hormonal surges didn’t help the four New World Companions I have in stasis. Jackson removed some portions of their brains and nearly all of their reproduction system to keep hormonal breaks from happening. Then he locked the companions down with a special code that I’m sure he thought was unbreakable. I broke his code fairly quickly, but I couldn’t restore these four women physically. I don’t have any secret to repairing their brains, not even enough for independent functioning. They running the most innocuous processor I ever created, but all its doing is keeping them alive.”
“So they really are living robots. Sounds like a horror vid instead of real life,” Dia said.
“Yes. Two of them have an older version of the companion code. Those women exist in stasis, but they do not understand who they are or even that they’re alive. They follow a strict schedule that keeps their bodies going, but they exhibit no human will or decision-making. The newer two have neural processors. If we had gotten to them before they were initialized as companions, we might have prevented their current condition. Now we would be destroying so many brain synapses that freeing them would destroy their minds. We recently rescued some young women from that fate, but the two I brought here are beyond my skills.”
Dia turned toward Kyra. “Are you’re hoping Sarek will help you fix these women?”
“Yes. Something like that,” Kyra admitted. She paused and sighed. �
��He has refused to share his genetic secrets with me or teach me how to grow back body parts. However, I think Sarek can fix them if motivated to do so. Our alien visitor may be their only hope to live anything resembling a normal life again.”
“You know Sarek is only motivated by one thing,” Dia warned.
Kyra sighed. “I realized that, which is why I’m hoping he’ll take all six into the program. My assumption is that you’ll look out for them if he’s able to give them back something closer to a real life than I’ve been able to do. If they one day recall who they were before their nightmare began, maybe you can tell them what happened and why putting them in the program was the only way I had to save them.”
Dia grunted. “Sure. Of course, I’d do that, but what if Sarek won’t take them?”
Kyra lifted a shoulder, then reached over to touch Dia’s arm. “If Sarek looks at them and says no, I’ll take them back with me and keep trying. No one in these women’s lives seem to care about them anymore. Most families wanted nothing to do with their Cyber Soldiers after we restored them. It was heart wrenching to watch all those soldiers lose their lives for a second time after a decade of being enslaved by the very people they were fighting to protect.”
The primitive land vehicle jostled them in their seats as they traveled over bumpy roads. A few more bumps and they heard metal closing behind them.
“Sounds like we’re here. Are you nervous?” Kyra asked.
“Only about dealing with Ash when he finds out what I’ve done. I’m not keen on being turned into a green spotted alien, but as long as I get to stay mostly myself, I’ll be fine. Scott told me that he and I were targeted for the program. They wanted astronauts, but no one gave them any. Well, now they’ll have at least one. I’ll be their pilot and get to be with my husband. That’s the life I’m choosing.”
“Lucy’s two people are female soldiers. They might be useful if they get restored. I have no idea about the other four. All they may be is cute.”
Ashland 297: The Alien Agenda Page 7
