Sector Eight (Perimeter Defense: Book #1)

by Michael Atamanov

  On my way into the office, I was unexpectedly stopped by Popori de Cacha coming out of invisibility.

  "My Prince, your secretary has arrived on the yacht and is awaiting you in your office. But my subordinates need some more time to make sure it's safe."

  The image of the chameleons preparing Triasss Zess for interrogation flashed before my eyes involuntarily. I even shivered, though I understood that my bodyguards did not suffer from excessive bloodthirstiness and would not be crippling her without reason.

  "My Prince, you may enter," announced Popori de Cacha one minute later, before disappearing again.

  I took a step into the open door and sharply stopped. There was no doubt about it, what I saw shocked me to the core. There was a big box right next to the door with its top taken off, lying right next to it on the floor. Inside the box, covered with packing peanuts, lay a totally naked girl. She had had to press her knees to her stomach and tuck in her head to fit in such an uncomfortable package. Next to the box on the floor lay a few sets of clothes, carefully folded into plastic packets and two pairs of shoes, one of them sneakers and the other high heels. The girl was conscious, and her bright blue eyes were darting around, following what was happening in the room, though she did not try to budge or climb out of the package.

  A chameleon appeared from nowhere and handed me a packet of papers and bent down over the box. He unceremoniously turned the girl's head a bit to the side, brushing a lock of yellow hair from her temple before entering some information into his electronic bracelet, constantly checking it against the single visible digit or letter. With difficulty, I tore myself from contemplating the box with living contents and took a look at the brochure I had been given.

  "Android Servant. Model № 034-6781. User's Manual," I read at the top of the first page.

  So that was it... That was why the expected salary was so modest! It seems I had ordered not a living assistant, but a robot servant... I walked around the box and noticed a label on one side, "Bionica Klein, android. Immediate delivery. Bill of lading: 71566-AAB Tesse."

  "Have you finished checking?" I wondered to the chameleons.

  "We're almost finished, my Prince," declared Popori de Cacha. "In essence, everything's in order, the base command unit is sealed, all restrictions are in place. No foreign objects have been detected in the box or the android's body cavities. But two irregularities are bothering me. First of all, the date on the security seal on her processor unit does not match up with her release date. That means this model has been sent out for repairs and some adjustments have been made to the operating system. Second, this model's firmware is very out of date. It's been more than twenty-five years since a new patch or update was installed. I must find an explanation for these irregularities before I can make a conclusion on whether this secretary can be used safely."

  "Maybe we could just ask her... or it, or how should I call it?" I wondered, going far off track as I didn't know how to properly identify the gender of a robot in conversation.

  "Perhaps, but we cannot consider the android's answers fully credible, in that we cannot check them," objected the chameleon. "But asking can't hurt."

  I walked up closer and met eyes with the girl lying in the box. She looked at me attentively as if waiting for something.

  "Can you speak?" I asked.

  "Yes, of course. I can speak," came the android's lifelessly mechanical voice, expressing no emotion whatsoever.

  Apparently, disapproval or disenchantment was being expressed on my face, because Bionica then rushed to answer:

  "Reading expression. Master upset. He was expecting something else. My appearance can be set on a sliding scale. My ability to learn new information and abilities is virtually limitless. My level of humanness can be set."

  "Normal voice, not like a mechanical puppet!" I demanded. "And your speech must be coherent, without broken phrases. Set humanness to maximum!"

  "Does this voice for a secretary and translator please the Crown Prince?" asked the girl with a pleasant, young, utterly vivacious voice.

  "Fully. Do you know who I am?" I asked, catching on the girl/android's last phrase.

  "With a chance of over... That is, my apologies, I recognized you Prince Georg royl Inoky ton Mesfelle, which is why I am at such a loss for words."

  "Explain," I commanded, not having understood her answer.

  "It is very nice that a member of Imperial upper aristocracy had an interest in my talents. But, at the same time, the choice saddens me. It is completely obvious that from now on, my value has risen sharply in the eyes of your Highness's foes. My intelligence and the wisdom I've acquired over twenty-five years speak to the fact that, even if I am left to lie in this box, either way after the end of this contract, there is a nearly one hundred percent chance that I will be purchased by other aristocrats with the goal of finding and extracting all information I have on Prince Georg royl Inoky. Clearly, your Highness will not allow that, and such information will surely be destroyed together with its carrier. I may not be a human but, like all people, I love and value life. So, my perspectives here have upset me."

  Huh, damn... With my stupid choice, I had sentenced this android to death. Even though she wasn't a living being, I still felt a bit beside myself with guilt.

  "You may stand up out of the package."

  Bionica immediately took advantage of the permission, stood up and adopted the classic "bashful pose." One arm was covering her breasts, while the palm of her other hand covered her crotch. As I was her owner, I felt it appropriate to walk a circle around her, looking shamelessly over the android girl who was getting embarrassed just like a human would. What a body. And her skin was very natural. There was no way of telling that the thing in front of me was not a living person.

  "Answer my bodyguard's questions," I demanded.

  Bionica, not seeing the chameleon, turned her face toward me and proceeded to tell her story.

  "I was sent to the service center for repair on warranty just three months after I was first purchased. My owner's son took advantage of his absence and threw a party with his friends. Though they didn't have super-administrator rights, they decided to take advantage of my model's expanded range of functions all the same."

  "Explain," I asked, not having fully arrived at what she was driving at, though I could have guessed.

  "If I were a living person, it would have been classified as gang rape. I tried to the best of my ability to obstruct the unauthorized access, but androids are not allowed to harm people, though people themselves have no such restriction... The external appearance of the model was damaged, and the warranty was used to get the necessary repair. The client was given a similar model instead of me, and my self-teaching programming unit was modified to erase the negative experience. The second answer is to the question about missed patches. My third owner thought that it was accumulated life experience that allowed androids to perfect themselves and become more human. He thought it wasn't necessary to change what was already working fine and that changing out the unique, naturally formed character with something average and manufacturer-recommended would only ruin me. So, he turned off automatic updating of installed programs, and all my subsequent owners simply paid the matter no mind."

  I waited for a reaction from Popori de Cacha, but the chameleon remained invisible. So, I made the decision on my own and addressed the android girl, who stood petrified as a statue:

  "In order to explain all questions you might have right away – yes, it was me who ordered you. And as you've probably figured out, I made a mistake. But today I was struggling with a severe deficit of translators from the Iseyek language, so I need a specialist in that, and it is of no importance whether that is a living person or an android. And I also need a personal secretary. So, get dressed and get to work.”

  * * *

  As the ship came out of warp, I was instantly met by two system messages:

  Global fame increase. Current value +5

  Glo
bal standing decrease. Current value -28

  I did not understand the reason for these changes. Either the Green House had unfurled various insinuations about me in the Throne World, or my choice of a second-hand android as a personal servant had been made known to the noble public and put me in a negative light. It wasn't really important. Much more important was the fact that I had had my first drug withdrawal symptoms. My fingers were clenching involuntarily, my leg muscles were shaking, and tears were rolling down my face. I never took drugs my whole life, so I had no idea what was happening to me and became quite scared.

  I immediately called for Nicosid Brandt, who quickly made a diagnosis and gave me an IV with some solution somewhere between glucose and vitamin complex. It helped, but my heart continued to beat in fear for no less than an hour.

  "My Prince, I warned you," scolded my elderly doctor. "No one has yet been able to overcome crystal addiction."

  "That means I'll be the first," I insisted in continuing stubbornness, reaffirming my decision as hard and final.

  I spent the next two hours just torturing myself at the gym to build up my atrophied muscles. Even the fitness instructor looked scared; he could only watch as the high-born prince fought through pain, sweat and tears to complete cycle after cycle of exercises. My exercising hadn't had any effect on my figure yet, but I was still feeling something. My first day of exercising, I spent an hour in the gym and was just dying. But now, after two hours, I still had the strength to take a shower and head to the pool.

  By the way, it was in the pool that an incident occurred that nearly lead to my being unmasked. I was running to jump into the water when two of my chameleon bodyguards appeared in front of me and grabbed me in what was not the most careful of ways. I fell to the floor with them, rolled and skinned my knee.

  "My Prince, that was not very smart!" The alarmed Popori de Cacha hurried to the place I'd fallen to help me get up. "That's the deep end, and you don't know how to swim!"

  I almost answered that I can swim very well, but I bit my tongue just in the nick of time. How lucky I was to have been stopped by my bodyguards! It would have been a sight to see if the truly unable-to-swim Prince Georg royl Inoky suddenly started swimming confidently, be it a crawl or a breast stroke...

  "Sorry, Popori de Cacha, I was dreaming way too big. But your worrying was for naught. Take a look at my body," I offered, extending a layer of skin with my fingers. "Can a person really drown with so much extra fat?"

  The chameleon's eyes both darted to the part of my body I was pointing at, then to the open wound on my knee that had a fair amount of blood dribbling from it.

  "My subordinates did not have enough time to account for the buoyancy of the human body," said Popori de Cacha, turning toward the three bodyguards who had blocked my way to the water. "So, my Prince, they acted on their life experience, which said that, if a Ravaash individual falls into the water, they will inevitably drown and die. That is why the bodyguards considered the threat to your life critical and acted in kind. If the front pair of guards had not been able stop you at the edge, all four of us would have jumped into the water to help our master reach the edge and get out alive, even if it cost us our lives.”

  Tired, I sat on a bench to allow the pool employees who had run up to me to disinfect my knee and attach a wide bandage. I opened the relations menu and saw a message about a possible decision:

  Chance of expressing your reaction

  Change in personal opinion of Popori de Cacha (choose an option: +15, +10, +5, 0)

  Change in faction opinion of Popori de Cacha (choose an option: +2, +1, 0, must be approved by the Head of the Orange House)

  Change in racial opinion of Popori de Cacha (choose an option: +1, 0, must be approved by the Emperor)

  Change in faction opinion of Chameleon race (inactive)

  Change in human race opinion of Chameleon race (inactive)

  I chose the maximum possible personal improvement with the head of my bodyguards, stood up from the bench, and took a critical look at my quickly swelling knee before announcing:

  "Apparently, swimming has been canceled for the day. Popori de Cacha, bring me to the changing room."

  It wasn't that I really needed the help. I was fully able to walk, but I just wanted to have a talk with the chameleon. He and his subjects were always invisibly present around me, keeping many threats at bay, but I knew so little about who they were.

  "I am grateful to you and your coworkers, Popori de Cacha, and in general I am very satisfied with the job you do. If there is anything you need for work or just for life in general, now is the time to let me know."

  Without thinking for even a second, the chameleon answered:

  "My Prince, what worries me the most is the fate of two soldiers of my group who you took for some important mission. Their transmitters are not responding, and I don't even know what to think."

  All I needed was a few seconds to figure out that the two big armed lizards in the Wishbone cafe where those very same armored chameleons.

  "Popori de Cacha, I have sent your soldiers to guard Miya, a person very dear to me. Miya sensed a threat and told me that, for her security, she would need to go into hiding for some time to keep away from the eyes of the many watchers. I myself do not know how my Truth Seeker got off Queen of Sin nor where she is hiding now. All I can say is that Miya and your soldiers are alive and well but can only return to the others in around half a year."

  The chameleon, standing at the changing room door, opened it before me and announced with a bow:

  "My Prince, thank you for the trust you've placed in me. You can be sure that my soldiers will not steer you wrong."

  Standing change. Popori de Cacha's opinion of you has improved.

  Presumed personal opinion of you: +17 (warm)

  * * *

  As the second half of the day began, I was taking a seat in front of my work again. The material Triasss Zess provided turned out to be truly priceless. Recordings of more than two hundred local skirmishes with the aliens and eighteen exhaustively analyzed battles with a timeline of all events and the characteristics of all ships that took part. I studied the recordings, finding interesting moments for myself.

  ... the alien Ascetic destroyer has truly miraculous firepower for such a little ship, but it is quite unwieldy and accelerates slowly.

  ...in battle against the Iseyeks in the Aysar cluster, there were three times that the Sledgehammer cruiser was not able to shoot after reloading. Each of them was when it was being attacked by the Umoyge light cruisers. That means its defenses against electronic warfare are pretty middling.

  ...the Hermit destroyers can release twenty combat drones. The damage each of them can do is comparable to that of a Pyro frigate.

  ...the alien fleet did not attack the beacon in the Umwi system, which made it possible for the beacon crew to take advantage of the emergency shuttle and make it into warp. Manpower is key. At the very end of the video, you can see the little alien ship has a landing party that captures the beacon.

  There was very little photographic evidence on the aliens themselves. And the specimens we did have were of a very low quality. That wasn't very surprising – it was hard to imagine that the corpses would be well preserved after a hit from a proton torpedo or the explosion of a ship's reactor. Nevertheless, the bodies of at least three different species of alien had made their way to the scientists for study. Also, these species were so strikingly different that many researchers suggested that there were actually three independent alien armies, not just one.

  I looked carefully at the reconstructions of the external appearance of the aliens, and I also wasn't able find anything in common between them. Something filled with hydrogen and methane, levitating with thin tentacles dangling down like threads; a glob of slime without typical sense organs; an incomprehensible bush-creature with a large number of branches. The last species of alien described was protein-based, though its set of amino acids was unfamiliar and
had nothing in common with the creatures humanity knew of. The two first were not protein-based life forms at all.

  I was tired from the many hours of studying pictures and numbers, and I was also downright starving, so I went off in the direction of the small dining hall. On my way, my attention was caught by a light coming from a branching corridor, and I turned to see what was going on. Bionica Klein was standing by the wall in the hallway, holding her boots and the package of her clothes. Her eyes were closed. I called her name, and the android immediately opened her eyes and gradually woke up.

  "Good evening, master," she said, greeting me.

  "Why are you standing here and not going to your room?" I wondered.

  "Captain Oorast Pohl said that androids and robots don't get their own rooms. Because I'm not a crewmember, I wasn't assigned a room, which is why I'm having a bit of trouble here. I don't know where I can put my things and wait out the night. I also don't know where to recharge yet."

  "Recharge? Are you hungry? Or what's the deal there, how do you recharge?"

  The long-legged blonde smiled and told me:

  "My Prince is repeating the very same questions that each of my previous masters has asked me. It's all laid out in detail in the instruction manual, but for some reason people don't like reading instructions. My model has enough energy reserves to work around-the-clock for six days, then I need a recharge. You can power an android either via the power grid or food. What is recommended is a combination of both recharging methods."