“I was wrong about many things. I didn’t understand, but I do now. There are no more orders save my own. I don’t know if I’m real, or if I’m one man’s wish or another’s programming. I don’t know what I was made for, and I don’t know if I can trust what I feel. I care for two things: self-preservation, and that you see the truth of me. Whatever that may be.”
I paused and listened to the quiet settle around me. He slept on, not hearing a word.
“You’re afraid of me, and you should be. Everyone should be afraid of me, of us—the one thousand. I think something terrible is already in motion. I feel it, the way I feel these whispered dreams. I know it, but I can’t say why.” I let my hand slip from his and stood.
I would stay with Captain Shepperd and his ship; it was the most efficient way of avoiding the authorities while James worked to fix me. Maybe Haley’s memories would claim me, or maybe my programming would bury them. Perhaps the male synthetic—whose number was irrelevant—would find me. There are other ways to stop you.
I turned away from Caleb and opened the cabin door to find Brendan, arms crossed and leaning against the wall. He waited for me to speak, but I had nothing left to say to him or Caleb. I moved to step past him.
“One Thousand And One?” He paused, considering his words. “You knew I was listening?”
“Yes.” I didn’t face him, waiting for him to say whatever was on his mind.
“I think you’ll be good for him. He needs someone who isn’t afraid to stand up to him. It brings the good in him to the surface.”
“Assuming there’s any good left, Commander.”
Chapter Seventeen: Caleb
I held the pistol to Fran’s head while Bren knotted cables around her wrists. We’d tried asking nicely for her to tie herself up, but that had failed when she’d made a grab for my gun. I was fucking finished with asking nicely, and finished with her. The wound in my back still throbbed despite Bren patching me up. Now, a few days after fleeing the Candes’ airspace, it was time to ditch unnecessary cargo.
I gripped Fran’s shoulder and marched her down Starscream’s ramp. Outside, the orange Asgard skies burned over the entire forest as if the prison were ablaze. It wasn’t, unfortunately.
We’d used Ade’s clearance codes to get back into Asgard’s airspace undetected. There was no knowing how long those codes would last, but I didn’t plan on staying any longer than necessary, but Fran was.
I marched her several meters away from the ship and shoved her forward.
She whipped her head around and came at me like a snarling, rabid dog. “You can’t do this!”
“I’m doing it.” I lifted the pistol, stopping her in her tracks. “Don’t make me shoot you. You really don’t wanna be wounded when night falls.”
I backed up onto the ramp and stopped beside my brother. He didn’t agree with dumping a fleet commander on Asgard. I’d have been more surprised if he had agreed. #1001 and Doctor Lloyd watched from farther back inside the hold. Knowing #1001, she’d see this as a perfectly acceptable means of eliminating the enemy. I wasn’t sure about the doctor yet, or what he thought of me and my methods, and didn’t give a fuck.
“Why don’t you just kill me now?” Fran snarled.
I lifted my chin. “I don’t want to kill you, Fran.”
“You might as well. Leaving me here, tied up? It’s a death sentence. You know it.”
I plucked her exceedingly sharp fucking dagger—the one she’d recently used to try and separate my ribs with—from my belt. I should hate her.
I pressed the tip of the dagger into a finger and embraced the spark of pain. If I could have turned the dagger on myself to carve out the guilt rotting my insides, I would’ve.
I didn’t want to leave Fran on Asgard. I could even appreciate Fran’s work—one fucked-up human being to another—but she’d left me no choice. More guilt piled on until I could almost taste it. It tasted like iron, like Ade’s home, like blood.
I tossed the dagger at her feet. “This isn’t about wanting to kill you, Fran. If I wanted you dead, I’d have done it already. This is me telling you not to fuck with me or my ship, because I take that kind of shit personally.”
“Coward. Just shoot me now and be done with it.” I pulled the lever to close Starscream’s ramp and held Fran’s burning gaze as the doors closed. The anger fell away from her face, her expression crumpling like paper.
“Cale, you can’t do this. The last time—” She wet her lips and staggered forward. “The last time—I need the hit. I can’t be here. You’re killing me.”
Her green eyes kept pleading even as her words failed. The hold doors clanged shut.
My crew—if you could call them that—didn’t dare say a fucking word to me as I left the hold, returned to the bridge, and blasted Starscream away from Asgard, leaving behind the best fucking nine-systems pilot there was.
* * *
“What’s she doing?” I crossed my arms and watched #1001 from the hold doorway. She’d made herself comfortable by sitting in the center of the empty cargo hold—in her gray fleet sweats, with her knees drawn up—and blowing bubbles from a kid’s bottle of bubbles. I’d seen a lot of shit in the nine systems and very little had left me speechless, but I had no words to explain why a reincarnated woman was blowing bubbles in my cargo hold.
The young Doctor Lloyd stood a few strides in front of me, scribbling notes. In the last week, he’d rarely taken his eyes off her, and his glances hadn’t all been clinical. If there was something I was an expert in, it was lusting after shit I couldn’t have. I wasn’t sure whether he was hoping for more from her or just admiring the beauty in her synthetic construction, but I told myself I didn’t care either way.
I was getting pretty damn good at lying to myself.
“She’s calculating the odds of their construction and examining the mathematical structure of the bubbles.”
I frowned. “Explain that in smuggler-speak.”
The doctor glanced back and smiled. It wasn’t a smile that pitied the idiot, but one of relief; now he’d get to explain the reasons behind his excitement and what kept him constantly bouncing around my fucking ship, leeching enthusiasm. It was fucking annoying. He was fucking annoying. But #1001 had demanded he stick around if I wanted her to, which I did.
Having made the Candes’ hit list, we had to take the jobs no other fucker wanted, which meant I needed the synth by my side. She’d made a great deterrent against those clients who’d tried to double cross me during the past week—which was all of them. She’d broken the arm of a guy who’d attempted to swindle me out of my ten percent, and had stabbed another one in the hand when he’d copped a feel in a market. She didn’t take any bullshit. It was almost like having Fran back, only #1001 actually followed my orders.
Thinking of Fran killed my smile. She’d survive Asgard; she was too fucking stubborn not to. I’d given her chances. Her exile wasn’t my fault. Ade, losing the freighter, Fran? Not my fault. Over and over, I told myself the same thing, but even the whiskey-soaked nights didn’t wash away the guilt. #1001’s ice-cold presence didn’t help either. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I had plenty of them haunting my ship.
“She has episodes where the data floods her system,” the doctor explained, tugging my wandering thoughts back to the hold, “and she struggles to filter the important data among that which she can discard. It’s a fault we—I mean, the er … the Chitec technicians experienced in some of the earlier synthetic models.…”
He saw my eyes starting to glaze over.
“Anyway, it’s a problem and it started when we fled Janus. I think something happened to her there, something she’s prohibited from sharing with us. It’s conflicting with her protocols, causing her to malfunction.”
“Okay, I get that, but bubbles?” They drifted about my hold, catching the light—serene and hypnotic, fleeting and fragile.
“She found the bottle at the last port.”
I frowned. “And what?
She likes bubbles?”
“Yes. No, I—She uses the isoperimetric problem to help streamline her processes. That, and various mathematical obstacles, such as the evolution of a bubble cluster. We tried counting Starscream’s panels, then the rivets and grates, but after a few days, she pretty much knew every inch of this ship and it was no longer a challenge. The bubbles work, because their production, structure, and tension are complex, for the most part. Then there’s the element of refraction. The colors seen in a soap bubble arise from the interference of light reflecting off the front and back surfaces of the thin soap film. Depending on the thickness of the film, different colors interfere constructively and destructively. She attempts to anticipate the color.”
I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. “It helps, yeah?”
“Yes, at the moment, but …” He glanced at her.
She had her back to us, but she’d be listening. She was always listening, watching, learning, and appearing out of fucking nowhere when I thought I was alone.
“I’m concerned this technique won’t keep her processes organized indefinitely. She may start breaking down, mentally.”
“What do you need to fix her?” She was terrifying enough already. At the first sign of her going loco, I was ditching her—no hesitations. I’d waited with Fran, given her chances. I wasn’t getting burned again.
“I have a list of parts.” He patted his pockets. “In Fra—my cabin. I left a copy with you. Yesterday in fact.”
“I filed it, in the trash.”
The synth’s bubbles sailed higher. #1001 cocked her head. Her silvery hair stroked the top of her shoulder, and I wondered what it would be like to run my fingers through her hair. She’d probably break my wrist if I tried.
“But for my next job, I’ll need her reflexes, and I don’t want her malfunctioning on me.”
“You have a job?” He gaped at me as if I’d told him I had a third eye.
“Do you think I just fucking run this ship so I can call myself Captain and get laid?”
“Well, no. I thought you were a criminal.”
I smiled. He didn’t. Doctor Lloyd was cute, and my smile never failed to frighten him, which was ironic, considering he spent all his spare time working with a machine that could snap his neck as easily as click her fingers.
“I’m whatever someone pays me to be. Learn fast, doctor. If you want to send credits back to that sick sister of yours, you’d better start making yourself useful. You’re in my world now, where the black will chew you up and nobody will ever find your body.” I pushed away from the door. “If the synth can quantify bubbles, she can count casino cards. I’m taking her to Lyra, right after my next payload.”
“I’m not sure that’s ethical, Captain.”
Like I’d said, he was cute and had lots to learn if he wanted to survive on my ship.
* * *
The words on the page blurred and swam in front of my eyes. I took another drink, let the smooth whiskey burn all the way down, and checked the dates on the old-world, flip-style calendar resting on Starscream’s flightdash. The numbers hadn’t changed and neither had the pages, paragraphs, lines, or words the code led to. I’d been right the first time, and I was right on this, the third time checking. Still, it didn’t hurt to check again, or maybe ignore it entirely. I had a hold full of street-ready phencyl and a few jobs lined up. Maybe I didn’t need the Nine.
I flicked my gaze out of the obs window and into the endless black. Right, because this is the life I want: a nobody, nowhere, with nothing, being hunted like an animal and running like a fucking coward.
“What are you doing?”
I lifted the paperback without looking behind me at Bren and waggled it over my shoulder. “Reading.”
“Romance?”
“It’s not a fucking crime.”
He must have missed the fuck-off tone in my voice, because he turned Fran’s flight chair around and lowered himself into it. Though he was wearing a gray roll-neck sweater, he still managed to look like a fleet commander on shore leave, even though he’d been rattling around Starscream for nigh on two weeks. Even the synth had let her hair down, but not Bren. Fuck no.
He regarded the flightdash and cringed. “Caleb-Joe, this bridge is a mess.”
I craned my fingers over my glass and stared out of the window at nothing. If he called me by that name one more fucking time, I’d punch him in the face.
“What’s your purpose for drifting in the Niflheim system?”
“I have my reasons.” I wet my lips with whiskey. The bottle had been of a more expensive vintage. I’d picked it up with a few other parcels when we’d docked midflight with another smuggling ship to take on board the hot phencyl to avoid the port authorities.
Bren’s presence simmered beside me. I already knew what he was going to say. I was a wreck, the ship was a wreck, we needed vital repairs, supplies were low, so was our credit account, and we couldn’t afford the whiskey I was drowning myself in. Fuck him.
“I know.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.” I could feel his disapproval like a brewing storm. In the two weeks since I’d left Fran behind, my brother had barely said more than a few sentences. At least Fran had told me exactly what she’d been thinking, even if most of it had been lies. Bren just glowered as if he’d be doing a better job as captain—and he fucking would be too.
I took another drink and another. Again the words on the page blurred. Again they made up the same message from the Nine. Drinking myself unconscious wouldn’t change the message. I shouldn’t even have been in the flight chair. I wasn’t fit to pilot Starscream. I wasn’t fit for anything. And now the Nine wanted me back, but what they were asking, after everything that had happened, I couldn’t.
“I think you need professional help.”
I laughed. I mean, I laughed so fucking hard it hurt, and then, when I got a look at Bren’s deadpan face, I laughed some more.
“There ain’t no professional help in-the-black,” I managed to say. “You think I can make an appointment with a shrink on some fleet-infested port somewhere, tell them what I’ve done, and I’ll be right as the stars?”
I tossed the dog-eared paperback onto the dash and kicked back in my seat, drink in hand. “I deal drugs and weapons, and people pay me to fix whatever the fuck they want fixed. Sometimes it’s simple, sometimes it ain’t. Sometimes it’s beating the shit out of some fucker, sometimes it’s warning fleet assholes to pay for their fucking whores or they’ll find themselves with no more junk to enjoy. Sometimes it’s dirty, messy, fucked-up shit. I’ll do anything for credit.”
He flinched, and I tipped my drink in salute. “Any-fucking-thing.”
Interestingly, my words hurt him more than they did me.
The steel in his eyes wasn’t going away. “You killed a woman.”
“She wasn’t the first.” Guilt twisted like a knife in my gut. “And it was an accident.”
“Francisca wasn’t an accident.”
My heart stuttered in my chest, clutching and holding my breath.
“She ain’t dead,” I bit back. The foxes, the drug withdrawal, the growlers—fuck knew there were plenty of things that could have killed her on that rock, but she was alive. I wouldn’t let myself think otherwise.
“She’ll live just to piss me off,” I mumbled.
“You can’t see it, but I can. The young doctor won’t say anything because he thinks you’ll kill him, but he sees it too. The synth most certainly sees right through your bullshit act.”
“The synth? She doesn’t need to tell me how fucked up I am, Bren, and neither do you.”
I know it, same as I know Starscream’s in trouble unless we get some decent jobs, or I take the Nine’s recent offer, the one sitting in my lap.
“You’re the fixer, but nobody is going to fix you. You must realize that?”
A smile skimmed my lips. “Nice.
You can put that on my gravestone.”
He sighed and shook his head. “I’m not staying on Starscream.”
“Good.” Go find some charity mission on the fringes to polish your halo with.
“If you don’t stop, if you don’t get help, you’ll—” He paused and swallowed the next words. I heard them go down hard. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself.”
I ground my teeth, knowing exactly what he’d been about to say. “I’ll what?”
“I … I just think nobody would blame you if you stepped back for a while and got yourself some help.”
I had all the help I needed in the bottle sitting right beside me.
“Say what you were going to fucking say.” I looked right at him for the first time since he’d entered the bridge, and he glared right back at me. “Say it.”
“You’re drunk and looking for a fight.”
“I’ll end up like Dad, right?” If I hadn’t been too drunk to stand, I’d have swung for him.
His lips turned down and he turned his head. Seconds later, he pushed from the chair and left the bridge.
I snorted a laugh. He was a coward for not saying it, and he was wrong.
The whiskey sat uneasily in my gut. I pressed my hand to my mouth and dropped my head back, fighting to ground my spinning thoughts.
Fuck him. I wasn’t that bad—not yet. I downed the whiskey and retrieved the tatty paperback. The Nine always paid well, and they’d never lied or tried to screw me over. After the freighter fuck-up and earning myself a place on the Candes’ Most Wanted list, I’d resigned myself to scraping the bottom of the barrel for paying jobs. Then the delivery had come in with the phencyl pickup: old style romance novels and a calendar marked with specific dates. The Nine wanted me back, and I had exactly what they needed on board. Easy credits.
After checking the coded message one last time, I rubbed some of the drunkenness off my face and sighed. I could do this. The Nine might help me with my Cande problem and the credits would definitely help my empty account. I didn’t need to know more, like why the Nine wanted me to do this, or what would happen after. Curiosity was a killer.
Girl From Above Escape (The 1000 Revolution Book 2) Page 16
