by C. Gockel
“Or gone to visit with friends or relatives in town,” suggested the wife.
His shoulders dropped a fraction. That explanation was possible. Personal affairs were about the only reason to visit Iron Forge in the middle of winter. Many Libertians had migrated to Libertas Prime in the past twenty-five years. They could be home for a funeral .
“Ain’t our business to keep track of them,” said the innkeeper.
The hairs on the back of Alaric’s neck rose at his tone. There were Libertian separatist groups in just about every region of this planet. The pair might be involved—and may have somehow managed to sneak out before the Guard began their sweep. An errant hope crept into his consciousness. It could possibly be Volka and the machine. He quashed it. Iron Forge was too far from the crash site for anyone without a hover small enough to coast through the trees.
“The watch at the front and back exits can keep an eye out for them,” said Ran.
Alaric nodded. To the innkeeper, he said, “I’d like room forty-one.”
“No heat in that room,” the man replied.
“Forty-three, then,” said Alaric, gazing hard at the man.
The innkeeper hesitated. Airman Huang’s hand casually dropped to the phaser pistol in his holster.
Pulling his guest book around, the innkeeper nodded. “Of course.”
“And you’ll be bunking my crew,” Alaric said.
The innkeeper looked up at him, his hand shaking.
“You will be compensated at a fair rate,” Alaric assured him.
The man looked down and began scribbling in his guest book. It should make the man’s year to have Luddeccean Guard forces here in the offseason. Whatever the Guard’s other faults, they did pay their bills, but the man’s hand still shook.
A bark echoed through the small inn. Every man in the lobby looked up. Alaric grabbed his short- range communicator. “Airman Bonham, report,” he said.
The dog barked again—but there was something off about the noise.
Airman Bonham’s voice cracked on the communicator. “Sir, we haven’t detected any explosives or fugitives.”
There was another bark, and Alaric noted the bark sounded distinctly cheerful. The airman’s voice cracked on the radio again. “Cecil’s found, well, it’s…it’s a werfle, sir.” A happy canine whine sounded in the communicator. “She’s taken a liking to it.”
Alaric remembered Cecil cornering a werfle on a ledge last time they were on Luddeccea. Alaric had thought the dog had done it with murderous intent. Maybe he’d misjudged Cecil’s motives?
“What room are you in?” he asked.
“Cecil and me are in room forty-two, sir.”
The hairs on the back of Alaric’s neck rose again.
The airman added hastily, “She did a full sweep. Nothing seems out of order.”
Another happy bark sounded in the communicator.
“No, girl, we have to finish up,” said Airman Bonham, voice distant, as though he’d forgotten he was connected. “We’ll play with the werfle later.”
The dog whined, this time distinctly unhappily, and Alaric disconnected.
There were a few chuckles in the lobby. Alaric’s eyes drifted to the guest book and read the check-in time for room forty-two. The name was Johnson. It was a very common name on Libertas, which had a high number of settlers from the region that used to be the United States on Earth. It shouldn’t put him on edge—which is maybe why it did. He thought about voicing his suspicions with the commander, but his heart began to pound double time, and he didn’t.
Airman Huang smacked the master key on the counter. The innkeeper reached for it, but Alaric’s hand got there first. “I’ll keep this,” he said, giving the innkeeper a tight-lipped smile. His eyes went to the man’s wife and daughter and came back to the innkeeper. “I’m sure you have another.”
The innkeeper gulped audibly. “Yes, of course.”
Alaric had to keep his hand from shaking as he slipped the key into his pocket. He told himself that it meant nothing. The room was empty. Cecil, their very capable explosive-detecting dog, didn’t like weere and would have barked if she’d smelled Volka. But she had found nothing and no one, and the innkeeper was nervous about having military men around his wife and admittedly pretty daughter. That was all. He pushed all those thoughts aside and focused on the logistics of their current situation.
Later that night, he was walking down the hallway on the fourth floor with Commander Ran.
Ran said, “Agrawal says that they’ll have the hover and life support systems up by morning.”
Alaric nodded. Their boots clicked on the wooden floors of the hallway. Cold radiated from the walls. It was negative eighty degrees outside and still dropping. Volka was out there. He imagined finding the supple body that had once been his to touch cold and rigid, tan skin blue with death. They passed room forty-two and he could feel the weight of the master key in his pocket.
“If we need parts from base—” Ran said.
“—it will take a few days,” Alaric finished. “We may be able to source replacements locally.” Although he’d seen no more than a blur since they’d arrived, Iron Forge was a bustling industrial city with sixty thousand souls.
“Yes, sir.”
Alaric stopped outside of his door.
“Goodnight, sir,” said Ran, drawing to a stop.
“Goodnight.”
Ran didn’t move.
“What?” asked Alaric, wishing the other man would hurry. Farther down the hall, he saw the light spilling under the door of room forty-four wink out. Their medical officer had gone to sleep.
“You kept us alive,” Ran said.
“Told you,” Alaric said, spinning on his heel. “I have plans.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ran.
Alaric entered his room and closed the door behind him. He thumped the key in his pocket, waited to hear Ran’s retreating footsteps, and the commander’s door shut. Alaric counted to three hundred sixty and then stepped out again. To the men standing guard at either end of the hall, he said, “Pablo, Smith, I want you on the landing in the stairwells. You hear anyone moving, I want to know about it.”
“Yes, sir,” they said, saluting and going to their new positions. Alaric returned to his room and slipped off his boots. When he left his room again, there was no light coming from beneath Ran’s door. He made his way to room forty-two, slipped his key in the lock, entered, and gently shut the door behind him. Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light spilling beneath the door, he took a deep breath. The bed was neatly made and nothing was out of place. Exhaling, he ran his hand through his hair and remembered Volka’s hands there, that first season when she’d needed him so much…and he’d needed her. She’d turned all the frustrated, angry urges of his teenage self into something almost like virtue. He’d helped her; she’d helped him. It had been violent and innocent at the same time.
In between seasons, she’d been sweet and shy, more curious than he’d thought weere were, with an interesting knack for sketching he’d believed weere incapable of, but during the season…His fingers itched, and his face flushed, and at the same time, his chest got tight. To be needed so much and so desperately…he needed that again.
He looked around the empty room. It wasn’t to be. She wasn’t here. That part of his life was over.
Pulling his phaser out, Alaric moved toward the closet, more out of habit than hope. He was the good Guardsman again, and he’d just check the room for any signs his airmen had missed. He put his ear to the door, heard nothing, and then opened it. A man stared back at him, eyes unblinking, features unnaturally symmetrical.
Alaric had his phaser aimed at the man’s head an instant later. He let out a breath, almost ordered the man to put his hands up before he realized that he was staring at his own shadow. Alaric backed away from the closet. What was wrong with him?
Shaking his head, he let the phaser sag. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but he wanted Volka to be h
ere, and his guilt for not rescuing her from the machine and the cold was playing with his mind.
He put his free hand on the bed and then bent to look beneath it, not really thinking about being the Guardsman, but going through the motions. Movement beneath caught his eyes, but he didn’t spook this time. It was just an enormous werfle, striped and orange, like a tabby. Alaric let out a breath. “Not Volka,” he whispered, his eyes losing focus and drifting to the deeper shadow past the animal.
A pair of amber weere eyes gleamed back at him.
“I can’t make him unsee you, Volka!” Carl Sagan’s words rang over the ether.
Moments before, the man who 6T9’s Q-comm had pegged as a captain by his uniform’s ribbons had looked directly into 6T9’s eyes, raised a phaser, and then turned away. “Why not?” 6T9 demanded silently in the ether.
Half kneeling beside the bed, the man whispered, “Volka, come out.”
“His mind is difficult to control…he’s…interesting,” Carl replied. “He wants Volka.”
“Why? To turn her in? To pin another ribbon on his chest?” 6T9 demanded, taking a step forward.
“Stop!” Carl said. “It’s not like that.”
“What is it like?” 6T9 asked, but he halted.
There was scuffling from beneath the bed, and a moment later, Volka stood before the captain, eyes downcast. “Alaric,” she whispered.
It was so unexpected that, for a moment, 6T9 did not register the whisper for a name. And then it sunk in—they knew each other.
The captain holstered his phaser, and Volka was safe…for now. 6T9’s mind leaped into the ether, suspicions about Dean calling the Guard playing in his mind. He connected to the hover and peered through its sensors. It was still in the garage. Dean was arguing with a group of men about something.
“Volka, look at me,” the captain whispered. His voice was something between a command and a plea, and it drew 6T9’s consciousness back to their tiny room.
She met his gaze, and he stepped closer. “What happened?” he said, his voice urgent. “You must tell me.”
Volka’s face contorted into a look of rage and despair, and then she all but sobbed, “My cousin Myra had her patron’s baby, and they killed her and the child, and Joseph and Esther—”
The captain covered her lips with his thumb. “Shhhhh…shhhh…you must be quiet, Volka. You’ll be overheard.”
6T9 tilted his head. The captain had an un-augmented, imperfect look—his nose was too strong, his jaw was defined but narrow, he had too prominent cheekbones, and blue-gray eyes contrasted too sharply with his otherwise Afro-Eurasian features. His frame was rangy and lean and too tall. It was the sort of imperfection that 6T9 had noticed humans seemed to find particularly attractive.
“They wanted to kill me just because I knew, Alaric,” Volka continued, her words hushed but urgent. “They were going to torture me to find out who I’d told, and I ran away with a robot because he offered to save me and no one else would.”
6T9’s Q-comm hummed, putting her words together with the pieces of the story he’d seen from the outside. This was why the Guard had been after her—his circuits sparked and then dimmed at once. She’d been keeping all that death and violence inside? He remembered how close he was to non-functional after Eliza had died. He’d had Noa and James to keep him from shutting down completely. Even if their concern hadn’t been in the form he’d wanted, they’d helped him get through the day-to-day, made sure he powered himself up, applied for personhood status on his behalf, and took him to holo shows to cheer him. Not that they had been the type of holo shows he would have preferred.
The captain bent lower to speak to Volka. “I am here now. I won’t let them hurt you.”
Taking a step back, Volka shook her head but her eyes never left the human man’s. “Here everyone knows weere and humans can have children…it’s just taken for granted, but they were going to torture and kill me for knowing.” Chest heaving, she whispered accusatorially, “Did you know, Alaric? Did you know it was possible?”
“No,” he said, lifting a hand and almost touching her face. “No,” he said again, dropping the hand to his side. His fingers twitched. “You must believe me, Volka, I did not know.”
Volka sucked in on her lips and looked up at him, her eyes enormous, glassy, and wet. Alaric’s gaze stayed fixated on her.
“I do,” she whispered. “I do believe you.”
The captain’s body sagged, his chest heaved, and he leaned forward so his forehead almost touched hers. “Thank you, Volka,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
Watching from the closet, 6T9 was mesmerized. Alaric’s tongue slipped between his lips, and the way Volka’s eyes followed it hungrily before snapping back to Alaric’s gaze made 6T9’s mouth feel parched. 6T9 had experienced passion before…but there was something more going on, something he couldn’t define. He would sw ear the air between and around them was vibrating, that they were warping the universe at the quantum level.
The captain raised a hand, almost grazing the side of Volka’s face. He did not touch her, but his fingers trembled as though the fabric of space and time was tugging them together. Volka closed her eyes, and Alaric put his hand against her cheek. Every sensory receptor beneath 6T9’s skin went hot.
“One kiss,” Alaric whispered. “Just one. Please, Volka.”
Volka looked up at him, her lower lip trembling. In the closet, 6T9 leaned forward, his primary functions engaging. Alaric leaned forward. Volka’s eyes scrunched shut.
“Rawr!” cried Carl Sagan. Volka’s eyes went wide. Alaric paused.
“What are you doing?” 6T9 hissed over the ether.
“Rawrrrrr!” Carl Sagan sang.
“The werfle,” Alaric muttered. “I’ll kill him.”
“I’ll help him kill you!” 6T9 silently declared.
“Rawwrr,” Carl Sagan replied, hopping up and down. Into the ether, he said, “He wasn’t thinking of just kissing her!”
“You don’t have to be telepathic to know that,” 6T9 hissed over the ether.
In the bedroom, Volka murmured, looking at the ground, “I can’t.”
“Volka, look at me,” Alaric whispered.
“Their lives are so short,” 6T9 replied to Carl Sagan. “They should have their fun.”
“Their lives are going to be very short if the captain gets his way,” Carl hissed. “His second in command never went to sleep and thought he heard something before I spoke up!”
Volka’s ears trembled.
“What is it?” Alaric whispered.
“I hear someone…awake…” Volka said.
Straightening, Alaric pulled back from her, but the air between them still hummed. 6T9 was reminded of holding two oppositely charged magnets and feeling the pull. Seemingly giving in to that magnetic attraction, Alaric traced Volka’s profile with his thumb. When he reached her lips, Volka froze, and her eyes slipped closed.
“The commander down the hall is putting on his uniform,” Carl declared.
From down the hall came a thunk.
“I can get you out of here, but you must do as I say,” Alaric said, putting his hand on her shoulder.
“If you are caught…” Volka whispered, her face crumpling, her hands moving to rest on his arms.
Alaric shook his head. “I know what they would do to you. I couldn’t live with myself if they did.”
6T9’s Q-comm sparked, and he understood why the moment had felt so powerful, so passionate, even though they hadn’t even kissed. They were willing to die for one another. There was no upload for them, and 6T9’s life and all his grievances suddenly felt illusionary. He was, in a sense, traveling through the universe as though he were in a game. He was just play acting, being who he thought Eliza would be. She’d been willing to sacrifice herself for him, and maybe at some level, he’d felt that being more like her would make him…real.
“Volka,” Alaric whispered. “I need to know where the android is. He’s dangerous.”
All of 6T9’s circuits lit at once. She was going to sacrifice herself for him? For a moment, his mind was completely thrown offline.
Alaric shook his head. “I know you must think that, Volka, but he used you to get into my uncle’s State Room. You must tell me where he is. I know you don’t want anyone else hurt…and he’s killed already.”
“What?” Volka whispered.
6T9 almost stepped out of the closet, ready to surrender himself, but then his Q-comm hummed. She needed to turn him in to keep Alaric’s trust. “Volka, tell him I’m in the closet!” He screamed the words into the ether, but Volka was a true telepath, and his “telepathy” was only in wireless frequencies.
“A man died aboard the Leetier during your escape,” Alaric said. “Believe me, I’ve met these creatures before. They can kill without remorse.”
“No—” she murmured, taking a step back.
Into the ether, 6T9 shouted, “Carl Sagan, make her tell him I’m in the closet!”
20
Betrayal
“Tell him 6T9 is in the closet,” Carl Sagan said.
Volka’s knees were weak from Alaric’s almost kiss, her lips were buzzing, and at the same time she felt like she might be sick. Still, she turned to the werfle. “What?” she demanded incredulously, every rumor of their demonic nature racing through her mind. How dare he volunteer his friend up for sacrifice.
“It’s just a werfle,” Alaric whispered.
“Cheep,” said Carl Sagan innocently. Hopping on the bed, kneading his front claws into the bedspread and blinking his eyes, he purred loudly at Alaric—the duplicitous, furry snake.
And then speaking into her mind, Carl said, “6T9 says, ‘I can’t die, but you and Alaric can. Please, turn me in.’”
Volka shook her head.
“Volka,” Alaric said, seizing her shoulders. “You must tell me where he is.”
He’d put his phaser in his holster, and Volka imagined wrapping her arms around his waist, distracting him with a kiss, stealing it, and then…what? Threaten Alaric with it?
