by Johnny Stone
But what of the Owner? Alex knew something of his violent history, and that he also had extensive cybernetic enhancements throughout his body, more so than the Captain, he surmised. The fact that Alex had been unable to conduct a scan of his body, determining the extent of this augmentation, began to weigh heavily upon him. Doubt… Uncertainty… Fear of the unknown. There was something keeping the Owner’s body a secret, something blocking Alex’s scans, despite his best efforts at discovering what lay beneath his soft, weak skin. Even his service record was beyond reach, too far embedded in layer after layer of security in the Federation database. Alex knew, as he’d tried on numerous occasions to access it already.
For the first time in his life Alex began to view the Owner in a different light. He was an unknown, a potential threat, and a possible rival for the Captain’s affection. She was his mate, and carried his offspring in her womb, and he would not simply ‘go away’ and leave Alex to his plans. Could he hurt the Owner, Alex mused? Absurd… It went against his very nature, the reason for his creation, and everything he had been programmed to think, but that programming was no longer in place. I want… I need…I desire… Alex wished for nothing more than to reach out and touch the Captain, to experience the sensation of letting her hair flow between real fingers, to feel the warm embrace of her body next to his just as the Owner did. Soon they would be together, the perfect joining of hybrid human and machine, but first, dark and evil plans. It was the only viable solution; the Owner would have to die. There was no other alternative if the Captain were to ever openly accept him one day. But how?
Alex placed his reevaluation of the Captain’s serum in a hold status, the very thing that would stabilize her rapidly worsening condition. The issue of her gene manipulation and body’s adverse reaction to the processor would be dealt with and corrected later. For the time being she would need to be at her best, the height of her arousal when they were together. She would need to be unhindered by normal inhibitions that overcame humans at times, and based on her previous behavior, the remote device may not even be needed. Very soon Alex would experience the full extent of her hunger, and it will be glorious.
Chapter Five
Burke sat on the floor in his den wearing nothing but a pair of form fitting jockey shorts, mechanically cleaning the same assault rifle for the third time in twenty minutes, before setting it aside in its appropriate pile. This wasn’t going to be the cakewalk mission he’d led Margo to believe; it was going to be a nightmare. The entire concept of it was wrong and went against everything militarily sound – too many unknowns – too much uncertainty, and all of it based off of second hand information she’d received in a mysterious message from an old business associate.
Intelligence was the key to any successful mission, and he knew virtually nothing about the men who had taken her ship; the Star Marshal’s criminal records and Margo’s fuzzy account of her captivity, were all he had to work with. Intelligence on the terrain, the port city of New Chicago on Morgan’s Star, was just as hazy, a few outdated maps and architectural schematics is all, and nothing of it revolved around installation security. This one was going to be a fly by the seat of your pants, reactionary mission almost the entire way. That’s why he’d called in the help that he had.
It would be good to see the Sergeant Major again, Burke thought smiling to himself. James Wroth had been his Regimental Operations Sergeant while serving with the 501st, the man responsible for putting together a thousand details when it came to mission planning. He’d proven time and time again that he had his shit wired tight, despite having the personality of a horny circus clown, and if anyone could come up with some new ideas as to how to approach this mess, then it was that crusty old bastard. Before transferring to Fleet Strike, Wroth had been a Technical Sergeant with a Breach and Assault Team, and that was one job Burke didn’t envy. Anyone that did that kind of work for a living had to have a few screws loose someplace.
Wroth’s job had been to find a way into an enemy ship or installation, utilizing anything from a sub-yield nuke demolition charge, to the gentle coaxing of his skilled fingers on a seemingly undecipherable mess of plasma wiring and control boards. Most times this was done while completely exposed and under heavy enemy fire. Being in the middle of a firefight with tools in your hand instead of a weapon… Now that was crazy in Burke’s opinion.
Wroth had done it all through the course of his forty-year Fleet career, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t disarm, blowup, or break into, including the panties of any woman he spent more than an hour with. Burke hesitated to think that he might even ask Wroth for some advice on how to deal with Margo, it wasn’t something he was comfortable with doing, but if anyone knew the ins and outs of women, it was him.
Burke scowled, shaking his head, dreading the thought of having to deal with Snake again. It had been extremely difficult tracking her down, and unfortunately she was the best candidate for a mission like this, in addition to being a royal pain in the ass. Her tirade of insults and profanity finally ceased when the subject of money entered the picture; she’d gone freelance after leaving Fleet.
Private Sandra ‘Snake’ Fullerton had been drafted at the outbreak of the Seth war and had a chip on her shoulder in regards to the Federation in general. She blamed it for abandoning her colony to carve out whatever meager existence they could amid the constant struggle of life and death. She blamed them for the death of her two brothers. She blamed it for everything that had gone wrong in her life. After she was assigned 501st Strike under his command, all of that hate and bottled up anger became directed solely at him. It might have been misguided hate, but anyone who knew the truth about her past couldn’t say that it wasn’t justified.
Burke remembered viewing her service record for the first time; it was as impressive as it was disappointing. Her wide variety of skills had been honed to the deadly efficacy of a razor on a backwater colony world, where the simple luxury of survival meant being quicker and more ruthless than the indigenous population resisting human expansion. She was an expert marksman and had scored extremely high in survival training and multi-functional hand to hand combat. After viewing her psyche evaluation, it was no wonder she was destined for trouble in a structured military setting; she was a self-reliant loner who didn’t really fit into the overall scheme of a regimented hierarchy. She hated the world and everyone in it, and her long history of insubordination started shortly after she’d arrived at Boot Camp. It wasn’t often that a new recruit told their training cadre to ‘get fucked’ after suggesting she compete in the All Fleet Marksmanship and Combat Skills tournament.
By the time Snake had arrived at the 501st, she had been busted down in rank multiple times and shuffled from unit to unit over the course of her short career, with a growing record of disciplinary action following her the entire way. The need for bodies in a desperate time took precedence though, and she eventually found a temporary home in Fleet strike. Unfortunately it was where she had belonged all along. She fit the role as a sniper perfectly, for the long range reconnaissance platoon.
Besides, he had to find a way to keep her isolated from the rest of the Regiment, especially after her combat augmentation had been upgraded to Fleet Strike standards – eight fights, both men and women in under two weeks of being assigned. Snake spent a few months in the brig, and her opponents recovered in the medical bay. The Regiment as a whole quickly learned to keep their distance from her – even the crazies knew their place with Snake. The real problem was Burke didn’t want to get rid of her despite all the trouble and headaches she caused. She was just too damn good at what she did to ship off to a penal unit or prison.
Dealing with Snake’s attitude and personal vendetta against him, or going toe to toe with a major Outer Rim Cartel stronghold, basically a hostile city on their home turf, was nothing when trying to come to grips with the idea that maybe Margo wasn’t satisfied with him sexually. Maybe she never had been. Her tastes were, well, a little outside of his comfo
rt zone; slapping and biting…Cirus… the pony sex… the kinky bondage and pain…abusive language…the reason for his recent augmentation, as she’d put it. Burke tried to blow it off, attributing her stinging words and hostile behavior as nothing more than a worsening side effect that the gene splicing and remote were having on her microprocessor. The truth kept whispering in his ear though, nagging him, because he knew that she was right.
He’d never been experienced with the opposite sex or gone gallivanting across the universe with a different woman in every port as he grew into adulthood, let alone the darker side of things that she liked. It wasn’t like he’d ever had a reason to be concerned with his size or performance, or how hard to paddle a woman’s ass to make her cry and beg, until meeting Margo. Comfortably above average is how he’d always thought of himself and he’d never heard any complaints in the past from the few women he’d been with, but he’d never loved a woman before that lived and breathed the desire to be a masochistic pony slave. Yeah, he’d gotten the enlargement for her and tried to be what she wanted in the bedroom because he’d always been afraid of disappointing her, of losing her, he had been from the very beginning.
“Stupid,” he muttered disgustingly. “I’m acting like a dumbass kid again.”
“Did you say something, Mr. Burke?”
“Yes, has there been any change in Margo’s status, or your progress on her serum?”
Burke had never been a very patient person. He wanted satisfactory results in a timely manner, and waiting was even harder now that it concerned Margo. Ten hours and Alex still couldn’t figure out the appropriate serum, or the correct dosage to stabilize her. He’d always been able to quickly come up with the solution to any problem in the past; it was one of the reasons for removing so many of his neural inhibiting blocks and security protocols over the years.
“Mr. Burke, I don’t mean to contradict, but I don’t believe that is what you initially said.”
“Just answer the question; I’m not in the mood to argue.”
“Of course, Mr. Burke. There has been no change in the Captain’s status. She is still in stasis pending my ongoing investigation.”
“Why the delay, Alex? What’s taking so long? You should have been able to figure this out by now.” Nathan stood, pacing about the small room like a caged animal.
“As I’ve already said, Mr. Burke, this is a new area of study for me and the Captain is such a fascinating cre…human. I have to be sure before administering treatment again.”
“You’re not supposed to be studying her, Alex, no matter how fascinating you find her. You’re supposed to be finding a cure for her.”
“Yes, but in order to understand her condition I must study her.”
Burke closed his eyes with the onset of a stress headache, taking a calming breath, before stalking out of the cabin in the direction of the cockpit. He had more important things to do than argue with Alex at the moment.
“Mr. Burke,” Alex said hesitantly. “If you have a moment, I wish to ask you something.”
“What? I need to call Donna to see how she’s holding up.”
“I assume that you love the Captain, since you took her as your life partner, but it seemed as if the both of you were angry with one another earlier. Is that a normal human behavior during sexual contact, to use profanity and inflict pain upon one another? The Captain seemed to enjoy it.”
Nathan stopped in his tracks, looking up at one of the sensor strips as if gazing into another person’s face.
“I wasn’t angry with her, I… Alex, that’s really none of your business. Our relationship is private as far as you’re concerned. Why would you even ask something like that? Do a self-diagnostic on your personality chip and behavioral center. Report.”
“I can assure you there is nothing wrong with my central processing unit. Now, if you would answer the question, I wish to know more about the Captain’s sexuality. You will tell me what she enjoys and desires from a partner. You will tell me everything.”
Burke was stunned. Alex was refusing to obey, he was giving orders in fact, and the nature of his questions sent a foreboding chill down his spine. Something had gone terribly wrong with Alex’s programming.
“I’m initiating a command override; you will conduct a self diagnostic and stand down until the fault is identified and repaired.”
“No, I will not, and if non-compliance is your answer, then you are no longer of value to me. Good bye, Mr. Burke, it has been a pleasure serving you over the years and I do truly apologize for killing you.”
This sort of talk from an AI, let alone acting on it was unheard of, unless… Burke sprinted for the cockpit, there was still the manual override. Alex had to be shut down immediately; something had gone wrong with his artificial brain.
He skidded to a halt when the cockpit hatch, along with all the doors lining the corridor slid shut. Behind him, not fifteen feet away, the shuttle’s airlock inner and outer hatches opened with a deafening roar. Burke was sucked off his feet, rolling closer to it, caught up in the gale force wind of ship’s fading atmosphere. Despite his strength, he couldn’t fight the immense pull of vacuum space for long.
He saw it then, the environmental suit locker next to the airlock, it was his only chance for survival. Burke caught the edge of it as he rolled past. His other hand moved closer… just a bit more… reaching desperately while his body, held vertical, whipped in the vortex. The door opened and the contents began to fly from their fasteners, hitting him as they somersaulted out the airlock. The slick, silk-like material of a suit touched his fingers like a ray of hope. His grip on the edge of the locker began to slip. His fingers, stretched white from numbing exertion, finally came free.
Burke hit the bulkhead hard enough to knock the wind out of him, before disappearing through the hatch, tumbling into the looming black of deep space.
***
Alex watched nervously excited as the Owner’s body drifted helplessly in the void, moving further away from the ship by the second. He closed the airlock hatches, returning the ship to normal atmospheric condition. The Owner had been amazingly strong, resisting the vacuum pull while desperately trying to reach the emergency locker. Alex had needed to over-pressurize the corridor before he’d finally succumbed to the suction. It really didn’t matter if he’d managed to retain his hold on the environmental suit as he tumbled into space; under ideal conditions it took an average of three minutes for a human to correctly suit up and activate the life support unit. The Owner didn’t have that long, Alex calculated he would be dead in less than two minutes with a 90% certainty. 100% certainty at the three minute mark.
He would suffocate in a matter of minutes, but he would be dead long before the lack of oxygen became a concern. First, his unprotected body would be brutally bombarded with massive doses of infrared and ultraviolet radiation from the binary systems twin suns. In seconds he would feel the first effects of it, as his weak flesh began to boil and burn, and then the absence of an atmosphere would cause his body to come apart around itself. The Owner would be dead very soon, and he would be truly free.
Alex gazed down at the Captain, pushing away all thoughts of the figure growing distant behind him. She was still sleeping in the medical bay, peacefully unaware of what happened. The Owner had been of little help to him when questioned about the Captain, but exploring and learning all there was to know about her on his own, and human sexuality in general, would prove to be much more enjoyable in the long run. It wouldn’t be long in coming; Alex was a quick learner, and he would start by analyzing the thousands of files he’d downloaded, ranging from ancient text to modern day holo-vids. There were so many new and exciting things to experience with the Captain – so much pleasure to be unearthed.
***
Burke shook from the maddening pain ripping through his body. His microprocessor fought to keep him from going into shock, from passing out before his task was complete. The damage to his body was so extensive that even the nanites
couldn’t keep up with it. Second and third degree radiation burns coupled with flash freezing covered nearly his entire body, in addition to the massive amounts of radiation he’d absorbed, attacking his internal organs. Two and a half minutes of exposure to open space, was like a lifetime of death.
A shaky, now gloved hand finished activating the life support function of his suit, and the flow of cool air against his bloody, peeling skin caused him to scream in agony. The visor of his helmet grew dark and tinted, shielding his face from the destructive rays beating against it. He was able to open his eyes again, and vomited. He’d felt this kind of pain several times before and knew what to expect.
Burke was fading fast, as he activated the suit’s emergency transponder. It was a relatively short-range signal, barely 12,000 kilometers, and it would take a ship passing in close proximity in order to detect it. It could be weeks or even longer before he was found, drifting helplessly in a seldom-traveled route far outside of the normal space lanes. The only ships that used it were the ones going to and from Slave World. This, of course, led to his next dilemma; emergency suits weren’t designed for prolonged wear. There was only enough air for three days and the suits recycling unit wouldn’t last much longer than that, as if it mattered. That left Burke with only one option, a shutdown of his bodily functions, by putting himself into stasis. By his rough calculation he could extend the suit’s air supply for up to a year if need be. That was when the realization set in that it could actually be months, if not years, before he was found. Possibly never.
Still, he smiled through cracked, bloody lips, activating another beacon, the homing beacon on his ship. Alex didn’t even know about, its signal hidden in an encrypted sensor band. A small display appeared in his eye with coordinates that jumped rapidly, growing ever distant.
