It was getting hard to figure out which movie it felt like this was.
Rachel glanced at Sir Rupert, who flew off her shoulder and landed in front of it, apparently unworried by the admittedly cute little thing. But cute could be deceptive. Cute was also taller than the parrot which wasn’t that hard. The top of its head was about the guy’s knee height, and it looked like a cross between a pet and a small child. It moved, shifting back and forth, then side to side as its—eyes—studied the parrot. It was highly flexible, based on the small movements, but its eyes were, well, bright and enquiring.
“I am Siru,” it said. “We are unfamiliar with your personal designations.” Its voice had a robotic edge, but there was a personality in there.
“I am Sir Rupert,” the bird said, “and this is Dr. Frank.”
Rachel lifted her free hand in a half wave. “Hi.”
Siru twisted around so it could look up at the guy. “This is Sir Rupert and Dr. Frank, Valyr.”
So his name was Valyr.
“I heard, thank you,” he said.
“You can call me Rachel. If you want.” Well, she’d never pretended her people skills were great.
“Rachel.”
The way he said it was kind of…sexy. He had an accent that was—huge surprise—not familiar, but also not a Khan accent. She even knew that thought was ridiculous. Of course, he didn’t have a fictional accent from a movie. That little blurring of his r’s sent a few shivers skittering down her spine. Which also happened to her in the reboot Khan.
A silence formed. A painfully uncomfortable silence, one teeming with the questions that neither of them knew how to ask. In desperation, Rachel looked at Siru.
“Are you Garradian? I mean, a Garradian AI?”
“I do not know A I,” Siru said.
“Artificial intelligence,” Rachel explained, her gaze flicking up to Valyr and then back to Siru. Could his name be any more heroic? It was like being in a Hallmark movie that had collided with a comic book.
Siru seemed to consider this. “I am artificial in construction and also intelligent.”
She saw the edges of Valyr’s mouth twitch. Encouraged by this sign he had a sense of humor, she asked, only without the AI part. “Are you Garradian then?”
Valyr’s gaze locked on hers. “You are not Garradian.”
It wasn’t a question. And the ice reconstituted as his brows closed on each other over his nose once again.
“No…I didn’t,” she gestured at the chambers. “It wasn’t me.” Jeez, now she sounded like the Rocketman.
The lips twitched again though his gaze didn’t lose any of its steely quality.
“No,” he agreed. His frown returned. He seemed to be picking his words. “Only the…Urclock…”
When he didn’t finish this, she prompted him, gently, she hoped, “The Urclock? The one in the—” she made a vague gesture in the direction of the control room.
His frown deepened. He shook his head as if it pained him. “That is an Urclock, but not the Urclock.”
“Right. Of course not.” There went a few more IQ points. Since she didn’t have anything to lose, Rachel decided to go for it. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
He looked surprised for a moment—also a good look on him, she noted—and then his head went back, and he laughed. It was not a long laugh, and it was rough around the edges, possibly because his voice had been on ice for who knew how long. But what it did to his face took a substantial amount of chill from the air. Rachel felt her own mouth curving up, and her insides relaxed even as the voice in her head chanted Danger, Will Robinson.
“My memory is still…fragmented,” he admitted. “The…”
Rachel did not recognize the word he used, but his indication of the cryo-chamber gave context. She nodded wisely, she hoped. Before silence could pool in between them again, she asked for the third time, “So you are Garradian?”
He hesitated. “We are, we were, from many planets, many peoples.”
“Really?” That was going to be news to a lot of people, though this made more sense than a whole galaxy calling itself by one name.
“We assembled under their banner for research and discovery.” Now he frowned. “You should know this, should you not? If you are here?” He stopped as if arrested by some thought. A silence formed again, but this one felt important, not tense. “But no one should be here unless—”
Rachel didn’t prompt him to finish. She didn’t think it would work anyway, because he looked like he didn’t know the rest of the sentence, based on the return of his frown. She did have a sense that her best bet was an attentive silence. She’d nailed attentive. She was hanging on his words.
His gaze tracked around the room, lingering for a long time on the row of chambers, their control pads and interiors lit up so that the frozen visages could be vaguely discerned. He might have flinched. His gaze returned to her.
“This is not the…right time?” It was both a question and a statement.
“I don’t have a clue.” Rachel shrugged. “I’m a…researcher. I was following a lead from the Kikk Outpost and ended up here.”
His brows pulled together. “No one ends up here by accident.” His tone was gentle, but he’d bumped up suspicious.
“I may have cracked your codes,” she admitted. “My specialty is cryogenics and Sir Rupert—” She stopped. His quest was not hers to share.
“I am in search of remnants of my species,” he said, surprising her.
This seemed to indicate a high level of trust in Valyr. Was it the name that invoked this trust? Still, the parrot probably hadn’t seen Wrath of Khan.
Valyr stared down at Sir Rupert, not trying to hide his surprise. “There was avian research,” he said slowly, as if the words came from a long way away.
Sir Rupert fluttered his wings. “Do you know where this research was conducted?”
Rachel could see he tried, then gave a frustrated sigh.
“Perhaps when my memory reboot is complete. It was not…my specialty.”
“What—” Rachel stopped, feeling rude.
His gaze lifted to hers and the edges of his mouth twitched again. He pointed to Siru. “Robotics and, um, AI.”
“Robotics. Robots,” she added as the chill returned to the room and her insides. “Robots.” The look she exchanged with Sir Rupert was, well, loaded.
He frowned. “This troubles you?”
“No, I mean, not you being a robotics guy.” She bit her lip and glanced at Sir Rupert again. How much should she share?
“There is an unknown-to-us ship,” Sir Rupert took up her narrative, “that appears to be heading to this outpost.”
“This concerns you?” Valyr asked. She nodded. “Why?”
“It…might…have some robots in it.”
“A ship of robots?” She nodded again. “Headed to this outpost?”
“Possibly. If they stay on their projected course.”
He regarded her in frowning silence. “You believe I should be concerned?”
It was not exactly a separating himself from her, but it felt like it.
“I don’t know,” she admitted again. “They are not from here, and they broke into the border outpost, and they seem to be heavily armed—” Her tablet alarmed. Or maybe it sounded alarming because her brain was trying to connect some robot dots. She pulled this up. Great. “They’ve fired something at us.” She waited for more data. When she got it, she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not. “A probe.” A probe wasn’t weapons, was it? Because she wasn't sure, she added reluctantly, “Maybe we should evacuate to Kikk.”
“What is this Kikk?”
“It’s one of the outposts.” She tried to think what he would have called it and realized it was futile to have started the thought. Even with one of their star charts, she wouldn’t have known how to pronounce it. She pulled up their star chart of the system and then showed him the tablet. “We’re here, and that’s what is now k
nown as Kikk. That’s where my people are, my team.”
He stared at the map for a long time, his expression sober. Very sober.
“I…” he stopped, and it was his turn to swallow dryly. “…have been cold sleeping for a long time, have I not?”
“I’m pretty sure that…yes. A long time.”
“I feel a need to sit,” he said slowly.
“There are chairs in central control,” she offered, as well as much more options for contact and evacuation. Could he make it that far? She studied his face. He looked better than he probably should, but it wasn’t great.
He straightened his shoulders as if he felt her doubt. “Yes. Let us go there.”
9
With poorly concealed relief, Valyr sank onto a seat in front of a console. Rachel dug into her pack and extracted her extra bottle of water and her sack lunch. Good thing she’d had time to finish her breakfast before Doc scared her away. She also pulled out a couple of her energy bars, hesitated over her secret candy bar stash, sighed and pulled that out, too. He’d been asleep for a long time.
He took the sack with some reserve, but when he saw the contents, she had the feeling he’d have eaten the wrappers if she hadn’t been watching. Which was rude. She turned away, setting the backpack down by her seat. He looked pretty good for a starving, formerly frozen, no longer naked guy.
Sir Rupert rode in on Siru’s head, then hopped back onto her shoulder as the robot passed her before assuming a position that looked kind of protective near Valyr. Once again she felt the pull of differing needs. Valyr needed a medical check. Sir Rupert needed her to find his research and—she bit her lip— she was dying to dive into the cyro-research. Instead, she turned to the holo-screens waiting with some impatience for her attention. Apparently, none of them were happy about the probe heading toward them. The alarms were polite but insistent. The alarms and the Urclock could have formed a band. A really annoying band. The silence, other than the ticking and alarming, was not comfortable. She glanced at Valyr, then keyed in her “working” playlist, adjusting the volume to mute the ticking level. He looked up toward the speaker locations, then at her, one brow arching.
“The ticking is bugging me. And the music helps me concentrate.”
The other brow rose. “Concentrate?” His expression asked how that was possible.
She grinned. “You have to feel the beat, get into the zone.” She started to move her upper torso to the beat of “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.” Something she’d never be, but it had a great beat. She kept the moves subtle and then held her hands up, flexing the fingers. “Rock’n roll. You rock to it and the inspiration rolls.”
She turned to the console, laced her fingers and gave them a nice stretch, then dove in. The music changed to a mellow version of “Twist and Shout.”
“It feels less loud if you feel the beat,” Sir Rupert said, moving his head in time to the organ solo. Rachel gave him a thumbs up and noticed Valyr trying not to look incredulous. Though he wasn’t trying very hard. The edges of his mouth were twitching again. All the best heroes had a sense of humor, in her opinion. Not that he was a hero, well, he wasn’t her hero. He might even be her downfall when she presented him to Doc.
“It helps to move,” Sir Rupert told Valyr, adding a few hops to his routine.
Her gaze lifted just in time to meet Valyr’s—and a flicker of heat flared in the yummy brown depths. And then it was gone, and she wondered if she’d imagined it. Probably imagined it. Her sense of humor prompted her to tease him just a bit.
“Just a small shoulder shake?” She wriggled hers, sort of surprised at herself. Maybe it was the red shirt? When his brows arched and his shoulders didn’t, she gave him an impish smile.
His lips twitched again, which she took as a positive sign of…something. He crumpled the wrappers from her former lunch, stuffed them into the brown lunch bag and looked around for some place to put them. He finally set the bag on the floor and drank the rest of the water, then set that bottle by the bag. The lack of a trash can appeared to bother him, which was curious. She filed it with all the other curious things about him. She should get to work, but her eyes stayed glued on him, even as her body kept time with the song.
He rubbed his temples, then with an interesting reluctance, looked at the Urclock. She couldn’t see his face, but there was a lot of tension in his super straight back. He lifted his hands, flexing them as if he wanted to do something with them, but wasn’t sure what. Her inner physician noticed that he was getting more flexible and his color was better. Nothing in their research indicated this swift of a recovery from cryo-stasis. His brows drew together in a scowl, and his hands curled into fists. So slightly at first, she wondered if she imagined it, his shoulders twitched. When they did again, right on the beat, she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. The heart of rock’n roll was hard to resist. She ticked the volume up just a little.
To her surprise, Sir Rupert began to sing along. He leaned his head toward hers and, well, it would have been rude to an important ally not to join in. Valyr swung around to stare at them as they—and their voices—rose in the final crescendo.
She grinned at his dropped jaw—which he snapped shut—and said, “We could take our act on the road.”
Sir Rupert lifted a claw for her fist bump. “Indeed.” He looked thoughtful. “One could make the case that we are on the road—and off-road.”
Rachel laughed. “And running into the ditch—” She met Valyr’s gaze and forgot what she was going to say. His head tipped to one side, and well, she didn’t know what his gaze said. Other than it curled her toes in her expedition issue boots. She was a genius, but also a girl. She’d observed attraction, both the good and the bad. She’d wondered what her type was. She had not expected it to be a thousand-year-old, recently defrosted alien.
Doc was surprised when Hel touched her arm.
“Have you checked the Central Outpost video feed recently?” he murmured, for her ears only. His gaze was a bit distant, indicating he had and was still looking at this feed.
She pulled it up inside her head and almost broke out in expression. It was a relief to see Dr. Frank and Sir Rupert apparently unharmed. But—
“Who—” she managed to cut herself off before anyone noticed, transferring the conversation to a private one with Hel, via their nanite connection. Who is that?
Hel gave a slight shake of his head. I am more concerned about where he came from, how he achieved access to the outpost.
Key DNA? Doc asked. If he could get in without us realizing it…
…then other outposts can be penetrated. Could already have been penetrated.
Doc had sent her nanites digging here and there. Nanites were the best at it, and they were fast, sometimes answering questions she hadn’t thought to ask. Now they reported in.
No ship on Central Outpost. No ships located in or around the outer space of the other outposts except those previously identified and tracked. No heat signatures at any other outpost. No sign that any outpost — but the defensive perimeter outpost — has been activated in a very long time.
And that one hadn’t been so much activated as pilfered of data. What the heck was going on?
Can you zoom in on his face? The nanites obliged. The first thing that struck her…He looks ill. And— Is that an Outpost sack lunch he’s pounding?
He was either very brave or very hungry. The former, based on how fast he was stuffing it in. Hel had some interesting things to say about their not pretty—and often bland—expedition food. He didn’t bother expanding on those opinions though she felt them through the link.
It appears to be.
Doc ignored a faint “poor chap” and got her nanites to back off the zoom again. There was Dr. Frank on one console, her now open backpack on the floor. She had to be the source of the sack lunch, but why would she give him her lunch? She didn’t look that concerned. In fact… is she singing?
That’s what it appears to be to
me. Hel sounded amused. Sir Rupert seems to be getting in—
—on the act? He did. The two were cozier than Doc had realized.
Not bad. This from Lurch who did like his karaoke. Hel’s amusement was about to breach containment. She did not think General Halliwell would be amused if they broke into giggles right now.
Why are they looking at each other like that? This question was from Fester, who felt younger than her other nanites.
Doc was wondering the same thing—oh, she knew why they were looking at each other like that—but why the hell was Frank looking at him like that?
The first time we saw each other— Hel began.
Do not go there. She flicked him a look that both promised and threatened. Not right now anyway.
10
Rachel’s playlist reached its end, and in the sudden silence, the ticking seemed louder and a little annoyed. It certainly broke into the staring session. She hoped it hadn’t been as long as it felt. She glanced at Sir Rupert and felt color steal up her face. Yeah, it had been as long as it felt. Where was she—oh, right.
“I’m going to see if I can open up communications with Kikk from here.” She turned back to her console. The surface felt cool. Or her fingers were as hot as her face.
“If nothing has changed, it should not be difficult,” Valyr said, his voice rough with, well, she hoped it was rough with the same thing putting color in her face.
On one of the screens, the probe was still tracking steadily toward them. “A probe isn’t that scary or, well anything, is it?” she asked the room. Neither the room nor anyone in it, answered her.
Sir Rupert hopped closer to the probe screen and considered it. “Is it possible the incoming bogey launched a probe at the border outpost prior to touching down?”
Lost Valyr: Project Enterprise 7 Page 11
