Unfortunately for Evelyn, she had the dubious pleasure of walking the angel through using cerebral implants for the first time, which had been an interesting experience, as Vaneryth knew almost nothing about implants to begin with. In the process she’d also learned a few things that were… unfortunate.
She quickly learned that all of the women had been the victims of a variety of ‘training programs,’ but only two had been universal across all of them. Obedience and courtesan programs afflicted each of them, and their implants reported how far each program had progressed. Worse, Kragg informed them that trying to move or examine the obedience program would cause it to self-destruct the nodes containing it, causing damage to the victim’s brain. Supposedly that was to protect the programming from being easily undone by others, though deleting the program was possible.
Evelyn was privately amused that while Zelirana’s obedience program was only thirty-seven percent complete and the courtesan training complete, Vaneryth’s obedience was at ninety-seven percent and the courtesan training was at seventy-seven percent. She’d have thought the angel would be more resistant, but that obviously wasn’t the case… not that it mattered too much. Doing some research, the obedience training only really mattered if a new owner had been imprinted on the victims, so aside from being a little easier to order around, the women would recover over time.
The rest of the programs they’d found were a bit more puzzling. Beatrice had a cooking program, Moon and Star performance programs, and so on. Not that they’d survived long, as the women had promptly deleted the obedience and courtesan programs. At least, that was what Evelyn assumed from their comments. Moon and Star, somewhat surprisingly, had chosen to keep the performance programs, but Star had privately confided that they’d always wanted to learn that sort of thing, they just didn’t have the money or time for all the classes they wanted. That made sense to her, and it wasn’t like it was Evelyn’s mind being messed with.
Once Kragg was down with the Dolls, Evelyn made sure he wouldn’t need anything and returned to the women, walking into the room as she made a few arrangements, then sent implemented them.
“I’ve sent a thousand mythrite to each of your personal wallets. For those of you who aren’t aware, this allows you to use your implants to pay for things,” Evelyn said, looking at Vaneryth and Zelirana in particular. The angel’s cheeks grew rosier, while the succubus just smiled. Evelyn continued, scanning the room. “What you do from here is your choice. Do not make a decision lightly, take some time to think about it. Except for Vaneryth and Zelirana, of course. The two of you can return to your home planes at a moment’s notice, so you don’t have the same problems.”
“As it happens, I’ve already decided to remain aboard your ship,” Zelirana replied after a moment, her voice smooth and calm. “I’m currently considering the harem offer, but I’d be willing to acquire one of the training programs for… what did you call it? A shipboard rating?”
“There are multiple types, but yes,” Evelyn confirmed, mentally rolling her eyes. Succubi were predictable, in her opinion. She’d had a couple try seducing her before, but they tended to flock to those in power like flies, so she couldn’t say she was surprised. “We’ll have to discuss it, once I’ve determined where I’m going.”
“As for myself, I believe I will return home. A great deal has happened, and I will need some time to recover and come to terms with it,” Vaneryth said, giving the succubus a suspicious glance, then bowed deeply to Evelyn. “Thank you for granting me my freedom. May the gods bless you.”
“Yeah… somehow I doubt that,” Evelyn murmured, just as the angel dissolved into motes of blue light and vanished.
“I believe a great deal will depend on what happened to my assets after I ended up enslaved. I have a few private accounts which, if they’re still intact, will allow me to rebuild my life. If they are not… I very likely will take you up on your offer, Evelyn,” Dirax said, a cold smile on her face. “I built a life once, I’m sure I can again, but a thousand chips isn’t nearly enough for me to be comfortable.”
“Pretty much the same for me, though it’s more a question of whether I was declared dead or not,” Peldri said, grimacing, and Tianna nodded in agreement.
“Um, how long do we have to decide?” Ilyra asked, her words surprisingly subdued, even compared to normal, and Evelyn gave her a sharp look. She didn’t say anything immediately, though, thinking things through first.
“Until it’s time for me to leave port in Nald,” Evelyn said at last. “Mind you, I expect you to have some idea of what you’re going to do before that. If you don’t have skills, I don’t care whether you’ve decided to follow Fya’s hairbrained idea or not, you’re not staying aboard. If you’re learning, though… that would be acceptable.”
“Oh, good,” Ilyra said, looking relieved, and she smiled nervously. “It’s just that, well… do you mind if we speak in private? I discovered something else in my implants which is… unpleasant.”
“Tell me something new,” Beatrice said balefully. “I think I need to murder whoever sold me off, assuming she didn’t get executed during her coup attempt.”
“Something else unpleasant, then,” Ilyra corrected herself, looking down at her hands nervously.
Evelyn looked at her for a moment, then nodded, standing up as she spoke. “In that case, I’ll leave you be. Moon, Star, Orm… you are the only ones who haven’t said for certain what you’re leaning toward, so consider it, please.”
“My apologies, I should have expressed where the currents would take me,” Orm said immediately, bowing her head smoothly. “I believed it obvious, but the course may not be as evident to others. I must return to my people and inform them of what happened, as well as the discoveries and hazards which I was unable to sing of to them.”
“And we’ll think about it,” Moon assured her, smiling broadly.
“Most likely we’ll go home, but we’re probably going to send messages to see what happened. Things might’ve changed,” Star added.
“Good,” Evelyn said, looking at Ilyra. “We’ll go to the astrogation room, Ilyra.”
“Of course,” Ilyra said, quickly standing and hurrying to follow Evelyn, who made a mental note that she really did need to arrange for new clothing for all of them. That wouldn’t be more than a handful of mythrite more, as long as she didn’t let Fya do the shopping.
Ilyra followed silently but kept up despite Evelyn’s fast pace. She was slightly out of breath by the time they’d gotten to the astrogation room, but Evelyn was impressed anyway. She wouldn’t have thought that a noble would be able to do so well.
“What is this about?” Evelyn asked, looking at Ilyra curiously.
“I… apparently do not exist anymore,” the celestine replied, her voice trembling.
“What do you mean?” Evelyn asked, her eyebrows rising.
“I had a great deal of data in my implants. Teaching programs, unlike these training ones, entertainment, and… and ones which would allow me to prove my identity. They are all gone,” Ilyra said, inhaling slowly as she hugged herself. “Instead, there is other information in its place. My implants claim that I’m Taslyn Reeth, a celestine born in captivity. I was… was sculpted to mimic one of Brightdawn’s nobility and given an implant with a training system to make me as much like her as possible. Even my implants were changed, their serial numbers gone, and… well, my parents might believe it was me if I was allowed to speak to them, but who I was has been completely erased. I’m… I’m not certain what to do.”
For a few seconds Evelyn considered her, watching the young woman… then let out a soft sigh and pulled her into a hug. Ilyra yelped, stiffening slightly as Evelyn’s arms closed around her, and stood there for a few seconds, then relaxed, leaning into Evelyn as she began crying, her arms slipping around Evelyn as she clung to her.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Ilyra,” Evelyn told her simply, and the celestine stiffened for half a second, then relax
ed again.
“You… you believe me? That I am who I say I am, not someone who is… delusional, and thinks they’re someone more important than they are?” Ilyra asked, her tears tickling Evelyn’s neck.
“Yes, I believe you. For one thing, manufacturing this confusion is far more effort than it’d ever be worth,” Evelyn told her, a faint smile trying to play across her lips, but she suppressed the urge. She didn’t want to accidentally devastate the young woman. “There’s actually an extremely simple reason for them to have done this to you, you know.”
“What’s that?” Ilyra asked, pulling away slowly, reaching up to brush away her tears as she sniffled.
“The reprisals,” Evelyn said calmly.
“The… oh. Oh. If I’m not a noble, then the military won’t go after them. They’d just take me away, and that would be it. They wouldn’t try to destroy everything.” Ilyra said, her eyes widening.
“Precisely. I suspect that whoever purchased you knew exactly who you are, and likely even has copies of all the data on your implants. What you have would stay there right up until you were in their hands, then they’d put it all back. They’d have their prize, and Brightdawn would never know,” Evelyn said, her distaste for whoever had bought the women growing still stronger. If she ever had the chance, she’d destroy them.
“I… alright, that makes sense. It… it makes more sense than what I was afraid of. For a few minutes, I thought I might be…” Ilyra began, but her voice trailed off as she rubbed at her eyes.
“You know that there’s a silver lining to all of this, don’t you?” Evelyn replied, raising an eyebrow at the woman.
“Um, what would that be?” Ilyra asked, frowning.
“You were running away from home so you could learn, weren’t you? Well, with a different identity, it isn’t like they’re going to come to drag you home, is it?” Evelyn pointed out.
For a moment Ilyra looked at Evelyn in confusion, then her eyes slowly widened, and her mouth turned into an o-shape. Then she breathed out softly. “I… I can, can’t I? I could just delete all of this and… and do whatever I want. Brightdawn already thinks I’m dead…”
“I might leave the bit about sculpting, but that’s what I was getting at.” Evelyn confirmed, smiling warmly, then patted Ilyra on the shoulder as she headed for the door. “You’re free, Ilyra. Of slavery and the expectations of your station. Choose what you wish to do with it.”
The celestine had a contemplative look on her face as she left, which satisfied Evelyn. That was far better than having her moping all over the ship.
Now she just needed to figure out where Kragg was with the Dolls. Evelyn suspected that, based on the programs in the women’s implants, she was not going to be happy with what skills they had loaded.
She could deal with that far more easily than the women, though. As long as none of the Dolls had developed souls… that would make everything messy.
Chapter 15
None of the Dolls had souls, fortunately enough. Their maintenance units were designed to detect the presence of souls, and didn’t find anything. Unfortunately, the programs they had installed weren’t what Evelyn wanted. Maidservant, bodyguard, assassin, chef, and pleasure programs dominated, but the majority of those were useless to Evelyn. So she uninstalled most of them, sold them to the nearest vendor, and bought a variety of naval chips instead, primarily generic ones but with a few tactical, communications, medical, and a large number of engineering chips as well. It’d allow her to turn the Dolls into proper crew, which was the important thing, and she splurged to get more expensive chips. Those were less likely to be virus-laden wrecks, though Evelyn made certain to scan them thoroughly before installing anything.
Dolls were both fascinating and mildly repulsive to Evelyn, and she couldn’t quite decide which. They were advertised as being indistinguishable from a living person, with a synthetic ‘flesh’ that perfectly mimicked whichever species they were built to imitate, but Evelyn found that most of the constructs were identifiable, simply because their makers didn’t put the effort into giving them the subtle imperfections that a real person would have. High-end models tended to be almost impossible for her to tell apart until they opened their mouths, though, which she found a touch disturbing. Worse yet were the ones she couldn’t identify easily. Probably because she was attracted to some of them.
In essence, they were little different than robots, Evelyn supposed. The main difference was that with their maintenance units, Dolls could ‘heal’ from damage, rather than having to completely replace parts like most robots could, and their programming was far more expansive than the typical robot. Evelyn would never have ordered forty high-end models which could use diamond-grade chips, she could have ordered three times as many reasonably equivalent robots, though they wouldn’t have been as pretty, she supposed.
“The transport team has moderately injured a group of assailants, Captain,” Control reported, and Evelyn paused, looking at the Doll. She’d chosen the Doll who looked like an elegant blonde elf to liaise with the rest of the Dolls, and the resemblance to Vania was entirely a coincidence, she told herself. Control continued without pausing more than a moment. “None of the team has sustained significant damage and has continued to move the remaining cargo to the ship.”
“Hm. What sort of assailants?” Evelyn asked, frowning slightly.
“A group of eleven, all of them with patches resembling a purple, four-winged bird. M-3 stated that they appeared drunk.” Control reported after a moment, her silver eyes refocusing slightly. “They subdued them with non-lethal weapons, ensured they wouldn’t perish on-site, then continued on their way.”
“Good enough.” Evelyn said, nodding in satisfaction. She knew the symbol, that of the Spire-Hawks, and the gang wouldn’t do anything too stupid if their people hadn’t been killed. “This includes the shield generators, correct?”
“Yes, Captain.” Control confirmed, and Evelyn nodded in satisfaction.
“Are all of the rooms cleared? All the personal effects of the previous crew off the ship?” Evelyn asked.
“They have been cleared and all items except for those you designated have been removed from the vessel.” Control confirmed, smiling slightly. “We are only waiting on Fya and the transport team to be ready for launch.”
Evelyn nodded, stepping away and looking at the screens showing the ship’s surroundings. There were a handful of large bins near the bay exit that had been filled with all the things she hadn’t wanted and didn’t feel like selling, which was a lot, but otherwise the bay was clear. She could even see the shiny new patches where the starport staff had repaired the damage that’d been dealt during her attack. Evelyn was amused that they hadn’t even tried to charge her for it, as instead the Commodore had quietly taken care of everything. Captain Eight-Fist’s meeting with him seemed to have a potent effect on the man, and Evelyn wasn’t going to argue with that.
A pair of Dolls were running diagnostics at the navigation and tactical consoles, wearing the sleek black and silver shipsuits she’d bought for them. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but she preferred that to the more elaborate clothing which had been in their attached storage. Soon she’d be ready to launch, so Evelyn closed her eyes and wondered why she was looking forward to leaving so much.
“Ah, right. I should let Vania know that I’ve left,” Evelyn murmured, opening her eyes again, and she mentally began composing a message as her lips curved into a wicked smile. She’d toss it into the first courier’s queue once she was done, and it wouldn’t even matter if other people chose to decrypt it. “Maybe now her so-called advisors will start earning their wages.”
No one replied, which was probably for the best. That was a distinct advantage to Dolls as crew, she supposed.
“Rakal Space Control,” Maggie said, cringing internally as she saw which ship the message was coming from. She really, really hoped that this wasn’t going to be another Evelyn Incident in the making.
The voice which replied startled her, since it wasn’t Evelyn or her psychotic minion, and instead was a woman with smooth, precise diction. “Rakal Control, this is Daggerhound, requesting permission for launch. Requesting outbound lane for the nearest safe astral jump space.”
“Ah, let me check the lanes,” Maggie replied, blinking, and she checked both the outbound lanes, as well as the bay’s status. She frowned at seeing a red indicator, debating if she should say anything, then braced herself as she added. “The lanes are clear, however you haven’t paid fully for your use of the bay.”
“Acknowledged. One moment while I consult with the captain,” the woman replied, her voice unruffled. Of course, an instant later there was another voice, this one Evelyn’s assistant, though at least she wasn’t speaking directly into the mic, or to Maggie.
“Why should we be paying for that? Isn’t that something the Commodore should be taking care of?” Fya said, a note of resentment in her voice.
“No, it isn’t. It appears that our predecessor didn’t pay for this long of a stay. Unsurprising, really.” Evelyn said, and Maggie blinked at the wry humor in her voice. “Besides, the Commodore doesn’t own the spaceport. Control, check how much the bay fees are. As long as they’re appropriate for our tonnage and stay, pay them.”
Maggie opened her mouth to ask how she was supposed to pay for it, but the woman who’d been speaking to her before spoke first. “Yes, Captain. Interrogating spaceport systems. Fees are within projected allowances, initiating payment protocols. Rakal Control, payment has been made, requesting launch clearance.”
As the woman spoke, the docking bay indicator turned from red to green as the payment registered. Maggie blinked, then relaxed slightly as she replied. “Acknowledged, Daggerhound. Assigning your lane now.”
With a press of a button she sent the flight path to the ship, and another flick caused the bay doors to slowly slide open. Mostly, Maggie was relieved that Evelyn was leaving. And if she was heading for an astral jump, that might, just might, mean that she’d be out of Maggie’s hair for good. That gave her a lot of hope.
Chosen of Chaos (Eve of Destruction Book 1) Page 10
