Hell's Razer

by S. F. Edwards

  “Static terminal. It will auto-forward to her macomm.”

  The operator nodded and established the link to Chris’ mother. The Donvarion logo for the Psi-Comm service replaced her. For an interminably long pulse it remained until Torishen appeared, her face dirty, sweat glistening along her grey and silver hairline. Despite her age, Torishen’s face was still so similar to her own that Chris felt like she was staring into a future revealing mirror.

  “Chris, My Baby! What a surprise!” she called full of glee using her little nickname for Chris. Her eyes narrowed for a moment as she looked back at Chris. “What’s wrong?” her happy tone descending into worry.

  “Nothing's wrong. We were transferred,” she realized she hadn’t even gotten cleaned up since their return and must look like quite the sight. “She motioned towards the blank wall behind her. We’re on the,” she trailed off, thinking if she was clear to reveal that. “The Wolfsbane.”

  Torishen’s whole face brightened. “My God, My Baby, that’s amazing! I had no idea. If your father was here he’d be flipping with joy. But something’s bothering you, I can tell. Did you have to leave someone behind?” she asked snapping between concern and a knowing grin.

  Chris snapped a look back towards the wall behind her. “I didn’t. No.”

  “My Baby, I know you’re using your micomm, but could you at least mouth along? It’s disconcerting.”

  Chris chuckled. “Not a problem mother,” Chris replied, sure to mouth the words.

  “Why the need for quiet?”

  “My roommate’s asleep. I don’t want to wake him. But Mother, I need to know, something. When did you know that Father was, you know, the one? How did you decide to take him as your mate?”

  Torishen went silent for a long moment, staring off into space. Chris had never been one to ask about such subjects before. Her younger brothers and sisters, yes, but not her. “I haven’t thought about that for a long time My Baby.” Chris wasn’t surprised, the question hadn’t been asked since she’d been a little girl. “I grew up with father, but we didn’t date until after I was medicaled out,” she replied, rubbing her temple and the faint scar she insisted be allowed to stay. It was a sort of memorial to one of her teammates. “He asked me out right after I’d returned, and I knew by our fourth date. A street gang jumped us. Why we ever lived in Scibe City, I still can’t fathom. But your father, he managed to fight them off.”

  That caught Chris off-guard. Her mother was no wilting blossom. – after all, she’d been a Special Operations Operative. As soon as Chris had had clearance, she’d read a few of her mother’s early mission reports. It made anything she’d done pale by comparison. Torishen’s final set of deep-cover missions remained beyond even Chris’ security clearance, however. She’d even written passages in sections of the Special Operations combat manual. That she’d needed defending by any man, let alone Chris’ father, seemed absurd. “Father, a fighter?”

  Torishen smiled, a wicked thing. “I didn’t say he was a good fighter.” She covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. “I was still recovering from my injuries and hibernation sickness.” Chris had never heard her mother mention hibernation sickness before, but before she could ask, her mother continued. “He held them back, and didn’t say a word when I jumped in to help him. I only ever knew one other man whose ego wouldn’t be so bruised. Why the sudden interest?”

  Chris looked back again. “Last mission out, Gavit, he was hurt.”

  “Markus? The pilot you’ve been in competition with since you met him?”

  Chris nodded. “I can’t give too much detail. He was giving air support to us on the ground and a gunner got off a lucky shot. He went down hard and all I could see was My Kerjus all over again. Mother, I cried, I cried like I was losing my love again. But, I don’t love him, he’s an idiot man-child even if he is My Gavit.”

  Torishen remained silent as if waiting for something as tears welled up in Chris’s eyes again. Chris thought it just lag - that was possible even in a psi-comm link. When nothing came, she continued. “My Baby. I know. Your Kerjus was an amazing man, Chamalad in spirit, if not in blood. Gavit, Your Gavit from what I’ve heard. He’s anything but. But then, I’ve never met him. Still, you have to read the truth of your own hearts.”

  Chris longed for her mother’s touch. It could still soothe so many ills. “I know. But still. His past. I know much of it was blown out of proportion but I, mother… What do I do?”

  “I can’t tell you that. Not here. Not like this. I can only tell you that I trust you and your judgement. You are My Baby, and in line to become queen of the Chamalad. You will make the right decision.”

  Chris scoffed at that. Torishen was third in line, behind her two older sisters, to her grandmother, the High Matriarch of the Chamalad. That left Chris behind her three cousins for any chance of ascendency. Not that she wanted that honor. “Seventh in line mother.”

  “We’ll talk about that the next time you’re home. But where is Your Gavit now, making his rounds of the ship’s crew?” she asked with a smirk.

  Chris shook her head and indicated the wall behind her. “Not that I would have picked him as a suitemate. Especially now.”

  Torishen ran a finger down her nose. “My Baby. You are a Chamalad woman, one of the greatest I’ve ever known. You know what you must do. You must confront your feelings, and him. See if he feels the same. But do not name him as Yours until you are sure, and preferably have spoken to me.”

  “I will mother. Thank you.”

  “I love you, My Baby. Now do what you must. I have Thresh Thorn to harvest before your father comes home and gets tangled in them like last annura.”

  Chris chuckled - her father had been known to get tangled up in even a single strand of Thresh Thorn. “I will mother. Please, give everyone my love.”

  “I love you too, My Baby. Call me again when you can.”

  “I will,” Chris replied before closing the connection. The screen went dark and she turned away from it. She sat in silence, pondering her mother’s words and replaying the conversation in her mind. “My Gavit,” she heard herself say. “Your Gavit,” her mother’s voice echoed. Her eyes went wide, realizing that she’d declared Gavit her own, and her mother had kept trying to tell her that. Whether by accident, or unconscious intent, she couldn’t be sure. She stared at the wall for a long moment. Indecision, something she’d felt so rarely that she had trouble recognizing it, nibbled at her. She needed to talk to someone.

  Setting her resolve she strode out of the room intent to find Arion. His skills in psychology might help, though he might just as readily chide her about declaring Gavit her own. As she went to march past Gavit’s door she stopped dead in her tracks. She stared at the featureless slab. “Better to face it head on,” she said to herself. She pressed the chime. There was no response. She pressed it again. Gavit yelled something unintelligible and the door opened. Gavit lay there shielding his eyes from the light of the common room. He started to say something, but before he could, Chris stepped in and closed the door. “We need to talk.”

  Burning Crater, Wolfsbane

  Several decks down and near the outer hull was one of the few spaces on the ship with an external window. Most warships would keep the number of windows to a minimum due to the inherent weakness they represented. This space had started life as an observation dome for a tertiary navigational suite. A battle, decades earlier, had blasted open the dome. Due to the redundant nature of the suite, the space had been sealed and left unused. It hadn’t taken long for the ship’s space wing to take control and refit the area as a bar. It had operated without a name for decades before Ace of Aces, Toran Markus, had declared it The Burning Crater.

  Arion hadn’t intended to invite the rest of the team along to the bar. Once Rudjick had told them about Alieha however, they just invited themselves. Everyone except Blazer, Marda, Chris and Gavit, who had their micomms set to private. He didn’t want to put her on the spot like this. At least they did
n’t all try to crowd into one booth. They had the decency to spread out to the nearby tables that led towards the bubble from which they could watch the starboard fighter operations.

  Arion approached their booth, noticed the rings of etched mugs around the observation bubble. It was a curious sight, almost like ripples in a pond. Most of the mugs in the innermost ring had been discolored by time, while those towards the outer rings looked shiny and new. He felt sure that each mug would be engraved with the names of pilots who’d died serving aboard the Wolfsbane. Tearing his eyes away from the memorial, he reached their table and set his and Alieha’s drinks down. “So, what brings you aboard the Wolfsbane?”

  “I’m a merchant and I had a load of, let’s say, unusual cargo to deliver.”

  “How often do you do that?”

  “I have a business relationship with the command staff. So, I tend to act as their finder and distributor of hard to find and or rare goods.”

  Sitting at the next table, Zithe spun around. “You’re a smuggler?”

  Alieha snapped towards him, her eyes hardened. It was not a look Arion had ever seen on his Alieha. She was always so calm, even in a fight. He liked this new look. “I’m a merchant. From time to time some of my cargo happens to show up on a system’s contraband list. It happens to even the most ‘legitimate’ cargo haulers too.”

  Zithe nodded. “I see - so what kind of ‘cargo’ were you transporting?”

  “That’s between me and the Captain. But it’s nothing illegal, just things that take longer to acquire through standard channels, mister…”

  “Officer,” he corrected. “Enerian Zithe, Blade Force second-in-command.”

  “Pack Zithe?” she asked, an intrigued look on her face.

  “Yes, why?”

  “I would love to do business with your pack. I have no desire to learn your pack’s secret to making barren soil farmable, but a chance to haul cargo for you would be an opportunity I could never pass up. Not even for a small trader like me.”

  “You say that as if I could help you in some way.”

  “A trade perhaps. I can locate something you need but can’t get through normal channels. You just have to secure me a Pack Zithe trading medallion.”

  Zithe leaned back in thought at that. “Weapons? Non-Standard issue?”

  Alieha nodded. “You have a taste for the exotic?”

  “Monomolecular sword?”

  Alieha grinned, leaned back and slapped Arion on his chest. “I hope he doesn’t handle much of your team’s negotiations,” she said before turning back to Zithe. “Done. I have one that a customer backed out on. Get me the medallion and it’s yours.”

  Zithe smiled like a kid on Cycle of Outcome. “Done. I will need to contact my cousin, so it may take a few cycles.”

  “You have until they finish repairing and refitting my ship, otherwise I might sell it at my next stop.”

  Gokhead slid in closer, the implant on the side of his head blinking away. “We were wondering, how did you become involved with the biodroid project? We only have data for after the project went into testing.”

  Alieha regarded Gokhead with a curious eye. “We?”

  This could get tricky, Arion mused. Alieha, as a civilian, wouldn’t have the kind of clearance necessary to know about Que Dee. “Gokhead has an advanced supplemental intelligence suite,” Arion explained, pointing to the implant. “It left him with… some quirks.”

  Gokhead nodded. “Yes. Injury during the Gorvian crisis.”

  “Okay, not the first time someone made up a weird excuse for a ‘Synth-Sent’ implant. My brother in law has one too,” she said with a wink. “They’re overseeing the project. I had one in a Personnel Robot following me around before Number Six went rogue.”

  Gokhead tapped the implant. “That’s how Que Dee started out too.”

  “You guys don’t play cards much do you?”

  Arion shot Gokhead a withering look.

  Alieha just shook her head. “Anyway, you wanted to know how I got mixed up in this whole biodroid thing?” As curious as Arion was to know that, Gokhead seemed enthralled. Arion felt content merely to listen to her voice, its melody bringing back so many memories and a smile to his face. “So, biodroids were originally developed for use in making artificial limbs, right? A handful were made as full body prosthetics. Then they developed the organic-mech brains to help those with brain damage. Those later became test beds for the full body prosthetics, but because of the Cynial Accord, they had no intelligence. Some were made that bordered on intelligent, but their personalities weren’t much, if they had any. My uncle wanted to change that. He wanted to use me as a personality template to make a full biodroid more personable.”

  “The Synthesis stepped in around that point,” Que Dee added. “We’d learned of the experiment and offered technical expertise, but wished to remain separate to avoid confirmation bias during observation trials.”

  “If you say so,” Alieha replied, taking a drink. “They screened people from across the Confederation, but I think my uncle always had me in mind for the project. I was in an ‘interesting’ place back then. I think he ultimately enlisted my help to keep me out of trouble.”

  “Did it work?” Arion asked.

  “Yes, and it paid well. It kept me tied up for three annura in the process. And, it allowed me to buy my ship, The Reluctant Favor, outright so I could start my own business.” She looked out the window to some point in the distance. “I was having a rough time of it back then. My parents had died, and my fiancé had left me. The project gave me a fresh start and direction.”

  Arion laid a hand on hers. She looked up and met his eyes. They were the same eyes, but carried more experience, more pain, and more joy. They were those of the Alieha he knew, and so much more. She patted his hand and continued. “For over a tridec they just prepared to make the physical shells – you know, measuring, poking, prodding and imprinting pretty much every one of my physical attributes to make near perfect copies of me. They said it would help the personality imprint take. And I mean near perfect.” She pulled up her shirt to reveal a small mole beneath her left breast to Arion. “Three had the same mole right?”

  Arion smiled and nodded as he took his next drink, his cheeks flushing. My Alieha wasn’t that forward in public, or with strangers, even after our first duwn in the pit.

  “I thought so. Anyway, then came the neural print sessions. Those took a cycle each, and they did it thirty-five times to make sure that they’d had my brain completely modelled and mapped. They opted to build six ‘test units.’ Each one had the neural map tweaked slightly to bring out a different part of my personality and to insert specific skills programming. That way they could experiment with making custom purpose-built models in the future.”

  “How were they changed?” Arion asked.

  Alieha leaned back and began ticking them back on her fingers. “Well, Number One has this out of control maternal instinct. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids, but I’ve never been in a hurry to have them. She came out of the pod wanting kids. But, let’s face it, she doesn’t have the hardware.” She looked over at Arion as he took a drink and winked. “But I’m sure Arion can attest to the fact that they’re fully functional down there otherwise.”

  Arion choked on his drink and tried his best to hide his embarrassment and excitement. The thought of being able to be with Alieha again stirred his loins. To know that this Alieha was the real deal, the template, a real woman, worked them up even more.

  “So, since she couldn’t birth any kids, she decided to start work in an orphanage instead. All the kids she could ever want, all the mothering, and none of the labor pains. Lucky Critch.

  “Number Two is a math whiz. She does the books for all of us and manages most of my stocks. She has more money than she knows what to do with – which is good, because that way, Sister Alieha’s kids never want for anything. She’s even financed some of my riskier ventures. Seriously, put her in charge of your finan
ces for an annura and you’ll be set for life. She’s got suitors from across the Confederation throwing themselves at her.”

  “I’d throw myself at her if she was dressed in rags and didn’t have half a CMU to her name,” Rudjick mused. “Just so long as she was as hot as you.”

  One look from Arion sent Rudjick back in his chair.

  Alieha just chuckled and continued. “Elf, she’s turned down men and women with enough money to buy this taskforce. You don’t stand a chance.”

  “It’s not all about the money. Let’s face it, this elf is top shelf.”

  “Does anyone know that she’s a biodroid?” Gokhead asked, cutting Rudjick off.

  “Did you know that Three was? They’re programed not to tell someone unless asked directly. But I’ll bet that Three left clues. They all do.”

  Arion nodded. Though subtle, there had been signs from the beginning as to what Alieha Three truly was. He just hadn’t wanted to see it. “They can’t lie about it?”

  Alieha shook her head and touched his arm, the hairs there dancing. “No they can’t. And yes, I am real,” she winked at him. “Maybe I can prove that to you later.” Arion’s whole body felt electric at that point before a platter full of thin triangular wafers topped with meat, peppers and almost overflowing in runny melted cheese arrived from the bartender. “Thank you,” she said, her face lighting up. “Say what you will about Terrans, but this is a delicacy of theirs that I adapted. They call them nachos. Try it.”

  Arion accepted one of the wafers and after a quick examination, took a bite. His eyes went wide with sensation. It was like a miniature crunchy sandwich wrap, but spicy and drenched with cheese. “This is excellent!”

  “Yeah. A Terran smuggler I had dealings with used to eat the stuff all the time, so I tried making it myself. I have customers who buy cratefuls of the stuff, especially if I can get the actual Terran Tortilla chips.”

  “I can see why!’ Arion replied, taking another bite before turning back to the bartender. “Can we get more of this for the other tables? And the autocook codes?”