by Elsa Jade
Was this how the girls at the saloon had sized up their clientele? “I’ll take your insights under advisement.”
Without another word, she turned, but he caught a glimpse of her downturned mouth before she looked away. Well, and rightly she should feel bad, since she was taking him into the kind of indentured servitude she herself wanted to escape.
He might be half machine, but even so, he had some feelings.
The configuration of the small shuttle meant he had a clear view from the corner of the hold straight up the central corridor to the bridge. When she settled herself in the pilot’s chair but didn’t close the hatch between them, a faint glimmer of hope turned up like a diamond in coffee beans.
He studied the parts of her that he could see around the padded plasteel skeleton of the adjustable chair. The soft flow of her split skirt reminded him of the dress she’d worn in the saloon, though the style wasn’t so ornate and the fabric was obviously not of Earthly origin. Her hair was piled in a similar fashion, although the streaks of purple-red through the rich brown had been laid with a more skilled hand. She was still playing a role, for an empress instead of horny cowboys.
When she turned her head to check something on the navigation screen, the sight of her scarred profile sent another surge through him—anger this time. To leave her marked by a disease that had been eradicated even on backward Earth, when a simple cosmetic treatment could’ve restored her skin, showed such a casual callousness from the empress that even a killer robot was disgusted.
Which didn’t bode well for him becoming one of her servants.
Later, when Nell rose from the pilot’s chair and headed for the galley area, he cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I need to make a request to use the shuttle’s biological maintenance facilities.” When she glanced toward him, eyes narrowed, he clarified, “The bathroom.”
“I know what you meant. I just don’t think you really need it.”
He wrinkled his nose. “With my nanites disabled by the cuffs and the blaster shot, my organic processes are insistent. I could try to piss in the coffee cube—”
“Stop.” She strode toward the hold. “Turn around and put your back to the bars.”
Slowly, he did as she asked. The small hairs at his nape prickled as she did something with the cuff around his neck. It tightened for a moment, and her soft exhalation whispered over his ear. A shiver went down his spine, and he wanted to duck away, but he was pretending to be compliant.
“All right. Don’t try anything or the adjustment to the stasis cuffs will knock you all the way out.”
He wasn’t sure what she’d done. Was she bluffing? But the shot from the blaster had stopped him in his tracks.
How could such a slight Earther female leave a shroud Theta questioning his capabilities?
A sharp clank from the hold door roused him from his confusion. “You can come out now,” she said. “Don’t make me shoot you again.”
“I shouldn’t have insulted you last time,” he admitted as he turned to face her—even more slowly than he’d given her his back, so her finger didn’t slip on the trigger. “Although it was half a compliment.”
She stepped back warily, the pistol aimed at him. “Which half? The greedy or the whore?”
“When you put it that way, it does sound all the way rude,” he admitted. “But I appreciated your determination to not sell yourself short again.”
“Sell myself.” Her lashes flickered, and he caught his breath, steeling himself against an anticipated blast. But she only lifted her chin. “I’ve figured out my own worth.”
Had she? Somehow he doubted she saw what he saw in her.
But when she stood back, leaving plenty of room between them, he knew she could see well enough to shoot him.
“Do what you gotta do,” she told him, as if he hadn’t planned to do exactly that. “I’ll make us something to eat.”
He wasn’t sure if the reluctance in her voice came from performing such a mundane task or because needing to eat indicated that they would not be meeting with the empress’s barge any time soon. Good, that gave him time to win her over. At least she’d let him out of the cage which was progress toward falling in love, right?
She never let him get close enough to grab her or the blaster—not that he planned any violence since he needed to win her affection, not her weapon. And he did need to use the facilities as he’d said. Meekly, he availed himself of the shuttle’s rudimentary hygiene facilities. Like the skeletal pilot’s chair, the closet-sized space was a bare-bones, customizable unit typical for a low-rent ship intended for use by many different species. So, not her own ship. She’d come after him with few resources besides her willingness to shoot first and often.
How invigorating.
He tidied himself with the efficient ultrasonic/ultraviolet emitters that removed various infestations and impurities. But being clean on the outside just made him realize how empty he was on the inside. No food in his gut, his nanites drawn so deep into his implants he could barely sense their churn—he felt like an empty shell of himself, occupied only by tiny ghosts.
Probably he should’ve spent more time quartering the bathroom for a way to take control of the ship, but he just wanted another cup of coffee.
And to not think about how far he was from…everything he’d known.
When he stepped out into the central corridor, she was waiting. “You can sit by the galley while I make us something. But don’t—”
“I know, I know. I won’t make you shoot me again.” He hesitated. “At least not if I can help it.”
She snorted. “Too honest. Keep that up and I’ll forget you’re a Theta.”
“As weak as I am, I forget too. I surely would appreciate another cup of coffee.”
“It’s been a long day—long century—for both of us, so let’s eat. Also, I want to save the coffee.”
Nodding, he settled onto a storage bench that emerged from the wall next to the galley unit and he held himself still and unthreatening as she programmed them a meal.
“I didn’t have time to personalize this dispenser,” she said, “so it has the default nutrient profile but nothing else. Good thing shrouds can convert any carbon.”
“Only when our nanites are active,” he reminded her. “But my baseline programming offers suggestions for converting standard nutrient packs into something more interesting. If you’d allow me?”
She gazed at him a moment before stepping back from the unit. “Be my guest.”
Guest, prisoner, whichever. At least the fact she was allowing him to feed her was another step forward in their relationship. Trying not to gloat, he positioned himself in front of the unit. “What is your favorite food?”
“What is this? A date?”
He froze with one finger hovering over the control pad. How had she guessed…?
She smirked at him. “Easy, cowboy. I was just kidding. I know shrouds don’t date.”
Calming his thudding heartbeat, he smiled back at her. “True enough.” No, they didn’t date; they just plunged into crisis bonds with the nearest delectable Earther and declared their literally undying devotion—or so it seemed watching his matrix-brothers from the outside.
She had let the pistol sag to one side, her gaze unfocusing. “Actually, I really miss apple pie. Everyone out here makes a version of pixberry pie because pix grows everywhere. But I haven’t had an apple since I left Earth.”
He’d never cared much for fruit. Their ploy seemed disingenuous to him: Offer up something so sweet and luscious in return for what exactly? To trick him into willingly expending that energy to spread the seeds. Yes, it was bad to be a killer robot spy, but cozening others into bearing one’s reproductive material made him suspicious indeed.
But if Nell liked apples, then apples it would be. Accessing the recipe portion of his archives required no effort, and he quickly found a molecular match for the requisite flavors. He directed the galley’s rudimentary data gel to recombin
e several nutrient packets, separating out a filling from a shell. Not all empty shells were a bad thing…
“It’ll take a couple minutes,” he told her. “And since I don’t have real butter, the crust won’t be as flaky as you probably remember.” He shrugged. “But they aren’t real apples either.”
She blinked. “You… That quick? I remember apple pie took hours to make and longer to bake.”
“It won’t be real,” he repeated. As he sank back to the galley bench, he gazed at her. “Since we have a moment, may I ask, if you already have this ship, why are you going back to the royal barge at all? Why don’t you just leave the empress behind?”
Her fingers fisted restlessly on the blaster, tight enough that he worried about an inadvertent discharge. “You think I haven’t considered that? I couldn’t even leave the saloon, and that was just on one little planet on the edge of nowhere. I didn’t have the resources to start over somewhere else. I still don’t. And the universe is much bigger than a one-cow town with one drinking hole. Not counting my holes, of course.” Her smile held an edge. “The empress is a selfish being who still considers me her childhood doll, but she is not ungenerous when the mood strikes her. My chances of earning a reward from her by returning you are substantially better than most gold-mining claims.”
“And if she decides to take me and keep you as well?” He echoed her head tilt and telling stare.
Her shrug this time was fatalistic. “Then I guess I’ll have to decide what to do next. But when I caught a note on a back-channel gossip assembly about an unsubstantiated shroud sighting on my closed homeworld, I knew it was too good to be true.” She gave him a look. “Except it wasn’t, was it?”
“Not too good,” he said with a flirty wink. “I am a killer robot spy, after all.”
The galley unit chimed before she could answer and he popped off the seat to grab the two cubes from the processor.
She leaped back a step, the blaster squared in her hand.
He raised his eyebrows and his open hands, palms out. “Whoa there. Just didn’t want the crust to scorch. Don’t scorch me instead.”
“Take your meal back to the hold.” The blaster didn’t shake, but her voice did, just a little. Obviously, questioning her plan had left her feeling vulnerable.
Silently, he cursed himself for making her nervous again. Not that she was wrong to be distrustful. Again keeping his motions slow and deliberate, he retrieved one of the cubes from the dispenser. “I’ll leave yours in here to stay warm, but don’t wait too long or it’ll get mushy.”
“I just want to make sure I don’t get poisoned,” she snapped. “You could’ve programmed anything into the galley.”
He scowled at her, truly annoyed this time. “The galley has fail-safes to prevent inadvertent food poisoning. And anyway, I had the chance to kill you in the saloon, and I didn’t do it then, so why would I do it now?”
“You did give me the opium,” she reminded him.
“You asked me for the whiskey,” he shot back. “And my nanites counteracted the drug, just like they would do any additives to this food. You don’t have to trust me, but you can trust what I gave you.”
She torqued her lips to one side and gestured at the hold. “In you go.”
Grumbling under his breath, he went. He braced his back against the wall in the little prison and slid to the floor, bobbling the hot cube in one palm. “I should’ve made ice cream to go on top,” he muttered.
Through the bars, she stared at him. “Ice cream?”
He gave her an arch glance. “Next time maybe.” He peeled open one corner of the cube. “May I at least have a utensil?”
With her own grumbling to accompany her, she retrieved the second cube and two eating utensils from the galley. She held one between the bars, her grip tense and wary. If he jerked the utensil toward him, she wouldn’t be able to let go in time before he grabbed her wrist.
For an instant, he considered whether that would be the better option, then discarded the thought. Maybe sacrificing the chance of making her love him in exchange for stealing her ship was the more expedient choice. But who better to lock down his imprint code than someone who was half keyed to him already with his matching nanites?
If she had found out about him, others could do so. Scavengers had come after his matrix-kin before. And he didn’t have another hundred years to passively convert someone else to his cybernetic signal.
Stabbing into the pie with more force than was necessary, he peered down at the cube. “I think the apples are too sweet. According to the recipe, they should be more tart.”
She watched him for another moment. Did she wonder whether he’d expire right in front of her from poisoning his own apples? Or maybe she just wanted to shoot him again.
With a wordless grunt he couldn’t decipher, she plunked down on the galley bench and opened up her pie. When she dug in, the utensil punching through the crust let out a soft curl of steam. She took a bite and made a softer sound. And this one he did know—or at least his seduction protocol did.
That was a moan of pleasure.
She tried to hold back—he could tell by the way she bit her lip—but as she took another nibble, her sigh was almost as rapturous as when he’d blown his nanites into her.
His organic parts twitched at the blissful sounds, but for some reason, it bothered him to think that nothing more than manipulated nutri-packets were bringing her such joy. He took another bite himself to swallow his confusion. “What do you think? Too sweet?”
“No such thing,” she countered. “I don’t even know how you got any sweetness out of those chems.”
Uh-oh, had he given himself away? But she seemed too entranced by the synthetic pie to be distrustful, at least for the moment. “There’s a lot you can do with raw ingredients if you just know the way.”
She swirled her utensil through the filling. “Must be nice to have all the answers already programmed in.”
“It’s not quite that easy. After all, we’re both in the same place now. Again, actually.” He tried to catch her gaze. “As if we were meant to be together.”
Letting the cube rest in her lap—she’d spooned out a serious hole in the middle already—she tilted her head back against the galley wall. “I don’t want to belong to anyone anymore,” she murmured to the ceiling, as if there were anyone listening up there. “I’ve come so far to still be a whore.”
The hushed throb of the ship’s engines almost erased her soft voice. But he heard her.
“Gravity is the weakest of the universe’s fundamental forces,” he said. “But somehow it binds entire galaxies together. Belonging is the only power that seems more tenuous, yet it is just as inescapable.”
“That’s too deep for a greedy whore like me.”
He grimaced. “I’ll never be able to live that down, will I?”
“Nor should you.” She pushed to her feet. “I need to sleep. You might be half robot, but I’m not even a hundred-thousandth of that and I’ve been hunting you for a while. I’ll warn you that I’m reinforcing the bars, and the shuttle controls are bio-encrypted to me specifically, so even your nanites won’t be able to fake it.”
He nodded with reluctant approval. That was a smart policy on her part. How could she hate him and claim to not understand him and then lay out the same coldly calculated tactics he would use? When he’d told her they were meant to be together, he’d only been cynically advancing his own falling-in-love scheme, but… Really, they did have a lot in common.
She was no simple Earther—probably hadn’t been one even when he’d met her in the saloon—and he’d not mistake her for such ever again. “Sleep well,” he said. “I’ll be here when you wake.”
She gave him a searching look. Had he sounded too sarcastic? Or did his promise strike her as more intimate than it should be? Maybe it was, but she was the one who had tightened the bond between them. He’d shared his nanites with her in a moment of weakness, and now she was using it agains
t him. In all fairness, she couldn’t rail against him doing the same.
He watched as she slipped through one of the narrow portals off the main corridor, presumably into one of the private bunks in the small shuttle.
While she was vulnerable in sleep, she might have left surveillance on him in his cell. But even if she had, she couldn’t monitor it while she slept and would have to wait until her next waking cycle to review it. Slowly he continued to eat his apple pie. If surveillance was reporting his activity to her, it would become habituated to his movements, and hopefully the data gels would not interrupt her sleep with any changes in his behavior as long as he moved below that threshold.
He finished his pie and set the cube aside, licking the utensil clean. After waiting for what he felt was a reasonable length of time for her to fall asleep, he turned to the blank wall of the bulkhead.
He’d already identified the location of the conduits behind the plasteel panels. Not that there was anything of critical importance to the infrastructure or command of the ship, of course.
At least nothing of importance to anyone besides a cyborg. Bending the tip of the utensil between his teeth, he slipped the edge behind one of the innocuous sensors intended to monitor shipping conditions in the hold. Technically, the sensors weren’t connected to the main systems. But really, everything in a ship was interconnected. Rather like the whole universe was, as he’d told Nell.
He’d had only a moment to prepare his plan while he’d been programming the apple pie, but now he sent a few nanites questing through the humidity sensors of the storage room. Though the hold had no direct connection to life-support, they queried the same gauges through the galley, and his nanites would be able to jump between systems to set his plan in motion.
Anticipation rushed through him, faster than his depleted tech, leaving him giddy. Or maybe that headrush was dizziness. Even this negligible expenditure of nanites had sapped his already depleted reserves.
Besides, with half an apple pie in his belly, he could use a nap himself. He settled down against the wall of his prison.
