“Leave her alone,” Stephanie said. “No, I don’t need you to marry me before you run off, I just wanted to be part of the discussion.” She dropped onto a thickly padded sofa.
“I’m sorry,” Shamus said, finally able to get close enough to put his arm around her. “You have things starting up here, and you’re carrying our first born.” He took her hand. “That’s everything to me, so I don’t want to put you and our little rascal in the line of fire.”
“Our first born,” she repeated quietly. “How many kids do you want to have?”
“As many as you want. Just this one, or a football team; you tell me when we’re done, I’ll treat ‘em all like found treasure. Why? How many do you want?”
“I’ll tell you as soon as this one starts walking,” Stephanie replied. With a sigh, she said; “It’s going to be more than a week. You’ll get out there, and the situation on the ground will be complicated, there’ll be some kind of trouble, probably someone chasing your brother or waiting to be paid so he can get away, and who knows what his crew will need.”
It was as if she grew up with him and his people. That was exactly what he expected. “Well,” he braced himself. “that’s why Captain gave me two weeks with the Admiral’s new ship.”
Stephanie punched him in the ribs, not so hard that she meant it, but enough to make him aware that she was displeased. “I’m a cliché. The poor, knocked up port wife who can’t go on the trip because it could be dangerous. You probably have five women with kids wondering if they’ll ever meet their father, the legendary captain, or ship thief, or whatever you were when you met their mothers.”
“I always used protection on liberty,” Frost replied, though he could remember a couple times when he forgot.
Stephanie laughed and kissed him briefly. “Don’t take too long out there. I swear I’ll have this kid put into stasis and come after you if you’re gone thirty days.”
“I’ll stick to the mission; Locate my brother, pick him up and bring him here. I think you’ll like him: he’s the responsible one.”
The door chimed, but Stephanie stared at him meaningfully, as though she was searching his eyes for more than he was saying. He stared back at her, feeling like he was being searched from the inside. He had the thought that she would be a masterful interrogator if all the criminals were clones of him, then the door chimed again. “Ashley and I are going for lunch, now.”
Stephanie had calmed down, but he could tell there was still anger under layers of other emotions that could evaporate at any moment depending on what his next words were. “I love you, dear,” he said, squeezing her hand.
Looking absolutely incredible and smelling just as wonderfully of some light perfume that reminded him of roses and some other, darker flower, Stephanie stood and left him behind on the sofa. “Prove it,” she said only loud enough for him to hear as she strode to the guest room door.
It opened, revealing Ashley, who looked as well-groomed and clothed in a shimmery red dress. “He’s not meeting Minh for lunch with us?” she asked.
“No,” Stephanie said flatly.
The entrance chimed one more time and they opened it on their way out. A surprisingly thin young man with a closely trimmed black beard stepped inside, his head turning after the pair for a moment before he shook it and looked to Frost. “Chief McFadden?” he asked.
“Call me Frost,” he said, looking up Hot Chow’s service record to confirm that the man in those images was several kilograms heavier. “You’ve slimmed down.”
“Fitness pills, torture runs, and real food. At least, that’s what they tell me real food is, but I never thought barbeque eel or crabs were real food in the first place. Everything okay?” he thumbed in the direction of the door. “That’s if you don’t mind me asking.”
“That was my marvellously complicated partner and her much less complicated but equally brilliant friend. They’re off to eat some of that real food with your Wing Commander. God help me for loving complicated women with fiery tempers.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that, Sir,” Hot Chow said.
“You might learn about it one day, if you’re lucky,” Frost said, standing and taking a better look at the pilot. He already had his rucksack, his sidearm and the rest of his kit was properly set up under a heavy armoured jacket. There wasn’t much to pick at. “Why do they call you Hot Chow, anyhow?”
“One day after training a bunch of us were going to the mess after drills and the food smelled so good that I shouted; ‘Hot Chow!’ and it stuck. It’s not the worst call sign.”
“Aye,” Frost said. “But it doesn’t fit an ace who has better navigational scores than some mergillians. I’ll call you ‘Hal,’ all right?”
“Sure, aye, Sir,” he said, shaking Frost’s outstretched hand.
“Now, the angrier looking of those angels you passed when you came in expects me back here in one week, and a clock starts the moment I’m late; it doesn’t tell time, mind you, it counts how many minutes she worries about me more than usual, and we don’t want it to run too long. Tell me you’re the pilot for this ship and you can get me back here before she starts grinding her teeth in her sleep.”
“I can get us there and back in five days with that ship,” Hal said. “And I don’t like playing tourist.”
“Grand; I think we’ll get along fine, lad,” Frost said, the excitement of getting away for a few days and seeing his brother beginning to build again.
Seventeen
The vast water tanks surrounding the room Gavin and Skylar were left in once they were guided into the mothership were filled with strange aquatic creatures. Most of them followed the same basic shape – a bulbous body with fins running down their lengths that gently propelled them through the water – but their features varied. Some had clusters of eyes running down their backs with a concentration at the front. Others had none, but sensitive looking patches along their torsos with long, thin tendrils extending in all directions. A few looked more carnivorous, with broad mouths and small eyes.
The walls around them were completely transparent, showing off the creatures as they drifted past paying the four of them little mind. The circle of seats was too comfortable for a brig cell, and guards regularly entered one door, crossed the room, then exited through the other secure door in pairs. No one seemed too concerned with them. “Anyone have any idea what this room is?” asked Terry, the dark haired, heavily built man that the Earthlings brought aboard in the black restraint bag.
Skylar pulled on the edge of the curved sofa she and Gavin were sitting on and an eating or working surface slid out, folding down in front of them before she pushed it back and put it away. “Looks like a space set aside for leisure? I’ve seen luxury cruisers that have observation areas scattered around the ship when there are features inside to look at. They’re a bit like this. Maybe not as elaborate.”
“Makes a pretty good prison cell,” Terry said, kissing the top of Farrah’s head and putting his arm around her. The pair looked matched – dark haired, well-muscled beings that were made for each other like most paired dolls – something he knew quite a bit about. He turned his attention to the transparent walls around them, standing up and peering past the creatures. The tank around them must have been huge; there was complete darkness after about fifteen metres. He could barely see the light of a hallway with rooms like the one they were in towards what assumed was the port side. It was difficult to track where they went as they were brought in, there were several twists and turns along the way.
“I’ve never seen anything like these beings. They look mammalian, like small whales or something,” Farrah said, watching one of the larger ones pass overhead.
“A lot of them have features that don’t make sense from an evolutionary standpoint,” Skylar said.
“Why do you think they put us here? I mean, they’re treating us like passengers when I could knock a guard down and take his weapon at any time. They’re just ignoring us,” Terry said,
eying two guards who were approaching the room.
They, like several others, entered, locked the door behind them, passed between the curved sofas, then exited through the doors opposite, locking them back up. Terry watched as though he was formulating the best plan of attack. “Hey! When are we going to talk to someone who can tell us why we’re here? Why my whole squad was murdered like rats when we set down?” Terry shouted after them.
A transit car rushed past the room, using a tunnel that was only noticeable as the well-lit conveyance passed parallel to them. Gavin noticed plant life beneath it, probably engineered to keep the water clean and the strange creatures fed. He started to put the information he collected as they were brought aboard and what he collected since together. The ship was big, probably with cavernous hangars in the bottom half and large nursery sections like the one they were in. The technology was advanced, but not so much that it was mysterious to him. It wasn’t a Lorander ship, he guessed, and even though there was a lot more water than the crew would need, it wasn’t an Issyrian ship, either. It must have actually been a ship from Sol Defence, especially since it looked so much like one that had been captured and put to use by rebels near the Iron Head Nebula.
“Does he talk?” Terry asked, pointing at Gavin.
“He’s gathering information,” Skylar said. “You need to calm down.”
“I need to find out where we are and what’s going on,” Terry retorted, Farrah nodding her agreement.
“We’re on a ship crewed by synthetic humans and other manufactured beings,” Gavin said. “These aquatic creatures were made, maybe a lot like we were, and to some extent they’re still experimental. I don’t think they’re part of the crew, but I could be wrong.”
“So, why are there so damned many of them?” Terry asked. “If they’re experimental, then why keep them? I know when they were trying to make the perfect synthetic human in tubes and printers, they killed whatever didn’t turn out right after recording the results. They didn’t keep all the rejects and dead-end experiments.”
“Because they may be experimental, but regardless of their differences, they can still perform the tasks they were made for, even if it is to continue to exist and be observed. Maybe they all have a core function and the diversity we’re seeing isn’t compromising that.”
“That makes sense,” Farrah said, watching one of the creatures with large, rainbow coloured fins pass by gracefully. “But why show us this?”
“Why not?” Gavin asked. “It’s impressive, it’s distracting. I’d imagine the crew might be pretty busy, so they put us in this nice, secure, quiet, entertaining environment. I know I’m probably a prisoner, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to us next, but for some reason I’m not actively worried. Their plan is working.”
“That’s all I can think about; what’s coming, where we are and why. So, it’s not working for me,” Terry said, cracking his knuckles.
“Sure it is,” Gavin said, sitting down beside Skylar. “You’ve talked about attacking a guard three times since they let you out of your bag, but you haven’t made any effort to follow through.”
“So, what do you think we’re here for?”
Gavin thought for a moment, accepting Skylar’s hand. He looked at her and smiled, knowing that she had an idea as to why they were taken. Without any signal from him, she answered; “We’re high end synthetics, dolls,” she said. “We’re easier to reprogram if they can figure out the genetic key that gets them past the measures made to prevent it. It takes more time and effort to reprogram humans and their tolerances to heat, cold and trauma are much lower.”
“So, we’re recruits whether we like it or not,” Terry said, standing up and starting to pace.
“It’s a theory,” Skylar said with a shrug. “From what I gather, they think they liberated us from servitude.”
“We have,” said a man in a long, V shaped gold tunic and black under suit. Gavin didn’t see him come through the door, he was pretty sure he was cloaked somewhere in the room listening in the whole time. His white hair was slicked back, and his gleaming white grin seemed genuinely glad. “It’s important that you know your actual condition. The status of most dolls is kept from them, so we can begin by sharing the truth with you. It’s time to build some trust.”
Terry lunged at the much shorter, thinner man and passed through him. “Dammit!”
“That’s not a good start,” the image said, touching a hidden control on his wrist. Terry’s body went limp and he collapsed.
A moment later he was back in control and taking to his feet as quickly as he could. “What the hell was that?”
“You passed through a cloud of nanobots when you boarded,” the hologram explained, looking every bit as real as the room around them. “They entered your bodies and painlessly built a control system so we can disable you if we have to. I would rather not do that again, since we’d like you to join us.”
“Who is ‘us?’” Terry asked.
“You’ll find that out soon. First, let’s talk about the four of you. We’ve finished our deep scans and analysis. Gavin and Skylar; I’m afraid you only have two hundred and eighty-seven days until self-termination. Farrah and Terry; you have one hundred and forty days left. I understand that the tyrants that owned you told you that you would retire sometime around those dates. That is a myth. What really happens to your models is simple but terrible: Your organs will begin shutting down three days away from your final termination date, and when that time is up, you will be dead. Chances of revival are zero, because as soon as that termination process completes, your bodies will decompose at a highly accelerated rate. This system was put into place to maintain demand for dolls, and to ensure that each line was precious to their owners while they were alive and serving.”
“Bullshit! Our Prince honours us. We were never told we were retiring, either. We were superior, so he brought us with him on his military mission,” Terry retorted.
“Yes, your Prince adores his dolls,” the hologram replied. “That’s why he went to Geist; to find the genetic key that would allow him and his royal line to modify you. He wanted you to live for a normal or even exceptional length of time. He also wanted you to be able to have children, and when that was accomplished, he planned on starting tests. He envied the strength, fortitude and intelligence of his dolls, so he planned on finding a way to attain that himself. He was already close.”
Gavin struggled with the idea that he and Skylar had less than a year to live. He believed it immediately. During his lifetime he’d seen nine pairs of dolls retire, and after they departed he never heard back from them. A few pairs were sent off to war when they reached an age similar to his own, and they never returned either. “Who are you?” Gavin asked, hoping to skip ahead in the conversation.
“I’m Walt, one of the Geist Minds you see drifting nearby. I’m using this hologram so you have something to speak to in the room. Also, I don’t use a style of verbal speech you’d recognize, so it also translates my thoughts into words and expressions.”
“Your thoughts?” Farrah asked. “You mentally communicate with a computer that translates with this much nuance?”
“Yes,” Walt said. “It’s easier for me than it would be to communicate with all four of you mentally.”
“Are you making our prince into one of these things?” Terry asked.
Walt laughed. “No, we may give him a body someday, but not any time soon, and we don’t transplant minds into Geist beings. We are partially manufactured, we gestate, then are born. Next, you’ll ask where we’re taking you,” he said. “There is a base where we’re building a copy of the manufacturing system like the one that created the four of you. We are close to creating our own key to unlock your limits, and, regardless of how you feel about us, are willing to reprogram you so the restrictions built into your bodies are removed. We are most likely days away from success. You will be able to have children, and you will have a life expectancy of over a century with l
ittle aging, good health and the capacity for even longer with some basic pharmaceutical aids. You will not be human, but still a superior synthetic that looks like, thinks like, and can live like one. A deep scan would reveal that you’re a synthetic, however.”
“Can we really trust you?” Farrah asked. “You killed our Prince, destroyed our fleet, murdered our people, and at any point you can subdue and reprogram us.”
“Your Prince is not dead. His mind is very much alive in a support tank. Right now, he thinks he’s at home, hunting a convicted murderer through the woods on an all-terrain cycle with his old friends. We have what we need from him, so he’s living a good simulated life until we need him again. As for trust; let’s start building that. While we are in transit across two sectors, you will have wonderful accommodations. Lavish temporary quarters have been prepared in the safest portion of the ship – the Gallery – so you will have time to contemplate our offer and review a great deal of information about what we’re offering, and why our cause is so important in this part of the galaxy. The Citadel arm of Sol Defence is on a quest to preserve humanity and assure dominance over the other races. You’ll see why this is important, I’m sure.”
Eighteen
Boro looked like he was in a state of disbelief when Spin caught up to him. He'd just finished docking his new, smaller ship in one of her ship's bays - it barely fit - and he received a notification that Shamus 'Frost' McFadden received his message. The single line response his brother was allowed to send read simply; Be there in two days.
There was no specific destination in his mind. The only place he didn't want to go back to was the more lawless section of the core, where he knew all of them were wanted. It was a good thing they were headed in the opposite direction. Deeper inside British Alliance space they'd find the Beta Bio Facility, and when Boro was told they were headed there without delay, he seemed pleased.
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