Lady Luck

by K. C. Cross

  “You know what, buddy? Consider our deal over. I’m never talking to you again. And when I get my ship—and I will get my ship—I’m not even gonna say goodbye before I leave!”

  I turn on my heel and walk out of the bedroom.

  “Good!” he calls after me. “And when you get arrested for not paying your gate fees and need someone to bail you out of Prime Prison, don’t call me!”

  “I won’t!” I say, and walk out the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - LUCK

  “Good!” I yell. But Nyleena is already gone. “God,” I say, grabbing my hair with both hands. This girl makes me fucking nuts.

  But actually, I’m glad she left. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Trying to have a conversation with a crazy psycho like her is pointless. So what if she’s lying about getting off? Plenty of girls have faked an orgasm with me.

  Well, no. I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. I’m damn good in bed.

  But I know she’s holding back. I can just feel it.

  And I know for a fact that Serpint says Lyra goes into supernova mode when they have sex. Not that I’m comparing Nyleena to Lyra, but hell, they are sisters, right?

  There has to be more to this girl than just this super-great ordinary sex we’re having.

  Doesn’t there?

  Beeping from the other side of the room redirects my attention to the autoshopper. The whole screen is flashing. I guess we added a lot of shit to the cart during foreplay.

  I walk over to it, ready to clear the whole thing out, then sit on the stool and get my shit together.

  We did have a deal. So I press the checkout button, then adjust delivery so it gets sent to her quarters, and tap complete.

  There. Now you have a whole new cart of designer Xyla clothes for your fantasy trip on your very own sentient ship.

  Such a ridiculous plan. What was Crux thinking?

  But she is a ridiculous girl.

  Now I have a whole evening to myself. I should go drinking. Yeah. I am gonna go drinking. I’ll even ask Valor to come along.

  Except I can’t. We were punching each other in the face earlier.

  And I can’t go looking for girls. That’s just dumb. Not that I want other girls, but now it’s not even an option. And not because I’m in love with Nyleena or anything, it’s just…

  I don’t know.

  Life is weird.

  Maybe I should just make nice with Valor? He’s my best friend. My only other best-ish friend is Cha-Cha and I’m not in the mood for sexbot parties tonight.

  Maybe Valor is sorry too?

  It’s not like we haven’t always fought. We have. This is what we do.

  But we never held grudges so… time for make-up drinking.

  I look everywhere for him. I checked his location on my air screen first, of course. But his status was blinking the word ‘unavailable’ at me. So then I went to his quarters because we’re on the same level.

  No answer when I ping the door.

  So I head up to the Harem room to see if he’s with Crux.

  No. Crux isn’t there either.

  So at this point I guess I have to face facts.

  He’s with Tray. He’s got to be with Tray. I know he’s not hanging out with Jimmy and Delphi or Serpint and Lyra so who else is there?

  Just thinking about all the time Valor and Tray spend together gives me a tight feeling in my chest. Because they have never been close. Hell, Tray has never been close to any of us. He’s always been a loner.

  And maybe all of us have a little loner gene lurking in our DNA, but it’s different with Tray. Jimmy always had Xyla. She’s been around from the very beginning. Then they got Dicker and that’s a proper crew right there.

  Serpint and Draden have been stuck together like twins since before we left Wayward station. They had Ceres and Booty too. And now that Draden is gone, Serpint has Lyra. He didn’t miss a beat, actually. Just reorganized because that’s all you can do when people die. The only other option is to give up. And that’s what I think Valor is doing.

  He and I were like Serpint and Draden. We just naturally teamed up. And we had Beauty and Lady.

  Crux has the cyborg master, and the harem girls, and the Baby, not to mention a whole station of people who work for him.

  But Tray… the only thing Tray has is the Pleasure Prison.

  I guess, before our world was tipped upside down with the appearance of Lyra and Corla, I’d say Real ALCOR was part of Tray’s crew. But isn’t that a little weird? To have no one but an AI and a fake reality? Not even a bot or borg in the real to hang out with?

  I don’t get it.

  I don’t understand Tray and I don’t understand why Valor is suddenly his best friend.

  How did this happen? How did a guy with no friends manage to snag my friend right out from under me?

  Of course, I did take off after Beauty died. But we have a job to do. The station depends on us to salvage AI parts to keep the Baby running. So really, he’s the one who left me. Not the other way around. And he bailed on Lady Luck too.

  So what if he doesn’t like Cha-Cha? We have to have an inorganic partner. She can do things we can’t. Go out into a vacuum without an envirosuit, for instance. That comes in handy when your job is to infiltrate long-dead stations with no atmosphere.

  I think about all this as I make my way down to the Pleasure Prison levels, and by the time I enter the control room, and do in fact find Valor and Tray together—conversing and laughing like they are the oldest of best friends—I’m kinda pissed off and all my thoughts of make-up drinking have disappeared.

  “Hey,” I say, when they don’t even turn around to notice me walking in.

  Valor swivels around in his chair and sends me a tight smile.

  “What’s up?” I ask. “What are you guys doing tonight?”

  “We’re going inside the Prison,” Tray says.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because it’s fun,” Valor says.

  “Since when?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  I glance at Tray. Shoot him a look of narrowed eyes. Tray is not as tall as me, but only by one or two centimeters. We’ve got the same build, though. We’re both broad in the shoulders, well-muscled, and hard. I can only conclude this is genetics because unlike me, Tray doesn’t do manual work for a living.

  It kinda pisses me off that we have the same body when I had to earn mine and he was simply gifted his.

  He’s got dark hair and dark eyes to match. They’re violet, don’t get me wrong. But they’re not violet like the rest of us. There’s no bright pinkish ring around his iris like Serpint has. And no mottled purple around the pupil like Valor has.

  Sometimes Tray’s eyes even look black.

  Like right now as he’s glaring back at me.

  “You never spent any time inside that place before,” I say to Valor. “So what’s changed?”

  “I don’t know,” Valor says. “I guess I just never understood it until now.”

  “Hmm,” I say. “What’s to understand? It’s a virtual sex game.”

  Valor chuckles, then trades a look of amusement with Tray. Like they know something I don’t. “That’s not all it is,” Valor says.

  “So what is it, then?” I ask.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Tray says.

  “Try me,” I growl.

  They trade another look and I can feel my blood starting to boil with anger. First the fight with Nyleena, now Valor and Tray are ganging up on me.

  “OK,” Tray says, turning to fully face me. “If you really want to know, it’s a node-flux conduit for quanta packages that can access the core matrix of electromagnetic and gravitational fields using the holographic principle to form a collective of two-dimensional spacetime-informational-directionality and thus access a form of informational phase transition that breaks information and spacetime down into something other than information and spacetime.” He pauses. “You know, like how ice turns
to water when you heat it up? Same shit here. But with information and spacetime instead of ice.”

  I blink. But only once so I don’t appear confused, even though I have no fucking clue what any of that bullshit nerd-speak means. “OK,” I say, playing it off. “Do you think you could use the words ‘information’ and ‘spacetime’ a few more times in the same sentence though? It might make more sense.”

  “See,” Valor says. “Told ya. You don’t understand.”

  “I get it,” I huff. “I might not understand all those big words Tray just used, but it’s still just a fucking virtual reality.”

  “It is,” Tray says. “But only in the most basic sense. Like dreams, for instance. They’re a basic virtual reality too. If you want me to use baby words, Luck, I can. It’s about data, dude. We’re pushing data through transformational phase changes in there.”

  “Baby words. Right,” I say, glaring at him, then turn back to Valor. “So you’d rather go in there and do magic tricks on data instead of staying out here with… you know, real people. You’d rather do virtual things instead of real things.”

  “It’s real,” Valor says. “That’s the part you don’t understand.”

  “It’s just a different kind of real,” Tray adds.

  “OK.” I sigh, rubbing a hand down my face as I rethink my approach. Because I’m never going to convince them to see things my way. I try another tactic. “So what’s so great in there?” I ask Valor. “What’s in there that’s not out here?”

  They trade another look. Only this time it’s not amusement.

  It’s a secret, I realize. They’re keeping a secret.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I ask.

  They’re still trading that same look. I can practically hear the mental conversation they’re having.

  Should we tell him?

  He’ll tell—insert your favorite Harem Station Brother, AI, bot, princess, cyborg here.

  Maybe. Maybe not. But he’s gonna find out eventually.

  Sure. Eventually. But not today.

  “Nothing’s going on,” Valor says. “It’s just…” He smiles. “It’s just a sex game, dude. And I like it. What can I say?”

  I point at him. “You’re fucking lying. Why are you lying to me?”

  “Luck,” he says. “We’re gonna tell everyone at the same time, OK?”

  And Tray adds, “We need more information so we can explain it properly, that’s all. It’s not personal.”

  “So something is going on in there?” I say. “Is it Asshole ALCOR? The new Succubus AI from Mighty Minions? What’s happening?”

  “It’s not that,” Tray says. “I swear to the fucking sun, that’s not what this is about.”

  “Then what is it?”

  They trade yet another look and that’s it. I’m done.

  “Fuck you both,” I say. “Just fuck you both.” I point at Valor. “You were my best friend. You and I never lied to each other. We never kept secrets. And now that you’ve teamed up with Tray, all you are is lies and secrets.”

  And then I walk out before he can try to placate me with yet another bullshit excuse.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - NYLEENA

  Two days.

  I’ve been working on this super-problem for two days and I’ve gotten nowhere.

  I tick off a bullet-point list of things I need to get my ass off this stupid station and back in the game of hunting down all the people I hate.

  One. Crux will give me a ship but he wants to know what something called leveling-up is. And to get that information, I need to go inside the Pleasure Prison and ask the Asshole ALCOR if he knows anything about it.

  Two. The waitlist to actually go inside the Pleasure Prison is two weeks long.

  Three. Tray refuses to even speak to me, so I can’t beg for access.

  Four. Valor says he’ll help me get in by talking to Tray, but only if I find out information about Veila.

  Five. Luck knows something about Veila, but he won’t tell me unless I bring him new information about what happened to Valor when he went with Crux to pick up Jimmy and Delphi off Mighty Minions.

  Six. Delphi knows something about Valor, but she won’t tell me unless I get her information about Earth from the Baby ALCOR.

  Seven. I’m pretty sure stupid Luck knows something about Earth too, but now he hates my guts.

  So I guess my next move is Baby ALCOR.

  I’m just about to open my air screen and make an appointment with the Baby when Luck storms out of the Pleasure Prison doors, grumbling and mumbling to himself as he waves a fist around in the air.

  I stand still, hoping he won’t see me. But we have this almost magnetic attraction and there’s actually no way for him to miss me.

  His head swivels in my direction and he stops in his tracks to frown.

  I feel a little bad about how we left things earlier. I mean, he’s sorta right. I am using him. But he’s using me too, so what’s the problem?

  We lock eyes and stare at each other.

  Should we talk? that look says.

  Are we mad at each other? Or the world? Is this whole thing pointless?

  I don’t know.

  I see the possibilities when I look at Lyra and Serpint. Or Delphi and Jimmy. Both of my Cygnian sisters seem inexplicably happy with their new life. And both of them were like me before. Living a life of outlaw adventure.

  Now Serpint is Lyra’s partner in crime. Ditto for Delphi and Jimmy.

  Is it possible that Luck and I could become close like that?

  I just don’t know. We’re so different. He’s kind of a simple guy and I’m so not a simple girl. I mean, what does he really know about pleasuring a silver princess like me?

  Nothing.

  But there’s a little voice inside my head that counters with, Maybe that’s because you hide things from him? Things like what really happens if you don’t hold back during sex.

  That’s why he’s pissed at me, I remind myself. It wasn’t the question about Earth, was it? No. He could tell when we had sex that I wasn’t as into it as I should be. Would be, if I thought he could handle me.

  But what are the chances a guy like Luck would be able to handle me? I mean, Serpint liberates princesses and Jimmy liberates bots and borgs. Luck is basically a junkyard hunter.

  Do I really think he’s got what it takes to satisfy me for the rest of my life?

  Shit. He’s coming my way.

  “What are you doing?” Luck calls, once he’s within earshot.

  “I’m about to have a meeting with the Baby ALCOR, actually. To get information about Earth that you refuse to provide.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” he hums, folding his arms across his chest. “Using him too, are ya?”

  “I’m not using anyone,” I snap. “In case you haven’t noticed, everything I get, and I do mean everything—every piece of information and the ship at the end of this long problem—is through trade. I give something, I get something. That’s how life works.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Except with me,” Luck says.

  “What are you talking about? I have sex with you every day. Twice, lately. You have no room to complain. In fact, I’ve given you much more than you’ve given me.”

  “Is that right?” he growls.

  And wow, he’s really pissed off. But then I remember he came out of the Pleasure Prison angry. So I decide to change the subject and defuse this little fight we’re having. Maybe try a little harder when it comes to Luck. Because like it or not, he is my stupid soulmate. We’re going to be interacting, at least at times, the rest of our lives. Maybe I need to make an effort?

  So I say, “What happened?”

  “When?”

  “In there,” I say, pointing to the entrance.

  “Oh, fuck them,” he huffs. Turning to look over his shoulder. “They’re a bunch of assholes.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because… because… do you know anything about quanta holographic principles and data spacetime bre
akdown?”

  I squint at him. “What?”

  “Or something like that. I think there was a matrix mentioned. And melting ice cubes.”

  I laugh. “You’re not making any sense.”

  He points to the Pleasure Prison. “They’re not making any sense! Do you know what they told me?”

  “I hope it’s not that stuff you just incoherently burbled.”

  “It’s not. They told me that data is real.” He nods. Like this is a revelation.

  “Isn’t data real?” I ask.

  “No!” he says. “That’s not what I mean. I mean, they said… that… virtual… information… is real.” He nods. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s what they just said. It’s not real, Nyleena. That’s why it’s virtual.”

  “Hmmm,” I say.

  “What?”

  “I think I know what you’re trying to say. Are you talking about node-flux conduits for quanta packages?”

  He snaps his fingers and points to me. “Yes!”

  “And you want to know more about this?” I ask.

  “Yes!”

  “OK.” I think for a moment. “I can help you.” Then I point to him. “And since you’re keeping tabs on how much we use each other, I’ll give this one to you for free.”

  “Awesome,” he says. And he smiles at me.

  God, it really is a nice smile.

  “Hit me up,” he says. “And I don’t need baby words.”

  “OK,” I laugh. “So… this is what I know about the quanta of spacetime—”

  “Wait. Maybe a few baby words. What the hell is a quanta?”

  “It’s… just another word for package, I guess. It’s a thing. A quantity.”

  “Ah,” he says. “Quanta. Quantity.”

  “Right. So… in virtuals you have a matrix of information that lives in its… unique spacetime, I guess. And since information is theoretically… um… indestructible? Maybe that’s the best word. It can’t be destroyed. It’s saved somewhere.”

  “Where?” Luck asks.

  I shrug. “I dunno. Some people think it’s saved on the event horizon of a black hole. And they say that it can be saved on the event horizon of a gate too. As a sort of a backup copy.”