There seemed little point in communicating the Wraiths' warning to Rhona or the Saganerio starkeepers who'd requested support. He had been trying to work away from his reputation as gullible, even if he could blame some of it on his neural virus. Why risk his living space in Alderson disk #396727-S?
Bringing up what he'd seen on Wraith and his concerns over what they might be planning seemed unnecessary at best, fodder to downgrade his karma at worst.
Besides, the StarMaster couldn't really be dying. And what good would it do for him to report it?
A girl named Nova with a great ass was chilling at his hill that night. He fucked her brains out then spent the rest of his sol observing a combat sim. A one on one battle between two hardened super soldiers in a jungle. No godwebs, no synthetic combat frames. Only the jungle's resources. It lasted hours, and he decided he'd watch the rest the next sol after his work cycle.
He entered his sleep cycle (alone). The next sol, he woke up to some foul-smelling liquid washing over him and his neighbors shouting, "You idiot, the StarMaster is dead."
Chapter 6
KAI
* * *
Kai blinked and examined her new frame. Her arms were covered in patches of flesh and segmented metal plates blemished by dings and scratches. She noticed wires and magnetic bolts connecting her joints.
"You have to be kidding me," she growled. "What sort of low-tech frame shit is this?"
She put her hands to her chest and discovered partially exposed gears and pistons underneath armor plating laden with dirty pale skin. Her perfect figure was gone, replaced by an obsolete and crudely designed cyborg body. No. This was not the frame she wanted or needed. This crappy thing would break in minutes.
She wanted her protean frame back. Without the standard capabilities of a protean-based synthetic body—enhanced strength and mobility, extreme durability, regeneration, various chemical resistances—she would be at a major disadvantage when it came to completing her mission.
Wiping off some sticky orange paste from her ankles, she caught a whiff of something awful. That meant that this frame's lungs were acclimated to the atmosphere. She felt nauseous, and this time realized maybe she actually could vomit. This body was partly organic.
At least it wouldn't require food and water outright—just raw materials for maintenance and something for energy. Assuming what she knew about low quality cyborg bodies hadn't changed in the last few decades.
Piles of trash framed her. The scattered engines of old vehicles, containers oozing a thick blue smoke, tattered fabrics, rotting corpses of various insect-like creatures.
"He sent us to a trash heap," she thought out loud.
Taking inventory of her subpar body, she knew weapons would be the biggest concern. Armor if they could find it. Right now all she had was a gray and maroon tunic, some torn-up baggy pants, and crappy little sandals. She patted her body down, cringing at previously tight and curvy parts of her body that were now a hard metal.
She picked up an empty canister, and her nexus translated the alien symbols etched across it.
At least they were on the right planet.
Her eyes, watering from the filth in the air, fell upon one of the mounds of garbage in front of her. Aside from a few scattered clouds, the teal sky was empty and the sun bore down. Several sheets of shiny metal glinted under it. Out of the corner of her eye, something moved in the reflection of one sheet.
It was standard operating procedure to run missions synced with her network and whatever other data access points were available, but obviously the virus in her had prevented that connection. She was still quarantined then. That would make things harder. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise, though. Without any direct access to the InfiNet or messaging services, she couldn't connect to anyone. And they couldn't monitor her directly.
She knew the Starbleeders must've attacked the research vessel trying to find her. They'd likely planted scouts through this star system and various others, just waiting to find her. Now they were closer than ever.
Suddenly, someone else's arm wrapped around her neck. But she was ready for Raksamat and drove her elbow back. Connected with flesh of some sort. The arm loosened, and she twisted free. The weight of her new body caught her off guard and she tumbled face first into a fungus colony.
A puff of noxious fumes screwed up her vision. The next thing she knew, Raksamat was on top of her. She'd installed a breaker device in his core that could prevent a betrayal. She could trigger it any time she liked and paralyze him. But she didn't want to rely on the breaker. She needed to beat the fight out of him here and now. Let him know that he'd tried and failed.
Sharp claws wrapped around her neck, and her body trembled with an adrenaline-like burst of energy. It was nothing like what she'd been used to. Still, she'd trained for situations where she might lose her synthetic protean frame.
She extended a hand. If her sense of spacing was reliable, a metal rod would be...
With a whoosh, she swung it up. A grunt and her opponent collapsed sideways.
Blinking, she caught sight of the humanoid figure sprawled on the ground. His body still looked like a translucent blue-orange teenager's. Staring down at the single glowing sphere of light that was his eye, she knew he wouldn't try again. Like her, his frame wasn't the one he was used to.
Kai temporarily disabled her nexus's ability to perceive sensory boosters, signals that altered one's physical perception of reality. Her body and Raksamat's became nondescript humanoid frames of no particular species. Upon reactivating her nexus's perspective booster filter, they again appeared to be their respective species.
As far as she could tell, the perspective boosters were configured to only work among them. Everyone else would only see them as generic sapient frames. That would offer a semblance of disguise against Starbleeder trackers, but not much. In a universe where physical appearances could shift so easily, their nexus IDs were their primary means of recognition.
The weight of the rod tugged at her arm, her wrist burning. She didn't have the strength of her old body. She chucked it aside and offered him a hand.
She didn't bother tensing. Clorondites were fools to power the way Terrans were fools to money. Right now, she'd done a good job reminding him she had power over him even outside of her ship.
"I know Clorondites can shift their emotions. So why don't you get over your anger at me and realize we've got a better chance of surviving if we make a truce?"
She sighed and updated him with thought messages about the stealth ship attack and how they’d ended up here. Except for the parts about her family and the Starbleeders’ rise to power. It was better that Raksamat remained oblivious to his network's success for as long as possible.
"Yeah, then what was it?" she shrugged, glancing around. She'd had two cores with her. Raksamat and the other. The asset. Where was he? "Come on, we're in a junk pit. Let's scavenge." She drifted off. Twenty feet apart, she turned around and called, "And if you try to betray me, I'm activating the breaker."
As she scoured for useful items, she checked her data files on Burkos. After a few seconds, her nexus pinpointed their location. Thirty-nine solar cycles ago, this spot had been a thriving village.
More than likely, the other data files on Burkos were equally outdated. Meaning the living sphere four klicks from here might or might not still be there.
She checked the karma bits available in her nexus. There were none.
The uplinker hadn't associated her nexus's new ID code with any karma bits and her old one was no longer accessible to her. And she couldn't request more from her network thanks to
the quarantine.
"Fuck," she breathed, wiping something gooey from her eyes. It occurred to her that with no access to her original ID code, her other two bodies and backup almost certainly corrupted, her old persona was effectively dead. Technically, Kai Pundoo no longer existed.
After ten minutes, she'd discovered two possible tools. One, a retractable energy shield. Two, a humanoid combat gauntlet. It was old tech.
A pop from a small explosion. She whipped her head around and studied the hills of trash, trying to detect the origin.
She climbed up the hill, avoiding another patch of fungus that seemed to be churning. A few feet later, another pop left her ears ringing and her semi-organic heart racing. She looked down to see a hole in the fungus. It must've been a chemical reaction from the sun. It heated up gases inside and caused an "explosion."
Atop the mound, she had a decent view of the dump and the surrounding area. Bright pink trees dotted sweeping hills of red weeds and rock formations tainted with patches of a light orange fuzz. Giant, dull pink beasts floated overhead, scooping up weeds with a series of trunk-like appendages. Her nexus also identified buzzing sounds coming from large carnivorous insects that lived in tunnels underneath the hills.
In other words, crossing over those weeds was out of the question.
Movement shifted in the corner of her eye.
A pair of Glenbots were hovering above the trash field. From a distance, these models resembled plasma pistols of old. Dark, compact with jutting flaps and fins, and a primary aperture at the end of a "muzzle" structure.
She assumed they'd come for her. This could get very difficult if they began prodding into how and why she was here. As far as she could tell, Sestrel had transferred their cores and consciousnesses into frames that had already existed here as trash.
She froze as an invisible force shoved her body up and extended her arms. Her shield and gauntlet fell away. They'd caught her in their godwebs' gravity bind. Their godwebs probably fell on the weaker side of the spectrum, but they were enough, considering Kai didn't even have a bubbleweb to defend herself.
She noticed two more figures rising in the air.
The Glenbots cruised over as the three of them were brought together. "State your names."
"You know, I'm pretty sure you guys could just access our nexus IDs to check non-intrusively," said a nightmarish alien in the air beside them.
Four tusks framed a mouth of spine-like jaws and six predatory eyes dotted a huge, wrinkled forehead with tiny stubs at the edges. Despite his horrifying appearance, Zendants hated unnecessary bloodshed.
In another betrayal of his looks, Sarvill's voice was high-pitched and smooth. At least that's how Kai's translator chose to present it. "In fact, may I even go so far as to suggest you don't need to do this."
"Are you getting smart with us, sapient?" the Glenbot snapped.
"I already am smart," Sarvill said.
Kai glared at him. "Now might be a good time to shut your mouth."
"Just saying, you don't have to do this. You guys have godwebs that can identify sapients outside of your immediate visual range and your operating systems can read our IDs," Sarvill protested.
"Sometimes our OSs are running updates and we have to check manually," the Glenbot said.
"You don't store the info in localized data caches? You should have the storage capabilities. I mean, you're not sophonts, but you're still fairly advanced robots."
"Don't use that term with us, sapient."
Kai didn't know what she was witnessing. The stupid was going to get them killed.
"Okay, okay, no need to get testy," Sarvill went on. "Listen, you know what I think? I think you do this to intimidate other species. You're maintaining your reputation of ruthless efficient machines."
"We don't need to intimidate. We use our devices."
Sarvill spread his tusks in a way that said, Gotcha. "I don't know about that."
"Have you noticed our godwebs?"
"I don't mean to disappoint you, but my friend here had a godweb, too. It was stron—"
"Hey, shut the fuck up now or I'm putting you back into stasis," Kai said.
Sarvill had been referring to her previous inquisitor frame. Kai knew her mom had seeded his nexus with data nodes to bring him up to speed. Somehow she didn't think it would be such a good idea to let the Glenbots in on her profession.
The bot rotated to face her. "Listen, you three can't scavenge from this living sphere."
"This is a living sphere?"
"Buejentoe nests, yes." That explained the fungus. "They've requested that you stop scavenging their nests and leave their sphere. Otherwise, we will be forced to force you."
It hadn't occurred to her that salvaging from this pit might be a bad idea. Well, it had, but only as a tiny voice she'd long ago learned to ignore. What she didn't want to ignore was the possibility the Glenbots would ask what they were doing here.
The universe had been a big and weird place thirty-nine solar cycles ago. She imagined it had only gotten weirder since. Still, every planet had its own specific laws. And she didn't know this one's.
"Yeah, we would love to, except that we have no transport."
"That's not our problem," the Glenbot said. "Now go, you filth!"
Kai stared at the red hills as the Glenbots lowered them to the ground.
They wouldn't make it across right now. At least, she didn't think the underground insects would let them pass. Given that their frames were partly machines, they might... There was one way to find out.
"Alright, we're leaving," Kai said, heading toward the red weed field with the other two bringing up the rear. She glanced over her shoulder to give the Glenbots a last look and noticed Raksamat's single glowing eye fixated on Sarvill.
he thought to them in a dark tone.
"No. Not really. That's a common stereotype," Sarvill said. To be fair, he had been a good warrior in the Great Cosmic Wars.
Kai made an obscene gesture that his nexus would translate. "I captured you, didn't I?"
Kai grinned. "Why do you ask questions you already know the answer to?"
"I have a mission on this planet that I intend to complete."
"Something way bigger," she said as they made their way over to the hills of red weeds and pink trees. "We just need to reach Zone 2080." There were roughly ten thousand different zones spread across the planet. According to her data node, taking Sarvill to Zone 2080 would attract her target. Alternatively, if she happened by extreme chance, to run into her target her core would identify him, her, or it as such.
She couldn't admit that her mission's data node hadn't included that upfront. "None of your damn business. Not yet anyway."
She pivoted around and extended her leg. Her foot connected with his hip joint, and his frame collapsed. Without another look she continued walking. Obviously, Raksamat wasn't pleased.
"Your mercenary goon network is all but fin
ished," she lied. Since she'd limited his nexus's abilities, he wouldn't be able to check whether or not it was true. "The Hellions have practically assimilated them. And Sarvill, don't listen to him. If you do that it's going to make things really, really bad for all of us, especially you."
In the data nodes her mom had seeded to Sarvill, she'd explained that this was all an entertainment sim—an adventure game, essentially. And that Kai was the character who would give him his objectives. Apparently he was obsessed with adventure game sims. He'd spent hours and hours digging into them until completion. All she had to do was keep him entertained along the way.
They stood on the edge of the red weeds. Kai crushed one under her boot and slowly looked over to Raksamat. "Hear that buzzing sound?"
His nexus could identify the fauna the same as hers. She didn't see any way to convince him besides hinting at the breaker. "Start walking. Or else."
He started across, leaving a trail of flattened weeds. About fifty meters in, he stopped, turned around.
"Come on," Kai said to Sarvill and they began walking.
There was a shrieking sound from below and Raksamat disappeared.
She tensed, the rumble running from the dirt up and through her legs. As she pivoted around to save herself, the ground shifted beneath her.
Chapter 7
FELIK
* * *
"I still don't get why the MARINES' network name is all caps," said Brody, nibbling on a chocolate bar. Since foods could be taken as digital sensory boosters that didn't affect your body, people could indulge in their favorite consumables without guilt. Excessive consumption was frowned upon by many New Terrans, though.
Well, you're still a child. There's a lot you won't get.
Also, MARINES was an acronym for Military Armed Response Intelligence Network Engagement System.
"You have to give them credit," Felik said to his brother. "They've—"
The StarMaster’s Son: (Formerly The Master War) Page 5