by Susan Hayes
Number nine waited until the woman in front of her was on the tarmac before exploding out the door like a comet. She let out a whoop, threw a leg over one railing, and slid down it to the ground, hitting hard enough to fall to her knees on impact. She bounced back to her feet, threw out her arms, and spun in a circle, her face lifted to the sky. Beaming and laughing, the woman danced, her red hair glowing like fire in the afternoon sun.
Striker couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He’d witnessed the arrival of hundreds of Vardarian colonists and had been present when many of his cyborg brethren were roused from cryo-sleep and told that their nightmare was over—that they were free. None of them had reacted with the joy of this small human. Was she intoxicated? Had her mind broken during the journey?
He used his implant to get a closer look at her. If he hadn’t, he would have missed the moment she took off her glasses to wipe the tears from her cheeks. She looked up again and called out, “You did it, Jaybird. You got me here. Wherever you are, thank you, now get your ass here as fast as you can.”
None of the other women reacted to her outburst. In fact, they seemed to be working hard to ignore her. That caught his interest more than her wild antics. She’s an outsider. Like me.
He knocked the errant thought away like he was swatting an insect. She wasn’t like him. She was human. Tiny. Unenhanced. She would barely come to his shoulder. She was nothing like him.
He tore his gaze away from the strange little human and stepped back into the forest, fading into the sun-dappled shadows. He had work to do, and he’d wasted enough of his day already. The humans were nothing more than a distraction. He had a home to build, traps to check, and the vast wilds of this world to explore. The humans could have the colony. The woods were his, and no fragile human woman was going to take them from him. They’d ruined their own world. He would not let them destroy this one.
2
Maggie dashed the last few meters to the woods. If she was spotted, she’d get yet another lecture about the dangers of leaving the colony alone and unarmed.
She almost made it.
“Maggie, where are you going?”
Fraxx.
“I need to clear my head.” It was true enough. After a lifetime of noise and crowds, she had discovered that a walk in the woods was a balm to her soul. She could think out here. She could breathe.
“It’s dangerous out there. You’ve been to the briefings. Plenty of wildlife out there would be happy to put humanity on the menu.” Skye, one of the cyborg women charged with helping the human colonists adapt, joined her in the shadow of the trees.
Humanity. The casual mention of the word made her want to wince. Skye hadn’t meant it as an insult, though. If she had issues with humans, she kept it well hidden and had done her best to help Maggie and the others adjust to life at the colony.
Not everyone she’d met was so welcoming. Some of them were downright hostile. She understood their reasons, but it frustrated her that they couldn’t understand that anyone still on Earth was as much a victim of the corporations as the cyborgs had been.
“There’s an easy solution to that problem. If it’s so dangerous out there, give me a blaster so I can protect myself.”
Skye laughed. “Have you ever fired one before?”
“Well, no. But I’m a quick study.” Energy weapons were heavily restricted back on Earth. While she’d bent and outright broken plenty of rules, she’d never messed with that one. Only security forces and the hardest criminals carried that kind of weaponry. She fell somewhere between the two.
“That’s what I thought. No blaster for you.”
“I’m going to need to learn how to use one eventually.” Maggie hefted the walking stick she carried. She’d sharpened the top into a point, but that wouldn’t help her against a ghost cat or a kopaki.
“When you’ve finished your probation period, yes. You’ve only been here a few weeks. Technically, you’re not supposed to be in the woods at all.”
Maggie grinned. “The rules state I’m supposed to stay on this side of the river for now. There’s nothing in there about staying inside the boundaries of the colony.”
Skye was quiet for a moment.
Maggie stayed silent and resettled the pack she carried to a more comfortable spot while she waited for the other woman to finish scanning her copy of the rules. At first, the momentary silences had seemed strange. Now, she knew it meant they were either talking on an internal channel or scanning their vast data files for information.
Eventually Skye sighed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were a lawyer instead of a bartender.”
“Hardly. Didn’t have the grades. And even as a kid, I knew better than to sign my life over to a corporation.”
Skye nodded, her lips pressed in a tight line. “At least you had a choice.”
“Not much of one. The alternative was living like a rat in an overcrowded maze, fighting for recycled scraps and trying to scrape together enough hard scrip to get off the planet.”
“Any regrets?” Skye had asked.
“Yeah. I regret that no one will give me a blaster so I can protect myself from the more aggressive wildlife out there.”
“I meant about coming here. Some of the others…” Skye looked back toward the collection of buildings where the human women were currently living.
“Yeah. Some of them are struggling to deal with the changes.” Maggie dropped her voice, knowing the cyborg would hear her clearly. “But that’s because they’re the ones from the U.C. levels.”
“U.C.?”
Context is an interesting thing. You didn’t notice it until it wasn’t there. Apart from the nine women from Earth, no one on this planet had ever seen a hive city, and none of them had any idea how they worked.
“Upper center.” Maggie held out her hands, palms down, one over the other. “More than half of Athens Two is underground. If you can afford to live above the dirt, you’ve got money, influence, or a little of both.”
She shifted her hands so they were side by side. “Same for where you live in relation to the walls. The deeper into the center you are, the more protection you have if something fails. Water, air, power all come through the center and out to the walls.”
“Ah, so you’re saying the women having the hardest time adjusting are the ones who lived the best back on Earth?”
“Exactly.”
“And you? Where did you live?”
“As a kid, that depended on who my mom was sleeping with at the time. We made it above ground once or twice, but we were still near the outer walls. As an adult, I lived on the lower levels. Rent was cheaper there.”
Skye nodded thoughtfully. “So you adapted and made the best of things. They haven’t needed to do that. At least, not to the same extent. Thank you. That’s very helpful. I think we’re going to need to screen the next group for certain attributes, including adaptability. This place takes some getting used to.”
“So does being free.”
“Truth.” Skye’s brow creased. “And freedom means being allowed to make your own choices. Like whether to go into the woods armed with nothing more than a pointy stick and a smart mouth.”
“You could give me your—”
“Nope. No blaster. You want to exercise your freedom, you do it without a weapon you don’t know how to use. But I’ll arrange for weapons training for anyone interested. Starting tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” Maggie startled them both by moving in and giving the much taller cyborg a one-armed hug. “That means a lot to me.”
Skye blinked and then smiled and hugged her back. “You be careful out there. The wildlife aren’t the only dangerous things in these woods.”
“Vardarians?” She wasn’t ready to run into her mates yet, if she had mates on this planet.
“Not all of my brethren are embracing colony life. Some of them prefer the woods. Away from everyone. It’s probably safer for both parties that way, but they won’
t be happy to see you.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“I know you will. See you for the evening meal?”
While all the new colonists had been assigned their own habi-pod with a kitchen and food dispenser, the group would eat dinner together, along with any cyborgs and Vardarian females or mated males who wished to join them. Some meals were quiet, but others were rowdy, enjoyable affairs that felt more like a party.
“What’s on the menu?”
“Something called lasagna.” Skye shrugged. “Whatever that is.”
“Pasta. Meat. Tomato sauce. Lots of cheese. I had it once. The real thing. Cost me a month’s wages and it was worth every bite. I will definitely be there for dinner.”
“Good. I thought maybe you planned on staying out for a while given the size of the pack you’re carrying.”
Maggie repeated the line she’d rehearsed until the delivery was perfect. “Nope. This is just the basics in case I get stuck somewhere. Poncho, heat source, food tabs, and water.”
“Smart.”
“I did my research.”
“I can see that. See you at dinner.”
Skye left, and Maggie walked into the trees before she exhaled and leaned against the nearest trunk. Lying to a cyborg wasn’t easy. They could sense pulse rates and read body language in ways no human could match. So, she hadn’t lied. She’d simply practiced a version of the truth, instead—one that didn’t mention the other items she carried. She had fuel pellets for a cookstove she’d traded for last week and a thermal blanket someone had thrown out because one corner was torn off.
There was so much waste here it made her head swim. Scraps of food were tossed into composters every day. Anything that wasn’t perfect was thrown out and replaced. Things were recycled, yes, but they had an entire planet full of raw materials, and more of everything was brought in by traders all the time. Waste and wealth all around her, so she did what she could to claim some of it for herself. Not stealing. Just taking what had been cast off and doing what she did best—trading up.
Barter and trade were necessary skill sets for people like her, and she was honestly surprised most of the others weren’t doing the same thing. She’d seen Nasha combing through the recycling almost every day, and Dani had been out a few times. They traded what they found between the three of them. Nasha was looking for extra food she could stash and materials to make her own clothing. Dani was looking for anything she could trade for koldar, the Vardarian currency they used on this world. The others barely went outside. They attended the countless classes on everything from language to Vardarian mating customs and then spent the rest of their time in their habi-pods, sharing news from a place they still called home.
Maggie didn’t understand it. They’d all known what they were signing up for. This was their one chance at a fresh start. Why weren’t they embracing it?
There had been tens of thousands of entrants. They’d had to do the draw three times to cull out the ones who were too old, too young, or failed their physical exams. The first round had been open to anyone, a sort of experiment to see if the idea could work.
For her and Jade, it had been the chance of a lifetime. If the project continued, there’d be screenings and deliberations to ensure they brought over the ones with the best shot of making the transition. Not even Jade’s hacking skills could erase two lifetimes of dubious decisions and occasional brushes with the law. If they hadn’t been on the first ship, they’d have never gotten here at all.
She and Jade had spent months planning their escape. They’d gathered information, figured out a plan, and then had to scrap it and start over again more than once. Once they’d come up with their final concept, it took Jade weeks to access the right systems and set everything up. Hacking the list directly was too obvious. Instead, Jade planted a simple subroutine that added variations of their names over time. By the time the draws started, the odds were as good as they could make them without tipping anyone off.
It had worked better than they’d hoped. They’d both won a spot, Maggie in one draw, Jade in another. It was supposed to be their shot. But at the last minute Jade had gone looking for what she called insurance… and then she’d disappeared.
Maggie rubbed at her arm, the one with the implant. She had no way to know for certain, but she suspected that whatever Jade had gone after, she’d found it. That’s what her friend had sent to her, and it’s what had gotten Jade into trouble.
Worry churned in her stomach and Maggie set out at a brisk walk. She thought better when she was moving. It had always been like that for her, and since she’d started taking the pharma to increase her bone density and accelerate muscle growth, she could go for hours, even in the heavier gravity of Liberty. The food helped, too. She’d never eaten so much, or so well.
Part of her didn’t trust that something this good could go on indefinitely. The food would run out. There’d be an attack, an illness, or some sort of natural disaster. When that happened, she needed to be ready. So, she did the same thing she’d done back on Earth. She gathered up what she could find and hid it all where no one else would find it—the woods.
Despite Skye’s warning, Maggie hadn’t seen anyone else on her walks. All she’d run across were rockclaws and squeakers. The squeakers were this biosphere’s version of rodents. Granted, they had green fur, red eyes, and hissed a lot, but otherwise they were pretty much the same creatures she knew from Earth.
The rockclaws were something else entirely. Massive crab-like creatures, they lumbered through the forest like six-legged tanks. Their claws were the size of her head, strong enough to break bones if they got a hold of you. They weren’t aggressive, though. If she left them alone, they were happy to do the same. It helped that they were so brightly colored they were easy to spot. She’d seen yellow, blue, and the occasional pink ones trundling through the trees. If one got too close, she prodded it with her walking stick until it changed direction.
The stick was handy for pushing bloodvine out of her way, too. The stuff sensed body heat and contracted around anything it found, tearing at it with hundreds of sharp thorns, but it didn’t react to the wood. Still, she’d like to have an energy weapon, too. In case something bigger came along.
Until that happened, she’d stick a little closer to the colony. The more dangerous wildlife stayed away from Haven, knowing the biggest predators on the planet lived there.
She hefted her pack and picked her way through the woods, carefully counting her steps as she went. The spot she wanted wasn’t far now. Ten more minutes and she’d have her next cache safely stashed. Then she could head back for dinner. Easy-peasy.
She was back again.
Striker wasn’t sure what to make of the little redhaired human who kept coming back to his woods. She’d been hiding things out here. He’d found two of her stashes and gone through the contents. Food, water, and equipment—most of it out of date or imperfect. It didn’t make sense. Food was plentiful. Equipment could be made to order. Yet she came out here every few days and added to her stockpile of junk.
The first time he’d seen her out here, he’d followed her to make sure she wasn’t doing anything that might jeopardize the colony. Now, she was a puzzle he wanted to solve. He’d set up a sensor to tell him when anyone entered this area. So far, she was the only one who wandered more than a few meters from home. He wasn’t sure if that said more about her or the other human women.
The humans stayed together for the most part, but not the one he’d learned was called Maggie. His impression that she was an outsider had only strengthened since the first time he’d seen her dancing in the sunlight outside the shuttle. She spent more time with the cyborg women than her own kind. That was a mark in her favor. She also had no idea how much danger she was in every time she set foot in his woods.
Maggie had wandered into a ghost cat’s hunting grounds one time. He’d run it off before it attacked her. The woman had figured out how to deal with the rockclaws and bloodvine,
but a stick wasn’t going to protect her from any of the larger predators. She should be armed if she was coming out here, yet no one seemed inclined to stop her visits.
Did they want her to get killed? It was one way to deter more colonists, sure. But it might also cause problems the colony didn’t need. So, he shadowed her, kept her safe, and tried to figure out what the fraxx she was up to.
All he knew about her was her name. Maggie Piper. He hadn’t asked anyone about her. That would require talking, and he didn’t do much of that anymore. He touched the scar at his throat. The only ones he wanted to talk to were long gone.
Once she was close enough, he broke into a run so he got to her destination before she did. He did a quick scan for threats and then leaped up into a tree on the far side of the clearing to settle in and wait.
This was where she’d been coming the last few trips. To a rotting tree in the center of a small clearing. Bloodvine lay all over the forest floor here, but she’d learned to wear heavy boots and use her staff to sweep most of it out of her way. She always got a few cuts, though, and the blood was absorbed into the soil to be turned into nutrients for the vines. She hadn’t noticed yet, but more of the vines lined the path she took to the tree. More vines meant more cuts, and more blood meant more vines. A few more trips and anyone coming through here would be able to see what he could—clear signs that someone was visiting this place.
As smart as she was, she didn’t know the rules of her new home, and she couldn’t see all the threats. She had no idea what to look for. He did.
While he waited, he scanned the woods for heat signatures. No predators. Just a juvenile rockclaw wandering through the underbrush. Even Maggie’s limited senses would be able to hear it and stay clear.
Maggie arrived a few minutes later, counting out her steps as she came. It was a rudimentary way to navigate, but it worked well enough. She was smart and capable for a human, and as much as he hated to admit it, she was attractive. She’d filled out since her arrival, her curves more pronounced now, and she had a vitality to her that appealed to him—at least, from a distance, and that’s all he was interested in.