Liberation's Vow (Robotics Faction #3)

by Wendy Lynn Clark

  She considered the butterfly-feathered dress. Cousin Poyo probably wouldn’t notice if she wore a flight suit. “Do you have any backup plans? He truly hates you.”

  “If everyone who hated me risked the wrath of the family, I would have died years ago.”

  “You are determined to trust him.”

  “On this matter.” He tapped his lip with his index finger. “Poyo values economy. He judges me as harshly as he judges his family, and he cares less what others think. Given my uncle and Darvin, that was a strength. But murder… killing my father would be unlike him.” He rubbed his face. “Perhaps his choices are no longer his own.”

  “You want to ask.”

  “Yes. For some reason.” He snorted. “Despite the evidence. It seems that some of my naiveté has survived.”

  “Perhaps he can also tell you about the high numbers of androids he has allowed to emigrate into his districts.”

  There! The words escaped out her mouth without her robot being able to stop her. What she had needed to tell him finally popped free.

  He stopped. “You reviewed the data.”

  “Your street sweeper theory was more correct than I realized. However, the androids who have emigrated are much worse than you realized.”

  “How did he manipulate the data? I interviewed so many of them.”

  “And they all looked indistinguishable from humans.”

  His jaw tightened. “What are you saying?”

  “For almost a year, you’ve been visited by a huge influx of soldier robots.”

  Whenever she found a suspicious record, she brought up the photo. More times than she cared to, she found the “person” staring back at her to have irises threaded in the particular pattern of x-class robots. “Specifically, your streets are teeming with soldiers who double as assassins.”

  He stared at her. “What are they waiting for?”

  She had asked her robot the same thing. But on this point, it remained infuriatingly silent.

  “I guess they are poised to capture the rogue,” she said.

  “For months?” He counted backward. “That is about the time Cressida disappeared. They knew the rogue would come here.”

  “Or they guessed,” she said. “Cressida is a known carrier. Her sibling and half sibling probably are as well.”

  His eyes slightly narrowed. “And you don’t know?”

  “I don’t. But it may be the discovery that made your cousin Darvin change his beliefs to yours when he learned of the danger. And your cousin Poyo very well might know the answer, since they are concentrated in his district.”

  Aris thought on that for a long moment. They were heading to meet with a man who telegraphed on his face his intention to murder Aris, backed up by his actions by trying to murder Aris twice already, in a district full of x-class assassin soldiers. How badly did he want to interview his cousin?

  His lips pulled back from his teeth into a great smile. He laughed in the face of death. “How will Poyo talk himself out of this one?”

  “Well then.” Resa led him to the door, clearing the passages, more swiftly than his scrambling security team. “Let’s ask him.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aris drove so Resa could have her hands free.

  The unmarked, armored car wobbled beneath his hands, swerving and shaking. He couldn’t study the passersby veering from the streets or the running pedestrians for the robots hidden within the populace. Sweat gave way to exhilaration as he continuously pulled it out of a death dive.

  Not bad for a person who had never learned to drive.

  “I should’ve done this forever ago,” he said, gunning the resistance gyros and bucking them back and forth.

  His companion was poised in the seat, compensating so a camera trained only on her calm countenance would imagine themselves in a stationary car. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t important for governing.” He squealed around a corner and jumped a curb. “This is awesome.”

  “I meant why didn’t you speak with your cousin?”

  He took his attention off the road for a second. “I thought he had no problem telling me everything to my face.” He turned back. “Oops. Where did that come from?”

  A caution screen crumbled against their front.

  They reached the tall golden gates in the bright Morning District. Within the complex, a great dome reached up to the atmosphere shield. Inside, hidden from view, a great anchor led all the way down to the planetoid’s surface.

  He rocked up to the communicator and opened a connection. “Aris to see Cousin Poyo.”

  A pleasant voice denied him entry. “Your companion is not authorized.”

  “Aw,” Aris started to argue, but Resa simply got out of the car.

  “I’ll see you.” Her expression wouldn’t look like a smile, but to him, he couldn’t not see it.

  “You’re sure.”

  But she simply smiled again. “Drive right in.”

  He considered that smile as he fought with the simple vehicle controls. He had asked her to smile as part of his ruse at Darvin’s, and received a frisson of awareness now that she did it for him. Her smile was powerful, confident, and sexy. A hint of naughtiness.

  That hint curled around his hard cock and squeezed.

  Fuck.

  The lady rogue had told him not to fall for Resa.

  When he thought of her as a robot, it was so much easier. He revved the engines as the gate slowly creaked open. Of course, he couldn’t fall for a stick of metal with no heart. But when she touched his knee of her free will, or when she tasted the macaroons like they were the first morsels of food ever to pass her lips, or when she pressed her soft feminine body against him… well, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  He forgot he no longer had a heart because it seemed like something moved in that empty chest cavity after all. Something awakened from the dead.

  In the glinting bright sunlight reflected from the golden sky overhead, a shadow passed over the wall. Butterfly feathers floated down to rest on his windshield. He touched the glass beneath the powdery feather. They flew away on the wind.

  The gold gates swung open.

  He pressed the button to drive inside. The car jerked forward, whiplashing his neck.

  Poyo’s residence anchored the Morning region’s domes, and its grand layout matched those found at his residence in Night and Cousin Darvin’s in Twilight.

  Another butterfly feather floated, brazen red and black, in front of his hover car.

  He moved forward, jerking into the complex, and skidded into a dried out courtyard. The fountains had been filled in with rocks, layers and layers of rocks forming a sediment of color and patterns and texture. A household security guard stood beside the open front door.

  Aris stopped the vehicle.

  It slammed into the ground and coasted a few feet, tossing up sparks and gouging the stone. The vehicle rocked.

  Any landing he could walk away from….

  The smile remained on his face as he stepped out.

  “This way.” The household guard turned smartly on her heel and led him into Poyo’s residence.

  He barely saw the cool, sandy tile or the dusky walls, the bright porticos off to either side, the sparse sitting rooms. The guard moved with an exact clip. Poyo wouldn’t dare allow robots into his home, would he? After everything Aris had said?

  Household staff fell in before and behind the guard, and his discomfort increased. They had different hair and eye color, different demeanors and strides, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of electronic foreboding, mechanical exactitude in their gestures.

  The house seemed too warm. A bead of sweat dripped down his back, tickling.

  The guard knocked on the communication sensor on an ornate door, bowed, and left him with an escort of five household staff. At the last moment, as the door slid open, he recognized the location as Poyo’s office.

  Poyo sat behind a clear desk. A thousand screens emb
edded in every corner, playing some statistic or report. Like him, they were jumbled, untidy, and it was impossible for Aris to imagine how he got anything done. His walls nearly vibrated with screens, also shouting visual information. All except for the square patch directly behind his head. As the only unmoving thing in the whole room, the plaque stood out: A memorial insignia of the first governor. In the center, the plain governor’s locket.

  Ah. Resa had told him. Joensen’s widow had practically told him. Poyo himself essentially told him. He just hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  Poyo flipped off his walls and quieted the chaos of his desk. He removed his oculars. Disgust twisted his features. “Aris. You actually came.”

  He forced a smile. Practice. “You invited me.”

  Poyo tsked.

  “And of course,” he strode into the room, heart pounding in his throat, “I had to find out why you’re so hell-bent on killing me.”

  Poyo’s household staff filed in behind him and stood against the wall. Framing Aris against the window. They all five drew guns and leveled them on him.

  Fear squeezed his gut.

  Resa better be a lot closer than she seemed.

  Poyo didn’t stand. “That should be obvious.”

  Aris ignored the guns trained on him and the sweat pouring down his back. “Indulge me.”

  “That’s what you always want, isn’t it? For other people to ‘indulge’ you,” Poyo practically spat. “But all right. Fine. You’re a fool, a fop, a failure. You haven’t earned a single thing in your life, and you certainly don’t deserve to govern.”

  Aris’s grin came more naturally; this was the person he knew as his cousin. “You’ve never pretended to like me—”

  “Like? What is there to like? You’re just like Darvin. You’re both so concerned with your froo-ness and your foppery that you ignore the important facts. You’d rather do your hair, or,” he gestured at Aris, “sew your dresses, or polish your skin than read a trade agreement. Do you have any idea what you’re signing?”

  This argument was too familiar. “Contracts are negotiated by specialized teams—”

  “That you are in charge of keeping in line! This past year alone, you’ve let .0021 percent slide into our trade rivals’ chests.” He flicked the offending contracts onto his desk, stabbing them as though to shame Aris. “You take out your schlong for the cameras and everybody forgets. Someone has to stop you.”

  Wait. This was what had pushed Poyo over the edge? No serious fucking way. “Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t agree with the way one contract—”

  “Five! At least five!”

  “—five contracts were going, and insist I renegotiate?”

  “Because it was obvious.” He gestured at the trade agreements as though they spoke for themselves.

  Aris held up his palm. “Do you think I’m smart or do you think I’m a moron? You can’t have it both ways.”

  “What?”

  “I’m either super smart and deliberately signed bad contracts, or I’m a moron who’s too busy doing my hair, and you decided not to tell me about the bad contracts.”

  Poyo’s face contracted. Struggling, because both had to be true.

  “Either way,” Aris focused on the main, unbelievable point, “you tried to assassinate me because you don’t like the way I handle trade agreements.”

  “Because you’re a moron who can barely add your fingers,” Poyo shouted, jerking to a stand and landing on his tiptoes. “You’ve done nothing for the family but bury us in worthless sand!”

  His voice echoed off the ceiling.

  The breeze through the window from his courtyard smelled of sage and summer aromatics. It lifted the longer hair of the one household staff. The guns remained trained on Aris.

  “Okay,” Aris said, “we’ve covered me. Why did you kill my father?”

  Poyo landed on flat feet and looked away, rubbed the snot off his nose with the backside of his loose, food-stained flight suit. “I gave Darvin the nanobots. He obviously neglected to learn anything about them. Only an idiot would set off a bomb in his own fireplace.”

  “A lot of family got hurt—”

  “I know,” he snapped. “I sent my man back to collect them before anyone else did something equally stupid.”

  “There’s an inquiry—”

  “My father will pay them off,” he dismissed. “You’re the only one I ever intended to kill. Darvin and I would’ve finished the end-of-quarter trade agreements in peace before you ever got back from your resurrection.”

  Of course. Because Poyo’s attacks weren’t personal. But they were based on a flaw. “What if I didn’t come back?”

  “I would complete next quarter’s trade agreements in peace also.”

  “What if,” Aris emphasized, tapping the clear desk to stop the bouncing trade documents, “you killed me and I wasn’t resurrected?”

  Poyo refused to look at the firing squad at the side of the room. “That is a very rare side-effect—”

  “What if my restoration point was stolen? Because the Robotics Faction is trying to kill me?”

  Poyo’s brow furrowed.

  “How would you justify permanently killing me and allowing hundreds of android soldiers onto our planetoid, putting our entire family at risk?”

  “Obviously, killing you even temporarily is not an ideal way to progress.” He squinted. “I have largely stayed out of the Robotics Faction debate because it makes no logical sense. Why deploy ground troops when we could more easily be picked off from space?”

  “Unless they are stalking specific people,” Aris said. “Ones who have a particular gene.”

  “To what end? That’s so personal. It’s highly illogical to alter your entire method of being because of another person—” He broke off, looking behind Aris. “How long have you been standing there?”

  His beautiful head of security, Taier, stood in the doorway. His face said it had been long enough. “You were supposed to turn your father down. His threats don’t scare us.”

  Ah. Now the truth was revealed. It was Poyo’s uncle, and from the fear crossing Poyo’s face, those threats did scare him. Very much.

  “You don’t even want to be governor,” Taier reminded him.

  “You said I’d be great at legislation.”

  “Not at the cost of another’s life. Not at the cost of finally becoming your father’s puppet.” Taier’s frown seemed to permeate his whole being. “It’s not you.”

  “I knew it,” Aris said.

  The others ignored him.

  “You can’t do this. You can’t murder your own family.” Taier’s hand flexed over the gun at his slim hip. Red spots blushed high on his cheeks. “I won’t let you become that person.”

  “It’s too late,” Poyo said heavily.

  “No.” Taier stepped in front of Aris and pointed his gun at the firing squad. “Stop now.”

  One person changed their aim to Taier.

  Poyo broke. His face crumpled, his shoulders slumped, and he dropped back into his chair and covered his face. “My father threatened you.”

  Taier swallowed. “I accepted danger when I became your head of security.”

  “He has ways of getting to people and forcing them to do things.” Poyo shook his head. “I wanted to leave this vain, pretentious, serpent’s pit sixteen years ago. Instead, I’m still here, trying to become governor.”

  “You’d be a fine governor,” Taier assured him, “but not this way.”

  “I’m willing to discuss a change in leadership,” Aris interrupted, new adrenaline zipping through his squeezed-tight veins, “if you would ask your household staff to stand down.”

  Poyo sniffed and waved his hand.

  His staff did not lower their guns. They remained trained on Aris and Taier. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “Stop it,” Poyo said. “What are you doing? I said… oh.”

  Taier swallowed. “You’ve received an order from your employer. Put your weapons
down.”

  “It’s too late,” Poyo whispered. “My father—he’s set us up.”

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  Taier’s arm steadied. He grew taller and nobler as he accepted his fate. To Aris, he said, “Stand behind me, Governor.”

  A red feather curled in the air and landed on the clear desk.

  Relief snapped at Aris’s pounding fear.

  “It’s fine.” He threw back his shoulders with a laugh that almost sounded real in his distant, blood-rushed ears. “I’m not so friendless as I seem.”

  Resa preceded Aris’s car into the Morning District complex, shutting off her unauthorized identification chip and floating easily between security cameras, drifting seamlessly into blind spots. She spotted a human household guard below leading him into the complex. At least the x-class soldiers hadn’t penetrated to here.

  Yet.

  She slipped through an unsecured window and shimmied to the security booth, at which point, she had no choice but to hack in.

  An x-class sat at the controls.

  He looked up one instant before her hand pinched his neck at the back of his head and severed the nerve. She stuffed his inert body into a corner and assumed his seat.

  Someone might question whether you’ve gone off-assignment, her robot said, addressing her for the first time directly since going silent and allowing her to speak the truth in the dressing room.

  She feigned innocence as she hacked into Poyo’s security and dragged out the information she wanted—locations of x-class soldiers, entries and exits of Faction shipments. Aris had to be alive to contact the rogue, and she would do anything to keep him alive.

  Anything.

  Her robot lapsed into silence again.

  She downloaded the data into her brain for later perusal and began scanning the city for the loose x-classes. In Poyo’s office, the argument turned in an utterly predictable direction until the moment his household staff refused to lay down their arms.

  She zoomed in on the staff.

  Ah, she’d just located five of the missing x-class soldiers. One she could sneak up behind, but these five smartly had their backs to the wall.