by Cara Bristol
Why did he feel like he was no better than Obido?
When they approached the gangway inside the small cargo transport bay, one of the smaller shuttle ports on the station, two Lamis-Odg guards drew their weapons. “Halt!” one of them cried.
“It’s okay. He’s with me,” Mariska said.
While one guard leveled his weapon, the other scanned him. “The android is not authorized to board,” the guard said.
“He’s not boarding; he’s loading my luggage. He’ll disembark after he carries it to my stateroom.”
“Negative. He shall remain here.” The guard motioned. “Leave the cases.”
Kai set the bags down, and the sentry scanned them. “Clear,” he announced. He jerked his head at Mariska. “You may take them now.”
She dragged one toward the craft.
“My duty is to serve the daughter of Obido. Allow me to set the bags inside the door. I shall not enter,” Kai said.
The two guards glanced at each other and shrugged. “All right.”
Under armed watch, he deposited both bags inside the portal. There was nothing else he could do. He sought Mariska’s gaze. Don’t go. “Have a safe flight.”
“Thank you.”
She boarded. Kai stomped down the gangway.
Chapter Four
When the shuttle door shut, the spacecraft hull seemed to shrink and close in. Sweat dampened her temples. Mariska leaned against the wall and fought to draw air into her spasming lungs.
Was she sure about going to Katnia? What kind of a question was that? Of course she desired to go—this was her opportunity for a new life. Perhaps the Ka-Tȇ will ignore my deformity, and I can earn their respect. I shall pass the test, Father, and make you proud of me.
She closed her eyes and inhaled to calm her nerves. Then she squared her shoulders and pushed off from the wall. Once I get to Katnia, everything will be all right.
She reached for a bag then sensed a presence. An android stood there.
Despite their heavy metal composition, robots could move soundlessly. R981 did. Often she’d assumed she was alone, then she’d turn around to find him observing her.
Her heart hitched. I’ll never see him again. It should have been a relief to travel without a spybot reporting on every action, but, although she didn’t trust him, oddly, she felt safer with him around.
Nervousness made her fanciful. She focused on the android staring at her. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Mariska.”
“I am Q257,” the droid said. “I am here to assist.”
“Oh, good,” she replied. “Would you carry my bags to my quarters?”
“I am not programmed to carry bags. My function is to deliver the daughter of Obido to Katnia.”
R981 would have done it. He performed many courtesies, to the extent he’d seemed almost lifelike. A pang of loss pierced her again. Funny, she already missed him more than she missed her father, his mates, or her many siblings. It is only because he is familiar to you and was not unkind. Not unkind for a spy, anyway. Remember that.
“Can you at least tell me where my cabin is?” she asked.
The droid was slight, expressionless. Nothing at all like R981, whose tall, muscular body and quirky behavior caused her to sometimes forget he was a robot. Why would she bring a lamp to Katnia? The memory of how he’d tromped around her quarters picking up random objects brought a thickness to her throat. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth.
“Passenger staterooms are located port side, aft.”
She’d entered starboard side, midship, but it would still be a long way to haul her luggage to the rear of the craft. “How long is the flight to Katnia?”
“Four days, six hours, and seven minutes.”
“That long?” She didn’t know how fast a shuttle flew, but it stood to reason the longer the journey, the farther away the destination. The only other time she’d flown had been when she’d traveled with her siblings and their mothers to the space station. She’d been a small child then, and the journey had seemed to take an eon, but, in reality, had been overnight she’d learned later. She’d been excited, eager to move to a new place where she might have friends, where she might find acceptance. That hadn’t happened, of course. Deformity had been no more accepted here than it had been on Lamis-Odg.
“The shuttle will launch in twenty-nine minutes,” the android said. “Prepare yourself.” He marched away.
R981 would have kept her company.
Stop obsessing about him. Focus on proving your worth, on making Father proud of you.
Mariska decided to leave her belongings and locate her cabin first to avoid dragging her heavy bags while she searched. With determination, she headed down the passageway. It had been more than twenty years since she’d been on a spacecraft, and the sharpness of memories had dulled, but she estimated the size of the current craft as much smaller than the other one.
The previous one had seemed huge, but of course, it had carried a dozen passengers and two dozen bots, while this one ferried only her and a single unfriendly android.
She traversed the craft, noting the android recharging dock, a small galley stocked with expired military rations, an empty area with cleats attached to the walls, a tiny lounge with hard chairs, and, port side aft, a closet-sized stateroom, with two narrow sleeping berths, the gap between the bunks even slimmer. The cabin offered scarcely more space than the android recharging dock!
She didn’t have the most luxurious quarters on the space station, but, somehow, she had expected more of the shuttle. What conclusions would the Ka-Tȇ draw when she arrived on a ship with so few amenities it might well be used to transport cargo?
Her throat tightened as another bout of claustrophobia swept over her. She ripped off the veil. Air. Need air. She tossed the shroud onto the berth and fled down the corridor.
She wound up on the bridge. Sitting in a chair before the control panel, Q257 turned his head at her approach. Reflective orbs fixed on her face, but he did not seem surprised to see her or her unsightly face. Why would he? He was a robot. Only R981 had seemed startled.
“Is there something you require?” he asked.
A fire kindled in the pit of her stomach.
All her life she’d been tested. By the Great One, by her father, by her siblings, by their mothers. By her people. It was time for another to be tested. Even if he was only an android.
She straightened. “I require you to carry my luggage to my stateroom.”
“I am not programmed to perform that function.”
“I require you to fix me a meal and bring it to the lounge.”
“I am not programmed to perform that function.”
“I require you to sit with me and converse.”
“I am not programmed to perform that function.”
“What are you programmed to do?”
“I am programmed to deliver Mariska, daughter of Obido, to planet Katnia, and report back to base. I am programmed to pilot the craft if autoflight becomes inoperative. I am programmed to record what I see and hear.”
Another spybot.
What had she done to earn her father’s distrust? Was suspicion his nature? He was a general, an important man with a great responsibility. Maybe he didn’t trust anybody.
Q257 continued staring in his unblinking, emotionless way, and the fight went out of her. It did no good to spar with a robot and could even cause some harm. The bot could be transmitting a vid of her behavior to her father.
She had allowed R981’s anomalies to influence her. He’d almost seemed to be warning her.
“Ka-Tȇ males are unlike any you have known. Mating is rather violent.”
Violence was normal, wasn’t it? Her siblings’ mothers often had displayed blackened eyes, bruised cheeks, even a split lip after an evening spent with her father. One mate had suffered a dislocated shoulder. A woman expected small injuries to occur whi
le mating.
What if the Ka-Tȇ were more violent than that?
It wouldn’t matter. She would be fooling herself to think she had a choice. Her father had ordered her to Katnia. To Katnia she must go.
“Launch in twenty minutes.” The computer’s delivery was only slightly more robotic than Q257’s.
“Carry on,” she said, and exited the cockpit.
She grabbed one of her bags and dragged it to her stateroom, where she wrestled it onto the spare berth. After lugging the other bag to her cabin, she extracted a mantilla. She’d intended to tat the edges to transform the head covering into a sacramental veil. She didn’t know what nuptial rites the Ka-Tȇ observed, but she assumed there would be some ceremony. Traditionally, a mother presented her daughter with a lace-edged mantilla on the eve of her first mating, but without a mother, Mariska was sewing her own.
Busy hands calmed a worried mind. But she couldn’t work on it in the closet-size cabin. Taking her mantle, her skein of silk thread, and her needles, she went to the passenger lounge.
“Launch in ten minutes.”
She stabbed at her veil with the threaded needle.
* * * *
On the monitor, Obido spied his first officer about to hail him from outside his quarters. “Come!” he barked through the audio. He wove his fingers through Janai’s thick mane, twisting her hair around his fist until tears welled in her eyes. He twisted harder. She uttered not a single complaint, so he relaxed his grip and caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. So compliant. She might become his favorite if she bore him sons. As long as she continued to produce, she’d have the honored place at his feet. If not, she might find herself on Katnia, too.
Vison entered and snapped his heels in salute. “General.”
Obido motioned. “Status report.”
“Mariska has boarded the shuttle. It is scheduled to depart in ten minutes.”
“Excellent.”
“May I commend you on an ingenious plan,” his first officer said.
“It is perfect, isn’t it?” Obido stroked his newest mate’s cheek, drawing blood as he gouged her skin with a fingernail sharpened for that purpose.
Once he’d learned the Ka-Tȇ needed playmates, he realized he’d found the perfect solution to the Mariska problem. Katnia was located near Xenia, where Lamis-Odg had sought to place an outpost until an AOP ambassador had squelched the arrangement. If he could eliminate Mariska and secure a base of operations…
“The Great One acts in mysterious ways, but we are blessed,” Vison said.
“Indeed.” On both counts.
The Great One had selected their people as his Chosen Few and marked them with a distinctive facial feature. After death, those bearing the Odgidian ridge would receive the boundless riches of the Blessed Beyond.
“By all that is holy, Mariska should have been smothered at birth,” Obido said. It had been commanded that those born without ridge or with other deformities should be put to death to ensure the integrity of their race.
“You could not.”
“No. She carries the sacred spiral.” In His mysterious way, the Great One had marked her to be spared. Obido had prayed that the years would remove the protection, but it was as bold as ever.
Her existence cast a pall upon his service, her deformity raising questions about what he might have done to offend the Great One to have been punished with such an abomination. Only with Vison did Obido trust his secret sin. Everyone else who’d been alive then had been silenced or eliminated. But as long as Mariska remained, so would the questions. He’d always suspected she was the reason he’d been sent to this space station instead of a planet. If he were ever to please Lamani and ascend in the organization, he had to get rid of the reminder.
“The Ka-Tȇ will not enter the Blessed Beyond anyway,” Vison said. “Your plan is brilliant.”
It was perfect. Get a heathen to dispose of his impediment and gain a foothold in another part of the galaxy.
Obido raked another bloody score down Janai’s cheek. With her thick, heavy Odgidian Ridge, she’d always been comely, and each additional siska made her more so. She was probably the most beautiful woman in all of Lamis-Odg, such a contrast to Mariska’s hideousness.
“Keep me informed of the progress,” he said.
“Of course, General,” the first officer replied. “What would you like done with the android R981?”
His newest mate uttered a small noise.
“Did you say something, my sweet?” He looked down at her affectionately.
Janai rubbed her bloody cheek against his hand and peered up through her lashes. “If you do not need him, I would like to have him.”
Obido shifted his gaze back to his first officer and shrugged. “I have no particular use for him. Have him reprogrammed and deliver him to Janai’s quarters.”
Chapter Five
Kai dropped his travel bag into the passageway and sidled into the cockpit. The android sat in the pilot’s chair facing the control panel.
“Launch in ten minutes,” announced the shuttle’s computer.
The droid’s sensors must have detected something because he spun around. “You must disembark. You do not have authorization—”
He pressed the deactivator to the bot’s torso and squeezed the trigger. The android slumped. “That’s my authorization.”
He dragged the android out of the chair and tossed him onto the dock next to the two dead guards. “I’m going with the notion it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” Kai muttered. Not that he would receive either. After killing two guards, frying an android’s circuitry, and hijacking a shuttle, he’d be toasted if he got caught. And that would be Carter’s response. Obido would be much less forgiving.
Conscience and mission objective had battled it out. The former had won. Lamis-Odg had to be defeated, but he couldn’t allow an innocent, unsuspecting woman to jet off to a horrific death, even if she had been born into a terrorist race. She was guiltless. Maybe it wasn’t enough to destroy evil, maybe good needed to be rewarded.
Or was that a rationalization to justify going rogue?
Whatever. With two guards dead and an android deactivated, backing out wasn’t an option.
He punched a passcode into the keypad to seal the door. He’d hacked into the shuttle’s operating system from the outside and switched its authorization protocol from a palm swipe to a passcode of his choosing.
“Thank you, Brock, old buddy.” Kai saluted the fellow Cy-Ops agent who had taught him how to upgrade his programming. Without the mods, he would have been stymied by the security measures.
Back in the cockpit, he settled into the chair vacated by the android and familiarized himself with the instruments. On a vidmonitor, he located Mariska in a Spartan lounge, and zoomed in.
She was unveiled and, once again, her beauty struck him in a visceral way, tightening his groin. Her complexion was porcelain perfect, so different from the other females of her race, many of whom had oddly scarred skin. On her lap was a swath of embroidery, but her gaze appeared vacant. She gripped the armrest so tight her knuckles blanched, but her chin jutted out with stubbornness.
Would determination or fear win? Was she afraid of space flight—or had she figured out what awaited on Katnia? He hoped the latter because it afforded a better chance of convincing her to go along with his plan—once he figured out what it was.
First, they needed to get off the space station ASAP.
“Launch in five minutes.”
Mariska jumped; her embroidery slipped to the floor. Watching her wouldn’t get them off the station. Kai minimized the image and swiveled around to the controls.
If the bodies were discovered, they would be screwed. The runway bay door would be sealed. Even after they cleared the dock, Obido would launch an offensive when he found the dead guards. They needed a head start to outrun him.
However, that would require overrid
ing the pre-programmed departure, which would transmit an electronic signal. Traffic Control would investigate, find the bodies, and Lamis-Odg would be chasing their tail regardless of what he did.
So would Cy-Ops. When Carter learned he’d deviated from the mission, he’d dispatch another cyberoperative to bring him in.
Fuck, if this assignment wasn’t getting interesting.
* * * *
“Prepare for launch in ten, nine, eight…” The computer counted down the seconds, and then the shuttle blasted off, pressing Mariska into her seat.
She wished she could blame the nausea on the sudden acceleration, but her stomach had begun to churn long before takeoff. Concentration had eluded her. Her mantilla had suffered for it—the lace she’d tatted had to be ripped out.
When the force against her body eased, she set aside her sewing. The last time she’d traveled, she had been five years old and hadn’t watched the approach. She’d been cloistered in the women’s section since then and hadn’t explored much of the station.
She’d heard it was huge. A giant city.
Mariska ran to the window, expecting to see a floating, sparkling metropolis.
The station was illuminated, but it appeared more fortified than citified, its shape hulking and menacing. An armada of warcraft hovered in stasis docks outside.
As a small child, she’d overheard her siblings’ mothers telling them they were going to live on a city in the sky, so she’d assumed that was what it was.
Clearly it was a military base.
This changes nothing. She’d always known her father was a general.
She watched her home for the past twenty years grow smaller and smaller as the shuttle zipped through outer space. When it was nothing but a spot of light in the distance, she turned away. Engines hummed beneath her feet, which somehow seemed disconnected from her body. A fine tremor ran through her limbs. Anxiety dampened her nape and her temples.