She certainly wouldn’t have.
Bel Lissa made another announcement. “Bel Sharra has given us our approach vector,” she said. “Sending the coords up to you Maya.”
The JUDI had entered the civilian spacelanes by this stage and the in-system flight line for Thermadon Val came up on Maya’s holodisplay. She entered the information into the ship’s helm, and after a moment, the JUDI assumed its assigned course. From there on out, absent any emergencies, the merchanter would be guided down to Bel Sharra Memorial Spaceport by auto pilot.
Zara gave her a little salute at this, and Maya returned it, grinning. Then she allowed herself the luxury of leaning back in her seat and relaxing enough to really enjoy her triumph.
They touched down an hour later and as soon as the docking clamps had closed around the vessel, everyone gathered up their kit-bags and walked down the cargo ramp.
As they descended, Sarah pulled Maya aside. “I want you to keep your distance from Taur K’aut’sha,” she warned.
“Why?” Maya asked. “She seems all right to me.”
“She is not fit company for you,” Sarah stated, “and she will not be with the JUDI very much longer if I have my way. That is what I spoke with the Captain about when we came aboard.”
“Okay,” Maya responded. “Do you plan to tell me why? I saw those bones on her earring. She’s no greenie, and the JUDI can use a good hand now that we’re off playing secret agent.”
“That is none of your affair,” Sarah said curtly. “Keep your distance from her.”
Maya had never enjoyed being treated like a child, and this entire affair was really starting to irritate her. “You know something, Sarah? I’m getting fekking tired of being told to be a good little girl and just do what I’m ordered, no questions asked. So, if you want me to obey, you’d better tell me what’s going on.”
Sarah’s eyes narrowed in irritation. “Very well, Maya. I shall. Jeena taur K’aut’sha is not what she seems.”
Maya gestured impatiently for Sarah to explain herself. “Why, Sarah?”
Sarah lowered her voice to nearly a whisper. “I have told you about ‘Project Advent’, have I not?”
“Yeah, that Marionite thing,” Maya shrugged. “They wanted to make their Redeemer guy. So what? Is Taur K’aut’sha the Redeemer? Kind of a funny place for him to turn up, don’t you think--and wind up being a ‘her’ on top of it all?”
Sarah glowered at her sarcasm. “Despite your rather sophomoric attempt at humor, you are more or less correct about the nature of the project. When the Sisterhood learned of it, one of the black operations that the Agency engaged in was to infiltrate the Marionite labs. I helped them to accomplish this.’
“And there was another operation that followed it. Its intent was to duplicate the Marionite efforts in order to gain living specimens that would provide us with an idea of their ultimate aims. It was also pursued in the hope of furnishing us with potential operatives who could move among them without suspicion.”
“So, you’re saying that we made our own neomen?” Maya asked.
“Yes,” Sarah replied. “I am. We copied the genetic blueprints for their Adam-16 generation. The A-16’s are one generation behind their so-called Redeemer. The only difference is that the ones that we created were conditioned to be loyal to the Sisterhood, not to the misguided Marionite cause. Not that we are counting on that as our sole insurance; the A-16’s are also chipped.”
“’Chipped?’”
“A-16’s have chips implanted in their brains. If any of them ever betrays us, a simple code, sent by psiever, sets it off, and the device explodes in their cerebral artery. It is an added precaution against a male’s natural tendency to disloyalty.”
“How thoughtful,” Maya replied sardonically. “Sounds like the Agency has it all covered. So what does any of this have to do with Jeena?”
Sarah shook her head in exasperation. “Everything! Jeena is not a woman. She is actually a ‘he’ and he is one of our neomen. An A-16. He would have gone on to work for us as a deep cover operative, had the project not been shelved. Now, do you finally understand?”
Maya shook her head. The notion was preposterous. “No way! That’s no Neo. Jeena is a woman. Neos don’t look like that.” While she was certainly no expert on the subject, she did know that neomen were all big, hairy and ugly. Jeena was as female as she was.
“Adam-16’s do look like ‘that’,” Sarah replied. “Both ours and theirs. Jeena taur K’aut’sha is a male, and the only reason that he is on board this ship is because the Agency couldn’t find any other place for him after he lost his last berthing. As for the Daughters of the Coast, they don’t care one way or the other as long as the profits keep rolling in.”
“Weeellll,” Maya said. “I didn’t see that one coming. Deas dam va!”
“So you will follow my instructions then?”
Maya smiled crookedly. “Of course, Sarah. When have I ever disobeyed you?”
“This is not an occasion for levity!” Sarah snapped. “Jeena taur K’aut’sha is not someone that you will associate with.”
Maya looked back in Taur K’aut’sha’s direction, but by now ‘he’ had disappeared back into the ship. “Fine, Sarah. Whatever.”
She also made a point of projecting nothing but thoughts of docile compliance for the woman to read. Sarah scowled, having done precisely that, and not believing it. But the woman let the matter drop with nothing more than a threatening gleam in her eyes.
CHAPTER 8
Storm, Agleope System, Sagana Elant, United Sisterhood of Suns, 1048.10|22|08:41:67
Shandra n’Aida’s journey to Storm had been indirect by design. Mindful of the danger that the RSE posed, she left Thermadon in disguise aboard a sympathetic merchanter, and travelled first to Calandra, then Flora.
At Flora, she changed identities again and transferred to another ship which took her on to Thenti. At Thenti, she assumed a third identity and boarded a vessel which was bound for the Agleope system.
As far as the captain and her crew knew, she was a researcher for the Orgón par Ricer da Satillit Météorologi etá Climatique, the Planetary Weather and Climate Research Agency.
N’Aida was eminently suited to play the part. Before the Voice had taken over her personality and body, she had held doctorates in Xenoarchology and Planetary Climatology. Although she had been more than ready with all the right answers, no one challenged her credentials however.
Arriving on Storm at last, she was pleased to discover that the Faithful had arranged everything for her in advance. With their help, the previous weather researcher had already ‘disappeared under mysterious circumstances’ and thanks to other friends working in the ORSMC, she had been officially listed as the woman’s replacement.
Already overworked, the local science team welcomed her with open arms. In short order, she was sent out to one of the agency’s remote monitoring stations to continue with her predecessor’s work. After this, the planet itself became her ally.
Even on the mildest of days, winds ranging from 102 kph to 402 kph, or even higher, scoured the landscape. The omnipresent dust kicked up by all of this chaos also rendered visibility down to zero, and a glimpse of the planet’s sun was such a rare thing that the natives actually marked it on their calendars.
These extremely harsh conditions challenged the very limits of Sisterhood technology. The average crawler was unable to remain in service for very long before being completely demolished, and hover vehicles were simply out of the question. The Stormite solution to this were ground vehicles that resembled ancient tanks from old Gaia. They were low squat things, with wide treads, and five times heavier than their ancient counterparts.
The crawler that the ORSMC had lent to N’Aida was one of these behemoths. It was fully automated and its main job was to patrol the network of monitoring sensors that had been spread out across the blasted landscape. When it encountered a unit in need of repair, it disgorged the appropriate bots to
handle the work, and then trundled on through the tempest to the next point in the grid. The only time that it ever stopped was at the research stations themselves to let off passengers like herself.
Hours later, and halfway to her assigned post, N’Aida checked her coordinates. Satisfied, she sent a manual override to the crawler, ordering it to halt. Then she donned an emergency survival suit, popped open the tiny canopy and clambered down the side. Reaching the rubble strewn ground, she sent another command to the machines artificial brain, and it started up again, leaving her alone in the whirling dust.
She had no illusions about her exit remaining a secret. The moment she had stopped the crawler, the Central Research Station had received the alert. The women there also knew that she had gotten out, but it would take any rescuers hours to reach her last known position. By that point, she would be impossible to find. Which was exactly what she had planned.
Despite the blinding grit, she still managed to locate the marker light for the dig site. It wasn’t far from where the crawler had stopped and although it was more battered than her borrowed memories recalled, it was still functional.
The safety line that led up to the site itself was also intact and staggering under the remorseless blasts of the wind, she made her way over to it and clipped on. Violent gusts still tried to knock her off her feet and misdirect her like invisible demons, but she was not prevented from reaching her goal.
This was a ragged hole in the ground, at the foot of the marker. She dropped down into it, and found herself in a familiar environment; a long smooth tunnel that trailed off into the darkness. Grinning to herself in the gloom, Shandra n’Aida started down the passage with confident steps.
She knew exactly where she was going, and what her purpose was once she got there. She was returning to where she had been reborn.
There she would wait, and receive the pilgrims that were sure to come looking for her. Although they didn’t know it, most of them would die in the process, but one of them--a very special, singular individual--would also enjoy a rebirth. This person would become the third vessel for the Voice.
After that, anything and everything would become possible.
Apartment of Sarah n’Jan, 409th Floor, The Otrera, Agamede District, Thermadon Val, Thermadon, Myrene System, Thalestris Elant, United Sisterhood of Suns, 1048.10|22|09.58.69
Once they had finished with their drinks at ‘Jackie’s’, everyone went their separate ways. Bel Lissa and Zara retired to a pair of rooms that they had booked for themselves at a downtown hotel, and Sarah and Maya returned to her apartment at the Otrera.
The alcohol had left Maya feeling tipsy, and she was tired after the long transit. As soon as she was lying in her bed though, she found herself thinking about Sarah’s prohibition against fraternizing with Jeena taur K’aut’sha and her surprising revelation about his true nature.
In her opinion, the injunction was patently absurd. What possible harm could there be in just getting to know him, she wondered. Taur K’aut’sha was just a neoman, albeit a highly modified one. And didn’t everyone, even Sarah, know that males were inferior to women on every level?
Sarah was just being overprotective, and silly, she decided. In the morning, she was going to go straight back to the Port and take a better look at her new crewmate to see for herself what was so ‘dangerous’ about him. Motherthought and Sarah could both be damned.
With this settled, she finally let herself drift off. For once, the sleep which followed was dreamless, and when she awoke, she found that Sarah was still in bed, asleep. Taking advantage of her good fortune, she dressed herself quickly, and left a note with Aria to explain her absence.
‘Gone out for breakfast’, it said. ‘Be back later—Maya.’
It was even halfway true. She hadn’t relished the idea of eating at the apartment, and the Port restaurants offered fine breakfasts.
She also had an explanation ready for her visit to the JUDI. Sarah had mentioned the need for her to study more astrographic charts, and to practice her transits with the simulator. There wasn’t a better place to do that than on the merchanter’s bridge.
And if she just happened to ‘run into’ Taur K’aut’sha in the process, it simply couldn’t be helped. The JUDI was, after all, a very small ship.
When she arrived on her hoverbike at the port, she found the merchanter where it had been docked the night before, fully secured in its launching cradle with a screen of blast plates up and in place. Stepping inside the enclosure, she immediately encountered Zara, who was on a ladder servicing the hydraulics of the forward landing gear. The woman liked to do her major maintenance work when the ship was downside. It removed the requirement for cumbersome Zero-G suits, and made the work easier, and faster.
“Yah-tay, Maya, you come by to help us poor sailors out?” the woman grinned, “Or just trying to remember what real work looks like?”
“A bit of both,” she answered with a dry smile of her own. “Thought I’d study up on some astrographic charts and then run a ‘sim or two. Won’t get much of a chance for that once Sarah figures out that she didn’t give me any busywork.
Zara bobbed her head in sympathy. “Ay-yah. She’s got you working harder than a one-legged woman in an arsh-kicking contest. Well, the kaafra’s fresh and waiting for you in the galley.”
Maya smiled again, and headed up the cargo ramp. She could smell the promised kaafra from there, and even though the JUDI’s autochef was light-years behind the unit at Sarah’s apartment, she was looking forwards to what it would serve out, even if it did sometimes confuse chikka eggs with orange juice, or paankaakan with ribberfish.
Zara had tried, many times, to fix this, and had even replaced the unit twice, but the issue was persistent, and although Zara vehemently disagreed with her, Maya believed that the real source of the problem was actually the JUDI’s AI and not the autochef at all.
“Judi” had her own unique bugs, and among them, was a perverse sense of humor. Fortunately, these practical jokes, if that’s what they were, were also harmless and intermittent, and in the bigger picture, only lent more character to an already unique vessel.
Today, she found the autochef (and “Judi” herself) to be in a fairly tractable mood, and the kaafra really tasted like kaafra, just as Zara had advertised. In fact, it was a very good pot, although Maya did detect an odd ‘gamey’ aftertaste that she couldn’t quite place. Not that this was anything to worry over. It was hot, and it was free.
Taking her cup with her, she went to her locker and changed into her jumpsuit before heading for the bridge. By way of the Engine Room.
As she expected, Jeena taur K’aut’sha was there, sitting cross-legged on the decking as he cleaned off a set of plasma rods.
Although the JUDI used gravitronic engines for its main in-system drive, this was augmented by thermal antimatter engines which vented plasma through a series of ducts. These plasma jets added additional thrust during take-off, acted as afterburners when required, and assisted with changes in heading. The rods that the neoman was working on focussed the plasma as it was expelled into space.
Although this was a clean process overall, the rods still tended to gather residue after a while, and then needed maintenance to continue operating at optimal levels. The best way of achieving this was by doing just as Jeena was; removing them from their sockets, and wiping them down with a special cleaning cloth. It wasn’t the most exciting job on a merchanter, but it was necessary, and the kind of thing that an Engineer’s Mate tended to be tasked with.
Taur ‘K’aut’sha was intent on his work, and two of the five rods for the port side engine were lying at his feet, already finished and gleaming like mirrors. Maya leaned against the hatchway and observed him quietly.
Once again, she perceived the ‘difference’ that surrounded his aura, and considered it against what she had been told. It was definitely human, but also subtly different from a woman’s energy. Struggling to put a label to it, she concluded that it
felt denser, heavier, and more compact. There was more beyond that, but it defied any attempt to fully categorize.
Knowing what she did, it was still hard for her to reconcile all this with what her eyes were telling her. For all intents, Jeena taur K’aut’sha still seemed just like any other woman to her.
His body, encased in the JUDI’s blue working jumpsuit, had all the same curves and proportions of a female, and the illusion was only accentuated by a pair of fairly respectable breasts, delicate features and long blond hair which was still tied up into the simple pony tail that he seemed to favor.
She was also forced to ignore a rather odd sensation of discomfort as she observed him. Had she not known any better, and under other circumstances, she might have considered him--as a ‘her’ of course--to be quite attractive.
She was aware of the facts however, and she didn’t find him appealing in the least. Not one nanobit.
Taur K’aut’sha set down the rod he had been working on, and looked up at her, meeting her gaze with his startling silver eyes.
“Hello, Maya,” he said, brushing away a stray lock of hair. “Something I can do for you? Or did Zara send you here to help me out?”
“Nope,” she answered. “I was just dropping in on my way to the bridge. Got some work up there to do.”
A half-smile came to his lips, as if he had known that she had been standing there all along, watching him, and exactly what she had been thinking. He didn’t admit this though, or say anything more. He simply returned his attention to the parts at his feet.
“Well, nice to meet you again,” Maya said. “Later.” To her chagrin, she realized that she had been blushing throughout their entire exchange. These new neomen were clearly troublesome and confusing creatures, she concluded.
Not that this made Sarah right about anything. That was just as impossible as feeling any real physical attraction towards Taur K’aut’sha, and equally as unacceptable.
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