by Elsa Jade
Pausing for a moment, he stared down at what might’ve been for him. No doubt a Theta could do well in such a teaming morass of intrigue and careless cruelty.
He turned away to follow Nell.
She glanced back at him, those clouded eyes disguising her thoughts, but he was once again sure she saw deeper into him than anyone else ever had.
Leaving the party behind, they followed the upper balcony to a maintenance corridor that led toward the outer hull. Since the huge landing bay had been commandeered for the gathering, all ships had been haphazardly docked in groups or left to drift in orbit. Through the viewport, the scattered armada looked like the aftermath of the battle they’d come to memorialize. No wonder Nell was confident they could take a ship with no one noticing in time to stop them.
She unlocked a cabinet and unpacked the two e-suits concealed within, plus two supply packs. They suited up quickly, and though he didn’t remember ever having done so, his hands moved easily on the unfamiliar contours and controls. All part of his programming.
And yet somehow he and that first, forgotten matrix of his had failed at whatever their mission had been.
He concealed the sudden tremor in his fingers by rechecking the seals on the suit. Nell handed him the booster harness that would take them across the open space to the nearest ships.
“I’ve never done this before,” he admitted. “That I remember.”
“Me either.”
They affixed their helmets and flicked the visors into place, then stared at each other as the suits equalized. His feet felt frozen to the decking, his boots too heavy and strangely large, sized for the Tartaulans’ longer toes.
“Last chance,” he murmured. “We could stay here, playing the empress’s games and probably winning. There’d be risks, of course, but nothing compared to confronting the consortium.”
Though the heavy, protective layers of their e-suits separated them, her voice was a close whisper through the comm in his ear. “Stay.” The word hissed a little, drained of the warmth of her voice. “If that’s what you want. I won’t kidnap you again. The empress won’t try to kill you more than once a year. Probably. And you’ve survived worse than her anyway.”
He searched her cloudy gaze. “But you are determined to go.”
Even with the motion of her nod swallowed up by the e-suit, the determination was clear. “On Earth, we were told the Wild West was a place of freedom. I never got that. But I’ve finally had a taste of it, swallowed it down with the nanites in your kiss. And I won’t give it back now.” The quirk of her smile was little more than a wavery flaw in the transparent pane of her visor. “I guess I am a greedy girl. I’ve lived with just scraps of the strength and surety of a shroud. Now I want it all. And I’ll fight the consortium to get it.”
Despite the thermoregulation of the suit, his blood rushed hot with the conviction of her words—and the rest of his body burned ice-cold with fear at what they would face.
“Let’s go get your ship.”
While they waited to cycle out the airlock, he struggled to bring his own systems into standard operating parameters. But the “strength and surety of a shroud” eluded him. She was dangling the solace of something he desperately wanted right in front of his nose, just as he’d done to her back in that dusty saloon. But only to get what she wanted in return.
Back then, he’d told himself that the laudanum and diamonds were all that she’d asked for, and if she didn’t want more, that was her problem, not his. But now, he knew what he wanted from her, and it wasn’t just some random Earther treasure. But what she had was locked up tighter than Jedediah James’s vault, worth far more to him than the thousands of acres of pristine, star-studded sanctuary stolen for his matrix brothers in the heart of Big Sky Country.
He wanted the unlikely, symmetrical, cardioid curve that the Intergalactic Dating Agency teased as part of their logo. He wanted her heart.
Then the airlock doors opened and ejected them into space.
His head swirled with vertigo. And with the realization that this probably wasn’t the first time he’d stepped into the darkness, protected only by a thin layer of technology and hubris. But the experience had been wiped away when he’d been blanked and rebooted.
Making his own way on primitive Earth when he’d believed himself to be an advanced cybernetic marvel had been hard enough. If he’d known that he’d been a failed reject, refurbished and sold secondhand…
Whatever his first mission had been, he’d failed so miserably that his makers hadn’t deigned to retrieve him. And yet now he, one of their castoffs, believed he could confront them and emerge victorious?
Thetas were known to be devious and arrogant, but this was delusional, even for a fringe shroud.
Despite the bulk of the royal barge serving as a visual anchor point, his stomach churned as the whole universe seemed to spin around him. The infinite black was a void threatening to suck him down, forever. His breath in his own ears was a ragged sawing, only one inhalation away from a sob.
“Troy?”
A hand closed around his forearm, halting his aimless spin. The reflected light of the barge and the other gathered ships gleamed through her visor illuminating Nell’s face. And in his narrowed focus, she was like the only star in his sky.
But she only wanted a shroud’s power.
“Let’s go,” he said harshly, although she hadn’t been the one holding them up.
She was holding him up…
He gritted his teeth. He was a Theta, dammit, plus he was floating in space. He didn’t need anyone holding him up.
Not responding to his surly tone, she flicked her boosters, dragging them both through the empty space between the barge and the closest ships in orbit. “As much as I wanted to take one of the battleships, I didn’t want to draw too much attention to us,” she told him. “Last night, one of the empress’s courtiers lost his personal cruiser in a game of chance. He contested the loss with his opponent—apparently there was some cheating—so he hasn’t transferred ownership yet. If that cruiser disappears…”
Troy nodded, bonking his chin in the confines of the helmet. “They’ll argue among themselves which of them stole the ship.” He gave her a wry glance. “You’re good at this. No wonder you survived in this alien future.”
She gave them another boost, bending them toward the outer edge of the parked vehicles. “Not so different from my Earther past, I guess.”
If they couldn’t overcome their past, then he was doomed to fail again.
They eased alongside a small but sleek cruiser, exactly the sort of thing a royal courtier might’ve owned—and carelessly lost. Nell released him and floated to the control panel at the hatch.
“How did you get the access codes?”
“Called in a few favors that I’ve been saving for a while now.” She made a soft sound of satisfaction as the hatch parted silently. “I knew I’d need them one day. This is that day.” She spun herself into the airlock. “After this, I won’t need favors. I’ll be able to go my own way.”
“Strength and surety,” he murmured.
Maybe she didn’t hear him over the heavy clang of metal as the air pressurized around them.
The cruiser wasn’t much larger than the shuttle Nell had rented to retrieve him from Earth, although the interior was better appointed, reflecting—he hoped—superior range and power. They hastened to the cockpit, where the controls were customized for Tartaulan physiology, close enough to the Earther proportions he’d adopted to be more comfortable than the generic shuttle. She entered another set of command codes, and the controls flickered to life.
“Are you sure you need me?” he murmured.
She slanted a glance at him but again didn’t respond. She was more like a shroud than he was, only responding to input that mattered. And he clearly didn’t, not anymore.
His morbid gloom annoyed him, and he focused on the panel in front of him. “This ship was a good choice. There’s even an enhance
d defensive package with upgraded shields and weapons.”
“Nothing compared to the consortium.”
“True. But at least we won’t be hijacked by pirates on the way to our war.”
“That would be embarrassing,” she agreed. Her touch—strong and sure—on the controls faltered. “Troy,” she said again. Except this time she wasn’t questioning his hesitation but her own.
“I showed you on the shuttle how to plot a course and secure the best jump spots. This isn’t any different.”
“It’s very different,” she muttered. But she let out a harsh breath and set their points.
He was about to suggest a more efficient route when she corrected the path. He nodded, more to himself than to her since she seemed perfectly capable. Pride flared in him, brighter than the control panel lights. He hadn’t given her much, just a scattering of nanites, and she’d thrived.
Maybe they had a chance against the consortium after all.
Leaving the immediate vicinity of the royal barge was the first step, but next they needed the location of their target. He pulled the nav panel toward him. “Back on Earth, my matrix was hunted by scavengers who’d learned about the existence of unkeyed shrouds. My brothers defeated the scavengers and remanded them to galactic authorities…after stripping them of useful tech and info. I was able to review some of that data myself, and in the time since, I’ve correlated that against my other research. The whereabouts of the consortium base isn’t common knowledge, of course, but they do need to make themselves available to potential clients. With the location of one of their sales outposts, since orders would have to be relayed to production, I’d be able to work our way back to central programming.”
“I heard the rumor about those scavengers,” she said. “And when I realized it was Earth, my homeworld, I knew it must be you. The one who…changed me. That’s when I decided to go after you myself. I downloaded the records of the old emperor’s communication with the consortium from back in the day. Although now we know he never bought a matrix because of the expense.” She shrugged. “But maybe there’s data you can extrapolate.”
“Send it to my board. Let’s see what we can find.”
Side by side, as they sped across the galaxy, they hunted down the place where he could escape what he’d been made and she would claim what she wanted to become.
He didn’t know how long they worked—time had little meeting as they jumped away from their past—but he finally called a break.
“We might be killer robots, but we still have organic needs.”
She flicked a wary glance at him. “Meaning…”
“Pie,” he said. “Maybe a nap and then coffee. Why? What did you think I meant?”
“Definitely coffee.” She levered herself out of her seat and stomped off toward the center of the cruiser.
Rising, he stretched. The tension in his muscles told him he wasn’t completely recovered from the suppression of his nanites, first by his Alpha matrix brother, then by Nell’s specially tuned blaster, then by the stasis cuffs in the barge brig. But when he queried his deeper internals, all signs indicated he was on the mend. With a bit more rest, he’d be back at full strength.
Whatever that meant for a secondhand shroud.
As quickly as it surfaced, he rejected the cynicism. Whatever he was, it was not what the consortium would be expecting.
He stretched again, an isometric tension that redlined all the synthetics and left his organics twinging a warning. Then he straightened and shook himself back into alignment with a grunt. All his parameters centered, waiting for whatever came next.
He stalked after Nell.
She’d prioritized power to their speed and shielding, leaving the artificial gravity and lighting at lower levels. His innards felt strangely adrift, his blood circulating too quickly through his veins as each bounding step bore him quickly toward her.
Or maybe he just needed to be near her again.
She was in the open central compartment of the cruiser that served as a galley and gathering place. A bank of kitchen utilities ranged along one wall, and a sunken seating pit in the middle held deep cushions surrounding a central comm and data station. Studying the array of consciousness-altering substances available from the commissary dispenser, he could imagine exactly what this cruiser had been used for. But since the hapless Tartaulan playboy had enhanced the ship’s engines along with its drugs, Troy wasn’t going to judge him too harshly, except for his apparent failure to cheat his way into keeping his ship.
Nell was rifling through the contents of their supply bags, her movements strangely jerky. “Just wanted to make sure I got everything I paid for,” she grumbled. “Some of my suppliers are not as reliable as I might hope.”
“A problem everywhere in the universe,” he agreed as he sauntered around the rim of the seating area. “I do think we need to take a break though. I had some downtime in the brig, but you’ve been on task ever since you took me.”
She gave her head a hard shake, unraveling the last of the elaborate hairstyle she’d concocted for the party. The coiffure had been hopelessly smashed by the e-suit helmet anyway. “Longer than that.”
“Since the emperor’s shock troops took you off Earth,” he guessed.
“Longer,” she murmured. “Sometimes I think I’ve been running since…since my mother left the farm.” Biting her lip, she scooped the items of the packs toward her, bundling it all away again.
He gazed at her, an unexpected understanding weighing down the drift of his heart. No wonder she wanted a shroud’s lethal programming to finally take control of a universe more careless than a cattle stampede or a heartless child empress. How could he explain to her that being a shroud hadn’t protected him either?
He’d never had a mother, just a vat and a creche he couldn’t remember. But leaving his brothers behind in the crumpled wreck of their downed transport had torn a piece out of him deeper than any implants, even though he’d been forced by his programming to always be the outsider.
He went to the galley dispenser and programmed them a meal and restorative drink.
She wrinkled her nose when he returned to the seating area and pushed two of the containers in front of her. “Half the compounds in this cruiser’s stocks are useless since I can’t get intoxicated anymore.”
“We need to recharge,” he reminded her. “And these are the most accessible chemical configurations for your nanites.” He paused. “Also, the most tasty.”
With a soundless sigh, she dragged the beverage cube into her lap and leaned back, pulling her feet under her. She curled her hands around the edges of the cube, staring down.
When she’d removed the e-suit, she’d kicked off her boots too and a layer of the fancy petticoats, leaving her in only a simple smoke-colored chemise. In the low light, her cloudy eyes were darker than usual, and he found himself wanting to lean closer, as if he could see what she was thinking.
“I didn’t think I’d ever go back,” she murmured.
He tilted his head. “To being intoxicated?”
She huffed a laugh under her breath. “That too. Back to Earth. I just figured I’d never see my home again.” She took a drink from the beverage cube then glanced at it, her eyebrows rising. “This is tasty.”
“It’s hot cocoa.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Really? It’s an Earther delicacy, although it’s listed in the commissary here as an aphrodisiac.”
She glanced away. “Delicacies and aphrodisiacs weren’t anything I had on Earth.”
He restrained a wince at his thoughtlessness. Of course a farm child turned addicted prostitute hadn’t lounged about sipping hot cocoa. “It won’t get you drunk, but the simple sugars go straight to your nanites. We want to be as strong and sure as we can be before we face the consortium.”
She drank a third time and slumped back, spinning the cube idly between her palms. “I don’t feel strong or sure,” she confessed. “And I’d do almost
anything to feel drunk for just a few minutes, to forget…all this.”
Since her random gesture encompassed him too, he couldn’t help but frown. “Including me?”
For a moment he almost swore that the clouds across her corneas parted, then she shrugged. “I was so mad at you for doing this to me. But… You’re also going to give me everything I said I wanted—freedom, freedom from other people’s control, freedom from my own feelings…” She lifted her chin, the clouds rolled across her eyes again. “I guess there’s only one way left that I can feel drunk.”
Setting aside her drink, she crawled across the cushions toward him.
Chapter 12
This was a bad idea, Nell knew. But then, they’d stolen a spaceship to wage a private battle against a clandestine cyborg-farming war machine.
Much like space-time, bad ideas were relative.
The power that spiraled through her veins was not the heat or dark sweetness of the hot cocoa breaking down into energy, but something even more visceral. And it wasn’t just her nanites that reverberated in anticipation. Every part of her thrilled as she closed the distance between her and Troy.
In the low light, the silvery lightning in his green eyes flickered, and the faint pattern of nanite pathways pulsed under his skin like a chart of wayward stars. A beacon in the darkness.
With a breath remaining between them, she paused. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t move closer either.
“No coercion,” she murmured. “No stasis cuffs. No swapping of nanites. No manipulation of your programming or my past. No need to do this at all… Except it’s what we want.”
He tilted his head just the barest degree, bringing his mouth into alignment with hers. “And you want this? You want me?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“I thought you were sacrificing emotion for strength and surety.”
She curled her lips inward. “I will. I am. I guess… That’s why I want this one more time.”