Blood Siren

by Michael Formichelli

  “I’m going into standby mode, Prospero. Wake me if something important happens.”

  I shall. Rest well, Praetor Graves.

  Chapter Four

  Remus City, Sol-III

  40:8:38 CST (J2400:2918)

  The hotel smelled like toasted almonds and industrial cleansers. It made Nero’s nose itch. He was uncomfortable enough standing in the twentieth century Solan revivalist style hallway. Dark-brown crown molding framed corrugated beige wallpaper, and miniature-crystal chandeliers hung evenly-spaced from the ceiling. Every two meters a faux-wooden door sat within a ten-centimeter-deep niche with a doorjamb biting into the gaudy green, pink, and tan paisley carpeting. The pattern was broken only by the double doors of the hotel’s passenger lift and the picture windows at either end of the hall.

  Why a Relaen like Agent Khepria chose a place like this to stay was beyond Nero. The light levels in the hallway were too intense for her species’ liking, though implants in her eyes could tint them enough to compensate for that. Her file indicated that she grew up on a Relaen world ship, a completely artificial environment without gravity. Nero had been to one, once. The thousands of kilometers of dimly lit, metal corridors connecting equally dark habitat pods had made him feel like he was floating around a planet-sized construction toy. The Relaen belief that they exiled themselves to live in space for destroying their home world’s environment led the world-ship designers to exclude even the hint of anything natural. Such a primitive and human-specific environment as the revivalist hotel provided just didn’t seem right for a Relaen.

  Prospero sent a signal to the doorbell after Nero located Agent Khepria’s room.

  Maybe she just has a taste for old Earth artifacts or period architecture?

  “You don’t think that’s a bit odd for a species that lives entirely in space?” Nero said.

  I think every independent, sentient being is an individual.

  “Funny thing to say since you’re a model type and not unique or independent,” Nero said.

  The longer we are bonded the more unique we Sentient Cerebral Computers become. Your remark is speciesist and offensive. Just because SCC’s don’t have a body—

  The door clicked and swung inward. Sorina Khepria stood in a fuzzy pink hotel robe with a sharply plunging neckline. Her skin was flushed and glistened with moisture. Her hair hung unbraided in straggly wet locks about her shoulders. Amber pupils contracted, and tall ears twitched twice above her head as she registered who it was darkening her doorway.

  “Praetor Graves, I didn’t expect you.” Her long fingers checked the knot in the robe’s bushy belt.

  “Sorry I’m unannounced. I should’ve messaged ahead.” Nero felt a bit awkward having caught Agent Khepria fresh out of the shower. He was too busy planning out how he was going to ask her to join him on the way over to observe etiquette.

  “That’s all right. I wasn’t doing anything important. Come in,” Agent Khepria turned and led the way into the room’s interior.

  The lights were dimmed to near total darkness. Prospero activated Nero’s retinal enhancements to compensate and the room brightened enough to see comfortably. Like the hallway, the room was done in a revivalist style. Varnished faux-wood dressers supported a holographic projector disguised as a twentieth century cathode-ray tube one-way telecommunicator. An ancient-style four-poster bed and night stand also cluttered the space between the four-meter long walls. An old rotor-and-gear style two-way audio communicator served to disguise the room’s wireless Cyberweb uplink router. Prospero accessed it, and a smile spread across Nero’s face when his SCC found Khepria’s encryption software and firewalls in place.

  She picked up a towel from off of the bed’s blue-and-gray comforter and started wringing the water from her hair.

  “Make yourself comfortable. I think there is a mini bar under the television.”

  Nero glanced around the room.

  It’s the cathode ray device. Prospero flashed the machine in Nero’s vision.

  “I’ll pass, thanks. This is a business call.” He assumed a stance that put his arms behind his back with his feet shoulder-width apart.

  “I didn’t think you wanted to share a drink. Abyssians aren’t known for their social skills. What is the issue? Something come up with the Keltan job?”

  “In a way, something has. Baron Keltan asked me to join him on his trip to Kosfanter, and Daedalus agreed.”

  Agent Khepria paused. “Oh. That is odd.”

  Nero nodded. “Um, I was wondering if you might want to join me.”

  Khepria finished wringing her long locks and dropped the towel on the floor. She cast a glance over her shoulder in his direction. The light caught her eyes, making them seem to glow bright amber. “You need a cyber expert for a travel along?”

  “Prospero can handle most of it, but we’re still not sure what we’re up against. Your expertise would be appreciated,” he paused. “And your company.”

  Interesting.

  A smile tugged at the corner of Agent Khepria’s mouth. “I see. I assume you already checked my duty roster.”

  “On the way over. You’re cleared for the mission if you want it. It’ll take nearly a hundred days to reach Kosfanter. The trip over will probably be quiet once we clear Sol. The Barons will spend most of it in the ship’s local Cyberweb to lapse the time. They’ll be open to hacks and viruses then. Your firewalls are the best.” He spoke somewhat more sheepishly than he wanted to.

  Khepria’s ears twitched. She turned and opened the antique dresser. “I wasn’t expecting to head back to headquarters so soon. What do we do once we get there?”

  “So far, my mission parameters only cover the trip,” he responded.

  Removing several articles of clothing from the drawer, Khepria fiddled with her belt and the robe fell away from her willowy shoulders. Nero’s eyes ran down the deep, freckle-covered furrow dividing her spine from her head to the curves of her buttocks before he realized what he was doing and quickly turned his head.

  Embarrassed? Are you joking, Nero? You’ve seen like parts before, what’s the big deal now?

  “Shush,” Nero whispered. In response, Prospero activated Nero’s extra-somatic senses, amplifying his own body’s electromagnetic field out several meters. The effect gave him the ability to detect objects by the distortions they created in it. An image generated by Prospero’s interpretation of those field distortions formed in Nero’s mind. Agent Khepria figured prominently.

  Nero blushed.

  “What do you mean by, ‘so far’?” she asked. Balancing perfectly on one foot, she used the dexterous toes of the other to pull a thong up her leg, then allowed her hands to do the rest.

  Nero’s blush deepened, joined by an unsettled feeling in his gut and Prospero’s snickering in his mind’s ears. “Ah, Daedalus unveiled this part of the mission in a very strange way. There may be more parts yet to be discovered—”

  You could say that. Prospero intensified the image of Khepria in Nero’s mind.

  “—Ah, when we arrive,” Nero finished, then thought furiously at Prospero.

  Finally, proper communication! To answer your question, no, Nero. Technically, I am not really interested in such basic bio-cyborg relations, however, your mind is a treasure trove of such imagery. I wonder if Daedalus is aware that his design gives rise to such a propensity.

  “Oh, my. Are you all right?” Khepria’s voice brought his attention back to her. She had donned the black jumper of her uniform while he was busy chastising Prospero.

  “Ah, yes. Sorry, Prospero’s gotten a bit out of line.” He relaxed a bit now that Agent Khepria was at least partially in uniform. It wasn’t that he really minded her former state of undress, but it wasn’t appropriate for him to see a fellow agent that way while on duty.

  Then you should’ve waited in the hallway.

  He sighed.

  “Are you blushing?” Her face was positively mischievous.

  Nero licked his lips, re
fusing to meet her eyes. “So, do you think you’re interested?”

  Priceless.

  “In the mission,” he added quickly.

  Her smile broadened. “Yes, I think I am. When do we depart?”

  “Meet me at my ship at oh-eight-hundred. The baron is scheduled to leave by oh-nine hundred but I doubt he’ll be on time. He had a wild night last night,” he said.

  “See you there, Nero.”

  It took only minutes for the ship to break the stratosphere and enter the eternal night of the void. Jets fired in a rapid sequence of blue flares, orienting the vessel’s nose towards a point so far away it would take a powerful telescope to see it. Once the alignment was completed, the ship’s computer fired the main engines again at full power with the Higgs-Boson Reducer active. The ship shot forward trailing a tail of plasma three times its length at twenty gravities of acceleration, though those within the craft only felt a fraction of that. The reducer would remain active until all acceleration phases were complete and not reactivate again until they were on approach to the Keynesian Fortune, Cylus’ FTL ship waiting thirty astronomical units away.

  Their trajectory brought them alongside the path of the bird-like shuttle containing Cylus and the others. Nero’s ship, the CSS Akanda, was nearly ten times her size. It had a hundred-meter long dagger-like fuselage with a flat bottom and twin set of counter rotating pylons with a diameter three times that of the ship’s length. They could be locked into place and serve as wings within an atmosphere when needed, and at the end of each was a curved pod containing crew habitat modules for things best done in simulated gravity like eating and exercise. The rest of the ship was designed around strictly utilitarian functions, like the helm, engines, and weapons systems.

  Agent Sorina Khepria floated comfortably in the cockpit with her knees drawn half way up to her chin and her hands resting one atop the other on her chest. The dark gray cockpit walls were shaped like the inside of an egg, its surface interrupted at regular intervals by narrow polymer windows three-hundred-sixty degrees around the pilot’s chair. The chair itself was designed for both pilot and copilot to use at the same time, and looked like two pitted avocado halves placed back-to-back with a pole running between them.

  Khepria’s finger-like toes held onto the edge of the chair in a loose grip. The faux leather of her foot gloves creaked as she used micro movements to adjust her position. With her almond-shaped eyes closed she looked like she was napping quietly on an invisible couch within the cockpit.

  Nero floated up to the cockpit and arrested his momentum by grabbing the handles on either side of the entrance. He was going to speak until he noted Agent Khepria’s eyes.

  She’s not sleeping. I am detecting very heavy node use in the Akanda’s central computer.

  He looked closer and noticed the points of Khepria’s ears twitching. “I can see that.”

  One of her ears swiveled towards him. “You can see what?”

  “That you’re awake. Prospero says you’ve got some programs in use on the ship’s node.”

  He pulled himself into the cockpit and drifted beneath Khepria to assume the other seat. He spun around and strapped himself in. His perspective shifted so that it now seemed that Khepria was floating face down beneath him.

  Glowing holographic controls appeared in his vision over the blank spaces between the cockpit windows. They were representations of computer commands channeled to his mind so he could control the ship. Confederate vessels had no physical control panels, they required an individual to have a cybernetic uplink and the proper command codes to operate. An enemy boarding a Confederate ship would find only smooth paneling with no obvious means to operate the vessel.

  A window appeared in Nero’s vision framing the image of Baron Keltan’s gray, long-nosed shuttle. It’s numeric designation, projected by the ship’s Identification Friend or Foe, or IFF device, appeared in the window’s margin.

  “Everything looks good with the baron’s ship,” Nero said.

  “So far there is only normal traffic in the area,” Sorina stated in a dreamy voice from below him.

  “Prospero, keep the Akanda scanning.”

  I already am. I am not new off the assembly line, you know.

  Nero snorted.

  “Are you going to ride this trip out or fast forward it in cyberspace?” Khepria asked.

  He didn’t relish the idea of spending the next thirty days listening to the ship hum. Although jumping between stars was relatively quick thanks to advanced faster-than-light drives, the super-dense matter known as neutronium required to produce the energy for those jumps caused each Confederate FTL vessel to have a mass nearly equal to that of a terrestrial planet. As such, FTL ships could not approach a star system too closely. To do so would risk disrupting planetary orbits or a planetary collision. By law all FTL ships were required to wait at the fringes of star systems, usually thirty to fifty astronomical units away from a system’s center. Getting to an FTL ship from an inhabited planet, and vice-versa, comprised most of the time spent on a typical space voyage.

  Modern technology could transport a human being from a planet to an FTL ship at a rate of about one astronomical unit per day. In order to make the time go by quicker, it was common practice for passengers to enter a virtual world within the ship’s computer with an altered rate of time perception. In this case, a few days in the virtual world would be thirty days in the real one as his ship brought them out beyond the solar system where the Keynesian Fortune was waiting. This would all be accomplished via their cybernetic implants, which would translate the signals from the ship’s computer into commands and perceptions within their brains.

  I shall wake you if anything goes amiss, Prospero said.

  “I might go ahead and spend it in the ship’s node. What are you intending? I know you Relaen can hibernate without the assistance of technology,” Nero said.

  Khepria’s ears twitched in a peculiar pattern. She blinked her eyes open. “We can, but we usually don’t do it unless a dire situation arises. My people engineered the ability into our genome for use when a ship’s life support fails. I was thinking of spending the time in cyberspace. I have a few files that need going over.”

  “Alright then.” Nero moved his hand through a holo-control activating the Akanda’s stealth system. The hull responded on a molecular level in a fashion very similar to his air-car. A moment later they were virtually undetectable to the outside galaxy.

  “See you in cyberspace.” Khepria climbed fully into the seat below him and strapped herself in. He heard her suspension system activate.

  “Plug me in,” he told Prospero.

  A sensation akin to ice spines clawing their way through his veins spread from the micro-syringes in the chair’s harness. Nero blinked several times, each one slower than the last. Microscopic injectors in their restraints pumped nanomachines and nutrients into their bodies to eliminate wastes and ensure they stayed alive during the trip. There would be no mess made while they slept away the time.

  The darkness flowed around him. Six glowing panes of translucent green light appeared in a semi-circle. He glanced down at himself to ensure his digital self, his d-persona, had uploaded properly to the Akanda’s node. Many beings chose to be something else in the electron world of the Cyberweb, but he had never shown such a predilection. He appeared exactly as he did in the real world, scars and all.

  “Upload successful. All links to the Akanda’s systems fully functional. Would you like to query Agent Khepria to share your perceptual reality?” The center pane pulsed in time with Prospero’s voice.

  “Sure,” he responded. Prospero’s pleasant demeanor had him on guard.

  “She has accepted. Uplinking.”

  The glowing panes faded and Nero felt the darkness around him shift as though he were submerged in a river. The environment around him brightened until he was standing in the center of an oval room with concave black marble floors and a gently curving white ceiling. Panoramic wind
ows along the conjunction of the curving floor and ceiling gave him the feeling of standing in the mouth of a colossal clam. Beyond them an infinite dark gray sea undulated beneath a maroon sky. The room was well lit, though no obvious light sources were present.

  He was puzzled at that last detail before he remembered that the Relaen preference for dim lighting was a result of their sensitivity to light. They saw an area as bright when a human would perceive it as nearly dark. Here in cyberspace, each person’s perception of the world was automatically customized by their sub-conscious. What Nero perceived as a well lit room, Khepria did as well, but without the discomfort she would have had in the physical world.

  The chamber’s long axis was ten meters from end to end, and eight and a half meters along its shorter one. There were no decorations on the walls. The sparse furniture included only a sofa, a desk, and a mock audio system in the form of three globes with scrolling letters displaying the songs that Agent Khepria had uploaded into the node from her vertebral computer implant.

  Khepria sat at the desk in a form-fitting chair that held itself in place without any visible means of support. Her d-persona had her basic physical features, but she had quicksilver skin and her uniform looked like it was painted on instead of worn. Her eyes were the same pointed amber ovals as they were in the physical world.

  “Welcome to my room. Can I get you anything?” Khepria dispelled a set of glowing red numbers hovering above the desk with a wave of her hand.

  “I don’t feel the need to engage in pseudo-physical activities while in cyberspace like some beings do,” he said.

  Agent Khepria smiled. “I was just being polite.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Thank you for accepting my uplink request. Where are we?” Nero took another look around their surroundings. “It’s a unique setting.”

  “The outside is a planet I was on once when I was a girl. This room is just something I threw together on a whim.”

  “It’s nice. Spartan, yet comfortable. I like it.”