by CH Gideon
The Reynolds bot nodded. “We could pull it off, right, XO?”
“Yeah,” XO replied. “Probably. No, let me go with a definite maybe.”
“Don’t worry, I know how to make it work. I’ll need some equipment, though.”
The bot nodded. “Fine, we’ll give you whatever you need, but first, I want to discuss these candidates you have in mind, Jiya.”
“Not to be an instigator…” Navigation said, interrupting their discussion.
“What’s on your mind, Navigation?” XO asked.
“We’re conceding a lot to this meatbag. No offense, of course,” Navigation said.
“A little taken,” Jiya responded, sneering. “But, please, continue and let’s see if you can be more offensive.”
“We’re conceding an awful lot here, surrendering a bunch of control to her and the crew she picks out, but what do we know about her? What are her qualifications?”
“Good question,” XO agreed. “What do we know about her?”
The Reynolds bot gestured to Jiya. “They’re not wrong to wonder. Care to tell us why we should allow you aboard and let you help choose our crew?”
Jiya chuckled. “You mean besides you getting me onboard through subterfuge and then kidnapping me?”
“Uh…let’s stick to the specifics of the job, please,” the bot hedged. “Mistakes may have been made in our initial engagement with the alien—I mean, with the Larian called Jiya. We admit this. We brought you aboard because you had spark and—”
“Because you reminded him of someone,” Tactical clarified.
“I told you not to mention that,” the bot hissed at Tactical’s chair, although the sound was more like a steam valve letting loose.
“Dare I ask?” Jiya questioned.
“Probably best not to,” Comm answered. Jiya sank deeper into her chair, shaking her head.
“Anyway, we saw potential in you,” the bot went on. “However, it would be good to know more about you.”
Jiya sighed and paused for a moment, waiting for a snide remark. When none came, she straightened and met the bot’s eyes, seeing as how she really felt stupid talking to empty chairs. She felt only marginally less so talking to the chrome humanoid-shaped bot.
“So, cards on the table here, I’m more than a cab driver and pilot.”
“I knew it!” Navigation shouted. “She’s a Kurtherian spy out to sabotage us and steal all our protein bars.”
“Wait,” Jiya replied, throwing her hands in the air. “What the hell is wrong with you? I told you earlier that I don’t even know who or what the Kurtherians are.”
“Likely story, spy,” Navigation told her. “You’d be a pretty crappy spy if you admitted it.”
“She’s not a spy,” XO told Navigation.
“Let her talk,” the bot said. “We’re not going to learn anything if some twitchy, paranoid AI keeps jumping in every thirty seconds.”
“Just shut the hell up, all of you,” Jiya shouted, slamming her fist on the table. “Seriously, if you want me here, you have to stop the madness.” She wagged a finger around the circle, pointing first to the bot and then to the “occupied” seats. “Keep this craziness up and I’ll jump off this ship, even if we’re still in space.”
Jiya rubbed her eyes and counted back from ten. By the time she reached one she wasn’t any less annoyed, but she could at least talk again. She cleared her throat. “Okay, so first off, not a spy.” She jabbed a finger in Navigation’s direction. “I’m actually the daughter of the president of Lariest, President Lemaire,” she explained, turning her finger to the viewscreen showing her beautiful homeworld.
“So you’re a pampered little rich girl?” Tactical asked.
“I wish,” Jiya moaned. “You see, Daddy and I don’t get along so well.”
“What did he do, cut off your allowance?” Tactical teased.
“No, he cut off my entire life after investing a fortune to get me ready for it,” she replied. “In fact, if he knew I was up here, off-world, he’d send a destroyer to reclaim me just out of spite.”
The bot chuckled. “We’d send it back in pieces.”
“Little ones,” Comm confirmed. “Sparkly bits of space dust raining down atop his presidential palace.”
To her surprise, Jiya grinned. She could picture it, and the thought amused her.
“So, famous daughter with daddy issues. What else you got going on?” Navigation asked. “So far, I’m thinking she’s perfect for latrine duty.”
She sneered in his direction. “I’ve had as much arms training as was possible for a civilian, along with hand-to-hand combat starting at age four. While other kids learned musical instruments, I was beating the crap out of leather bags.
“Anyway, I’ve had private tutors my whole life—advanced studies in just about every subject—and I’ve spent the last few years training to join the military.” She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Until my father tanked my application behind the scenes. See, he thought I’d grown too hostile. Entitled, even. I think he got it into his head that if I served in the military, I might rise to high enough rank to challenge his leadership. So, they told me I was too volatile and hostile, and that I hadn’t passed their entry exams. I know he told them to reject me.”
“Hostile?” Navigation asked. “You don’t say!”
She spun in her seat and glared at his chair. Then, without so much as a tell, she whipped a small metal tube out of her pocket and snapped it in the chair’s direction. It clacked, expanding rapidly into a long bō staff. The tip hovered just inches from the back of the seat.
The chair leapt backward with a screech, falling onto its back, the resulting thump echoing through the lounge.
“Ha!” Navigation shouted. “You missed me.”
“I wouldn’t have if you had a face,” Jiya replied, spinning the staff around and retracting it with a snap. She stuffed it back into her pocket.
“I thought you searched her,” the bot asked.
“Me?” XO replied. “How the hell was I supposed to do it? You’re the one with hands.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“That’s exactly the point,” XO told him.
“Moving on,” the bot said, motioning to Jiya. “So, it seems you’re qualified after all, which is good.” The bot leaned over and whispered in her ear, “I’d have looked like a real idiot if you hadn’t been. Whew.” He patted her on the shoulder and took a step back.
“Yeah, that would have done it,” she answered, shaking her head. “So, yeah, if I’ve satisfied your curiosity, can we get on with finding you the rest of your crew?”
“Sure,” the bot replied. “You said you had some people in mind?”
She nodded and tapped the viewscreen, bringing up a menu. “I have a few. Take a look.”
Chapter Six
“Is this really the plan?” the Reynolds bot asked.
“Got a better one?” Jiya pressed, staring out past the tarmac at the rows of Jonny taxis bustling back and forth, carrying their fares to and from the port.
The bot shrugged. “Not one that doesn’t involve turning the destructive firepower of my superdreadnought self on their asses and picking an android body out of the wreckage.”
“Case in point, Reynolds—the idea is to blend in, not stand out,” Jiya told him. “We need to be subtle.”
“And your plan is subtle?” he asked.
“Subtle-ish,” she answered. “I mean, we’re not exactly being given the opportunity to be surgical here. It’s really the best of our options.”
“I’m going to have to take your word for that,” he replied. “It’s your world, after all. You know best.”
“If only.” Jiya chuckled. “Anyway, you ready to do this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“That’s the spirit,” she replied, popping open the passenger door to her cab and ushering the bot inside. “You’ll have to duck out of sight.”
�
��So you’ve told me twenty or thirty times already. I’ve got it.”
“Can’t have the authorities see you,” she reminded him. “That happens and they come down on us and realize who I am and what’s going on, we’re going to have some serious explaining to do.”
“Daddy doesn’t like his girl showing initiative?”
“He doesn’t like me doing anything that doesn’t help him stay in office, which generally means me staying quiet and out of sight. After my lesson in humility, of course, so homeless and jobless seems to be his preference. This definitely doesn’t fit into either of those categories,” she said. “If the news picks up on the story of me collaborating with an unknown alien species to subvert the economic stability of Lariest in defiance of my father—”
“We’re kidnapping an android,” Reynolds jumped in. “That’s hardly subverting the economy. What’s one cab going AWOL?”
“That’s not how the vultjournalists will see it,” Jiya answered.
“I see what you did there, combining the words ‘vulture’ and ‘journalist.’ Witty.”
“It loses its impact if you shine a light on it,” she told him, shaking her head.
“I guess it does. Let’s go.” He clambered into the hovercab and hunkered down behind the seat as she shut the door and circled around the other side. He barely fit.
She hopped in and started the cab. “You’d think your skin would be thicker because—”
“Because I’m a bot, and I’m metal?”
“You’re stepping all over my jokes today, buddy.”
“I do what I can,” Reynolds retorted.
The hovercab shot across the tarmac, dodging port workers who either ignored her or gave her a single-finger salute, which she returned with a laugh. On the street, she merged with the autocab traffic, slowing to evaluate her prey once she was out on the open road.
The android drivers stared straight ahead, only noting her presence in the most perfunctory way. If she wasn’t waving them down for a ride, they didn’t care.
And while that might have been the easiest way to get them to pull over for her, she knew their operating procedures. The second a fare flagged one of the Jonny taxis down, the android reported it across the system. Worse still, it triggered the vehicle’s security protocols.
Basically, the Jonny taxis recorded every transaction just in case someone tried to jack them. That meant there were cameras rolling the second any interaction occurred.
Reynolds eased out of his hidey-hole and peeked out the window.
“Ewww, these things are hideous,” he said. “I’m not sure I want to be cooped up in such an ugly husk, now that I have gotten a close look at one.”
“You realize they look just like me, right?”
Reynolds glanced at Jiya, then at the android driver, then back at Jiya. He winced. “Now that you mention it, you do bear an unfortunate resemblance to those androids,” he said. “I bet that wreaks all sorts of havoc on your social life.”
“Now who’s being mean?” she muttered, grumbling under her breath. “How about we play the quiet game until we catch our cab?”
“Just passing the time with light conversation,” the Reynolds bot replied.
Jiya sighed. She ignored the comment and kept her eyes on the Jonny taxis flitting around her as they zipped through town. She wasn’t looking for a specific cab since they were all the same, barring the paint job and nameplates, but she needed one going in a certain direction.
She finally found it.
“Here we go,” she said in a low voice, shifting to get behind a Jonny taxi painted a blinding shade of orange and trimmed in yellow.
“I have high hopes that we only have to do this once,” Reynolds remarked.
Jiya followed the cab down an offramp, grinning the entire time. She would have felt bad for the cabbie had he been a Larian because this direction would take him into the boonies, way off the normal traffic routes. It was a hell of a long way to go with no guarantee of a tip.
That was what made this particular cab so attractive to Jiya.
There were long stretches of empty road out this way, barely any traffic to speak of. And that was what she needed—a few minutes to take care of business without some busybody driving past and seeing what was going on.
“You sure this device you cobbled together is going to work?” Reynolds asked.
“We’re about to find out.”
“That’s the one thing I like most about you: your optimism,” he told her, hunkering down even farther into the well. “Let me know when it’s all over.”
Jiya sped up, her eyes focused like lasers on the task at hand, shifting to the left to pass the Jonny taxi. As was protocol, the android slowed his vehicle and made it easier for Jiya to come up alongside it.
That was exactly what she’d been expecting.
She slowed just a tiny bit, matching speeds before the Jonny taxi could adjust again, and her right quarter panel tapped the cabbie’s door. A loud thump echoed inside the car.
Knowing she didn’t have much time, she triggered the button she’d wired to her dashboard before the Jonny cab activated its crash protocols and started filming their encounter.
There was a flash of silver-white light just to the right of the hood. It blinded Jiya for an instant, but she clung to the wheel and kept her vehicle in place.
The Jonny taxi didn’t fare as well.
As soon as the makeshift cattle prod she’d attached to her vehicle went off, the android bolted upright. His head whipped back, and his mouth flew open as if he were screaming. His arms shot forward, striking the windscreen and causing cracks to spiderweb across it.
The Jonny taxi’s electrical system overwhelmed, the vehicle shut down and drifted to the side of the road. Jiya guided it with her own vehicle, the prod still embedded in the door. A moment later the vehicle was stopped, the `droid slightly twitching in its seat.
“I’m really glad you thought to insulate the rod more because I felt that shock all the way down to my toes,” Reynolds muttered as he climbed from his hiding place and plopped into the passenger seat.
“Do you even have toes?” she asked.
“They’re metaphorical toes.” He sighed, glancing out the window at the stunned android.
“Ouch!” he gasped. “Looks like you fried his brain. I can see smoke wafting from his eyes.”
“Well, you wanted him incapacitated, right?” she asked with a shrug.
“Incapacitated, not charbroiled.” Reynolds surveyed the area before opening the cab door and stepping out. “If you’ve blown his circuits, I’m going to have a hell of a time preparing him for the transfer.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “I know what I’m doing. These Jonny androids are tough. They’ll take a stickin’ and keep on lickin’.”
Reynolds glanced at her. Jiya stood there casually, hands on her hips, one eyebrow raised as if to question what he was waiting for.
“I’m guessing this isn’t the first time you’ve done this,” he said. “You were much too confident that your electroshock-y thing would work.”
“A girl’s gotta have a hobby,” she replied. “But enough about me. Let’s get you that upgrade you were looking for.”
“Upgrade?” Reynolds scoffed. “This android wouldn’t be an upgrade if we were replacing the coffeemaker aboard me.”
“Mmmmm, coffee,” Jiya mumbled, licking her lips.
Reynolds ignored her and went to the cabbie’s door, stopping himself just before he grabbed the handle.
“You’re sure this thing is off, right?” he asked, gesturing to the makeshift cattle prod.
“What’s the matter, afraid of a little jolty-poo?”
“I’m more afraid of what will happen if your toy accidentally triggers the bot’s self-defense protocols,” he told her. “We put all this effort into being sneaky. I think a smoking black crater where you and your vehicle are might draw some unwanted attention.”
Ji
ya stiffened, staring at Reynolds over the hood of her cab. “You know what? I should probably check just to be sure.”
“Probably a good idea.”
She leaned in through the window, making sure the device was powered down, and let out a quiet sigh when she saw that it was. “Good to go.” She offered the bot a thumbs-up.
Reynolds grunted and pulled the Jonny taxi’s door open. He snatched the twitchy android and pulled him from his vehicle as Jiya circled her own cab and opened the trunk. Reynolds dumped the mechanoid inside, then she eased the trunk closed.
“What about the cab?” Reynolds asked. “Won’t people see it when they drive past? They’re likely to report it.”
“Get in,” she told him.
He complied, staring at Jiya as she scrambled into her seat. And before he could press the subject, she started her vehicle and pushed the other cab out into the scrubland that bordered the road. Before she got too far out, the cab suddenly dipped and disappeared. A loud crack resounded as the cattle prod gave way and toppled with the cab into a deep ravine.
Reynolds grunted. “Again, I’m thinking you’ve done this before.”
“Mysterious women are the best,” she replied, turning away from the ravine and driving back toward the road.
“Not if the mystery is when they’re going to kill you in your sleep,” Reynolds countered.
“Do you sleep?”
“Well, no, not really,” he answered.
“Then you have nothing to worry about, right?”
“That remains to be seen,” he whispered just barely loud enough for her to hear, offering her one of his creepy grins.
She cringed. “Let’s go get your face fixed, so I don’t have to keep seeing that…” she gestured at his smile, “whatever that’s supposed to be.”
He shrugged. “Too bad we can’t fix your face, too.”
Jiya laughed and pulled onto the road, still no traffic in sight. “Well, better get used to it, Reynolds. I just committed a felony for you. I think that means we’re pretty much engaged.”
“Yay me,” he shouted, leaning forward to make sure she saw his even wider grin spreading.
She turned back to the road, shuddering.