Touching Infinity (The Rogue's Galaxy Book 1)

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Touching Infinity (The Rogue's Galaxy Book 1) Page 19

by Erin Hayes

I cut it a little close this time.

  I take one out and a syringe and measure the right amount and stick it into the fleshy part of my left shoulder. It burns as I press the plunger, but I don’t have any bad side effects, at least not yet. It’s uncomfortable, but it’ll keep the Infinity Virus under control for now.

  Stay dormant, I silently tell the virus. There’s no answering call back, meaning that I’ve at least put enough of a leash on it to keep it quiet.

  I should probably keep a vial with me at all times. In case I’m away from my room and can’t get back in time. So many things to think about and to make sure that I don’t cause another outbreak. I’m dangerous. I know it.

  Funny how I don’t feel any different.

  There’s a buzz at the door. I stash the vials before calling out, “Come in.”

  The door slides open, and my breath catches in my throat. “Orion.”

  For once, he looks nervous. There’s an energy about him that I’ve never seen before. Like he’s unsure of himself, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen on the android before.

  But I put on a smile. “Glad to see you walking around again.”

  He scratches behind his head. “Yes. You do not realize how much you miss it until you do not have it.”

  I nod. “I know.”

  “I have two items to talk to you about.”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  “First.” He reaches behind his head, and, as he turns his head, I see a panel I’ve never noticed before in his hairline by his temple. Orion is full of surprises sometimes. He takes out a storage chip and holds it aloft. “This is a backup of all the systems of the Pícara. I downloaded them before we arrived on Alpha. In case we never saw the ship again.” He gives me a smile. “I have only now been able to access it since I have hands.”

  I blink a few times, trying to understand what he means. “You mean…you have everything from the Pícara there?”

  He nods. “Videos, travel logs, captain’s diaries, and certain idiosyncrasies.” He smiles about that last part, showing me that he knew the ship had a personality. “They are all here. I know how much the ship meant to you and Popcorn. So here it is.”

  I take it from him, and I can’t help my own grin that spreads across my face. “How was it having the Pícara in your systems?” I ask. “She never really did like me.”

  He gives a nonchalant shrug. “The Pícara was an old ship that had picked up many bad habits in its time. If I could preserve it, I wanted to do so.”

  I clutch it to my chest, feeling a sense of relief that I hadn’t lost everything with the metal ship. I can’t believe that I’m about to voluntarily bring that ship’s personality back on this perfectly fine ship. I think about the cold showers I’ll have in the future, the doors randomly closing on me, things not working…

  And I’m excited to have it back.

  “Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you so much.”

  “There is another thing,” Orion says, and his expression hardens. “I want you to erase an event from my memory banks.”

  My euphoria from knowing that the Pícara will be back fades. I look up at him, confused. Hurt. “What event?”

  “The kiss.”

  Oh. My mouth opens for a retort, I can’t do that. I can’t take the risk that I’ll accidentally erase something else or change his behavior based on that one exchange. No. No, I can’t do it. I don’t want to go back to before. I don’t want to remember the kiss while he doesn’t.

  “I’m so sorry that happened,” I say. “I was grieving, and—”

  “It…changed something in me, Clementine,” Orion says, and my heart shudders to a halt. “When I thought you had been infected and were dying, I acted out of my feelings for you, not for the good of the crew or the ship. I put the crew at risk for one person. And…” The hard lines of his face fade away, and he looks unsure once again. “I cannot have that impacting my decisions.”

  “But…it happened,” I say. “And just because you want it erased, it doesn’t mean it goes away. I’ll still remember it.”

  He nods. “And I apologize for that. But I cannot have it impacting my performance. I cannot have it drive me in illogical ways.”

  Illogical. That’s what he thinks of this. My buried feelings for him. The way he thinks of me. He thinks it’s illogical. And it probably is.

  But we can’t just pretend that it didn’t happen. I don’t know if I can.

  “Please?” he asks. “I want to be the navigator I was programmed to be. And I think omitting that event will reset any inconsistencies.”

  And my resolve weakens. If that’s what he wants…

  I close my eyes. “Okay. Okay, fine. I’ll do it. If you trust me not to mess you up.” I hold my cyborg hand out and call my fingers to turn into the tools I need to access the memory banks in his brain. I’ll have to connect to him and sift around through his memories in order to delete that instance.

  And hopefully not fuck it up.

  Relief spreads across his face. “I do trust you. Thank you, Clementine.”

  He takes a spot on the edge of my bed, his back to me, ready for the procedure. I can’t help but think that I’d been wanting him on my bed for different reasons.

  But that’s apparently not going to happen now.

  I hesitate for just a moment before I sweep aside his thick dark hair and access his core at the base of his neck. I hold back the shakes in my fingers as I work. Orion is eerily still as I work, and I use it to remind myself that he is not human.

  He is an android. And I must remember that.

  Even if his lips were the softest I’d ever kissed. Even if I’ll never taste him again. This will be the most intimate I’ll ever get with him—digging through his memories. I try to avoid any that feel too…personal to him. Which is ridiculous since he is a machine.

  But I don’t want to see anything I don’t like. So I keep searching.

  “Sometimes, I do reflect on whether events had unfolded differently,” he says suddenly.

  I lick my lips. “How do you mean?”

  “If I had been a human instead of a machine. Maybe I would not be bound by protocol to put the crew and the ship above everything else.” He pauses. “Maybe it would have been all right to remember that kiss.”

  I grit my teeth as I find the singular event. “We’ll never know, will we?”

  And I delete the kiss from his memory. Forever.

  “Are you sure you want to bring the Pícara back?” PC asks. “I thought you had a supposed feud with the ship.”

  “It’s what Captain Louis would have wanted,” I answer.

  We all watch as Taka works on the central console of the ship’s bridge. Like everything else on this ship, it’s far fancier than the Pícara’s. There are more cameras across the ship, better navigational maps.

  And the view from the bridge is stunning. A complete 360-degree panorama of the galaxy as we sail through it—I feel like I can just extend my hand and capture a star.

  Daisy, PC, Orion, and Oliver sit in chairs that they’ve chosen, although there are enough here to sit twenty. Maybe we’ll fill them with more pirates coming up. Surely there are more people who want to overthrow the chokehold that these corporations have on the galaxy.

  Wherever we go from here, I’ll be glad to have my crew with me. We’ll figure this out. We’ll do it together.

  I try to maintain my composure around Orion, who looks at me like I’m a complete stranger. No, scratch that—he looks at me like he knows me, but it’s cold, distant. He’s not the android I kissed.

  And he won’t ever remember it.

  “All right, the chip is installed,” Taka says as he gets to his feet from his crouch. “A reboot and that should do it.” He wipes his hands.

  “A reboot, huh? And that should be it?”

  He nods. “If that is the full backup, it should assimilate with the current operating system and be able to control all the functions of the ship.”
<
br />   “Good job,” I say appreciatively. “Thank you.”

  I key in the code for the ship’s systems to restart. It won’t bring back Louis or Venice. And it won’t make this new ship the ship of my childhood.

  But maybe I can bring a piece of my past with me into the future.

  I initiate the restarting sequence.

  The entire bridge goes dark, and the backup lights flicker off, for just a moment. I hold my breath, wondering what we’re going to find when the ship is back online.

  Unlike the Pícara, it boots up in seconds.

  The lights turn on again, and the air system picks up and starts humming again. I glance around and feel a wide grin spread across my face.

  “Did it work?” Daisy asks.

  I look down at the console, and there’s a message there. It’s not much, and it doesn’t say that I’ll be battling the ship every morning.

  But what I see is encouraging.

  Welcome to the Pícara II, the screen says. I enlarge it on the window screen so that everyone else can see.

  “I think it did.” My grin widens. “Everyone, welcome to the Pícara II.”

  I’m almost ready to cry, and I can see Daisy sniffling as she looks at it. Even PC looks emotional. We have our ship back, sort of.

  “Where to first, Captain?” Taka says, glancing back at me.

  “Well,” I say, slowly, looking at each member of the crew, memorizing their faces in this moment. I avert my eyes a little quickly from Orion. It’s going to take some effort to hide my feelings for him. “We have a lot to do if we want to make some changes. Not to mention that Syn-Tech and possibly the Feds are looking for us. But,” I look directly at Oliver, “we need to make a pitstop and pick up a robot pup for you.”

  His eyes widen as Daisy’s stern face breaks into a wide grin.

  “Really?” the boy asks, his voice quiet.

  I nod. “Absolutely. This ship needs to have a puppy running around pissing oil in all the corners.”

  I feel a groan throughout the ship in response, like the Pícara II is dreading the thought of that. She’s back. And I can see it reflected on everyone’s face.

  My crew. My family.

  And we’re going to make our futures better for everyone.

  To be continued in Book Two of The Rogue’s Galaxy:

  Touching Humanity

  About the Authors

  Sci-fi junkie, video game nerd, and wannabe manga artist Erin Hayes writes a lot of things. Sometimes she writes books.

  She works as an advertising copywriter by day, and she's an award-winning New York Times Bestselling Author by night. She has lived in New Zealand, Hawaii, Texas, Alabama, and now San Francisco with her husband, cat, and a growing collection of geek paraphernalia.

  You can reach her at [email protected] and she’ll be happy to chat. Especially if you want to debate Star Wars.

  www.ErinHayesBooks.com

  NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and WALL STREET JOURNAL bestselling author Rebecca Hamilton lives in Georgia with her husband and four kids, all of whom inspire her writing. Somewhere in between using magic to disappear booboos and sorcery to heal emotional wounds, she takes to her fictional worlds to see what perilous situations her characters will find themselves in next. Represented by Rossano Trentin of TZLA, Rebecca has been published internationally, in three languages.

  www.rebeccahamiltonbooks.com

 

 

 


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