Star Navigator

by Naomi Lucas

  Reina dislodged her arm from the doctor’s grip, feeling Atlas’s eyes watching her every movement. “The Council said my implant remains with the ship.”

  “Yes, well, they probably assume you won’t leave your arm.”

  “She won’t.”

  Reina tried to shut the thought out, the tether that bound her, not wanting to dwell on her choices. I don’t even know if I’ll be alive at the end of this mission.

  “Do you think we got away? That whoever was following us lost us in the warp?” Quickly changing the subject.

  “Hard to say. I don’t sense a presence near us but we are headed in a very singular direction and there’s only one station in this sector. If they’re smart, which they may be–flying an unidentifiable vessel– and we take all factors into account, what we have is a non-standard ship with probing technology that is beyond any commercial, mercurial, or resource haul on the market. The brief connection that was made between our flyers held no traces of Trentian technology.”

  “Do we have an image of it? Could it be private?” Reina watched as Yesne found a spare spacesuit jacket off the bridge’s immediate storage unit and walked it over to her.

  She tugged it on, immediately feeling less vulnerable.

  “No image. And even if it was private, they could sell our coordinates and projected route to any splinter group looking for an easy target.” The bridge lit up as their current galaxy magically appeared around them, Atlas standing in the middle of it. Billions of stars and planets vanished from the periphery as the sector narrowed down to their specific solar system. Reina watched in awe as their ship came into view and their pathway materialized and changed.

  She couldn’t understand it but she knew, without a doubt, that Atlas was calculating and reconfiguring a new channel to travel by.

  She noticed intermittent flickering around the outskirts. Reina moved over to touch a fading star. “What’s happening here? Why are they fuzzy?”

  Atlas appeared next to her. “A result of the end of the network’s reach. All communication and information relay will continue to disintegrate as we continue farther away.”

  Reina turned back to the dot that represented their ship. “I take it you found us a new route?”

  “Yes. We’re due to arrive at Antix in forty-eight standard Earth hours.”

  “Good. Ahead of schedule.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s hope the stalker was a fluke but we’ll prepare for an attack as we get closer to our destination. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.” She turned to the doctor. “You’re dismissed, Yesne, try and get some rest. I will reach out to the Council per your suggestion. Thank you for being brave.”

  “Thank you, Captain, I do believe I need to rest my heart.” Hesitation laced his voice, as if he was going to say more but chose not to. Reina watched as the man practically skipped out of her presence while his eyes held on Atlas until he rounded the corner.

  Odd.

  She wasn’t sure what to make of everything that had just happened. An hour ago she was sound asleep in her quarters, lost within the gleam of a nightmare, everything otherwise normal. But now things had changed to a more stressful course.

  As if things could get more stressful, Reina mused, annoyed. She looked at the time on the ship’s console, indicating that it was still well within the rest cycle.

  Adrenaline flowed through her veins. What have I done?

  Danger could be lurking just around the corner and not just on the other side of Abyss-105 and it hadn’t really hit her until just now, tonight, lying down with the fake form of a man powered by Atlas’s mind that there was not much time left. That maybe she couldn’t trust her judgment anymore, that maybe she should have never trusted her judgment. She had always made the easy choice, the choice that resulted in the least amount of mess. Her life was driven by a bone-deep need for safety and security, and for an independence that she felt she never had.

  This mission was the messiest thing she had ever chosen in her life and it was spurred on by events that shattered her walled-up state of being that had governed every action she had taken to this day. But even the freedom that this quest granted her came with very heavy-handed strings attached. The barbed wire kept her tethered to the choices she had made.

  Reina wished that she could bleach out the self-doubt that infected her thoughts and ruled her soul. She wanted control of herself. She wanted the darkness of her inferiority complex to disappear.

  She stared out at the black space before her, seeing it only grow darker in her mind.

  “Are you okay?” Atlas appeared between her and the void, blocking out the darkness. Reina sat down in her chair and rubbed a shaking hand over her face.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You did what you thought was right.”

  “Was it though? I could have killed innocent people, I could have killed us. I made a horrible mistake and jeopardized this mission.”

  His beautiful robotic form kneeled down in front of her, and for a heartbreaking moment, she wanted to fling herself into his chest and be held and taken care of.

  “I was with you the entire time, sweetheart. You saw me, you knew I was there. I would never let you come to harm and you need to know, if you know nothing else, that you’ll never be alone again. Here,” Atlas waved his hand indicating the ship. “Or in here.” He pointed at her head.

  Tears sprang to her eyes as her nightmare came back to her in fragments. “I remember you, somewhere in the background.” She could barely form the words.

  “Yes. And I will always be there if you want me there. If you need me there. This ship is you and well–I’m here within the ship, within you. I sense you more and more, I sense you taking over, and in turn taking me over. Reina, when I helped build this cybernetic vessel, I built it because to me, it was mine. This ship was mine the moment the project was conceived and every circuit, every wire, every piece of metal and electronic was claimed by me from the birth of their fabrication. Every rivet. Every bolt. I had every intention of being the Cyborg who would sync with the life-blood of this ship. I needed the outlet to remain sane, a body that could be mine since the Council refused to fix me.”

  Atlas indicated her arm, the metal appendage she held to her chest. “Your specialized unit, the key, was just a means to an end for me. I assumed I would integrate the ship, take control of the piece, and in turn control both regardless of who it was attached to. You were right to be wary of me from the beginning. I had every intention of flooding the system, destroying any firewalls, mental and digital, and taking complete control. But what I didn’t account for was you. You ruined everything when you took this mission, and when I realized what had happened, it was too late for me. Everything I thought I wanted was nothing compared to you.”

  Reina couldn’t form any words. All she could do was let the tears stream down her cheeks and stare at the hologram before her. He continued when she didn’t respond.

  “What I’m trying to say, Reina, is that the ship is mine still and it always will be which means that you’re mine because you’re one and the same. Nothing will happen to you because I will never ever let something so beautifully crafted, so lovingly broken, so perfectly strong slip through my fingers.”

  “Atlas, I–”

  “–Don’t. Just know that you’re not alone. Trust me and trust yourself because we’re in this to the end. Even if our end is on the horizon.”

  Reina wiped the back of her hands over her cheeks. “I wasn’t going to say what you were thinking I would say.” Her voice shook. “I was going to say I love you.” Her eyes closed, hardly able to look at his transparent face. “I don’t know if you can believe that but what I feel for you is safe and warm and comforting. It feels like nothing I have ever felt before, it feels like home.” She finished shakily, “I think that’s love. I don’t have any...prior experience from my life.”

  She opened her eyes, willing herself to be brave, and was met with Atlas’s beautiful, bright project
ion smiling softly.

  “I guess we’ll have to discover it for ourselves.”

  Reina sniffled, “To the end?”

  “To whatever awaits us beyond the darkness.”

  Chapter Thirteen:

  Time was up. The unprecedented warp had fast-forwarded the mission, and Antix was less than two Earth days away.

  Atlas looked down at his semi-living shell, a flesh vegetable filled with priceless metal, cybernetic material, and his entire biological being. A vessel that was still alive but without a sentient conscience or a bot without a motherboard. A breathing zombie without a mind. One who didn’t feed off the flesh of the living but instead fed off the electricity siphoned from its static nanocells.

  Because my mind has been stuck in the network.

  A place where he should have been lost, a nightmare where he had gone insane for a time, but he had found himself and transcended to conquer his new world because he had been born to fight, to battle, and most of all to win. Atlas had been created to win. Win.

  He had conquered his humanoid, biological side while trapped in a place devoid of humanity; he had evolved. That’s what Cyborgs did.

  Atlas stared down at his body.

  But we don’t always win. He briefly thought of Reina and enjoyed the strange surge of power that flowed through him whenever she entered his thoughts. It was an exhilarating, fluttering feeling that brought him closer to being alive than he had been in his long years in the dark.

  She was beautiful, fresh, and pure, a new being who willingly joined him in his prison. He would never let her go, not anymore. If he could not win the fight to reclaim his body and in turn, stake his claim on hers, he would imprison her with him in the network and claim her there. The ship would be her prison. If he had to, he would revert to his previous plan and seize control.

  Atlas never thought of himself as a good guy; intrinsically, a battle-born man could never be good. But he knew he was rational, sometimes honorable, and above all he had integrity.

  I also have wants and my wants are the strongest force ruling my mind. I want Reina. I want her powerless under me and under my control. I want to sink into her flesh like a man, I want to mount her like an animal, and I want to control her like a Cyborg.

  He also wanted her to find her self-worth most of all, to be there when she fully realized her strength, and to watch as she battled her own inner demons–and won. He wanted to be there when her fears fell away and nothing remained but the queen she was born to be.

  His attention abruptly shifted back to his current predicament as Yesne changed out an IV bag that fed into the cryostasis pod, most likely filled with immunosuppressant drugs, kicked up with nanotechnology and electrodes to ease the procedure. It fed in where his body was still attached to the static machinery.

  His chest was cracked open, sliced and cut like fresh meat to reveal the inner workings of his torso. Where his ribs should have been was plated metal, peeled back, his lungs a silver metal chamber that pumped not only air through his system but also charged currents. His body was predominantly metal–a fully functional biomechatronic machine.

  The only thing missing was the human heart that had been his only link to humanity, the cavity and empty shell between his lung chambers.

  As he looked at his body, where his heart should have been was now a series of tubes, wiring. The organ had been replaced by a chaotic mess that was even beyond his scope of understanding.

  Dr. Yesne had created an electric, artificial, possibly conductive piece that simulated the human organ–a unique structure that looked like it could withstand anything a real-born, biological body ever could.

  One less piece that would make him human and one more piece that would make him a machine.

  Atlas knew he could deal with that concept but he was... afraid? No. He was apprehensive. If Yesne failed in the operation, Atlas would lose his only chance at reanimation.

  A series of questions flooded his mind. Was it okay to be both frightened and a Cyborg? Would that be considered a failure on his part? A malfunction? A flaw?

  Right now Reina was asleep, truly asleep and not unconsciously maneuvering the spaceship. He had it set back on auto-pilot and afterward followed her into her mind and soothed her into that blank space that Cyborgs used to recharge themselves.

  He held her there and she trusted him enough to let her mind go.

  At this point, Atlas always had one part of his consciousness fed into her circuits; he wasn’t sure if she even knew he was there anymore.

  It was considered a terrible breach of etiquette at best to do that between cybernetic beings, but Reina didn’t know their ways. He was intimately familiar with her mental defenses, so he was able to take liberties in his ability to protect her. That was how he justified the trespass.

  Atlas left his body to look at her sleeping form, peering through the window of the projection unit installed in her quarters. His broken body temporarily disappeared from his mind as Reina’s face, unlined by stress, replaced it. Her breathing was even and regular, beautiful pouty lips slightly parted and tilted toward the pillow.

  He leaned over her and brushed his fingers over her mouth.

  Fucking humans and the shit-staggering cybernetic program. Fuck this bleak limbo that’s my prison. Fuck scientific advancement as well. Atlas left the sleeping girl behind, refusing to look at her, and cursed the same beings who brought her into his existence.

  The greater good often left a lot of horrible things in its wake.

  Atlas returned to his broken shell and looked at the ice that had encased him drip and pool on the floor of the room, trickling into the grates to be sanitized and recycled. He was suddenly grateful that he couldn’t smell the stink of his body being thawed out.

  Yesne, his surgeon, unwilling captive, and temporary slave who was also the closest thing Atlas had to a friend was attentively watching Atlas’s vitals.

  Atlas did not know if he could fully trust the doctor under their current circumstances, but better circumstances had never presented themselves. As he watched the man work, he glimpsed into his pulled-apart shell to check for abnormalities.

  A searing, overwhelming pain–an agony that would have never bothered him in his previous life–gripped his mind. The euphoria of physical sensation shot through him. It was the first time he felt contact in seventy-five years, fifteen hours, nineteen minutes, and two seconds.

  A moment of blissful insanity flooded him, addiction to the pain bloomed like a starving seed.

  “It’s about time you showed up.” Yesne leaned over him just as he forced his way out of his shell. At one moment consumed with pain-pleasure, the next nothing.

  “I’ve been here the whole time. I’m everywhere.” He projected himself next to the pod.

  “Well, our time is coming to an end.”

  They both knew that this next step had to happen now. Yesne was to be relieved when they arrived at Antix and because of that, it was time for Atlas to take over the process and force his nanocells to integrate with the new hardware, healing himself. The internal battle would be worth it even if he only had enough time to kiss Reina once, even if he failed and his body rejected the new heart.

  “You must be happy about that. Your stay hasn’t been exactly what you expected when you boarded my vessel.” Yesne gave him a hard look before leaning over his body, the doctor’s eyes trained on his open chest. The man intently and fiercely began to close him up. It took a special type of doctor to go between welding metal and sewing up flesh with ease.

  “My stay aboard this ship has been better than expected,” the man murmured as sparks flew up around his face, splashing across the steel mask he wore. Atlas watched the tiny embers land on his skin and smolder out.

  Time passed in anxious anticipation as the metal plates fused together, closing up the wound. Before he knew it, Yesne was rising up, his hands steady as he raised the mask off his face, a thin sheen of sweat outlined the red markings left behind.r />
  At least one of us has the confidence to show the stress of the situation. It took a lot to make a Cyborg sweat. Even this situation wouldn’t warrant that bodily function.

  “You’re stalling.” The doctor brought him out of his reverie.

  “I’m contemplating.”

  “About what?”

  “About what happens next and about the Earthian Council. I am also thinking about you.” Atlas answered honestly. The doctor sat down on a nearby stool.

  “So you are stalling. I would never take a man like you for a coward. No man, or woman for that matter, thinks about me willingly. Except, possibly, under the direst of circumstances.”

  “You do know I can kill you but you probably already know that I wouldn’t. You have either discerned that your demise would look obscenely suspicious and would put Reina in jeopardy, which I would never do, or you have an ace up your sleeve and have installed something within me that only you can control, which would never work. But I don’t believe it is either of those reasons that have given you a sense of courage, I think you just can’t bring yourself to care because regardless of what you do or don’t do, your fate is out of your hands. And that is why you are trying to bait me. So tell me, doctor, why do you think I am stalling?”

  A twitch of a smile lifted the man’s tired lips. “Treason,” he answered.

  “Would you call what we have done here treasonous?”

  “I can’t quite say. I believe it depends on how we act from here on out. If our actions after this negatively impact the Earthian Council and the human race, then yes.” Yesne paused, rubbing his eyes. “If we can create a positive ripple of events after tonight, then no. We may be exonerated. And you’re wrong, I know you won’t kill me because you’re a logical man: there aren’t many of us left.”

  Atlas laughed. “Most people would have said honorable, not logical.”

  “Most people are idiots who do not know that even honorable people can do terrible things. Wearing a badge of honor is just a guise and an excuse to help a man go to bed at night. In our world, logic, rationality, patience, and common sense are the true virtues of our kind. We have moved beyond all else because we can’t afford to be bogged down by our sense of honor, charity, or even our morality. We have brought about our own demise: our species and even that of the Trentians is slowly dying out. We should do what we must, for the greater good, so that we strive to survive another day. We owe it to our future generations.”