by M. D. Cooper
Genocide wasn’t even the right word. Her father was willing to kill all AI and as many humans as necessary. To his mind, a quadrillion deaths was an acceptable cost.
Ricket had been right about her parents; not only that, she had been right about the guards. Her father was never without them. When they moved back inside, they shadowed him to the front. When he moved to grab a glass of wine, they followed him to the bar. The only time he had dismissed them was when he was with family.
With her.
But Kylie wasn’t ready to give up on him yet. She smiled and laughed at his jokes, working to stay in his good graces. Kate grinned and folded her hands together. “It’s so good to have my family back. If only David was here.”
“He’ll be along as soon as he can, Katie,” Peter said.
She sighed. “You keep saying that but surely he can excuse himself to eat a meal. He’s the captain for stars’ sakes!”
As she said that, the door opened and David entered. “Sorry about being so tardy. It couldn’t be helped.” He leaned over to kiss his wife’s cheeks and he kept his eyes firmly on Kylie. She met his gaze and narrowed hers.
Peter stood and, arms wide open, embraced his son with a hearty clap on the back. “You’ve done good, boy. Real good. You’ve given us a beautiful grandson, you’ve returned our daughter to us, and now the galaxy will be in good hands, you’ll see.” Peter smiled as he took in the sight of his family. “You’ll all see.”
A chill ran down Kylie’s spine as he said it.
David leaned in toward their father and he spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Pa, I’d like a word with you in private about Kylie.”
Kylie straightened up. “I’d watch what you say.”
Peter laughed and clamped down on David’s shoulder’s. “Sibling rivalry is always alive and well in this family. I’ll excuse it, but tonight isn’t the time for trivial arguments.”
“Pa,” David sighed, “it’s not trivial and my voice must be heard.”
“Not tonight, boy.” Peter raised his voice loud enough to startle the sleeping newborn. David looked to his son while Hannah bounced the baby in her arms to settle him down.
“Not tonight,” Peter said again. Softer this time. “Tonight is for celebration. And not only that, it’s for introductions.” He extended his hand to Kylie. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“All right.” Kylie dropped her napkin onto her plate and followed after her father. When David stepped forward, Peter held his hand out, stopping his son.
“Not now.” Peter’s eyes narrowed. “If you were invited, I’d tell you.”
“Pa…” David whispered. “This is my ship. I’m the captain. If I want to go with you and Kylie…”
“Sit down, David,” Kate said firmly. “That’s an order coming from your mother.”
Kylie felt sorry for her brother as his face fell, but anger burned behind his eyes and it was clear that he intended to have his say. Whatever he wanted to tell Peter would come out one way or another.
For now, Kylie was grateful to get away from him. Peter slung his arm around her shoulders and they walked out of the dining room and into the passageway. The guards followed close behind. “Dad, you didn’t need to be so hard on David.”
Peter snorted. “I understand, he’s your brother. Blood. But he isn’t us, Kylie. He’s not a visionary like you and I.” Kylie hardly thought she was a visionary, but before she could say anything, Peter continued. “David’s a good boy. He does what he’s told. That’s why he makes a good captain. Just like Paul. Both are good boys who listen, do as they’re told. They fall in line just as easily as their crew.”
Her father reached a lift and pressed the call button, leaning against the bulkhead as he looked her over.
“But you…you have your own mission, your own ideas. You’ve always had a mind of your own. Any day I ever tried to get Kylie Rhoads to do something against her will, was a day I rued.”
The smile he gave her was loving, and she wished it was real. But something had to be deeply wrong with her father. There was no other possibility.
“So much like your old man, I watched you forge your own path. It took you places I wished I could’ve saved you from, Kylie, but now you’re here. You’re stronger. And you’re ready to help your old man free humanity from the bonds of slavery.”
They rode the lift to one of the Ark of Justice’s shuttle bays.
“Where are we going?” she asked, keeping the worry from her voice.
“To my ship. The person I need you to meet is there. He is very busy and can’t fly around the fleet as I can—mind you I must. The flock needs to see the face of their leader.”
They rode in silence to her father’s ship, a behemoth that was closer to six kilometers long—as big as an AST dreadnought. It bristled with beams and railguns. There was no question about the vessel’s purpose.
Once they docked, he led her deep into the ship. From the signs on the bulkheads, she knew they were close to the bridge. Eventually, he stopped at an unmarked door and gestured for the guards to wait outside.
The door slid open and Peter gestured for Kylie to enter first. She stepped tentatively across the threshold and found herself in a circular room dominated by a map of a star system. The planets, moons and stations all circled above their heads, moving in a cosmic dance that was both beautiful and calming.
Beneath the display, with his back toward them, was a single man. His stance was wide and arms were akimbo. He wore what appeared to be a uniform, and his dark hair was shorn short.
Peter put his hand on her shoulder. “General Garza, I wanted you to meet my daughter, Kylie Rhoads. She’s finally come to join us in our battle against the AI.”
Quietly, Marge grumbled,
Garza turned and offered Kylie his hand. “Pleasure’s all mine. It’s been awhile since I’ve met a Rhoads. I hope you won’t disappoint me.”
Kylie shook his hand without a moment’s pause. “I hope not to, sir.”
“And how much do you know about the Silstrand Alliance and the GFF?” he asked, an appraising look on his face
Ah, Kylie thought. This is why I’m really here. Maybe that’s what they really wanted. Intel for their conquest of Silstrand. She was no fool, she recognized the system wheeling above their heads.
“Enough to get by, sir. I have contacts. I know SSF protocol. I can probably answer any question you could think to ask.”
Garza smiled at her and at Peter. “Seems this relationship is getting off to a fine start. You and I are going to get on famously. I have so much I’d like to discuss.”
Kylie looked up at her father and saw a pride-filled smile.
“Of course, sir.”
THE QUEEN
STELLAR DATE: 09.27.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Barbaric Queen
REGION: Interstellar Dark Layer, Silstrand Alliance
Winter slid down the ladder from the inspection catwalk, landing on the engineering bay’s deck with a solid thud. “Old girl seems to be in damn good shape. I bet if we could get an AI to run a QA98 on it for us, we could improve efficiency a few percent, though.”
The woman he addressed was a mech named Bubbs. Her left arm ended at the elbow where a gun-arm started. It currently sported a multifunction pulse rifle/mini-gun. Sort of a minimum/maximum force combo. Her left eye sported a protruding metal scope that did not look removable, and the rest of her skin was covered in blue and black tattoos. Small horns pushed up from the top of her head on either side of a tufty mane.
She wore a leather jerkin, and loose leather pants. From the way she walked, it was apparent that the legs beneath were not original equipment.
Bubbs was the type of girl Winter understood. She responded well to power and aggression, his favorite kind of woman even if Lana still weighed heavily on his mind—not all the time, but when things were quiet.
Sure, Winter h
ad regrets—about most things.
Bubbs’ green eye stared him down and her one hand rested on her belt buckle. “Guess I’m trying to figure you out still, not sure why we need a white monkey like you swinging around in here. But hey, who am I to second-guess the captain?”
Winter shrugged and wiped his hands on a rag before tossing it across a railing. “You’re the hired muscle same as I am. Doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to an opinion.”
Bubbs ran her tongue over her teeth. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Captain’s sometimes don’t see what’s right in front of them. Our job to make sure we keep them on the straight and narrow. Keep an eye out for number one.”
“And who is number one?”
“I am, baby.” Winter held his arms out. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel the same. You look out for you. I look out for me. Doesn’t mean we have to be on opposite sides.”
“Maybe not,” Bubbs tilted her head to the side and the scope in her eye spun, “but we don’t have to be friends either.” She turned and walked away, leaving Winter sighing with relief on the inside.
Winter pressed his lips together as he thought it over.
He hoped.
Winter got it, but all the sneaking around they were doing was making him nervous. He’d rather have a fair fight out in the open. He’d bet good money that he could take out Kingfisher one-on-one, except Nadine didn’t want to play it that way.
Onions tasted great but all that slicing and dicing; Winter would rather they use a low-level machine for that.
* * * * *
The Barbaric Queen had a core crew of a dozen men and women, with other members of The Black Crow serving as added muscle in times of need. The exact structure of the pirate organization—a word which may have been a stretch to begin with—was unclear to Nadine, but the current total crew on the Barbaric Queen was just under eighty. A lot of people, but a ship this size felt empty with so few.
Despite the fact that Winter thought he could fight his way through them, Nadine knew that wasn’t even remotely possible.
For her plan to work, she’d need to isolate the pilot and the captain alone on the bridge so they wouldn’t be aware of what was going on elsewhere.
Which meant they needed to disable the Link so there’d be no direct communication between the muscle and the Barbaric Queen’s leadership. First things first, Rogers would do his part in putting everyone to sleep with his cooking.
“My cooking is bad,” Rogers had said when she met him in the crew’s galley, “but it isn’t that bad.”
Nadine smiled briefly and handed him a vial. “Put the whole thing in. Whatever you do, don’t taste it. It’s a neurotoxin and it works fast. It’ll knock them down hard but we’ll have only a short time to react. Never know who may have internal systems for clearing stuff like this out.”
Rogers gave it a shake and the liquid flowed like glowing amber fireflies. “You always carry strange little vials on you and we never noticed?”
“Not now, Rogers.” Nadine pressed her lips together into a thin line and glanced around. “This isn’t the time.”
“All right, but this is really going to throw off the acids in my dish. The flavor will be all messed up.” Rogers slipped the vial into his front pocket. “What about you? What if Kingfisher wants you to eat with the crew?”
“Don’t worry about me. I don’t carry around something like that without having protections against it. I’ll be fine.”
Rogers shook his head and drew a breath. Nadine saw his sadness and it made her sad, too. “I’m the same woman you’ve always known, Rogers.”
He shook his head. “You’re really not. I know you said we’d talk about it later, that we’d get through this first, but…” Rogers sighed. “I feel like I already lost the Nadine I know. Maybe I never knew her at all. Maybe she was never real.”
“Rogers,” Nadine said softly as he turned back to the counter. She wanted to say something to make it all right, but she could feel it. She had lost him. He was going back to his task, he was doing what needed to be done, but a wall had gone up between them that Nadine couldn’t scale.
She wished she could. She wanted nothing more than for that wall to come crumbling down.
Nadine left the galley because there was nothing else she could do there. The hollow silence between them hurt too much and Nadine didn’t want to suffer through it any more than necessary. Soon, the job would be done. She would see to it that Rogers and Winter were reunited with Kylie and they got their happy ending.
The job. Killing Peter Rhoads. That was going to be a whole other mountain to scale. She’d need to convince Kylie to trust her. If she couldn’t get Rogers to give her the time of day, how was she ever going to get Kylie on her side.
Nadine shook her head, wishing she could go back to that concourse where she had handed Kylie over to David. There were so many other ways she could have proceeded.
Maybe even just tell Kylie the truth.
She skipped past those thoughts to what would happen after she killed Kylie’s father—something that would doom any future she and Kylie may have had.
A part of her entertained the idea of never returning to Petra for her debrief. Maybe she’d just fly off to some remote system and see what being a hermit for a century felt like.
Probably better than this.
Too much to do, too much at stake. Nadine swallowed back her feelings as she rode the lift to the bridge.
When she arrived, she saw Kingfisher standing in the center of the room, his stance wide, and his arms folded across his chest. His long jacket fell behind him, swaying slightly in the breeze from an air circulator.
The ship was out of the dark layer, travelling across the outer edges of the Trio system before making the next jump. Kingfisher’s eyes were on the forward holoscreen, but he glanced at her as she approached, and Nadine saw how his eyes lingered on her crotch before travelling up her body.
She flicked her finger over the inside of her wrist and triggered a pheromone release. “Quiet up here, much like the rest of your ship.”
Kingfisher nodded. “I like it that way. Sometimes it feels like the Barbaric Queen is a ghost ship, and we’re the spirits doomed to haunt her. Doesn’t hurt that Raye up there rarely talks. A better pilot, you’ll never meet. No offense to your Rogers.”
“None taken, at least for me.” Nadine watched how Raye’s hands moved on the console and it seemed to light up as he did it. The dreads on his head twisted and swayed like a separate being. “It’s very interesting to have a blind pilot, I must say.”
“He sees and hears more than we do.”
“Is it nano?”
“Partially.” Kingfisher stepped forward and pointed at the console. “Sensors, organic material, nano, and AI all working together so he can stretch into the controls and feel space. He feels things before our scan suite even identifies them. Just as he heard you go into the galley. Those vibrations, he picks them up. Everything, even through space.”
“It’s genius,” Nadine said. “It’s genius, Raye.”
Raye laughed and nodded back and forth. It swayed side to side as if he was listening to music. Maybe the vib
rations did sound like music to him.
“Steers us true every time,” Kingfisher said.
“I can imagine.” As necessary as it was, Nadine wasn’t looking forward to what was coming. In her mind, the idea of hijacking the Barbaric Queen was easy. They’d subdue the crew, kill whoever was necessary, and take over the reins.
In reality, things were much harder. Except for Beatrice—who had growled and spat at Nadine whenever they crossed paths, Nadine didn’t mind The Black Crow pirates as much as she had thought she would, minus the fact they lacked table manners.
But to be honest, so did Rogers and Winter. They were like giant slobbering puppies who, every once in a while, had to be smacked on the nose with rolled up paper. All the years of complaining and Nadine now felt affection for them and sadness over what she had never appreciated when she’d had it.
“Rogers said dinner will be soon. When he’s done, I’ll call you.”
Kingfisher took her hand and kissed it. “Of course. I’m surprised you didn’t ask for the status of the pursuit.”
Nadine shrugged. “If there was a change, I was sure you’d tell me about it.”
Kingfisher motioned to the holo display. “We picked a signal up from one of the beacons here. The outbound vector is spinward of Silstrand.”
She stepped forward and looked at the course David Rhoads’ ship was following. It was true, as long as the tracker hadn’t been found and placed somewhere to lure them away.
Nadine chose to believe that it was still on Kylie. Somehow, she knew Kylie would want her to come. There was no room in her for negativity when it came to wrapping up this mission. Nadine wanted to end it so bad, she could taste it. All the years of planning and suddenly, everything was quickly coming to a head.
“Very good. Soon, we’ll be on our way. We’ll get Kylie back. Help her and we’ll sell the nano to whoever will pay the most.”
“And you’ll do what you promised?” Kingfisher asked. “You’ll stay aboard the Queen and let your friend go?”
“Of course,” Nadine barely batted an eye, “I never go back on my word, Captain. I thought you would’ve learned that by now.”