Mystical Tales of Romance

by Ed Hurst

enhancements of their mercenary troops. Eventually such large scale modifications became too unprofitable. Given most warfare could easily be confined to machines and AI warfare, there was always a place for assassins, people who were expensive to train and equip, but highly effective with carefully selected prosthetics. However, the only barrier to finding other applications for such technology was simply costs. Someone who could earn enough pay could easily purchase whatever level of enhancement pleased them. However, most of the people who did this were the same empty souls as any assassin or torturer -- psychopaths with no conscience at all. She might as well have been a demon possessed robot.

  Rez was like every other young man growing up in the colonies, having passed through the same mandatory military training for defense purposes. He could never be as fast or strong as someone using prosthetic enhancements, but he understood with an absolute certainty he would probably have to use his one advantage some day in physical conflict. During his recovery with the Brotherhood, he had added back some of the martial arts practice to his regular pre-breakfast workouts. He wasn’t thinking about whether he could defend himself against a raging prosthetic enhanced psychopathic bitch, but was calculating how he could avoid finding himself in need of trying.

  All of this went through the back of his mind while he was listening to her explain she was a senior executive in the management of the facility in which they stood. He was tempted to run down that hall at that moment to escape. She was theoretically in his chain of command, as it was, someone who had access to his contract. Instead, he thought of a way to rebuff her suggestion he join her for dinner after his shift.

  It wasn’t lying to say he had other plans. His actual habit had been to climb the access shaft to the huge curved surface which served as a roof on the place. The wind was just about strong enough most evenings to keep him from hearing too much else. The workmen had a long pause in working on the roof waiting for materials, so he was usually able to find an isolated spot to be alone and virtually invisible to the rest of the people on this planet. He would eat a simple meal up there as he continued exploring the landscape of his newly healed soul.

  Perhaps in a previous era of human society she would not have dared be so forward as to make such an invitation, but the ebb and flow social fashion here and now made it common for women to be pushy. She said with a clear note of coldness, “You need to reconsider your answer. I’ll be back later.”

  As she turned and walked away, he could swear he saw her rise a few centimeters in height.

  12

  Taking full advantage of his control over the identifying code in his implant, it was cat and mouse for the next two days. If she was using the tracking system in the building, she would always know where he was just before he left, because he would send the images from an inspection as he was walking away. That was the only time his ID was reported with a location. He also wired a second camera to his head mount and used a split screen on his display, always watching what was going on behind him. Twice during that time he spotted her brightly colored hair, a fairly unique plumage visible over the heads of the crowd, and took evasive action.

  The bulk of his work was done. More importantly, he’d had enough of the game, and was about to close the contract and leave the planet. She caught up with him down at the loading dock.

  One of the most interesting inventions of his time was the Neutron Bubble. Not that anything could actually be constructed purely from subatomic particles having no charge, but there was a peculiar substance found in one star system which, when carefully processed, produced an extremely strong, light material, transparent only in the visible light spectrum. The “neutron” nickname came from the highly nonreactive nature of the product. Its first use was on tourist ships which left the atmosphere with passengers to show them some visual spectacle somewhere. They could see it in real vision without having to worry about other forms of shielding from particles and radiation.

  Because it was incredibly light weight, it quickly found use in freight containers. The stuff was insanely expensive, and the cheapest and quickest process was to form it as rounded orbs of different sizes. Most common was about a meter in diameter. This became the predominant means of handling freight which came in quantities too small to justify landing a ship on a planet. Simply pack it into one of these orbs, all of which had a hyperspace tracking device embedded on the inside, and let the ships pull them in from an anchor point as it passed nearby. Then they were approved as a means of moving single passengers, and many of the bubbles came with an embedded seat of sorts and an air re-generator.

  After paying for the equipment he wanted to keep, Rez figured he could just about afford to pay for himself to be sucked up onto one of the next ships passing through that part of space if he could find a spare passenger bubble. He logged into the terminal in the shipping bay, hoping he could finish the business before that fembot could find him.

  She must have had someone tailing him, because in his reflexive glance at the heads-up display, he caught sight of her plumage. It was the first thing he noticed as she strode quickly toward the doorway. That’s when he noticed she was not wearing her normal social prosthetics. What he saw was obviously military grade hardware.

  He estimated the time factor. He had already spotted an empty passenger bubble, and had just enough time to finish booking his departure. It had been pre-logged on his personal device, and it was simply a matter of transferring the data and electronic credits. As soon as the terminal made the tone to signal it was confirmed, he sprinted past the random clutter of devices, equipment and so forth, making maximum use of his enhanced coordination. He pulled a muscle when making one totally unnatural move, landed next to the bubble and opened it all in one swift motion. She burst through the doors behind him just as he closed the lock. There was no external latch handle on this bubble.

  Not a moment too soon, because she simply jumped over all the clutter, landing right in front of him. It was so completely inhuman that he caught his breath seeing it. She raked the surface near the seal with her prosthetic claws, but to no avail. The voice in her frustrated howl also seemed inhuman, as was the apparent rage. He spotted on her upper arm a device he had only heard about, and believed until that moment to be a mere legend. It was a highly specialized torture implement. When used properly, it forced a male erection, even while rendering him immobile. Guys called it the Man Rape Tool; feminists had hailed it as the great equalizer.

  Hidden in his left hand was a laser cutter. He was praying he wouldn’t have to use it, but knew he would if anything happened to expose him to her fury.

  Something nibbled at the edge of his awareness. As the noise and fury of her assault on the bubble only intensified, he found it strange he would recall at that moment the schedule for his departure. It was only a few seconds. Then he remembered what happened when people stood too close to something yanked into hyperspace. The sudden vacuum was no big deal, but the energy exchange was generally fatal at close range. Somehow he didn’t regret it when everything outside the bubble, including the mad clawing monster, faded into darkness.

  13

  There were other jobs, and none of them were half as complicated as his first. He ended up spending a lot of time working ship and equipment recovery. Things could be uncomfortable working with difficult people on some of the longer assignments, but nothing compared to the fembot. Still, it was good for his own sanity he was able to go right back and face the same monster within him which nearly devoured him the first time. It helped him learn to be much more careful about subtle cues which could send the wrong message.

  Recovery work was time intensive only in the sense it tied up the entire team of specialists, each member doing relatively little in short spurts, and everyone had to be on-site the whole time. Rez found himself volunteering to assist anyone whose job held up everyone else, and learned a great deal about the whole recovery process. He also had a knack for moderating squabbles. Despite his utter lack of amb
ition, he was often treated as de facto team leader on missions, where he was typically the youngest member of the team.

  At the end of three standard years, his devotion to recovery missions left him financially set for a visit home. He signed on as standby crew for the first ship headed toward his home planet. To his utter surprise, the steward escorted him past crew quarters to the junior officer’s cabins. When he turned to ask if the crew quarters were full, the steward was gone. Once inside his cabin, he checked over the routine messages most people ignore and discovered the Recovery Operations Chief on his last job had added an Operations Management cert to his file. He echoed out loud one of the most commonly heard refrains: “A management cert opens a million doors.” There was also an efficiency bonus added to his earnings account.

  Upon arriving home, Rez found Randell Colony had changed some, as the charter was contingent on turning a profit. Where humans could live without any actual wholesale modifications to the ecosphere were planets which could also support agriculture of one kind or another. There had been an increase in demand for “real food” sources and Randell was a fish and land animal