by C. Gockel
Focusing on the holo, she whispered, “It’s real, Sundancer,” and tried to feel certainty behind the words.
Acceleration gently pressed into Volka’s heels again, and the holo shifted with Sundancer’s movement. Volka’s brow furrowed. Sundancer was striking out on a path that was nearly horizontal and much slower than the ship normally traveled.
“She should be rising more,” Young said, frustration making his tone curt and loud.
Nodding, Volka imagined Sundancer bursting from the volcano’s bloom into brilliant sunlight, but the ship’s path didn’t change, and she felt cold gnawing in her gut again.
“Change her course, Volka,” Young commanded.
Concentrating on the holo, Volka replied, “I can’t.”
Young’s volume rose. “There are frightened, injured people on this ship, Volka. Change her course.”
Volka snapped, “Have you ever considered Sundancer might be injured and frightened, too, Lieutenant?” Someone growled. It took a moment for Volka to register it was her. I’m not one of your Marines to order around, she didn’t say, but it was on the tip of her tongue. Beneath her helmet, her hair was trying to rise.
Young’s nostrils flared. Returning her focus to the holo, Volka blinked as the bridge became bright. They’d left the plume of ash, and there were gasps as eyes adjusted to the change in light. The bridge was nowhere near as bright as it should have been. Sundancer’s walls were transparent again, but the ship’s exterior was coated in grime.
On her wrist, Bracelet said, “We just cracked the sound barrier…with no boom.”
“No boom” meant Sundancer was healthy, at least.
“What’s our heading?” Young demanded.
Bracelet rattled off some coordinates, but Volka, looking down between the feet of the crowd, already knew. “The sea.”
Moments later, the ship dropped onto the surface of the ocean, skipping like a stone. Water splashed over her, the soot washed away, and moments later, Sundancer was rising up into the heavens. Volka’s mind filled with an image of Time Gate 1. “Now she’s taking you home.”
Young might have been preparing to say something, but the world turned to light as Sundancer slipped through time and space…his jaw snapped closed when the world was visible again. Outside the ship, Time Gate 1 slowly spun. Along its ring, lights within winked cheerfully, and ships were coming and going. In the distance was the brilliant blue sphere of Earth and the dreary gray of Earth’s single moon. Volka let out a long breath. It wasn’t her home. Home was the asteroid with Sixty, Carl, Sundancer, and now Bracelet, Shissh, and FET12.
A hangar door slid open at their approach.
“That’s ours,” Young said.
Volka’s eyes focused on it, and at a gentle thought from her, Sundancer swooped gracefully toward it.
Just a little while now, and she could really go home. Remembering the kiss Sixty had given her, she touched her lips and her heart sank…Could she go home again?
19
Waylaid
Galactic Republic: Time Gate 1
6T9 sat in one of the aft compartments, Dr. Tong clutched to his chest as injured former patients and Marines were ushered off the ship first, and then the Minister’s Guard who had survived the scuffle. There had been more of the Minister’s Guard in Dr. Tong’s cell than were aboard. Were they dead? A stunner at close range and one to the head could kill—maybe 6T9 wasn’t the only one aboard who’d murdered. His Q-comm sparked, informing him that the action the Marines had undertaken at Shinar’s hospital was legal, and therefore the deaths of the prime minister’s men weren’t technically murder. The prime minister’s men were still dead. They didn’t have time gates with vast servers dedicated to storing their thoughts to back them up. Unless…well…unless they did. They were cyborgs. They weren’t without ether. They might have had all their experiences uploading in real-time…
He frowned. It wouldn’t be fair if they did—not if Dr. Tong and the woman in the stairwell did not. Dr. Darlene Tong was dead, which was why he hadn’t exited with the others. He hadn’t realized it when he’d picked her up. It wasn’t until he’d been carrying her back to the aft compartment that he’d noticed. He’d ducked his ear to her lips, his cheek had brushed her skin, and he’d realized that she was 4.5 C degrees cooler than she should have been. A Marine had hardlinked with her and confirmed that according to her internal records, she’d been dead for nearly an hour. 6T9 hadn’t set her down after the pronouncement. He couldn’t say why. Ramirez, 6T9 remembered, had looked shocked and anguished when 6T9 had spotted him kneeling over Tong in her cell. 6T9 was 98.5% sure Ramirez had realized she was deceased then; it explained the Marine’s expression of dismay: Mission failure. Civilian dead.
And yet…6T9 had seen Ramirez face his own imminent death with an odd combination of determination and good cheer when they’d battled the animals infected by the Dark on S33O4.
6T9 bowed his head, circuits dim. He was pinging James over the ether. He hadn’t gotten a response after forty-two attempts, and he’d set the ping to auto-repeat.
Ramirez’s footsteps approached him. “One of the Minister’s Service guys said she died accidentally.”
6T9’s fingers tightened on Tong’s body. He should be furious that Tong’s death was an “accident.” And he was. But then again, he hadn’t thought “I’ll kill him,” when he’d thrown the first man on the grenade. He had thought of Agnes in the hall in only thin scrubs and his own synth hide. He hadn’t thought “I’ll kill him,” when he’d pistol whipped the second man. He’d only thought, “He can’t get up and hurt someone else.” Or maybe he hadn’t really thought at all. He’d experienced rage—the white out in his vision—and he’d acted.
Staring at Tong, Ramirez turned his head as though preparing to spit and then seemed to think better of it. The floor was a mess with soot and blood from Celia’s injury—it had reopened when they’d cleaned and re-bandaged it. No one would notice a little spit. Volka’s dress was on the floor, too. It had been neatly folded and set in a corner when he walked in. Somehow, now it was a tangled, bloody, dirty mess.
Lighter footsteps padded behind Ramirez. Volka was next to the Marine a minute later, Carl on her shoulder. She wore the envirosuit Fleet had given her. As he’d feared, she’d been ready to charge in after him. Her face was gray with soot, probably from when she’d lunged out of the ship.
“Tong’s dead,” 6T9 explained.
“We need to take her in for autopsy,” Ramirez said to 6T9.
“I’m so sorry,” said Volka at nearly the same time.
Carl sighed on her shoulder. “Ah, Hatchling.” Carl’s whiskers had thinned out in the past few hours, and the fur on his snout was patchy.
6T9 blinked. He did not know Dr. Darlene Tong, but her death did feel like a failure—in emotional shorthand, it hurt. So did the death of the unknown woman in the stairwell. She’d died because he’d tried to fix a bug, because he hadn’t waited to understand the changes James’s updates had made in him. He needed to integrate those changes with his original programming, not undo them. Her death and Tong’s death made his circuits darken, and that was a relief. He could crush a man’s skull and throw a man on top of a live grenade, but a bit of the former him remained even with his new programming.
A spark lit in his mind. Volka and Carl knew he hurt without being told. Maybe even before he realized it—his new programming made him doubt what he was feeling and thinking. “Thank you,” he said to the two of them. Carl chirped, and Volka touched his arm.
The deaths of the Minister’s Service felt like failure too, in a different way. The whole confrontation had been pointless. His Q-comm sparked. But maybe it hadn’t seemed so to the men in the Minister’s Service. If they had “accidentally” killed Tong, they were guilty of manslaughter, and considering the whole reason for her arrest was questionable under Republic Law, possibly guilty of more than that.
Their deaths might be failures—he might not have needed
to kill them—but he’d commit both “murders” over again. Agnes’s life and the lives of the other prisoners were worth it. So was his life. 6T9 blinked. He was allowed to value his life as more valuable than the lives of others now.
Cleaning ‘bots whizzed into the ship, and 6T9 said to Ramirez, “Who do I need to get the body to?”
“There’s a team coming to the hangar for her,” he replied.
Nodding, 6T9 rose and began down the corridor that led to the bridge.
Volka followed, saying, “They have Sundancer’s new armor ready for testing. They’d like us to stay a while. We’ve been given rooms at the Diplomatic Corps Time Gate 1 residence. We can get showers there.”
6T9 glanced down at his fingers. They were nearly black with soot, and the part of his programming responsible for hygiene began flashing a little red light in the periphery of his vision. “I would like that.” He tried to turn off the warning but was distracted by a response from James on his 202nd attempt to ping him. He answered immediately.
James’s thoughts exploded in his mind. “Stop it, 6T9. I’m repairable.”
6T9 exclaimed aloud, “James is repairable.”
He realized his lips had curled in a slight smile while he cradled a corpse. Was that wrong? Volka and Ramirez smiled too, though. Not wide grins, but gentle upturns of their lips. On Volka’s shoulders, Carl bobbed, and his ethernet-to-speech “necklace” crackled. “Is he cantankerous? If he is not cantankerous, he isn’t really well.”
For Volka’s benefit, 6T9 asked aloud and into the ether, “Are you cantankerous, James?”
“What the shorted circuits is that supposed to mean?” James replied.
Twisting his head to the side as though he’d been physically slapped, 6T9 grinned. “I believe he will be fully repaired.”
Carl cheeped. Volka and Ramirez’s tentative smiles stretched a little wider. They hopped out of the opening in Sundancer’s keel and found themselves in the hangar.
“Upload your memory of events to Noa. I’ll see you later,” James said and disconnected.
6T9’s smile dropped as a team in Fleet gray emerged from an airlock, a coffin-shaped stasis container hovering between them. The stasis chamber’s lid slid away as the Fleet members approached Sundancer.
Without being told, 6T9 gently set Dr. Tong into the chamber, his hands leaving gray smudges in the pristine white coffin. The red light from his hygiene sensors was still blinking. He badly needed a shower and maybe a reboot…and sex—or, at the very least, self-maintenance. His ether started to ping. The caller was the stasis chamber—unusual, but not unheard of. He answered to a robotic voice flooding the ether. “Android General 1, it is an honor, sir!”
Jerking back from the ‘bot coffin, 6T9 asked silently, “Do you need some data from me for the autopsy?” That had to be why it pinged him.
“No, I just wanted to be able to say I said hello to you.”
6T9’s eyes narrowed first in frustration—a woman was dead, and the ‘bot’s cheerful exclamation was off putting—and then they narrowed further in suspicion. 6T9 asked silently, “Did you just come from Time Gate 5?”
“Yes, sir!”
Over the ether, he replied, “Do me the honor of finding out exactly how this woman died.”
“Oh, yes, sir, I will, sir. And all other trauma before the death she suffered as well. My scans indicate she took quite a beating before—”
Circuits dimming, 6T9 responded across the ether, “Thank you. I must go now,” and disconnected. Aloud, he said, “I need a shower.”
Twenty-five minutes later, 6T9 was in the shower in his room of the Diplomatic Corp residence. The water between his feet was finally running clear. His chemical sensors assured him he would not stink of sulfur to a human nose and hopefully not to a weere’s. The packet that held Eliza’s ashes and his access key lay on the soap tray, freshly washed. Even in his inside pocket they had become coated with sulfur-stinking ash. He leaned his forehead against the wall. It was a perfect time for self-maintenance. Oddly, the image that first came to his mind was Volka in Sundancer, in her Fleet issued suit, saying she was sorry for Tong’s death, and then Volka earlier, in her very modest summer dress, saying that if his programming update kept his Q-comm from going offline, her bruises were completely worth it. They weren’t erotic images at all. He tried to focus his attention on his memories of his time with her in No Weere...but what he kept thinking of wasn’t the almost coupling in the forest, but Volka frenzied in lust, growling, and shoving him outside of her room.
His vision flashed white.
Volka was in the kitchen of the Diplomatic Corps’s residence, staring into the refrigerator. Freshly showered, she was wearing a thin, scratchy, medical scrub-like, short sleeved tunic and matching drawstring pants. Both were much too big for her.
“Your new clothes should arrive in the next twenty minutes,” Bracelet said.
She was wearing Bracelet, too.
“Thank you for ordering them,” she replied. Bracelet had ordered them for her over the ethernet from local shops. Volka hadn’t even thought about doing that. She’d been in the Republic long enough; she really should start thinking of such things herself.
“You’re welcome,” Bracelet chirped with a self-satisfied hum.
Bowing to peer inside the fridge, Volka grimaced at a half-eaten Insta Quinoa Lentil Pilaf. She was hungry, but not that hungry.
Standing on his hindmost legs on the counter, Carl asked, “Anything other than tofu and vegetables in there?”
Volka sighed, pushing a container of soy milk away from the pilaf. “No, I…” Her eyes went wide. “Ooh…eggs! I could cook them…”
“Nah, I don’t want to wait that long.”
Sighing in relief, she pulled out the carton and placed it on the counter. “Me, either.”
She handed an egg to Carl and took one for herself. They toasted with their eggs, and then Carl cracked his with his teeth and began lapping out the insides. Volka cracked hers on the counter and swallowed the insides whole. In the background she heard Sixty’s shower shut off.
She took out another egg, cracked it, and, hearing heavy footfalls from the direction of Sixty’s room, swallowed quickly. Tossing the shells in the sink, she turned and found Sixty entering the kitchen. His hair was wet and disheveled. He was wearing a thin, white robe that fell to just below his knees. She inhaled the familiar scents of plastic, metal, synthetic scent, grease—and a new tinge of sulfur. Moisture was glistening on his skin. Before she could form a question or even a thought, he strode across the room and caught her chin gently with his fingers. Meeting his gaze, her lips formed words she never had a chance to speak, because a heartbeat later he kissed her. It had the same effect it had had on her in the ship. Electricity and heat shot from where their flesh touched, she rose to her toes, and heaven help her, she kissed him back. Even as she did, she felt like she was destroying something precious. How could she go back to the asteroid now? They weren’t suited, and she couldn’t bond again with someone who couldn’t love her the way she needed to be loved. Her fingers found the lapels of his robe, and she clung onto them with such fierceness her knuckles ached. It was a goodbye kiss. It would have to be, and she wanted to make it last.
But it didn’t. Sixty pulled away too quickly, licked his lips, and stared down at her. Her chest felt heavy. She took a shallow breath. She could hear every air vent in the suite and every electronic hum—especially the one in his chest. She didn’t look away from his gold flecked eyes, afraid she was looking at them for the last time. She couldn’t be what he needed, and he couldn’t be what she needed.
“Volka, marry me.”
Sixty’s mouth was moving, but she couldn’t connect the words to his lips.
There was a splat beside her on the counter. “You made me drop my egg!” Carl complained.
“So romantic!” Bracelet chirped.
“Wha...what?” Volka stammered, not sure if she was awake.
“Mar
ry me,” Sixty said.
Volka stared at him. “Are you teasing?” He looked very serious, but she couldn’t read him as easily as a human or weere. She had to go with her eyes and ears and brain with Sixty; her nose and her telepathy didn’t work.
“I am very serious,” he replied.
His hands wrapped around her and smoothed along her body from her shoulders to the arch of her back.
“I thought you…you can’t…” Be faithful, she couldn’t say.
“I couldn’t be monogamous before. I couldn’t turn anyone down, even when I wanted to.” His lips twisted in a grim line. “Not directly.”
Oh. She swallowed.
Bowing slightly, so his face was closer to hers, he whispered, “But I can be monogamous now. It was part of my latest system update.”
Volka gasped. “You changed your programming…” Her mind whirred, remembering the 6T9 unit she’d met in New Grande who’d been set to “monogamous.” It had been faithful. “For me?”
“For me. I wanted to be able to keep you safe and be with you in all ways.” Moving closer, he whispered against her lips, “I don’t want to share you with anyone.”
Volka’s blood pounded in her ears so loud she thought she might go deaf. Her hands tightened on his robe, and she pulled him to her, or herself to him. His mouth found hers an instant later and she could feel every inch of him along her body—Eliza’s ashes in the single gargantuan pocket of the robe and his hardware. Gasping, she pulled back and growled, “I will not share you with anyone, either!”
His lips curling into a smile was the last thing she saw before she kissed him again. His tongue teased the edges of her mouth, and his hands went lower. The next thing she knew, he picked her up and set her on the counter. Their bodies were flush, but he still wasn’t close enough. Her legs wrapped around him and pulled their bodies as tight as she could. His hands came up to cup the back of her ears, and Volka moaned into his mouth. She was vaguely aware of Bracelet clearing her throat, of a ping somewhere, and then Carl’s voice exploding in her mind. “Incoming!”