by C H Gideon
Basically, the Jonny taxis recorded every transaction just in case someone tried to jack them. That meant there were cameras rolling the second any interaction occurred.
Reynolds eased out of his hidey-hole and peeked out the window.
“Ewww, these things are hideous,” he said. “I’m not sure I want to be cooped up in such an ugly husk, now that I have gotten a close look at one.”
“You realize they look just like me, right?”
Reynolds glanced at Jiya, then at the android driver, then back at Jiya. He winced. “Now that you mention it, you do bear an unfortunate resemblance to those androids,” he said. “I bet that wreaks all sorts of havoc on your social life.”
“Now who’s being mean?” she muttered, grumbling under her breath. “How about we play the quiet game until we catch our cab?”
“Just passing the time with light conversation,” the Reynolds bot replied.
Jiya sighed. She ignored the comment and kept her eyes on the Jonny taxis flitting around her as they zipped through town. She wasn’t looking for a specific cab since they were all the same, barring the paint job and nameplates, but she needed one going in a certain direction.
She finally found it.
“Here we go,” she said in a low voice, shifting to get behind a Jonny taxi painted a blinding shade of orange and trimmed in yellow.
“I have high hopes that we only have to do this once,” Reynolds remarked.
Jiya followed the cab down an offramp, grinning the entire time. She would have felt bad for the cabbie had he been a Larian because this direction would take him into the boonies, way off the normal traffic routes. It was a hell of a long way to go with no guarantee of a tip.
That was what made this particular cab so attractive to Jiya.
There were long stretches of empty road out this way, barely any traffic to speak of. And that was what she needed—a few minutes to take care of business without some busybody driving past and seeing what was going on.
“You sure this device you cobbled together is going to work?” Reynolds asked.
“We’re about to find out.”
“That’s the one thing I like most about you: your optimism,” he told her, hunkering down even farther into the well. “Let me know when it’s all over.”
Jiya sped up, her eyes focused like lasers on the task at hand, shifting to the left to pass the Jonny taxi. As was protocol, the android slowed his vehicle and made it easier for Jiya to come up alongside it.
That was exactly what she’d been expecting.
She slowed just a tiny bit, matching speeds before the Jonny taxi could adjust again, and her right quarter panel tapped the cabbie’s door. A loud thump echoed inside the car.
Knowing she didn’t have much time, she triggered the button she’d wired to her dashboard before the Jonny cab activated its crash protocols and started filming their encounter.
There was a flash of silver-white light just to the right of the hood. It blinded Jiya for an instant, but she clung to the wheel and kept her vehicle in place.
The Jonny taxi didn’t fare as well.
As soon as the makeshift cattle prod she’d attached to her vehicle went off, the android bolted upright. His head whipped back, and his mouth flew open as if he were screaming. His arms shot forward, striking the windscreen and causing cracks to spiderweb across it.
The Jonny taxi’s electrical system overwhelmed, the vehicle shut down and drifted to the side of the road. Jiya guided it with her own vehicle, the prod still embedded in the door. A moment later the vehicle was stopped, the `droid slightly twitching in its seat.
“I’m really glad you thought to insulate the rod more because I felt that shock all the way down to my toes,” Reynolds muttered as he climbed from his hiding place and plopped into the passenger seat.
“Do you even have toes?” she asked.
“They’re metaphorical toes.” He sighed, glancing out the window at the stunned android.
“Ouch!” he gasped. “Looks like you fried his brain. I can see smoke wafting from his eyes.”
“Well, you wanted him incapacitated, right?” she asked with a shrug.
“Incapacitated, not charbroiled.” Reynolds surveyed the area before opening the cab door and stepping out. “If you’ve blown his circuits, I’m going to have a hell of a time preparing him for the transfer.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “I know what I’m doing. These Jonny androids are tough. They’ll take a stickin’ and keep on lickin’.”
Reynolds glanced at her. Jiya stood there casually, hands on her hips, one eyebrow raised as if to question what he was waiting for.
“I’m guessing this isn’t the first time you’ve done this,” he said. “You were much too confident that your electroshock-y thing would work.”
“A girl’s gotta have a hobby,” she replied. “But enough about me. Let’s get you that upgrade you were looking for.”
“Upgrade?” Reynolds scoffed. “This android wouldn’t be an upgrade if we were replacing the coffeemaker aboard me.”
“Mmmmm, coffee,” Jiya mumbled, licking her lips.
Reynolds ignored her and went to the cabbie’s door, stopping himself just before he grabbed the handle.
“You’re sure this thing is off, right?” he asked, gesturing to the makeshift cattle prod.
“What’s the matter, afraid of a little jolty-poo?”
“I’m more afraid of what will happen if your toy accidentally triggers the bot’s self-defense protocols,” he told her. “We put all this effort into being sneaky. I think a smoking black crater where you and your vehicle are might draw some unwanted attention.”
Jiya stiffened, staring at Reynolds over the hood of her cab. “You know what? I should probably check just to be sure.”
“Probably a good idea.”
She leaned in through the window, making sure the device was powered down, and let out a quiet sigh when she saw that it was. “Good to go.” She offered the bot a thumbs-up.
Reynolds grunted and pulled the Jonny taxi’s door open. He snatched the twitchy android and pulled him from his vehicle as Jiya circled her own cab and opened the trunk. Reynolds dumped the mechanoid inside, then she eased the trunk closed.
“What about the cab?” Reynolds asked. “Won’t people see it when they drive past? They’re likely to report it.”
“Get in,” she told him.
He complied, staring at Jiya as she scrambled into her seat. And before he could press the subject, she started her vehicle and pushed the other cab out into the scrubland that bordered the road. Before she got too far out, the cab suddenly dipped and disappeared. A loud crack resounded as the cattle prod gave way and toppled with the cab into a deep ravine.
Reynolds grunted. “Again, I’m thinking you’ve done this before.”
“Mysterious women are the best,” she replied, turning away from the ravine and driving back toward the road.
“Not if the mystery is when they’re going to kill you in your sleep,” Reynolds countered.
“Do you sleep?”
“Well, no, not really,” he answered.
“Then you have nothing to worry about, right?”
“That remains to be seen,” he whispered just barely loud enough for her to hear, offering her one of his creepy grins.
She cringed. “Let’s go get your face fixed, so I don’t have to keep seeing that…” she gestured at his smile, “whatever that’s supposed to be.”
He shrugged. “Too bad we can’t fix your face, too.”
Jiya laughed and pulled onto the road, still no traffic in sight. “Well, better get used to it, Reynolds. I just committed a felony for you. I think that means we’re pretty much engaged.”
“Yay me,” he shouted, leaning forward to make sure she saw his even wider grin spreading.
She turned back to the road, shuddering.
What have I gotten myself into?
Back at the ship—wh
ich she refused to think of as Reynolds—they’d passed the android and Reynolds’ bot form off to Doctor Reynolds—which wasn’t strange at all—and he groaned when he saw the state the android was in.
“Damn it, Reynolds, I’m an AI, not a miracle worker,” the doctor cursed.
“Do your best, Doc,” Reynolds answered from the bot. “We have a mission to accomplish, and I need my best…” He sat up on the med-bed and glanced at the android. “Well, maybe not my best. We can start with eighth string, I guess.”
“This was your idea,” Jiya reminded him.
“Actually, it was Comm’s idea, that bastard.”
“I know that Comm is you, too.”
“Now you’re splitting hairs,” he replied, wagging a finger at her. “Just go and get ready to meet your contacts. I’ll be along shortly.”
“That’s what you think,” Doc muttered. Reynolds ignored him and waved Jiya off.
Jiya didn’t hesitate to leave. She strolled out of sickbay, trying to remember her way back to the lounge without getting lost.
The earlier mention of coffee had her fiending, and she needed a fix.
Chapter Seven
“I look like a fucking toaster,” Reynolds complained, staring at his new android body in the reflective surface of the viewscreen. He ran a hand through his synthetic black hair and grunted at the dark pools staring back at him. “How do you run around looking like this all the time?” he asked Jiya.
She snorted. “It’s easy when you’re as hot as I am.”
Reynolds turned from the viewscreen with a dismissive grunt. “Let’s just get this over with. I feel like a clown without a birthday party to crash.”
“I hate to be the one to break it to you, Captain, but you look weird. Very clownish,” Tactical offered.
The new Reynolds sighed, waving Jiya toward the bridge door. “Helm, you have the helm.”
“Thanks for that, Captain Obvious,” Helm mumbled from his console.
“Belay that belligerence, Mister Christian. You shall be drawn and quartered!” Reynolds replied.
Jiya fled the bridge and made her way to the hangar bay, where her cab was parked inside a small shuttlecraft. Reynolds followed her. As they clambered into the shuttle and strapped in for the quick flight back to the planet, she got a good look at him.
While he was obviously an android, the doctor had spruced the frame up a bit, making it slightly less apparent that he was one of the Jonny taxi drivers. A few touch-ups here and there had cleaned him up. From a reasonable distance, most people wouldn’t give him a second glance, thinking he was a Larian.
Up close was a different matter.
“They did a good job on you,” she told him. “There are almost no char marks visible.”
Reynolds glanced in the side mirror. “You damn near scorched his eyes out. I look like I’m wearing mascara.”
“It looks good on you.” Jiya grinned, fighting back a chuckle. “Very robosexual. You go, Bot!”
He shooed her away. “Helm, get us dirtside, please.”
“Sir, yessir,” Helm replied, and the shuttle engines came online.
Jiya drew in a deep breath and held it as the shuttle shot out of the hangar bay and launched itself into orbit, circling the planet with growing velocity. She was pressed hard into her seat, the safety harness biting into her skin at every contact point.
The atmosphere rattled the craft as they descended and Jiya spewed lungfuls of recycled shuttle air, desperately trying to suck in a replacement breath. Her stomach was a hard knot, and she could taste the bitter sting of bile hitting the back of her throat.
“Uh, Helm?” Reynolds called over the comm. “Think you might want to chill with the theatrics. We’ve got someone on board who’s less tolerant of the gyrations than are we.”
“Oh, shit,” Helm responded and the shuttle leveled off, angling to slice across the atmosphere rather than burrow through it.
Jiya gasped, finally able to grab a decent breath.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Helm apologized over the comm. “Been a long time since we’ve had meatbags aboard.”
Jiya bit back her retort. From where she sat, “meatbag” was a pretty accurate description, her insides sloshing all over the place. She felt as if her guts had been pureed. She didn’t even want to think about where they’d spill out of.
“Just put me on the ground nicely, please, and I promise not to puke all over the shuttle floor. Maybe.”
“Roger that,” Helm answered.
A short while later he did exactly that, the shuttle settling on the tarmac with a gentle thump.
Once her guts stopped roiling, she gathered herself and stumbled to the cab parked in the back of the shuttle. The magnetic clamps holding it hissed and drew back, releasing the cab as the back hatch of the shuttle eased open.
She climbed into the vehicle, Reynolds dropping into the passenger seat. Once they were buckled in, she backed down the ramp and eased out onto the tarmac. Then Jiya put the vehicle in gear and shot across the port, glad to be in charge once more.
Out on the road again, the chaos of the other Reynoldses behind her at last, Jiya eased into her seat and relaxed for the first time in a long time. She knew it wouldn’t last long, given what they were off to do, but out here on the road, traffic whizzing past, she was at peace.
Too bad it was over far too soon.
Takal Durba sat in his living room, fuming as he glared at the vidscreen. President Lemaire loomed large on the public relations dais, shouting out at Takal and pounding his fist on the podium.
“We will not surrender our position to these terrorists! I promise—”
“To screw over everyone I know to make myself look better,” Takal finished, growling at the screen. “Vidscreen off!”
The screen went black at his command and he sank into his seat, grabbing his mug from the coffee table on the way back. He took a sip of the whiskey-infused coffee and sighed.
It was good stuff. Still, it wasn’t as good as having a job he loved and an income.
“Damn you, Lemaire,” Takal growled, taking another large swig of his coffee.
“You say something?” his niece Geroux asked, peeking in from the hallway. As always, she had her reading material, her thumb stuck between the pages of an antique book to hold her place.
A smile broke across Takal’s face at seeing her. “No, dear. I was watching the news.”
“Lemaire?” she asked.
He nodded. “Always Lemaire.”
She sighed and strolled into the room, dropping her butt on the coffee table despite knowing Takal hated it when she did that. He cast a quick glance at the table and bit back a frustrated sigh.
She always did what she wanted, and there was little he could do to change that now, but she was a good kid. He’d spoiled her ever since he’d been awarded custody, so it wasn’t like he really expected to control her. That chance was long gone. She’d been her own person since early on, and that was one of the biggest things he loved about her.
“So, what did the president do now?” she asked
“What didn’t he do?” Takal grunted and sat back in the couch. “He’s got very weird thoughts when it comes to technology and the advancement of it, as you very well know.” He waved toward the vidscreen. “I even created a personal cloaking device for him, something that could have advanced the Larian military’s superiority by a landslide, yet he never let me even test the thing outside of the confines of the lab. It’s still there, stuffed in a cabinet under lock and key. It’s likely coated in dust by now.”
“The man was never a far-thinker, Uncle,” Geroux soothed. “If the project wouldn’t immediately fatten his pockets, he didn’t have a use for it. Besides, military tech was never his thing—you know that. Hell, half the projects you worked on, however brilliant, are probably still stashed away in the lab somewhere, like your cloaking device.”
“That bastard wouldn’t know what a technologically sound idea was i
f it built a rocket in his ass and launched him to it,” Takal barked.
Geroux chuckled, setting her book aside. “You’re right about that, but I—”
The door chimed right then, interrupting them.
Takal straightened. “You expecting someone?”
She shook her head, her wild hair flipping about. “Not me.” Geroux hopped off the table, to Takal’s delight, and trotted over to the door.
“Maybe it’s an accidental pizza delivery,” she said with a grin. “I love those.”
She flung the door wide—another habit of hers Takal hated—and gasped.
He jumped to his feet and ran toward her. “What is it? Are you—” His question slipped away when he saw who it was at the door.
“Jiya!” Geroux screamed, diving into her arms.
The two hugged, and Takal’s eyes narrowed with suspicion and uncertainty. He hadn’t seen Jiya since the last time he was at the presidential compound. Which was where Jiya was supposed to be, although he had heard that she’d moved away several years back—sometime after his dismissal. Details had been scarce, of course. There had been a total blackout on the news because Lemaire couldn’t have anyone in his family showing defiance of his authority.
Regardless, her showing up at their door couldn’t be a good thing, not given the current political climate.
“I’m happy to see you,” Jiya told Takal’s niece as they embraced. The young girl’s voice rose to a squeaky giggle as they chattered back and forth.
After a moment, the pair separated, and Takal got a good look at Jiya.
She looked tired. Rundown, nothing like the little girl he remembered gallivanting around the presidential compound in her younger years. She and Geroux used to play there all the time when they were kids, screaming and shrieking through the yard and his workshop while Takal served as the president’s head of technological affairs.
Things had changed a lot since then.