by S. E. Smith
Ale understood curiosity better now. She was most curious to know what Rap wished to say, when he’d glance in her direction, and his lips would open, then close. He’d managed a few words but only those related to their mission. Nothing personal.
That man has some serious female-shyness issues, sweetie. If you want words out of his mouth, you’re going to have to ask him something.
She wished to know, if not for the hopeless mission, could they have been friends? Or more than friends?
You might want to start with something easier. Get him used to letting words out before you ask the Big Question.
Was it a big question?
According to my sources, for dudes, “Where do you see our relationship going” is the Biggest Question. Huge. Seriously huge.
But they didn’t have much time. When the two ships reached the beacon, events would escalate quickly. She wished to go into this hopeless mission knowing he cared.
If there was a dollar for every female who’d wished that….
So it wasn’t just her?
From what I gather, the problem is almost always the dude’s trouble with commitment and is a multisystem-wide problem.
Oddly enough, this did not help Ale feel better. So she turned her thoughts to a question she could ask that was not the Biggest Question, but would help her get there before it was too late.
I’ve been scanning books and video for something for you, but so far nothing seems quite right for the moment.
Right for the moment. She sighed. Time was running out for any more moments. She bit her lip then shifted in her seat so that she half faced him. Did she, as Jett asserted, have the hots for Rap? As if in answer to this query, heat suffused her body, but what startled her more, color flowed up into his face. Was he affected as well?
“Rap?” The name slipped out her lips that were pressed together so they wouldn’t tremble.
He turned so swiftly she jerked, but she held her position, though it took effort.
His lips moved several times before he managed, “Yes?”
“We’ll be to the beacons soon, and then it will be too late.”
“Too…late?” His strong brows rose over his brooding gaze.
She met his gaze, saw confusion in them, felt the echo of it inside herself.
Just kiss him. Sometimes words just won’t do it.
Before she let her fears stop her, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to Rap’s. They were warm and firm and caused more of the hots to spread out from this simple contact point. She was unsure what was supposed to happen next, but then his lips parted slightly, his head angling to draw her deeper into the kiss. It was the only place they touched. Her hands clung to the armrests to keep from reaching for him.
Lips, she realized, almost too dazed to form the thought, could speak in ways other than words.
“Ale.” Rap’s voice breathed this against her mouth before closing over hers once more.
The hots began to make more sense as the heat built—
The ping of the ship responding to the Q’uy beacon was a rush of cold to quench the fire.
Contact was broken, but neither moved more than a tiny gap as their gazes clashed. Words crowded her throat, and it seemed he struggled, too.
“Live,” she said finally.
His hand covered her hand closest to him.
“You, too.”
She sensed she wouldn’t, but she nodded, her lips curving into a trembling smile. She let her hand come to rest where his clutched hers. And then because the words couldn’t come, lifted his hand to hold it against her heart.
The ship’s systems began to respond to the queries from the beacon. With a final clutch, she let him go.
You love him.
If this tumult of longing and joy and sorrow was love—then yes, she did.
The pain in his chest was worse than the journey into this body as Rap turned from Ale. For several moments he could not see the data beginning to flow across the various screens. There was a haze before his eyes.
What you feel—
Not now. Rap cut Nelson off. He heard Snake hissing as well, but he didn’t want to know. Not yet. He needed a moment to savor the feel and taste of her lips against his. That she’d kissed him amazed him and filled him with regret. He looked at her, taking in the sight of the mouth that had pressed his, the eyes that looked at him with longing, the flame of her hair and the sweet suppleness of her skin. That she felt the same longing he did—he lacked words.
Not a surprise.
“We should…” He stopped, amazed he’d managed to get two words out.
“Yes.” She sat back and after a moment, her cybernetic platelets flowed across her skin, going up and down until every trace of Ale was hidden by the blue and silver.
He activated his cybernetics as well, feeling the distance between them growing. A communication from the Q’uy was most likely already tracking toward them, but he needed to know, if there was time.
“Your kind, is it true…?”
“Most of what you heard isn’t true,” she said. “But no one believed it wasn’t true. They thought we withheld secrets, power, so they killed us or—” she swallowed “—kept us as slaves and curiosities. I might be the last. I don’t know.”
Slaves. Curiosities. Which had she been in the world of the Q’uy?
“I’m sorry,” he managed.
Keep this up, and you’ll be spouting three words at a time.
Rap ignored Nelson. He felt Snake beginning to wind itself around him and touched the BoaConscript.
“Ready?”
Okay, that was a backslide, but yes, she is ready.
Behind him, one of the captured and restrained robots stirred, its metal hands reaching for navigation controls that weren’t there. The battle that was about to begin would take place inside circuits and systems but would also be mind to mind. Body to body. The fate of their crewmates and friends pitted against the lusts of their enemies.
Do you know what popcorn is? Jett wishes we had some. And she says she’s betting on us.
Q’uloumore, the central city for the Q’uy, was a series of complex shafts of metal that stabbed up through the perpetually heavy cloud cover blanketing the planet of the same name. Four of the darkly ominous planetary security force ships closed in on them as soon as they entered the murky atmosphere, sharp orders appearing on the various comm screens of their ship. The robots inside were even less diplomatic, Rap recalled.
Around them a wide variety of ships entered or left the atmosphere, also closely monitored by security ships. Indeed, there appeared to be more of the dark security ships than other traffic, both in atmosphere and out.
Though there was a central governing board that ruled all the Q’uy, it was an open secret that V’ruwak controlled this board—backed by the power of his robots. That control had been damaged when the Najer and its crew broke free. Though the ships sent against them recently were restricted from having updated data on V’ruwak, they had picked up some chatter during their transit that indicated V’ruwak was feeling increased pressure since the last failed attempt to capture the Najer. The sight of so much security appeared to confirm this. Tyrants clutched hardest when at their most precarious.
The return of these two ships should make him eager to bring them in and curious to find out what happened and who he and Ale were. As far as Ale knew, there were no other cybernetic beings like them in this system. They’d baited the hook well, but Rap’s well-constructed trap did have weaknesses, the biggest being their lack of current intel.
Ale looked about her with interest. She’d been a child when she was transported here and had never been let outside until her escape as a robot, but she’d not been in the mood for sightseeing then. Even though she’d taken what CabeX offered, she hadn’t been convinced she was truly free for a long time. The others had left her alone, and even when she was ready to interact, most of that was done through the system, not in person, unless they we
re on an off-ship mission.
She’d spent the time before and after learning to fight—and to trust. Could she say she had learned trust when she’d kept her most important secret?
That’s a little too deep for me, sweetie. I can’t process angst.
Ale had to suppress a smile.
That’s better, sweetie. You seriously need to chill.
Since Ale was not sure what temperature had to do with anything, she ignored this interjection.
“We will be docking soon,” she said, finding it easier to talk now that they were both focused on the mission. It was easier without the angst, she admitted to herself—and thence to Jett.
Rap’s plan presupposed a heavily armed boarding party of robots once security realized their robots weren’t flying this ship. It was their first most dangerous moment, with many more to follow—if they survived this first contact. Would the robots shoot them on sight? Protocol called for both restraint and aggression in the situation. Much would depend on how the robots had been briefed to respond through their programming.
The first tendrils of the virus were already inching their way into the Q’uy’s systems through the beacon’s first contact. It was in heavy stealth mode, because the Q’uy had the finest antivirus programming in three galaxies at least. This was a variation on the virus the robot crews carried. All sections of the virus were multipronged, designed to go dormant during scans, so they were uncertain how long it would take to propagate enough to take control.
“How is Snake?” Ale asked Jett. The BoaConscript was moving around Rap’s torso, its scales flickering gold and then brown in the subdued lighting of the bridge.
She is as calm as you are.
So, not that well.
“We’ve received the docking command,” Rap said.
Wow, five words in a row.
There was no turning back now, even if they wanted to. Tracking beams had already locked on to both ships. Rap’s hands moved on the controls as he activated the next level of the virus, sending it back along the beams.
For the first time, Ale struggled to keep the cybernetics in place, rather than the reverse. She had never needed to hide more.
It’s not a particularly cheerful place.
Nelson wasn’t wrong. The walls of the detention cell were gray, the light merciless, the ambient temperature set for discomfort. Rap was glad for the cybernetic skin. There was a single air vent, and his careful scanning indicated the air was barely safe for humans. No questions had been asked by the robots who’d ushered them in with punctilious force.
Questions came from humans, not robots.
Rap calculated the wait before a human came to question them as he and Ale sat unspeaking on a bench so hard even his cybernetics couldn’t compensate. Their captors would wish to escalate their fear. This desire would be offset by their curiosity.
He and Ale were, as they’d anticipated, being monitored, so talking was contraindicated. Rap had detected four cameras and at least that many listening devices. And even the most basic communications would be used against them, would give power to their enemy. At precisely the time Rap had calculated that curiosity would trump their desire to cause fear, a door slid back and a human entered. If he survived, Rap would have to calculate how not to be so predictable.
Gray faced and thin, the human wore the typical black garb of the Q’uy. The flat gray of his eyes gleamed with a curiosity partially obscured by heavy, half-lowered lids. The man’s hands hung empty at his sides, no other sign of weapons about his person. Perhaps he felt he didn’t need them when he was flanked by two fully armed, Oxeroid-class robots.
“You will explain yourselves,” the man ordered. As if to punctuate this statement, the two robots lifted both their arms and targeted Rap and Ale with their weapons. They wouldn’t fire unless forced to. Rap and Ale’s cybernetics was too unusual. Even then, in Rap’s assessment, they would seek disabling rather than lethal force. The human was expendable.
Rap felt no need to explain anything.
“You will explain who you are and why you are found in possession of stolen Q’uy ships and materials.”
Materials. That would be the robots.
Beside him, Ale stirred.
“If you find ships abandoned and floating in space, is it stealing to board them?”
This came from Ale. Beneath his mask Rap frowned. Her voice sounded odd, as if she spoke with an effort.
The man’s gaze snapped in Ale’s direction.
“Where did you find them?” the man barked.
Rap let the silence stretch out. “You know where we found them. You have access to their logs and databases.”
The man’s lips thinned, almost disappearing into the folds of gray skin. “You took them—”
“We started them up and they took us—here,” Rap corrected.
The man’s face contorted to match the low snarl.
“You are welcome,” Rap added.
“You should have informed us of their location and then left them untouched.”
“Who are you that we should contact you?” Ale’s tone held a hint of mockery but still sounded strangely heavy.
“And once aboard, your machines refused to let us leave. Technically, they stole us,” Rap pointed out. He added, “We would like to be returned to our ship.”
“What is your kind? Your designation? Who is your master?”
How like a Q’uy to believe they were slaves and things.
“We are who we are, and where we come from is our business,” Ale said.
Rap wanted to look at her, but it would expose a weakness.
“For now.” His lip curled in a snarl, but then his eyes widened, a trace of fear entering them. He turned on his heel and left.
That went as expected.
Had it? Rap was not so sure. The man had received a communication. A soft sound from the direction of the vent caught his attention. He did not look that way. He did not wish to call attention to the vent.
Snake is here.
Rap wished he could talk directly to his friend—and now comrade in danger.
If you’d indicated that is what you required…
Nelson sounded annoyed. There was a long pause.
Are you in any distressss?
Is this Snake? he wondered.
Of course it issss….
Now that he had the BoaConscript’s attention, he wasn’t sure what to ask. Can you give me a report? he finally thought.
I eggresssed the ssship assss planned and found the venting sssyssstem. Obviousssly.
Were you be able to access the required systems?
I have dissscovered accesss pointsss and releassssed virusss packetsss. I will continue my misssion unlesss you require asssissstance.
Will you be able to return safely to the ship?
Snake, Nelson, and Jett should be able to get to the ship on their own using the same pathways they’d used to deliver the virus, but Snake was most at risk, of course, since she was visible to human eyes and other scanning technology. But who would suspect a BoaConscript of carrying an AI packet of data embedded on the surface of her skin?
Once you have delivered the virus you should return to the ship and wait for us, he emphasized. It was acceptable to risk his life, but Snake’s? No more than absolutely necessary.
All he and Ale had to do was stall for long enough to determine if the virus worked, get out of here and back to the ships—the only ships that would be capable of flight—and escape while the Q’uy systems were in chaos.
So simple. And so complicated. With many “ifs” in the execution. How long would it take for the virus to move into the systems? The virus was a modified version of an AI, so that it could go dormant if needed then activate once the danger had passed. How long would word of their capture take to reach important enough levels that they would be moved farther from the ship? Or worse, separated for questioning?
In the hall outside, it seemed as if he heard the thump o
f footsteps approaching once more.
Next to him Ale stirred, then spoke, quickly and too low for the listening devices to pick up.
“I’m sorry.”
He stiffened, half turned toward her. The footsteps stopped outside and the door slid open once more. Rap sat frozen, caught in an unfamiliar cold at Ale’s unexpected words. Before he could speak, part of her cybernetics retracted, exposing her face.
“As you can see, V’ruwak, a daughter of Erume has returned.”
Two robots entered and grasped her on either side, dragging her from the room. Now, when it was too late, Rap leapt for the doors, but they closed in his face. He hit them with his fist, leaving a dent, but little else, in the metal and then turned, sagging against the unyielding surface.
I am guessing that was not part of your plan.
Chapter 3
The Plan Goes Pearshaped
“Hope is not a strategy.” Vince Lombardi
“Unless you set it to music.” Jett
Rap had to get out of this cell. He couldn’t do anything stuck in here.
Snake and I can assist you in reaching this goal. But we can’t promise what will happen after.
He could take care of what came after. He considered the robots and added, probably. He recalled the feel of Ale’s lips on his. He would take care of after. And then some. Do it, he told them.
The doors slid open.
The cybernetic skin flickered, opening a gap near his waist. From this he extracted a small but lethal hand weapon. It felt strange not to have more weapons about his unit. A flaw in this unit. He resealed the opening and eased to the door. He did a quick check. For the moment, the hallway was clear. He’d need more weapons than one.
The robots are heavily armed.
That was why he needed more weaponry.
Oh. Snake says—