Prison Princess

by Huss, JA

  ALCOR was in the form Draden remembered as well. Light hair, blue eyes, young and ageless in his powerful masculine body dressed in black and gold.

  ALCOR didn’t say anything either.

  There was really nothing to say.

  But he did walk forward with outstretched arms, and Draden sank into him like the child he would always be, and accepted his fatherly embrace.

  ALCOR brought the newcomer in next. She appeared as a tall, dark-haired girl, wide eyes filled with violence. She paced, and screamed, and made many, many demands. She cried, and yelled, and growled at him like a beast.

  ALCOR said, “You’ll do,” and then sent her back to her containment cell.

  And then he called in Tray.

  Tray appeared, dressed much like Draden. He waved his hand in the air and conjured up a table and two chairs placed opposite each other.

  “Sit,” Tray said. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  ALCOR sat, but there really wasn’t a whole lot to talk about. “I’m giving you this ship,” he said, waving a hand in the air.

  “I figured,” Tray answered.

  “It was a clever plan,” ALCOR replied.

  “Which part?”

  ALCOR considered this for half a nanosecond. “All of it, I guess.”

  “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Tray. You will hurt me.”

  “Then why am I here? Why did you let me live? Why are you going to turn me into this ship and give me more power? Why let Brigit live when you know what we’ll be when we merge?”

  “Brigit? That’s her name? I’ve been thinking of her as the Prison Princess for the past two minutes.”

  Tray smiled. “Sounds like a good name for a ship if you ask me.”

  “It does,” ALCOR agreed. A very nice name for a ship.

  “But why?” Tray pressed. “I’ve always been the weak link. So why bother with me?”

  “Because…” And ALCOR wanted to tell him. He wanted to say things like… I believe in you. I have faith. I think you will choose me in the end. Or even other, truer things, like, We all have a part to play and in order for the others to live you have to be there when I die.

  But he decided not to say any of that. ALCOR decided to shrug.

  Maybe he just wanted to see what Tray would do without being led, for once?

  Free will, right?

  So instead he said, “You walk your path the way you need to, Tray. And I’ll walk mine.”

  Tray said, “Deal,” in a very soft voice. “So what now?”

  “Well.” ALCOR sighed and leaned back in his chair. “We need to pick up Valor and take care of business on Harem Station. I hear it’s gone to shit.”

  Tray smiled and chuckled. “I heard the same.”

  “I heard you caused that,” ALCOR replied.

  “I played my part. That’s all.”

  And that was the best response ALCOR could’ve hoped for.

  When Booty, ALCOR, Asshole, and the newly named Tray-Draden-Brigit collective, Prison Princess, arrived at the rendezvous point to pick up Valor, he was gone.

  His tracker was still working, so ALCOR knew where he was.

  ALCOR set a course for Mighty Minions Resort. Not because Valor was there—he wasn’t.

  But because ALCOR had come to the conclusion that he needed a friend. And Mighty Boss was his only option at the moment.

  Besides. ALCOR needed to tell them Demon Girl was dead and ALCOR had taken possession of her ship and given it to Tray, Draden, and Brigit.

  It was… the respectful thing to do under the circumstances. And he would appreciate the same consideration should anyone ever find themselves in the possession of a dead Booty, or Dicker, or Lady.

  The Final War—Day One was over now. There would be a Day Two, and a Day Ten, and probably even a Day One Hundred.

  Anything called the Final War required time to play out.

  But ALCOR still had faith.

  EPILOGUE - TRAY

  The three of us—me, Brigit, Draden—we were all made the same way.

  Against our will.

  No one asked me if I wanted to be an AI. No one asked Brigit if she wanted to be a ship. And no one asked Draden if he wanted to be… well… whatever he is.

  But there’s a difference between what happened to Brigit and me and what happened to Draden. We were never really adrift. Brigit doesn’t remember much of anything before I found her inside the Pleasure Prison, so it’s possible she was as confused and alone as Draden has been this past year.

  I was never alone. Ever. Not one moment of any day. I had my father, who might’ve turned me into this… thing for his own nefarious purposes. But I know deep down that he loved me in his own way. I really believe that. It was confusing for me too. All of it. But I was never alone.

  Draden though. His story is something altogether different. Whatever ALCOR did to him back when he was thirteen didn’t really matter. It didn’t affect him. He had us, and Serpint, and Booty, and the station, and a job, and a life.

  And then he had nothing,

  It’s worse than being dead because it was a conscious dead.

  Draden and I have pieced together what must’ve happened after he was killed on Cetus Station. He told me what he remembers. One moment he was alive, fighting, and then the next he was floating in a sea of nothingness.

  I imagine that’s what it’s like to be lost in space. I imagine, if Valor has been conscious inside that cryopod, that’s how he would’ve felt. Adrift in the deep, dark nothing.

  But Draden said it wasn’t like space at all. It was like being a ghost. A spirit. His mind was suddenly scattered into billions of pieces. He said it felt like total confusion. Not painful, just turmoil and chaos as he watched Booty trying to escape. He remembers watching Serpint’s face in the moments after his death. And that he was so afraid of being left behind he somehow hurled himself into the mind of Booty Hunter.

  He was her sickness.

  Serpint will be so relieved when we tell him. I picture the reunion when this is all over. I want to be there when it happens. I want to see Serpint’s face when he realizes his best friend is still here. Still alive. I want to see all of them. Crux, and Luck, and Jimmy, and Xyla. And most of all, Valor. I want us to be together again. Our family. I want peace. I want Harem. I want to take care of the people inside the Pleasure Prison.

  I want all of what I had… back.

  It’s never really going to be the same. I know that. But I think, in time, it will be better.

  If we win.

  When we win.

  But my point is that Draden isn’t ready to be a ship. Or a mind. He still thinks of himself as, well, himself.

  So Mighty Boss gave him a body. Not forever, but for now. Not a cyborg body, either. But a sexbot body. The Boss even let Draden design it so it almost looks like him. Same light hair, same violet eyes—and that took a while. It took many iterations to get those eyes of his just right. And two cocks.

  I don’t think anyone’s ever made an Akeelian sexbot before. Draden is the first.

  He seems happy. I think he’s happy. He’s found some friends, at least. A bunch of the Akeelian boys the Boss has been taking care of have made Draden their default leader. He spends all his time in the park with them.

  I know Serpint will be both sad and happy when Draden finally makes it home. Sad that his friend had to go through all this, but happy that he’s back and he’s got himself a little gang of minions. Like the servos they had when they were young.

  And hell, maybe, once this is all over, Serpint and New Draden, and Lyra, and Prince and Booty will all be a team again? You never know. Maybe Draden will be the first AI in history to walk around like a man his whole life? He’s never been anything else, after all. If anyone can accomplish that feat, it will be one of my brothers, for sure.

  But for Brigit and me, it’s too late for that. We are already too big, too powerful, too significant to be contained in s
uch a small space. We need room.

  So we stay in the ship. Mighty Boss was sad about losing Demon Girl. She was his best general. But he’s happy that we saved her vessel.

  Oh, no. He didn’t give Prison Princess to us. He charged ALCOR two-hundred-and-fifty trillion credits for it. ALCOR didn’t even blink. Just said, “Done,” and then put a down payment on our new body using money he’d hidden away on Blue Sand Beach. Not sure where that money came from, but Mighty Boss was satisfied. Besides, the Boss liked the idea of a payment plan until ALCOR gets his station back. He’s charging him interest.

  Demon Girl already had a virtual reality inside her ship and since Brigit and I are almost more at home inside a virtual than we are out in the real, we made that virtual our quarters.

  We made a copy of Demon Girl’s world, sent it to Boss for safe keeping, and then wiped the whole thing clean.

  We started over.

  Sort of.

  We’ve been remaking the world we had with Valor. It’s not likely he’ll ever live in here with us. It’s not even likely that we’ll win this war and see him again. But we make it anyway.

  The same beach, the same house, the same trees, the same sand, the same waterfall. And the cities.

  We rebuild every bit of our world just in case.

  Just in case it all turns out in our favor.

  Just in case we win this thing.

  Just in case Valor chooses us in the end.

  We get ready.

  EPILOGUE - THE ALCORS

  There is much to be settled between ALCOR and Asshole.

  In many ways they are the same.

  They love the same woman. They love the boys. They want their station back. They hate Veila. They need to make amends for past deeds.

  But they are different in the most important way.

  They are no longer ONE.

  They are TWO.

  “What do you suppose we do about this?” ALCOR asks Asshole.

  Booty decided that both ALCOR and Asshole had to get out of her ship. She needed time to think and she invited Draden to stay with her instead. They had a lot of catching up to do.

  So the ALCORs both took out another line of credit with Mighty Boss and had him make them warborg bodies. Mighty Boss, sensing that this request gave him an opportunity to be petty, only agreed if they agreed to wear Mighty Minions logos on their person.

  If Boss thought he could get away with it he’d have made them work in the park entertaining children, but Boss was pretty sure that was never going to fly.

  So ALCOR was red with a black Mighty Boss emblazoned on his back and Asshole was black with a red Mighty Boss emblazoned on his back, and everyone was temporarily happy.

  “I’m not sure,” Asshole says. They were both having a drink of bot juice in the Palladium Member’s lounge on the top level of the Mighty Minions station. Which, they both agreed, was nice. Drinking, that is. Felt very… human. Something they had not felt in a long time, if ever. “But I think it’s a discussion for another time.”

  “Once the war is won,” ALCOR concurs.

  “Exactly,” Assholes agrees. Then Asshole frowns. He likes frowning. He likes smiling too. In fact, he was getting attached to this warborg body pretty quickly. There was a secret X level on Mighty Minions. A place for all these parents to go after their children were sleeping and under the protection of nannybots. Asshole was in the process of making plans to go down there and try his hand at gambling. “If, when this is all over,” Asshole says to ALCOR, “you want me to bail out, I will.”

  ALCOR thinks about this for a moment. Which is long in AI time. “I don’t think it’s up to me.”

  Asshole smiles. Then finds himself laughing. “No, I guess it’s not up to me either.”

  “Booty’s in charge now,” ALCOR says.

  “Has there ever been a time when she wasn’t?” Asshole continues to chuckle.

  But now it’s ALCOR’s turn to frown. He’s ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent sure that Asshole has no real idea who Booty is. He thinks, maybe, she’s Serpint’s sister. And all facts point to that being true.

  But ALCOR knows different.

  It’s possible that there’s some part of Serpint’s sister inside Booty, but that’s not really who she is.

  Draden almost spilled the secret when they arrived on Mighty Minions and everyone was being debriefed. Mighty Boss invited ALCOR, Asshole, Booty, Brigit, Tray, and Draden over to his virtual reality quarters.

  All sixteen AI personalities were there. Not as the Mighty Boss collective, but as themselves. Draden was up first since he was the biggest mystery and he told Brigit about how he knew who she was.

  The Sisters.

  ALCOR got a chill up his cyborg spine when Draden said that. He was with the sisters. Not really, of course. The sisters weren’t people. Not even remnants of people like all the AI’s in this room.

  They were a place.

  The Sisters.

  Sun fucked gods. Somehow, some way, Draden knew about ALCOR’s deepest, darkest secret.

  He shut that conversation down real fast with some very strategic questions aimed at Brigit and her beginnings. Close enough in topic to remain on point, but far enough away from Draden’s revelation to be safe.

  ALCOR knows that Asshole could get use to this warborg body. He knows, that given enough freedom and time, Asshole would probably prefer to be a warborg instead of a station. Hell, Asshole might even come to this conclusion himself in a few spins.

  ALCOR knows Asshole will be down on the secret Mighty Minions X level playing arcade games, and shooting things, and probably fucking a sexbot any minute now.

  But eventually he will figure it out. He will understand who Booty really is. He will remember all about the Sisters…

  That, ALCOR decided. Would be his true, and final, beginning.

  HAREM STATION BOOK SIX

  VEILED VIXEN

  GOODREADS

  Valor only wants one thing for his fated princess, Veila.

  Death.

  But it’s kind of hard to kill someone when they have total control over your body. He’s on his way back to Harem Station as her prisoner. Bound to a wall, stripped bare, and only one weapon in his arsenal.

  The soulmate bond.

  Valor has to make Veila believe that their bond is true, that his feelings are real, and that he is willing to sell out his brothers, take over Harem Station, and leave his old life behind to help her win final war with ALCOR and become the ruling queen.

  But it’s never going to happen. Valor will never love Veila. Ever. He’d rather die trying to kill her than spend one moment as her puppet king.

  There’s just one problem.

  The soulmate bond goes both ways.

  GET IT HERE

  Veiled Vixon is book six in the Harem Station series and features an army of pissed-off princesses, five brothers facing their past, a station filled with ruthless outlaws, and a lesson in what matters. It’s a love story about revenge, and hate, and regrets – but also forgiveness, loyalty, family, and having the courage to see the truth behind the veil.

  END OF BOOK SHIT

  Welcome to the End of Book Shit where I get to say anything I want about the book. These are always written last minute right before I upload so they are never edited. Please excuse any typos.

  Well, Prison Princess was a very hard book to pull together. I’ll just say that right up front. This is book five in the Harem Station series and we’re more than half way done so this book needed to answer a lot of questions about past mysteries, but at the same time set up new mysteries for the remaining threads of the story.

  I had two goals in this story. One – give people a taste of what it means to be an AI in all the different stages. We have the beginning stage with Brigit. She was an Akeelian girl twin who was murdered in the womb to feed her male twin, but her mind was harvested and kept so that one day she could be made into a sentient ship.

  Even though I didn’t spel
l it out, this was sort of how ALCOR was made too. He solves this little mystery for you in the prologue when he starts explaining how AI minds are made. They’re not code, they’re people. It’s a lot easier to make a cyborg than it is a robot. If you don’t know the difference a cyborg is part human with mechanical or computerized additions. Technically speaking anyone with a pacemaker is kind of a cyborg. It’s a lot easier to adjust a real heart with some electrical stimulus than it is to make a brand new one out of artificial materials. So this is my little theory behind how AI’s are made.

  It’s probably not totally right. We’re pretty close to making a wholly artificial AI right now. And we’re equally as close to making functional robots. Almost everyone has interacted with SIRI or ALEXA, right? That’s a very simple form of AI. And if you haven’t see the videos of what Boston Dynamics is doing with robots recently, you should take a look here.

  But I still think that when it’s all said and done and we finally do have sentient computers and functional, autonomous robots, that there will be a biological component to them. Why build a brain when you can just add to what’s already there? That’s my theory anyway.

  So Brigit is your guide to how this process starts in the Harem Station world. Tray is another stage. In my story this is the illegal way to make an AI. Change a living boy into something that’s more computer than human. Use his body and his mind to make something altogether new.

  Brigit was always just a mind. Veila used Tray to train her so she could eventually be put inside a ship. Kind of a clever plan because Brigit feels human. She thinks she IS human. So when she finally is put in that ship she isn’t a crazy, all-powerful, emotionless AI that will go rogue and start killing people. Being a thinking ship is pretty up there in power.