by R. K. Thorne
“Back to Arakovic.”
“Right. I’ve established she had them doing work for her. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that it was related to the aliens-monsters-animals-whatevers you encountered. But I haven’t been able to crack the security around the deeper files yet.”
“I’m shocked.”
“Arakovic clearly means business, and the Enhancers have never been stingy on security around their research files. If we hadn’t infiltrated them with so many nukes on other systems, I wouldn’t even be this far. Fortunately, they’re not half as good at physical security.”
“So you’re still working on it?”
“Computers are chugging away. Some things just take time.” But he didn’t look happy about it.
“Does this have anything to do with this Persad or Capital?”
“I suspect Arakovic may be connected to the blackmail, or whatever her problem is, but with so few details, that’s real conjecture. But I have a hunch. This trouble smells like her.”
“Why do you say that?”
He shrugged. “Well, what is Arakovic’s goal? What’s the goal of her research?”
Ellen frowned. “I’m not sure I want to think about that.”
“You better.”
She ducked her head, knowing he was right. Know thy enemy as one would know thyself. Or better. “Well, it’s something to do with telepathy add-ons. But not normal telepathy. The Songbird project connected multiple minds. Blurred people. Maybe with the goal of making them connected permanently?”
“And the Starbird project also essentially connected minds to other minds—or at least the written works of other minds in the network. It connected living minds to the vast information stores of both the living and the dead.”
Ellen rose from the floor and strode to her chair, hardly paying attention to what she was doing as she sank into the soft cushion of the bolted seat. “What is she building—a hive mind? Why would anyone want that?”
“I haven’t exactly found her diary. But if a certain scientist had drugs that could neutralize the power of telepaths… or something like that… that certainly seems like an opposing vector of research to me.”
She rubbed her chin. “It would—could, at least—make this Persad very dangerous to Arakovic’s plans. Whatever they are.”
“Again, it’s a hunch. Maybe Arakovic just wants to pursue knowledge, understand telepathy in a certain context. Then Persad wouldn’t be in her way.”
“Maybe.” Ellen scowled.
“I know. It just doesn’t feel right. I think Arakovic has her finger in this pie. The question is where and how—and why.”
She nodded. “We’ll do our best to find out.”
“One more thing. While I was poking around in the Theroki databases on Kael’s behalf, I found they’ve got Arakovic in there. Recently added in the last two weeks. After Kael joined us.”
She sat forward. “Really?”
“Yep. Listed as persona non grata.”
“What?”
“Someone to shoot on sight. Apparently they don’t know about the Enhancer connection, cause they’re still staffing half the labs she’s hired out. But at some point she hired a ship of theirs for some kind of outsystem mission.”
“And?”
“And the entire vessel and its men never came back.”
She pursed her lips, tapping her fingers on the desk. “Outsystem, huh? Is that a clue, or just random?”
“No other outsystem connections yet. But we’ll see.”
“Just what is she up to, Simmons?”
“Doug.”
“Whatever. So many Theroki. They’d come complete with ports, upgrades, and defiance repression built in, you know. How does that fit in? Enhancer labs? Kidnapping kids in gangs? Starved telepaths? Whatever those… things were?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Unfortunately, she was starting to have a feeling that she did.
Sick bay was nearly silent, or at least so Ellen thought at first. As she stood and gazed at the little fetus hovering in the glowing purple goo, sounds started to prick at her ears. The whirring of soft, cold fans, nearly silent beeps along with one flashing green light—the heartbeat?—the occasional liquid splash.
How strange that that little metal cylinder had turned into this. How strange that this purple mass of an artificial uterus and fetus would turn into a person eventually. Right now it looked more like a mutant shrimp.
And how strange that this capsule-shrimp-human had been the catalyst, the cause that would bring Kael into her path and change her life forever.
Of course, externally it hadn’t changed much at all, except that she had one more, very reliable lieutenant.
Internally, well… she’d never been so frustrated with herself.
She’d made a real mess of things. And for a supposed genius, she was having a hard time finding a way to fix them.
She’d had two months of Kael on her team, a few cabins away most hours, and she hadn’t figured out one damn thing. She’d spent some days puzzling through a solution and others grinding her teeth at fate. A part of her still felt the risk was too great. If it came down to it and lives were on the line, what if she played favorites? How could she ever forgive herself if she did? Worse, how would she live with herself if she didn’t?
The other half of her, perhaps the more practical half, had to admit that it was already too late. Whether Kael knew her feelings and regrets or not, they were still in there, guiding her attention, twisting at her gut. They would already influence her choice, whether she liked it or not.
This was the part of her that had sprung to life as he’d led Jenny and Merith up the ramp to the ship after that last disappointing mission. Things had gone all fubar, and he’d still acted like he was on a pleasure cruise. Eh, for him, perhaps he was. He’d limped past her with that usual glint in his dark eyes and that smile that seemed just for her, and she’d just nodded back and felt like a fool.
She had so much more to say than a nod but no words for any of it. Turned out growing up in the military didn’t teach you how to talk about your feelings.
More and more, she’d found herself here in this sick bay, back at the start. Staring at this creature. Trying to figure out how to untangle everything.
A snick announced the opening of the sick-bay hatch. Light footsteps approached behind her.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Dremer stepped up to Ellen’s side. Lavender light played across the lines of her skin. Dremer might love cybernetics, but she was no Enhancer, and her skin showed the delicate beauty of age.
Ellen could only nod and turn her eyes back to the child. The girl.
“Hard to believe she’s supposedly an empress, eh?” Dremer checked over a readout on the machine before them.
“Yes.”
“Not an empress of much. They’ve got fewer Enhancer outposts all the time. But still. Why would someone want an infant—less than an infant—as their ruler?”
“Who recruits children to play war games?” Ellen twisted her lips. “Genetic perfection—or genius—above all?”
“Hmm. Perhaps.”
“Children are more easily molded and manipulated?”
“More likely. I wonder what powers they’ve given her.” Dremer leaned both hands against the railing around the chamber, her face thoughtful. “Do you ever think about having children, Commander?” Dremer said softly.
“I think that’d be putting the ship after the rocket. I can’t even figure out how to talk to—” Ellen stopped short.
Dremer’s eyes lit up with sparkling laughter. “I meant in the general sense rather than the specific, but you know, if you’d like to discuss that too…”
“I’d rather not.”
“Well if the time ever comes…”
“Do you ever think about having them?” There, let her answer the tough question first.
Dremer smiled, to her surprise. “I did, once. Back at university, there
was a fellow I was taken with for quite a while.”
“What happened?”
“Bastard turned out to be a Puritan at heart.”
Ellen snorted. “Ain’t that how it always is.”
Dremer raised an eyebrow. “They all turn out to be Puritans?”
“They turn out to be… not what you need.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Dremer straightened, folding her arms across her chest as she leaned back. “Most of us don’t know what we need, especially not at the time. I do have a few eggs frozen, tucked away.”
Ellen pursed her lips. “Is that regret I hear?”
Dremer’s smile was only in one corner of her mouth now. “Perhaps not regret. I couldn’t have done anything differently than I did. I’m a lover of cybernetics. It’s my work, my passion, my everything. But if I knew then what I knew now…” She shrugged. “Maybe we weren’t as incompatible as it seemed. But quit dodging the question. Your turn.”
“I’m still a kid myself.”
Dremer let out a bark of laughter. “Says the highly decorated war veteran in command of over twenty soldiers and civilians and her own ship. And this is hardly your first rodeo. You weren’t even a kid when I first met you.”
Ellen waved her hand. “Well, thank you. But you know I was.”
“If childhood is about innocence, I’m not sure you ever had time for that.”
“War will do that. Besides, I chose the wrong path for a family years ago.” If she’d chosen it at all. There hadn’t exactly been alternatives. Try to save your planet—or die on it? Let me think.
“No such thing as the wrong path for a family with today’s tech.”
“My profession is killing things. Not growing them.”
“Your profession is far more than that.” The harsh edge to Dremer’s voice caught Ellen off guard.
“Maybe. But I don’t need to leave an orphan behind.” She knew that very well, too. Her parents hadn’t left her much but the two tattoos she’d gotten to remember them by.
“Hmm. So that’s a no to babies of your own?”
“It’s not a no exactly. It just feels far away, I guess.”
“You’ve got time.”
Yes, she thought, feeling a wave of relief. She came in here when she’d worked herself into a froth. But there really was time, wasn’t there? Not to think about children—that was futuristic nonsense. But she had a minimum of four more months to figure out what to do about the whole… situation. And probably much longer than that.
There was so much time. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
Dremer cleared her throat, and Ellen blushed, realizing she’d just been standing there, silent. “You’ve just been in here a lot, looking so lost in thought, staring at our little friend. So I wondered what you were thinking so hard about.”
“I’m—” Ellen groped for an excuse. Marveling at how this bundle of genetic material could have caused such chaos in her life? “I’m wondering what she’ll be like, what will happen to her,” she lied.
“The computer’s still running her DNA Enhancements. Some are easy to recognize, especially when we compare them to Levereaux’s and other standard edits the Enhancers always employ, especially in women. But of course, this was the culmination of a great deal of unique and cutting-edge research. Some of these seem like garbage edits to me. Levereaux will hopefully know better. There’s work around the telepathy mutation for sure. Her rate of growth seems to be advanced, even if we account for the benefits of the artificial devices. I’d estimate her at around ten or twelve weeks traditional gestation, but she’s progressing much more rapidly than that.”
“Are there any downsides to that? Will she be okay?”
“No downsides we can detect so far. She handled the move from the capsule to the chamber well. I’m guessing they didn’t want their child empress to be a child for very long. Either way, we’ll have a maturity date soon.”
“What then?”
Dremer smiled, eyes twinkling. “Then the fun begins, and I guess I’ll have a child after all.”
Chapter Two
Jenny toweled off her hair roughly and wrestled her red-orange tangle into as near-perfect a bun as possible, stopping short as she caught her reflection in the small, silver-framed mirror over her desk. She stared for one long moment, then the next.
What mattered was that Adan was happy, she lectured herself. If she truly cared about him, she’d stop overanalyzing what Josana had that she didn’t have—and just try to be happy for him.
Granted, that’d be a lot easier if Josana weren’t so awful.
Maybe he just didn’t like redheads? She flinched and darted away from the mirror, toward her locker. No, she was not going to do this. Stark naked and freezing her ass off were not ideal conditions for pity parties or self-analysis.
She grabbed her shorts and shoved a leg in, quick as she could. Her hot shower had been great to rinse the battle off, but the ship air was damn cold around her now. She kept her quarters a bit frigid intentionally; it was a more optimal temperature for sleeping. Her friends used to joke that Jenny had only started climbing mountainsides to reach a temperature that was more tolerable than the steamy temperatures back home on Capital. Space had been the logical next step.
But seriously, what kind of idiot doesn’t like redheads? Who were also galactic-class athletes?
Her kind of idiot, apparently.
Growling at herself, she shrugged into her bra. The air swirled the scent of orange blossoms and peaches—the scent of home. Cold, humid, stirring something melancholy in her chest. Her mother’s Capital apartment had always smelled like this—but from real trees, not these synthetic compounds. Those trees had been one of the few real, authentic things about home—and about her mother. Even the royalty of the athletic augmentation world had their Puritanical indulgences.
She yanked a black jumpsuit from the top locker drawer. Xi’s cleaning robots were doing a much better job with the laundry than Jenny had expected. Each was perfectly folded and sorted by color as she’d always done—olive, navy, black, orange. The drawer shut itself as she risked another glimpse in the mirror and smoothed back a few stray strands that had escaped.
Maybe it was the white hair. Maybe she should dye hers. Or get a gene mod. Neon orange worked well for Nova. Of course, that would require shaving her head so it’d all grow in the same color.
Yeah, right. Because the reason Adan was obsessed with Josana and not with Jenny all came down to hair color.
Either way, it didn’t matter. Oh, Josana was certainly pretty, in that holier-than-thou, unnatural sort of way, like a neon sign pointing at a poetry reading. And she certainly had the cultured bourgeois act down, if Jenny wanted to be polite—or the snotty rich kid, if she wanted to be less so. That elegant veneer had to be what drew him in. Right? Because he was smart, and sweet, and funny—and quick on the wing, too. He seemed way too smart to fall for such a superficial ice queen.
Either Adan was very mistaken about Josana—or Jenny was mistaken about him. And she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know which.
She heaved a disgusted sigh, plucked a zeefruit from the yellow bowl on her desk and sank down on her bunk in defeat.
The comm chime sounded—the tone she’d set for Ryu. Oh, good. A welcome distraction. “Yes, Commander?”
“I’ve got some details on the upcoming mission I’d like to go over with you. Can I stop by?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“Be there in five.”
The channel clicked off. Ryu never wasted words. A blessing in a boss. No bullshit. Just the way Jenny preferred it.
The door slid open, and Jenny sprang to her feet. Ryu waved her back to her seat on the bunk. “Did I interrupt anything?”
“No, ma’am. Just snacking.” And wallowing in my personal problems.
Ryu leaned against the wall inside the door, ignoring the desk chair. “Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news
.”
“Yes?” Jenny’s gut twisted. Ryu didn’t usually have bad news, and what little she did never resulted in the commander coming to visit her.
Folding her arms across her chest, the commander eyed her for a moment before speaking. “Next mission’s on Capital.”
The knot in her gut twisted tighter. Jenny winced. “What’s the good news?”
Ryu shrugged. “I thought that was kind of both.”
Jenny groaned. “Formally requesting ship-guarding duty, ma’am.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an option this time. Patron Simmons has concocted a cover plan for the mission that puts you at the center of it.”
She hung her head, but only for a second. Straightening, she forced herself into a curt nod.
“I just want to run the plan by you before I brief the team. In case you see any holes in it. You’re the Capital native, after all.”
“And I’ve done so well not publicizing that embarrassing fact.”
“You can also tell me if you don’t want to go along with it.”
Jenny frowned. “Hey, now. Have I ever not followed orders? Shirked responsibility?”
Ryu smiled slightly, a rare glimmer of emotion. “You have an exemplary record, Corporal Utlis. But maybe there are alternatives that might be less personally painful for you. Let me walk you through it and see what you think.”
“Of course, Commander.”
“We’re seeking to recruit another scientist to join our team. Dr. Chayana Persad. Designs telepathic resistance drugs. We think.”
Jenny couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “Didn’t think such a thing was possible.”
“Neither did I. Perhaps she’s found a way.”
“Or she’s a con artist.”
Ryu raised an eyebrow.
“There’re more than a few of them on Capital, you know.”
“More than on any other established world?”
“Yes. Trust me, the fancy clothes make it easier to hide, not harder.”
“Noted. But here’s the real rub. The cover story he’s concocted is that we want to commission her to design you some performance boosters.”