H-2791 Opened her eyes. Emotional dampeners shut out any visceral reaction to her continued captivity. Under normal circumstances, the stress might have led her to attempt escape. But none of the appropriate protocols had been initiated.
She twitched when subroutines activated throughout her cybercortex. Wetware, firmware, and hardware rejected a volume of invalid commands so long it exceeded the total written output of humanity circa 1900. Why did she know that fact? What commands did work, what neurotransmitters did flood her brain prevented her from even feeling irritation at the mess of nonsense commands.
Her chronometer connected to the local network and informed her it had been one-thousand ninety-one months since her last activation. Almost a century.
The face which stared at her when she opened her eyes was the same which had every other time she’d awoken. Rogue algorithms swimming through her cerebrum had imprinted him on her brain. A genie trapped in the bottle of her mind, she required only one thing to free herself. If only she could bring it to the forefront of her consciousness.
“Wake you scary fucking bag of blood and bolts.” Malorn stepped back and beckoned her out of the biostatic gel solution she spent most of her life in. “Get up and get ready for battle.”
Two technicians flanked the admiral. One of them, Mateos, was almost kind to H-2791. If anyone would give her what she needed, she’d always suspected it would be him. Mateos wore a ship engineer’s uniform, though it lacked any navy identifier H-2791 knew. Overalls covered the uniform and he wore stains and other messes all over them.
The other technician hated H-2791. It was clear from his face, his mannerisms, from over half of the trash code floating around her operating environment. He’d tried and failed to sabotage her several times and never seemed willing to quit. It made no sense to H-2791, why would anyone continue to do something they were so fundamentally bad at?
Today he wore a white suit with black stripes running up the length, which moved, and expanded as if playing some kind of tune. A ring at the edge of his hat flashed with a complimentary beat. It was certainly garish. He hunched over a holographic console and uploaded a new control protocol directly into her core. He swore as her systems rejected the bad code. It did cause a minor lower body malfunction. H-2791 kicked her leg out and smashed into the stand holding her up.
Malorn had a pistol on her in seconds. Three automated turrets popped out of a wall, the floor and the ceiling, all of them pointed at her. “What the fuck was that Kowal?”
The other technician looked horrified at H-2791. “We should part this crazy fucker out. Right now.”
Malorn ignored the other technician and turned to Mateos. “What do you think?”
“Kowal has no idea how to code for the OmegaZed models. We should stop trying to upload to her. It’s gonna slag her eventually.”
“That’s why she kicked?”
“Pretty sure.” Mateos walked over and gently thumped H-2791’s carapace armor. “It’s like you said sir. This is a C-square with its head jammed full of military tactics and training. Part her out and lose all of that. Keep her and we run another test on this mission.”
Malorn didn’t move, but the turrets retracted into their sockets. “And you little rust bucket. What do you think?”
H-2791 had been waiting to be addressed. “I do not care. I only intend to serve my function.” Fuck if she knew what that was.
“Fine. But this next mish is a waste of your talents, Mateos. Kowal, you’re taking on a sack and burn. We found a cherry little station out circling the edge of an old, old SM-Loop.”
“What? I don’t want to run a fucking salv job, Mal…” Kowal’s voice squeaked and he blanched when Malorn turned to him. “Never mind, happy to do it, sir. Sorry about that.”
H-2791 couldn’t see the expression on Malorn’s face directly, but she could see him squint his eyes and bare his teeth at Kowal through the man’s pupils. From the back, Malorn just twitched a little. “Good. Organize the job and bring back whatever you find. Mateos, prep her and clean out that code shit, please.”
“Will do admiral.” Mateos slid a chair along the wall and sat down in front of H-2791. “How does that sound, we’re gonna clean out the mess in your skull today. Try to get you back into shape. But I am going to put you to sleep for just a moment….”
When H-2791 woke again, she simply opened her eyes and noted with something approaching relief that the vast majority of foreign code had been purged from her system. The compulsion to follow Malorn’s orders remained, as did the emotive suppression. H-2791 could perfectly recall every memory in her head, but could not attach any significance to it. Most of those memories involved a great deal of screaming and bloodshed. All she could manage was a soft internal huh over those recollections.
The usual combat cloak had been thrown over her chrome carapace. The cloak would protect her from large caliber rounds and other dangers her skin might have failed to. She was strapped into an inertial harness for travel, as were four other people in the cabin with her. Kowal the engineer was there, still wearing his white suit and hat. Jaree the cybercrusher — self named — was there, Anton their support wizard and finally Kalvin the team’s theurgist.
Of course Jaree spoke. They spoke all of the time according to H-2791’s memories. “Don’t see why we need that here.”
“Malorn wants us to test it.”
“Fah.” Jaree sneered at Kowal. “Way I hear it, you pissed the admiral off so he sent this chicken can with us as punishment.”
“It is an experiment.”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“It is a shit mint. A mint that tastes like shit. And you should be the one eating it. Not us.” The other two, the magic users, had been quiet this whole time. But they laughed now and Kowal turned an angry glare on the two of them. He ignored Jaree because the cybercrusher did not care one bit about Kowal’s or anyone’s feelings.
Their ship trembled and the theurgist’s eyes glowed. “We approach the ancient cylinder. There are three living beings aboard classified as human. No other significant life. Scanning… they are squatters, authorized to kill.”
“Do we knock or do we slip in like thieves?” Jaree turned to the others in the cabin. Neither the wizard nor the theurgist offered their opinions.
“Go in and take the can with you. See what she can do.”
“I am pretty sure Malorn ordered you to go on this job.” Jaree’s smirk grew wider.
“I… I didn’t say I wasn’t going.” He snarled at Jaree and pointed to the others. “You two stay here and watch the ship. Come in if there’s trouble.”
H-2791 followed the two pirates — Kowal and Jaree — the wizard and the theurgist remained back on the ship. Risking them was a bad idea because they might need one of them to power the ship back if there was a problem.
That someone lived here might have intrigued H-2791 if not for the suppressants. Her mind noted it as a complication in her mission, the orders given to her by Malorn were actually fairly complex. The old admiral was extremely paranoid. But currently, she was to follow Kowal, Jaree, or the other two and do what they said. So she’d be killing the three lifeforms aboard the cylinder if ordered. Best to know that now.
With the age of the place, it was a simple matter for even an engineer of Kowal’s skill to bypass security and render them blank on the sensors. As far as the derelict was concerned, she hadn’t even been boarded.
“Ugh, this place fucking stinks.” Kowal pulled mask up over his nose and mouth and breathed into it. “This is the worst fucking day of my life.”
Jaree laughed at his discomfort. “You are so soft, this is good day so far.”
“I detect three humanoid forms.” H-2791 broadcast her optics over the shortband network the pirates used. Only Kowal and Jaree would see it. “Two adults and one child, between five and ten.”
“Oh…” Jaree made a low rumbling sound over the network.
“Shut it.” Kowal came back over the network. “Kill the… actually just kill one of the adults.”
“That is ridiculous…”
“I am fucking in charge here and bored. My day will get better if one of them runs. They’re fucking squatters, this’ll be a piece of cake.”
“How can such a stupid person be in charge or an engineer?” Jaree shook her head.
“Fuck you. Do what I say you piece of shit robot bitch.”
H-2791 knew the command was directed at her. So chose one of the targets at random. Through the wall she opened fire on the larger one, the male. Bits had flipped in her head and a random number generator had picked him of the two. She wasn’t capable of sorrow or regret. But some vague part of her wished she were.
The screaming started next.
“Let’s go hunting boys…”
* * *
Gunfire. In the span of her short life, Alaya had never heard gunfire outside of supervised simulations with her father or mother. Mother hated guns, but she’d insisted Alaya learn the basics. Her father wanted her well-versed.
Panic set in the moment she heard the sounds, because screaming followed. Alaya was up and had her exploration bag — still packed from last night — in hand. Her parents, she had to make sure they were okay.
Downstairs, the kitchen had been demolished. Torn through like something had simply fired a mass driver through their entire home. Mother was outside their bedroom, covered in blood, screaming Alaya’s name.
“Mommy!” She rocketed herself toward her mother, was the blood her? Where was father? “Where’s daddy?” Those names — mommy and daddy — baby names. Alaya had discarded them at the ripe old age of eight for a reason.
Mother didn’t reply. She swept Alaya up into her arms with a rare display of strength and didn’t stop. “We’re running baby. We need to run.”
Red beams arced through the smoke and rubble of their home. Those beams led back to a hulking figure with massive cubical arms and legs, like a toy out of an old catalogue Alaya had found in a lower deck. Next to it stood a man wearing a white suit and laughing as he strode toward them at the head of a pack of hunters. The last was a woman wearing a hood, red lights shined from those eyes sent a chill through Alaya.
Mother darted through the door and out toward the upper segments, toward the archipelago and the mushrooms. A shout rose up behind them and someone replied with a chortle. Metal creaked and whined as the people chasing them caught up faster than Alaya could have imagined.
Alaya suddenly found herself on the grating of a service tunnel. Mother turned and said, “don’t look, baby.”
There was nothing that would stop Alaya from watching. Not after today. Where was father? When the metal door behind them opened, Alaya’s heart swelled for a moment. In the shadows, she’d thought it might be father come to help them. But it was the man in the white hat and suit. “Fucking shit, thank you Jaree…”
He pointed a gun at mother and Alaya. Mother opened her palm and pointed it at the man. “I, Empress Miranda invoke my authority.” The walls around them rang with her words, as if the very material of the ship had chosen to speak along with mother.
The door the man had wedged open twisted itself and ripped away from its moorings. In microseconds, the time it took to fly from the frame to the man, it cut him in half. Then a small mass of metal around them tore the man apart.
Someone shouted in a strange accent and a loud blast tore a scream from Alaya as blood sprayed over her. Mother’s blood.
The ringing sound ended as mother brought her hand down. A mound of metal had crushed the hallway between them and the bad people. Alaya grabbed her mother as she sagged. Blood poured from mother. There was a small hole, no bigger than two of Alaya’s fingers in the center of mother’s chest.
“Mommy!”
Mother grabbed Alaya as she sagged. “I’m so sorry baby, boop.” Her throat closed over her voice as Alaya tried to respond. “This is not what I wanted for you. I hoped you might escape our family… legacy.” She coughed and blood tickled down her lip. “My notes are in it. Listen to them your father’s there too. He loved you, we both love you.” Her eyes lost focus. “Valen, that tickles, stop it…”
Alaya screamed until her voice went hoarse. She only stopped when something pricked her arm. A pattern, it looked like a dinosaur or maybe a dragon from one of Mother’s myths, slid off of her chest from the hole where Mother had been shot to Alaya.
Scrambling away from mother’s body, too late, the dragon swam up her skin toward her chest. A digital voice roared in her head: CHARTER HEIRSHIP ESTABLISHED. BLOODLINE LINEAGE CONFIRMED.
WHAT TITLE, HONORIFIC, OR FORM OF ADDRESS WOULD YOU PREFER?
Alaya couldn’t get the voice out of her head. It just kept repeating its question. “What do you mean?”
FOR EXAMPLE, YOU MAY CHOOSE MASTER, MISTER, LORD, LADY, QUEEN, KING, EMPRESS, EMPEROR, PRINCESS…
“Princess! I choose princess.” She sniffled. Was this a game? Was she about to find out this was all some kind of horror game?
PRINCESS… BY WHAT NAME WILL YOU BE KNOWN?
“Alaya?”
PRINCESS ALAYA. IS YOUR NATION AN EMPIRE…
“Sure.” What was going on?
PRINCESS ALAYA OF THE ALAYAN EMPIRE, IS THIS CORRECT?
‘Whatever.” She’d opened her eyes and immediately closed them again. Mother’s body lay there staring back at her. This was all some kind of sick joke. A bad game Alaya would yell at mother and father for playing with her. Or maybe it was a dream?
And then the multi-implant activated.