You took a job three years ago. It was a simple, taking you through Echelon Consortium space. From the fertile planet of Sant’Agostino to the industrial shipyards of Eureka. It didn’t pay much, but it helped you repair your busted cockpit blast door.
The shipment itself was of even less importance than the job; crates of citrus plants. Organically grown, with seed for replanting. Your employment was a clear side-step of customs duties. While heaving the boxes into the ship, a panel had come loose in the cargo hold.
It revealed an antique, nearly mummified 418 handgun, wrapped in an equally vintage powder-blue athletic shirt, left over from the early days of Imperial colonization. The shirt, faded with age, had long sleeves and unfamiliar imperial symbols above the heart. Forgotten coats of arms lost on your under-educated mind. That cycle, you used it to clean grease from one of the landing mechanisms and scrape Eureka’s mud from the cockpit floor.
But now you clutch the sullied garment in your right hand, pressing it against your wound to stem the profuse bleeding. The repair towel is far from sterile. Oil slicks its hemline. Holes shred through its brittle stitching.
“I wonder what subtle form of manslaughter is next on the program,” Dyle announces. He displays digital pamphlets concerning basic first aid.
They’re open-source. Royalty free how-to’s for rudimentary health maintenance. Complete with poorly encoded translation and bundled with a collection of standard malware that Dyle digests.
Atop the console, a three-dimensional model of a buxom nurse comically applies a bandage to a gaping wound, accompanied by fifteen hundred pages of detailed medical advice and mandatory disclaimers. You staple your eyes open through the pain, skimming the lines of jargon. You’ve forgotten how to read, panicking, choking down the ‘simple’ diagrams of monochromatic flip-book cartoons dealing with blunt-force trauma, cases ranging from contusion to decapitation.
Another hand envelops yours. It weighs on your shoulders. Furred digits squeeze your wound and send you yowling, holding you down in place. The mare above you, avoiding your tearful gaze, expertly wraps the shirt around your arm. You screech in pain as she ties its two short sleeves with a firm pull.
“Captain, is there any reason we’re still helping this clown?” The android asks. “Shouldn’t we have at least chosen a different exit craft?”
Reggie replaces the datapad into Dyle’s hardware. Her once-pristine blouse is caked in grime and sticks to her wet form. She pays no attention to the hole in her arm, which reveals interlocking mechanical wiring hidden beneath a thin layer of bleeding skin.
Instead, Reggie focuses on the contents of the datapad. Dyle rejects the physical input once, then twice, out of spite. Eventually he relents, digesting the recently unlocked treasure. Its information replaces your how-to gunshot wound pamphlet on the tactile center console.
“Or,” she begins, “would you like to tell me what why we’ve knocked over two different clinics specializing in genetic counseling, of all things? Real lucrative targets, aren’t they?”
“We’ve gotten what we came for,” the pirate queen retorts. She investigates her homemade bandage, as if attempting to ascertain its powder-blue importance. Her eyes intently watch the growing crimson tide that subsides with her pressure. It wets her digits, cracking the coagulated fluids already coating her arms from New Port Moresby.
“And what would that be?” Reggie keeps her hands on her hips. She subconsciously backs up her insubordination by keeping her sidearm close, within centimeters of her once-manicured nails, broken and filthy. Like before, the captain continues her work on you, allowing her subordinate to take her orders, or leave them. “You’re not answering my question, ma’am.”
“We came here for the datapad.”
The android scoffs at the non-answer, letting her finger test the depth of the hole in her forearm without even a wince, interlocking mechanics and wiring certainly within range of repair. Satisfied with her condition, Reggie’s eyes narrow, scanning the room, fixating on your sorry state and daring for an escalation. In response, the mare straightens her posture, placing a palm on her hip, the other instinctively constricting around your wound.
“Give me the readouts, Reggie.”
“The readouts? From the worthless datapad? It’s references to offsite data. Initial pharmaceutical trials. Corporate, investor-backed garbage. Nothing we can sell, and certainly not something worth a member of your crew.”
“I decide if what we do is worth the price.”
“Oh really? You think...” the android continues with her complaining.
She sifts through her useless vocabulary for a diplomatic way of saying that she’s unsatisfied. But the good thing is that neither are you, and you feel this dissatisfaction bubble under your skin’s surface, pouring out your shoulder’s entry- and exit-wounds, practically boiling, leaving you wondering if her eyes are still flesh or if they’re machine.
“Have this conversation when I’m not bleeding,” you snap. It’s unlike you.
Taken aback at your first, only sign of insubordination, Reggie cuts silent. She huffs, her diplomatic matrices out of options, her internal game theory discarded. She rips out her sidearm, causing multiple red warnings to appear on the digital dashboard. It’s the only human decision you’ve seen her make.
“And who do you think you are? I’d rather take my chances and fry you and your ship.”
“That could prove fatal,” Dyle sneers. He’s stuttering, already reaching the maximum limits of processing power, juggling so many tasks and programs at once.
“How about it, Captain? May as well, unless you’re more focused on your charity work.”
The mare stands to full height, flaring her nostrils. Her eyelids are bolted open and her breathing erratic. She audibly grinds her teeth as she moves in between you and her subordinate. Strangely enough, the warnings on the consoles became more pronounced as she faces down the barrel, her tail’s stray hairs scraping against your face, smacking you with soot.
Even out of view, you’re certain that the android’s eyes are human. Malleable flesh that you can taste, rolling their gelatinous orbs around with your tongue. Similar in flavor to the discarded, dismembered secretary, his taste too metallic to be missed.
“Call my fleet, Reggie,” Ø growls.
With a final scoff, the malevolent android stows her weapon. She creeps towards the hallway, careful not to break eye contact with her captain. Her fingers never leave her waist, itching for the trigger. After turning the corner, she stomps her way to the cargo area to begin her communications anew, put in her place.
The subsiding warnings and amber lights indicate Dyle relaxing his countermeasures. This leaves you alone with the mare, who still watches the open doorway with arms akimbo, trembling with anger. A defiled statue, decorated in red and purple gore, her black bodysuit sullied.
Frustrated, she locks the blast door and begins her research. Satisfied that you’ve gotten the gist of your pamphlet, she co-opts the digital display. She waves her hands in the air, clumsily navigating through the exceedingly organized file directories of corporate information. Her trawling is glacial compared to the android, and she squints through the diction with confusion.
Data points read across the displays and hover in midair. Discussions concerning marketing for genome reconstruction therapy. Presentations on targeted audiences. A list of publicly tolerated side-effect symptoms that extends five pages long, covering everything from heart disease to aneurysm. It’s focus-grouped, backed by subconscious consumer feedback.
A stable drip of disappointment enters your bloodstream as she accesses further documents, as if you, too, are realizing you’ve swiped fool’s gold.
“The work of Dr. Abdul Taraki has been instrumental in our goal of breaching new markets,” says the need-to-know-basis quarterly assessment. “While his presentations before the board were less than desired, they had positive effects on shareholder enthusiasm, even with the notice of dividend suspensions. Due to security concerns, research data is to be centralized in the facilities of Nuovo Portolago. Our internal analysts anticipate our equity valuation to appreciate in response to the projected advent of more sophisticated products following heightened R&D expenses...”
It’s middle-manager musings. CYA scribbles. Worthless data codified and stored for some byzantine purpose, and, with mystique, elevated to a supra-modern treasure map. One that trails a hundred corpses long, leaving the mare desperate for a meaningful conclusion. Her piratical instincts are embarrassingly off-course. It can’t be worthless, she pleads.
Your throat constricts, and your fingers claw into palms. The intense heat of hatred flushes your cheeks. You consider patting your shoulder to get the blood pumping, because any second someone could enter through that blast door with a gun drawn.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
You glance towards the mare, who investigates every spreadsheet’s every cell. She’s scowling, whole body taut with anger. Wet rain and dried blood have made her a piratical sunset, a living hurricane. She hesitates towards you, forearms out, ready to mangle, before drawing a deep breath.
You come to your senses. Your foreign anger and anxieties subside, allowing in the twangs of pain that drive nails through your deltoids. Timidly, you slump towards the medical kit and apply an initial layer of bene-gel, tossing the ruined shirt onto the ground with a wet slap.
The balm is cool, almost eucalyptic. It’s silphionic, numbing your wound. You massage the silvery substance into your forearm, and soothe your bruised clavicle. It’s the first application of many, but with any luck, the pain will dissipate in a couple of cycles. While not healed, you’ll be able to use your arm as usual, the addictive salve working as intended.
Another of Dyle’s displays reveals itself. It proudly presents the temperate planet of Nuovo Portolago, alongside coordinates recommended by the datapad. Well-dressed citizenry flank Romanesque architecture and scenic beaches in the digital leaflet. One such corporate sponsor, SpiritCorp, advertises its sector office to perspective recruits.
One more stop-over. Yet another destination. More time wasting circular excursions. Turning posts that disappear and materialize in endless succession, the hippodrome’s pitch elongating with each tired stride, the crowds more cacophonous and malicious with each sprint towards another mirage. They jeer at the mare’s aimless quest, alone in her struggle. Phantom rain beats down on her, one she’s never escaped.
The pirate queen pounds her fist against the console, losing her composure. Dyle is silent, tacitly allowing her outburst. He’s fascinated. Maybe in awe of her organic inferiority.
Hairs rip along her hand, splitting flesh with each pound. The fifth strike against the console cracks the projector’s glass into a spider’s web, cutting Dyle’s models into mosaics. Another smashes it completely. Chunks get stuck between her fingers, lost in her fetlocks and embedded in skin.
She pulls at her mane, walking circles towards the discarded flak jacket, the one folded over the corner console. It’s up for grabs, without an owner. She rifles through the pockets, tracking her fresh blood into the fabric. Out shakes crumpled handkerchiefs. Loose credits. Empty packets of spezie.
But no cigarettes.
Unsurprisingly, she balls up the garment, staining it completely. It’s spiked to the floor, stomped with her filthy hooves in her childish display. Her tantrum only subsides when she realizes you’re still lingering, her caged emotions coalescing into a screech.
“Get out!”
Impotence drips off her fingers, congealing on the cockpit floor. Killing instincts shoot from her bloodshot eyes. Alone, you’re her only target. An untouchable whipping boy that occupies her mind to an unacceptable degree. You assume that’s why she’s patched you up—you’re alive to be discarded later, at her behest, when she can finally tear your flesh from bone.
Dyle must have seen enough, as the blast door reopens. Nervously, you shuffle. Backwards, out the door, into the rotunda. She tracks you, the mare’s snout pointing towards you, divining towards your very soul.
The door locks. Once more, you’re alone on your ship. Finally, you take a breath, fidgeting in your lonesome. You listen for the half-hearted hails of the android as she attempts to raise the far-off fleet.
The long-range communicator is deactivated by the time you reach the cargo bay. Instead, processing has shifted to the cockpit to trawl through the datapad’s trillions of junk files. Power flickers on and off as Dyle begins calculations for an itinerary of different jumps.
Reggie fiddles with the console in front of her. She’s dressed her wound and fixed her blouse to the fullest extent possible. Even after a near-death experience, she’s kept her composure, sputtering away in her posh tonality.
“It’s impressive that your AI can handle so many processes at once.”
“Don’t say that too loud. He doesn’t need any more confidence,” you joke.
“I wouldn’t say it if we weren’t alone,” she says. She gestures towards the communications device. Dyle’s away once again, shifting his processing power through the file directories.
This part of the ship is different. It’s less humid. Somehow Reggie’s previous attempted murder gives you less fear than the erratic pirate queen only a room down. In the contest of analytical versus emotional, you’re willing to hide in the cargo bay, away from malicious eyes and bloodstained maws.
The android senses your guard lowering. Socks the blast door. For privacy, of course. She lounges, wiping dried blood from around her wound, carefully dabbing with antiseptic agents.
“Our Captain can be a bit much, can’t she?”
“You’re not kidding,” you match her leisure. “Does she treat your whole crew like this?”
“No, normally she’s more cautious. Just as angry, of course, but less foolhardy. She normally spaces meat like you for less liability, for example,” she muses with an annoyed sigh. “Plus, it’s not normal for us to lose one of our crew in such a pointless fashion.”
“He was—”
The android cuts you off with a diplomatic air. Her voice changes into another, different personality matrix, fortifying her mind against the cycle’s events. Her eyes continue to trail her wound.
“Every pirate knows the score. Until the Captain is ready for a debrief, I’m content with focusing on our next orders.”
“And what are those?”
The woman shifts in her seat, crossing her legs and contorting her face in anger. She shrugs her shoulders in an uncharacteristic display of informality. Another matrix unfolds itself as she shakes her head with a wry laugh.
“A good Captain should share her plans with the rest of the crew, but apparently this score’s details are too important.”
“Like why she kept me alive?”
“Absolutely. She’s lost a member of our crew, she has no contact with our ship, and she doesn’t have a plan. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she’s hoping this turns into a one-mare operation.”
Maybe a pirate should be used to the regular carnage, but you wonder just how much the cycle’s events have affected the android. Here she’s talking of mutiny. Perhaps her file’s short enough to receive a pardon in the right system, or she considers the bounty on her captain’s head. A double-crossing doesn’t seem that bad if it means one less interloper to dispatch. After weighing your options, you take your chance.
“Well, what about the datapad?”
“What about it?”
“Why don’t we see what she’s looking for? Maybe it’ll give you an edge.”
Reggie’s eyes perk up. A cooperative aura overtakes her as she beckons you to the nearby console. Using your permission credentials, she pulls the files, which materialize slower than usual. The transfer stops for a moment as Dyle’s systems once more draw power and suppress a brownout.
Her eyes widen, the machinations of a plan taking form.
She accesses a file, a writeup of a future product offering. It’s unformatted, littered with misspellings. Poor grammar expected of business executives. It details questions regarding cloning processes, lineage degradation, and other complex systems distilled into talking points fit for a corporate stooge.
While many cloning operations are outlawed, the executive summary claims, the law grandfathers in established lineages. Legal, endless gestation of athletic generations like the mare’s. It’s an untapped, captive, everlasting market for pharmacological targeting. The last notation in the document is the most powerful.
‘clone lineage genetic issues = gone?’
The android taps your side, begging your attention, and at once you face her outstretched palm. With a quick breath, she blows a small pile of spezie into your eyes. In pure reaction, you reach for your sidearm, only to remember its position on the blood-covered floor, next to the vivisected secretary. Reggie easily presses you backwards onto the ground with a thud.
You lay on your spine, clawing at your face, like an overturned crab. Your vertebrae dig into the metal flooring, bruising. The burning sensation takes over as you attempt to cough yourself back to competency.
As usual, Dyle’s sensors ignore your heightened narcotic intake. With his systems overloaded, your AI barely even registers your accelerating heart-rate.
The android, to her morose enjoyment, threads her hardware to the console and opens as many files as possible with your same permissions. She initiates forgotten processes, enabling and disabling your various security measures, sending conflicting command lines in separate ghostly voices. Dyle’s lights flicker once more before shutting completely, auxiliary power managing only a single red light to illuminate the room.
The scent of moldy strawberries enters your nostrils as the android performs her technomancy, mentally engaging with Dyle behind her human eyes. Half-blinded to the living world, she fumbles for her sidearm as your motor skills dissipate. She rips the slide back on her concussive pistol and laughs, pointing it in your general direction.
A jolt of unnatural energy flows through you, and channeling the foreign emotion, you roll to the side onto your chest, knocking your teeth into the floor and splitting your gums. In this vain attempt to flee, you continue to flop around towards the exit.
The multitasking android fires a single round, missing you by nearly a meter and cutting a hole in the locked door. She selfishly takes a moment to grip her head in pain. Dyle’s putting up a stronger fight than she’d expected.
Another shot lands in your direction, this time getting within a few centimeters of your legs. Your vibrating palms heave at your calves, temporarily paraplegic. While you try to contort your fingers, your neck bends backwards, your motor cues switched, internal wires crossed.
Bushels of menthol wildflowers spring up around your bleeding jaw, growing stronger as another life force arrives. In one movement, the mare rips open the cargo doorway, your ship’s slapdash construction putting up little resistance and shredding like tin. She does not assess the situation, almost as if she’s felt it from the beginning.
You feel her blood pressurize through her muscles, tensing them into a pounce as she bounds across the room, shrugging off two concussive rounds that hit her body armor in center mass. Her quick-fire musculature grasps Reggie with both hands, attempting to wrestle the handgun from the distracted woman, breaking off a mechanical finger in the process.
You wheeze. Raising your head, you’re pelted with rain. Its a familiar New Port Moresby hurricane.
Falling canopy debris dances around the android as she stammers protests, first reasonable, then hateful, and finally unintelligible as a mixture of real and metallic teeth is forcibly ejected from her mouth. The firearm in question accidentally discharges, another concussive round ricocheting off the wall and embedding itself in your thigh like a burst of sunflowers, tickling your bleeding gums with macha.
A crimson switch turns in your mind. You’re the angriest you’ve ever been. Angrier than every inconvenient courier contract, robbery, stabbing, near-incineration, parole hearing, or gladiatorial loss you’ve experienced in your life. Fresh blood bubbling at your throat, thick like molasses, tastes of fried rose-heads.
While your human eyes close, you’re gifted with renewed vision. From your vantage above her, you study the android. Your two sets of nails dig into the helpless subordinate’s face, furred digits ripping off skin to showcase intertwining meat and metal.
Ø tears the android’s arm at its elbow, both the appendage and the firearm hitting the ground with a wet thud against inhuman, cybernetic shrieking. You taste a mixture of metallic blood, acidic mechanical fluids, and fresh rosemary as sorrel fists collide with skull. Hardware cuts her knuckles as the hits delve deeper, warping cranium, splitting silicon architecture from psyche.
From your diaphragm bellows a scream that reverberates against the ship, and you shut your eyes, listening to bones break against tendons against veins, murderous emotion finally released.
Rotting garbage, pre-chewed khat, designer leather, copper wiring, and ten million other tastes rock you into an uncomfortable loss of consciousness. You chew your lips with stress.