Chapter 8
Ember ran through the checklist of her recent, significant events.
Rescued from a war, fucked her first orc, brought here sort of against her will, hyperspace intubation of her intimate places done manually by someone she both admired and disliked, and the latter was amazing considering how short a time she’d known Baz Rutland.
The things one did when not quite of a sane mind...
So, here she was face-to-metal with the cybermonks of legend, who may or may not have their digital ones and zeroes in the muddy pies of the galaxy.
Get it right and she’d leave here knowing who she was and where she’d come from, who had given birth to her. The names of her mother and father.
Gods...that was going to be wonderful when it happened.
She sniffed then wrinkled her nose to hold back the oncoming watery eyes.
They were dead but that didn’t matter. Just knowing who they were had become a need so deep it’d wrapped itself around her soul, crawled into the dark spaces in her head and stayed there waiting, niggling at her.
Just to know. Not knowing killed her a little every day.
Get it wrong and she’d leave here still a faceless, ancestorless orphan.
“Greetings, Miss Ember, princess of CESS industries. We are Lightnyng File, Stryng Theory, and Erroar Code.”
Curious names. She swept her gaze from left to right. So the one with long, white, and swishy cable hair was Stryng. Wedge-studded dome with the coin-colored eyes was Lightnyng. Erroar was shark teeth. Those teeth had markings like...she peered...like ancient circuit boards. That had to be deliberate?
These guys looked like the leftovers from a techpunk band.
Weird but nice.
Ember nodded.
“We believe you carry something that interests us. The DSU.”
The DSU? That was what they wanted? She had something they wanted.
Ember blinked. She had something they wanted. Excellent.
Yet...
“You told Baz this three years ago – to rescue me? How did you know I would have the DSU?”
“We are good at prediction.”
“Future events predicted from present data?”
“Yes. We process a lot of information to gain our understanding of the universe.”
This was why people worshipped them. It had to be. If they truly were prescient, this was world-tilting in significance. Well, well.
Her fingers twitched, wanting keys to press, data to mine, and her data knife in her hand. This might be fun. “You and me, we need to chat.”
“I am Erroar. You will give us the DSU,” shark teeth said, mouth widening.
“The DSU is mine and I’ve trapped it, virused it. No one can get in without my agreement. Especially you. Unless you want to be so many zeroes and ones on the wind.”
Okay, maybe she’d gone too far with that threat. She’d been riding high on the possibilities here.
Nevertheless, she slid the data knife from its waist sheath with her gloved left hand, and switched it on. The knife had a six-inch handle. Granted it was decorated with several stickers of her favorite anime star, but it was top-of-the-range equipment. The blade was powered and a six-inch-long piece of woven laser and ultraviolet light – the ultimate cyber-diving machinery. She could reach into any programmable device with this, even the minds of the cybermonks. It was that good. Her data-fucker, she liked to call it.
The hum and shiver of the blade under her fingers and the iridescence shimmering off the twisting purple blade, drew their attention.
Though she didn’t look down, she knew it would be fogging the adjacent air with frost.
“I’ll show you my DSU and you show me your database...all of it.”
“All of it? Never!” The dismay and anger erupting from their voices had her smiling.
Rescue a princess? They’d caught themselves someone better than that. She was a queen of cyberspace. Then the knife shuddered under her hand and the glow of the blade sputtered some more, faded, and zipped out.
Dead.
Which left her with only a handle. She couldn’t scare a hamsterpoodle with that
She really should’ve recharged it.
Asking for a wall outlet to plug it into might be a little presumptuous.
“Damn,” she said under her breath.
The silence was off-putting. She pretended all was fine and let her arm dangle at her side, casual-like, then slid the now bladeless data knife into the sheath.
Finally Erroar answered, teeth stretching into a crescent moon shape. “We will need time to consider your proposal. A room will be shown to you. Please feel free to relax. This may take a few days.”
She was sure teeth should not stretch.
Days? “What if Baz Rutland wishes to leave before then?”
“There will be other ships. Unless you are in a hurry?”
The vacant buzz of their voices blended until she wasn’t sure who spoke unless Erroar opened his toothy mouth.
Ember cleared her throat. “I’d wait a century if it meant gaining access to your database.”
“We see that.”
She’d revealed a weakness there, showed them how important it was, made no move to beg to be returned to CESS, like a dutiful employee should. Of course, she was on their planet, in their city. If they wished to, they could probably use unsavory methods to gain access to the DSU from her. Both she and they knew this. It was a basic fact.
But they hadn’t, yet. This was good.
“I’ll...find this room you speak of.”
All three of the cybermonks nodded and she backed away a few steps before turning.
“Your guard may stay a little longer. We need to speak to Hoss.”
Her glance took in Hoss and them, then Hoss again. He shrugged.
“I will talk to them.”
“Sure.” She walked out feeling strangely unsettled.
What was wrong with Hoss staying behind? Nothing she could put a finger on. If anyone would lay down his life for her, it was Hoss.
The doors closed behind her. An ankle-high, roach-bot skittered up on metal legs and gestured for her to follow. Ember squeaked and flinched. Not squishing it with her boot was difficult to do.
Roaches were a galaxy-wide pest critter.
“Who makes their welcome bots in the shape of a roach?”
And brown too. A shiny gold-brown. Where was the spray for this thing?
As long as it didn’t nibble on her food. Ember followed it down the corridor to the right, with her boots making a nice assertive sound on the floor. So far things were going as well as she could hope for, though she wondered exactly what Baz was having done to him.
Grumpy and rude he might be, but he had rescued her from an ugly death. She could never spit in the face of someone who did that. Well, maybe she could. He’d have to be a helluva lot ruder though.
The roach led her down sandstone corridors then into a garden open to the sky. Soft lights that dangled from poles came on as she approached them. Night had fallen. Though the walls of the corridor continued, they’d been strategically dismantled, partway to ground level, so they barely indicated where to walk. To either side past the sandstone blocks were ponds studded with stalks topped with huge yellow blossoms.
Bright-plumaged little birds zipped past, their tails fluttering feathered streams half as long as their bodies. The songbirds were blue mostly. Some were orange. They left trails of color and melodious notes and she closed her eyes just to listen.
So pretty.
She realized she hadn’t smiled like this for a long, long time.
The roach-bot had disappeared.
Ahead the path ran through a gap in another stone wall, though this one was partly hidden by a morass of vines. She ambled through, her shoulders brushed by tendrils of the low-hanging vine, and found soft green grass underfoot and the path deteriorating into the occasional square flagstone.
It angled left and skirted a shallow but perfectly clear pool with a bottom of rounded stones. Ripples marred the surface. The scent of pure water washed away her worries, her shoulders relaxed, her hands uncurled. She hadn’t realized how tense she’d been.
A low waterfall dabbled musically at the far end, creating the ripples, and the birds swooped low across the surface.
Swimming is allowed was written in white embedded on a gold plaque at the edge of the water. On three sides a high wall of slatted rough timber enclosed the pool. On the fourth side where she’d entered, the corner of a one-story building had been opened.
A tiny lizard skittered past and zipped up the drainpipe leading down the wall of the bedroom. Up above globular lights backlit the foliage of trees shielding this place from the sky. If stars showed, she couldn’t tell.
White glass sections had been slid back to reveal a bedroom decorated with white, bronze and silver accents. A square bed hugged the floor and was no more than knee high.
She was almost afraid to breathe and thus disturb the tranquility of this bedroom. Black birds flew across the white quilt in silhouette. This bedroom seemed designed to be both private and a part of the outside garden.
She could swim but had nothing to wear. Ember looked down at herself, grimaced.
The dirt of a week on board the Leaf under water usage restrictions enticed her to strip off her boots and her damaged tights and return to the edge of the pool. A pale gray stone ramp led into the water. She let the tights slip from her fingers and waded in. Under her bare feet were mildly rough undulations in the stone.