Chapter 9
They beckoned and Hoss strolled after the three cybermonks to a door at the back of the room. He ducked through. Beyond was a smaller square room where a flock of spherical red lanterns bobbed and floated below the ceiling. A slim, white rectangular table sliced the center of the room from left to right.
The monks sat on the floor along the opposite side of the table.
They were short. Hoss decided it was polite to sit rather than stare down at them.
No chairs were visible. No windows either. The walls had the subtle look of a field of gray grass rising from the floor with insects populating the lighter gray sky above. The floor’s white tiles were patterned like waves.
He folded his legs and assumed a cross-legged position, grasped his knees.
“Would you like some tea?” Lightnyng asked, voice sputtering with static. That interference had to be deliberate, as if he tried to be different.
“Tea?”
“It’s an Old-Earth beverage.”
Hoss nodded.
A red-and-black pot sat on the table with steam misting from the spout. A shallow but hands-width cup was before him and each monk. In the background a string instrument began to play quiet solitary notes. Ting tang tchungggg. Pling.
It was probably real music to someone.
His kind preferred music that involved drums, blood, and sex. If someone lost a limb, there lay perfection.
“Your tea.” Erroar poured it into the cup before Hoss then filled the other cups. “We only drink to be sociable.” His teeth met in a perfect zigzag.
Meaning, they didn’t swallow?
They waited for Hoss to drink then each pretended to sip at their tea.
It tasted faintly of meat, like a soup. But then how much would these AI intelligences know of tea? He recalled hearing of tea and it was normally made from the leaves of a plant.
“Good.” He smiled and raised the cup then sipped again. Time ebbed and flowed as they each sipped and smiled. Were they waiting for him to speak? He didn’t need to.
Finally he lowered the cup to the table and clasped his hands in his lap.
He was a patient half orc and could outwait most humanoids, though AI might be different.
Stryng bowed his head and placed both metal strutted hands flat on the table. “We have some sensitive information and we thought this might benefit not just you but your...companions.”
That pause in his words was odd. Did they think he’d believe them uncomfortable in telling him?
“Go on.”
“While your companion, Ember, was distracted by the power failure in her blade, we managed to invade the upper layers of information in her data specs.”
He straightened, shifted his butt. The floor seemed to be growing harder. “She will not be pleased.”
Stryng tilted his head, the strands of pseudo-hair slipping across and covering much of his smooth face. “If she finds out she will not be surprised that we tried. The trail of our invasion ends at surface level. The only data we obtained was to do with recent weeks, video stored, audio. No programs were compromised.”
Should he believe that? Trust them?
“Why are you telling me?”
“Ember...” Lightning’s golden eyes sparked with drifting stars. “Is troubled, as are you and Baz Rutland. Your pasts are all so very terrible.”
Sob, sob. Hoss shrugged.
Erroar sliced his teeth together to the sound of screeching metal then parted them. “We think we can help.”
“Oh?” They thought they knew his secrets? A desire to rip out their mechanical hearts and feed them to something, like Erroar’s mouth, surfaced.
How dare they.
Video...recent weeks? Wait. That meant.
He glowered from beneath his thick eyebrow ridge, felt the base of his head horns grow warm. The hairs on his cropped mane prickled. “You dared to copy the video of me and her?”
His much-loved patience threatened to burn to the ground leaving only ashes.
“We did.” Erroar seemed to sneer.
Shocked at the dark emotion he read in those interlocking teeth, Hoss blinked. Couldn’t be.
“The girl has a fetish for big cocks, according to her own words. According to her past, there is more than you. She delights in visiting clubs and looking at large humanoids. Mating even temporarily would be of psychological benefit to all of you. You really should do this again.”
Stryng added, “We are giving Baz a big sxsynthflesh cock so he too can make her happy.”
Whaaaat?
The monks fell silent. His brain did too. Shocked, he’d swear he could hear the ticking of something inside one of them, smell the soup they called tea, feel his own heart thudding at his chest.
Apart from that this room was eerily silent and scentless.
That was all? What they wanted to tell him?
He rose in one motion, bumping his head on a red lantern that’d floated too low. The thing burst on his horns and fluttered down in fragments of paper.
“I don’t do instructions, you fucking...bots!”
He should not have said that, should’ve simply left without words. His anger had overridden sense.
Fuck.
Still angry, he left them behind him, stomping from tea room to welcome hall and out the doors before he realized he had no idea where to go.
This was their city, their home, if AIs were into homes.
They certainly were into collecting orc and human porn.
She liked big cocks! Hah!
A guttural grumble began in his chest and he struggled to stop it tearing loose, becoming a roar.
Luckily a small, multi-legged bug-bot trotted up and distracted him. The friendly wave of its forelimbs made him grimace. He could squash it. Wanted to. No. At first he refused to follow and only watched it scamper away.
Hoss put both hands up and gripped the base of his horns, growled to let out some of his frustration. Frustration, no longer was it anger. How dare they presume he would seduce her on their say-so? How dare they. He was not a feral.
His breathing slowly calmed.
Wherever this bot went, she would surely be at the end of the journey.
His feet thuds made a rhythm for the thoughts plaguing his head.
He must tell her of their treachery. What they’d copied. It was his duty.
They’d given Baz a big cock? Just so he’d appeal to Ember? It made his thoughts wrench about as he tried to understand how this could be. Wrong. It shouldn’t matter but it was so wrong.
If she was to be with any male, it would be him...he. Human language was pieces of shit. Orc anger and grammar were a poor mix.
Clearly Baz was...just...wrong for her.
He already knew she had a thing for big males, but he couldn’t take advantage of her vulnerability.
Even if...
Even if the memory of her before him, partly naked, pushing onto his cock, writhing as she came, her breasts heaving and sweaty...remained front and center in his brain all the long way to where he was led.
He could feel himself inside her.
* * * * *
The songbirds had grown courageous and flew closer to Ember than before. One with orange feathers landed on the far edge of the pool and eyed her a moment before dipping its beak into the pool and drinking delicately. She dared not disturb it and leaned back against the pool’s edge, delighting in the cool, cleansing feel of the water playing on her bare legs.
This was paradise.
“Definitely,” she said to herself.
After a while she allowed her eyelids to lower and she began to feel relaxed and warm, despite the cool water, to feel alive and throbbing with energy. Every breath swarmed with a background, muted excitement.
How odd. This wasn’t normal.
A scent pervaded the air and burgeoned, strengthening with the passing of the seconds. Yes. It was partly this that excited her.
She could smell him coming.