The Empress Capsule (Audacity Saga Book 1), page 21
“And for the record, you definitely would not outrank me.” She gave him a warning kick in the thigh, and he crawled a few feet away, trying to gather himself. The commander turned to the waitress, speaking breezily as if nothing unusual had just happened. “Jobs around here hard to come by?”
The woman glanced down briefly, a touch of shame on her face. “When you don’t got no education, yeah.”
“Give me your comm. Do you have a comm?”
The woman nodded and handed it to her, unlocking it. Ryu punched something into it.
“There’s a job for you at this shop if you want it. If you’re on drugs, you’ll have to clean up, but they help with that. I’d recommend not coming back here if you can, although I will absolutely cut off his balls if necessary. Do let me know if such measures are required. Wrote my name and details on there. Tell them I sent you.”
The waitress glanced at the phone. “Ellen Ryu.”
He felt a bizarre surge of jealousy that this stranger had been given her first name so casually and he was still stuck officially with Commander Ryu. He needed to rectify that situation as quickly as possible.
The commander—Ellen—nodded to the waitress. “You okay?”
“Yes, I-I think I will be. Thank you, ma’am.”
“My pleasure.”
He sank back to a seat, pretending not to notice the massive dent and bend he’d left in the pipe above him. Moments later, she slid back into the booth beside him and took a swig of her beer as if nothing had happened. At least three eyes from the bar were on her, but she kept hers trained on the table until her gaze finally flicked to him, a grin on one side of her mouth. She gradually smoothed it, but a smug smile remained. Why did she fight smiling—or showing any emotion—so hard?
“Nuclear danger level lowered?” she said casually.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve narrowly avoided being wanted for homicide on this station. All thanks to you.” He took another swig. “It’s that damn chip, I think. I should just get it repaired…” He trailed off. It was a lie of sorts. He was far from sure if he wanted that.
She shook her head. “Some things are worth being angry about, Theroki,” she said. “Helps you know who deserves a job and who deserves a punch in the face. Or three. Dremer talk to you about what she found?”
He nodded. “Did she talk to you too?”
“Yeah. She had to authorize sharing her findings. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Nah. Crazy shit, though.”
She sighed. “Yeah. It takes time to get used to it.”
He paused, replaying the way she’d said it in his mind. Should he ask her about the chip she’d had? Union officers did not receive any special upgrades. But maybe special forces did? If he simply didn’t say anything, if he just waited, would she elaborate? Moments passed in a contemplative silence that wasn’t nearly as tense as he would have expected.
“Did she want you to do anything?” she asked.
Damn, had he just missed his chance to ask? “Yeah. Nothing I’m sure about yet, though.”
“Understandable.”
Another pause stretched between them, and he had the sense they both wanted to go deeper than small talk, to say the things they’d alluded to down there in the jungle. But how to get there from here?
“That was quite a sight, Commander,” he said finally, feeling like he hadn’t adequately acknowledged her valor.
“You can’t get far as a woman in the Union without learning to thump jerks like that when necessary.”
“Union officers like that propositioned you?”
“Not if they knew I was special forces. But sometimes when I wasn’t in uniform.” An even darker look crossed her face for a moment, then faded away.
“And did you offer her a job or something?” he said, trying to steer the subject away from darker matters.
She nodded. “Don’t ask, don’t tell, Theroki. I already told you more than I should today.”
He pressed his lips together, bidding himself to shut up. Her mission—missions?—somehow involved giving jobs to wayward harassed waitresses and blowing up what had clearly been an Enhancer lab where they’d been running some fairly nasty and clearly unethical experiments. Not all that different from the lab he had been working in, except his had grown babies rather than mutilating Ursas with gene-altering viruses.
What the hell did any of those two missions of hers have in common? Other than that he respected her a hell of a lot for both of them. He didn’t know the last mission’s objective, but he figured it had been similarly altruistic. Which made it even more annoying she’d run into Theroki there.
He straightened a little and peered over the booth to make sure the pilot had gotten a move on. There was still a smear of blood on the floor from his nose, but he appeared to be gone. Or at least in the bathroom.
“Well, glad we’ve rid the bar of any cocky pilot types. Now these people will just have to get rid of cocky marines and Therokis, and they can drink in peace.” He grinned at her and earned a slight smirk in return.
“I never said cocky was a bad thing,” she said slowly, starting on a second beer. Or was that a third?
“Most people consider that a bad thing.”
She shrugged. “I guess. I wasn’t trying to insult you. I think if the attitude is deserved, then you’re entitled to it. Maybe I’ve just hung around too many pilots for too long.”
“Almost certainly. Any time around pilots is too long.”
She snorted, louder than usual. “You have to admit, it was pretty cocky to throw that grab beam straight back in the Union’s face.” She snickered. “Would ‘ballsy’ be a better term for it? God, why does every word I come up with have to revolve around male genitalia?”
“Are you flirting with me, Commander?” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“Definitely not.” She slammed down her beer, then shrugged. “Eh, fragged if I know anymore.”
His eyebrows flew up.
“What. We’re off-duty. You’re enlisted. I’m beating up people in bars. I feel like I’m a fifteen-year-old junior officer again. You can think I’m flirting if it tickles your pickle, Theroki.” His heartbeat quickened. Maybe… maybe she was flirting. Bizarrely so, but still.
“There you go again with genitalia-focused metaphors.”
“Years of Union service don’t just get brainwashed out of you overnight, you know.”
“Is that a backhanded cry for help? Somebody brainwashing you, Commander? Blink twice if you are being held hostage by your own ship.”
She chuckled—actually chuckled. Damn. “Oh, no, no, no. If they are brainwashing me, I heartily welcome it.”
Well, glory be. She was actually smiling. The warmth on her face was unmistakable—for her ship? For whomever she worked for? Another twinge of jealousy hit him. He wanted that warmth from her.
And more than that too—he wanted to be a part of something worth feeling that way about.
“Did you say fifteen-year-old junior officer?” he said slowly. “How well did that work?”
She snorted. “Not well at all! But fortunately I’m as good at unarmed combat as I am at invasion defense planning.” Her eyes twinkled.
For the first time, it occurred to him that she might be tipsy. Of the six beer bottles on the table, all of them were open, and he had definitely only had two. A selfish, instinctual part of him immediately started trying to think of how he might use this to his advantage. She was always so serious and stoic. What was she hiding under that carefully pressed, controlled exterior? If she did “lighten up” a little, what might peek out?
They had said they wanted to exchange war stories. Discuss the burns of the past.
“So you know all about my chip,” he said cautiously. “Tell me about yours. Sounds like it was a doozy. Milk and cookies and everything?”
She took another long drink and then glared at the bottle, now empty. “I think we are going to need more beer for that, Theroki.” She raised a finger.
“No, no, my treat. You said a beer. Not a whole night of beers.” He began jamming his own credentials into the table’s surface.
“I thought you didn’t have any creds.”
“I don’t have enough to get to Desori, but I have enough to buy a bucket of beers.” Maybe even three. That was the extent of it, though, but she didn’t have to know that.
“Yeah, I had a chip,” she said, voice tight and bitter all of a sudden. “Not like yours. Networked telepathy add-on and a net hookup.”
“Wow. They give that to all the Union bigwigs?”
“Eh, no. I wasn’t a ‘bigwig’ anyway. It was experimental. Only for a few special-forces candidates. They wanted to test out if the artificial telepathy could assist marine fighting units. And for that, it was great. Faster command, easier comms, quicker access to the situation on the ground. Even if you were up in the ship, you could just reach out to each pair of boots and see for yourself what support they needed, how it was going. That part was pretty great. Kids didn’t need to stop firing to report to you.”
“So why’d you get rid of it? You seem to have gotten it out entirely.”
“Well, for one, they didn’t ask me if I wanted it put in. I got injured in a heli crash and woke up with my brain being flooded every second of the day. The bastards.”
“Shit. That sounds intense.”
She met his eyes now, her face serious but more open than usual. “You must have heard us looking for someone named Arakovic, right? You must have wondered.”
He nodded. “I may have been a little curious.”
“She’s the doctor that ran the program. Not working for the Union anymore. I can’t find her. But I’m going to.” Her voice had taken on a vicious edge.
“And what are you going to do when you find her?”
“I haven’t entirely decided yet. Make sure she’s not hurting anyone else, for starters. But when we get to Desori and you go on your merry way, Sidassian, you have to promise me you’ll let me know if you run into her. Or even hear of her.” Her stare was intent, beseeching. As if he could say no to that.
“Of course. Is this Zeta Arakovic? The cybernetic telepathy researcher?”
She scowled fiercely. “You know her?”
“No, I looked her up after our last mission. I said I was curious. Just making sure I got the right first name, so I get the right person when I go hunt her down for you.”
She snorted, assuming he was joking. The larger part of him wasn’t. “That’s the right person,” she said. “But you don’t have to do that. It’s my cross to carry.” Such a funny expression. She must have grown up on a Christian world.
Why he suddenly felt so determined to take her cause as his own, he didn’t know. But a very high-ranking Enhancer lab lay at the end of his journey to Desori. And if a scientist with slightly flexible morality was going to leave the Union, he had a feeling he knew where they’d end up.
Oh. Of course. The rest of her missions suddenly made a bit more sense. Certainly they had a humanitarian purpose, but she had a personal vendetta driving her too.
She took another sip of beer. “The chip also wasn’t good long-term. There were side effects I couldn’t stand.”
“Such as?”
“They put in some obedience algorithms, which was sure nice of them. I didn’t recognize it myself, but since I had the telepathy piece, I saw the others thinking about it. I’d find them thinking, ‘Ryu should have reamed me out for that,’ ‘she would have argued that stupid order,’ ‘what did they put in that damn chip,’ ‘hell, they lied to her,’ and so on and on. So I knew from my team’s reactions that it was changing me. And not for the better. The ability to question and collaborate with command is very important to mission success. If you always do what you’re told, you’ll walk people into a death trap.”
“Dremer said my chip’s got some of that too. She’s not sure how much.”
“Lucky for you that you got around some of it, I guess?”
He shook his head. “Sort of.” He hadn’t gotten around it so much as he’d told Vala how she could get around it without him. She’d still had to drug him and tie him to the chair for most of the process.
She looked curious but wasn’t finished with her own story. “But it was way worse than that, honestly. My mind started to… drift. To thin out and sort of blend in with the others. They noticed it too, although their implants were more minor. I was prepared for some of that to function as a better team. If it saved people’s lives, I might give up a bit of identity in exchange. But when you start to know who wants to screw who, and who actually hates the person that wants to screw them or is screwing them. And then they both start to know all that about each other…” She shuddered. “A hive mind was just not for me. And I could access the net in a blink too, which was almost as blurring. Addictive, really.”
They paused for a moment as their waitress delivered six more beers with a smile this time.
“So you quit? Resigned your commission?”
She looked chagrined. “Not exactly.”
“Oh, ho, ho, my straitlaced commander on the surface, but you do like to break the rules, don’t you?”
“Well, no. I hate breaking rules.” She let out a small laugh, although her pleasant buzz seemed to be dimming a little. “I hate it. That doesn’t mean I don’t do it from time to time. I also hate stupid rules. I wish so many assholes didn’t force me to break rules so often. And I may hate going crazy and being lied to more.”
“That’s fair.”
“Maybe someday I’ll tell you about how I left. Not just yet. But I went crazy for about six months after I took it out. Stark raving mad, at times.”
“Lot of cookies and milk?”
“Yeah. And a lot of running, trying to bring my mind back into my own body. I kept reaching for minds and information that weren’t there. And were never going to be again. Sometimes I’d demand the chip back. Or I’d just sit there demanding the AI get me information, just so I could prove to myself that it wasn’t gone, that there were other ways, slower ways, but less insane ways to do it. I had to rebuild the wall around my mind again.”
Her brown eyes were distant, haunted. Her expression was almost lost, like someone who truly was searching deep inside themselves for something—and not finding it. Then she snapped out of it, her eyes locking on his. “Look, I’m sure they’ll require you to fix your chip. But I for one would be glad if you didn’t. There’s life without it. And sometimes it’s better.”
“Oh, I have no doubt of that,” he said softly, holding her stare.
A sudden spark flew between them. Her wheels were turning, as if she wasn’t sure she’d read the right meaning into his words. Even this look, this magnetism that had sprung out of the nothingness—all that part of his life had been shut away for so long. It was murderously distracting to have it coat his thoughts. But it was also intoxicating, a heady feeling stronger than any drunken high. Or at least it felt that way after being without it for so long.
He broke the intensity of the moment before she did, as he sensed her panicking, reaching for some way to push him away. He took a swig and smiled casually. “Then again, we might be thinking differently if we hadn’t avoided the brutality I wanted to inflict on that jerk behind us.”
She reached out and laid a hand on his forearm, strategically placed away from any serrations or rough spots. Her own eyes had fallen to focus on her beer, lost in thought.
Of course she knew where to put her hand to touch him. Of course.
Wasn’t that what drew him to her? What made him get lost watching her lips, listening to her voice? It was not just the sexual drive unshackled by the chip damage. This was why he needed her in particular. He was broken, he was raw, he was fragging dangerous. And yet she understood all those broken, raw, dangerous things. She knew them intimately somehow, had some of them in herself. She could navigate them. How many other women could?
“It might lessen with time,” she said gently. “The brain adjusts. Mine did.”
“I hope you’re right.” He opened another beer. “I hesitate to mention this, but… was this the third-degree burn you mentioned? Cause we may be too drunk to swap war stories in not too long.”
Her face darkened, and she pulled her hand away. He almost regretted saying anything—but he had a feeling his window for finding out this bit of her past was closing, and he didn’t want to miss it forever. They should be in Desori within two weeks or so, and the ship wasn’t as conducive to sharing secrets as pink neon and buckets of beer.
“It was one of them, but not the one I was referring to down there. You really want to know?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”
“I… I dealt with a lot of shit to get to my post in the Union. Special forces is supposed to be a meritocracy, but you find out it’s not if you’re a low-born female with no wealth or connections. Brute strength, mindless endurance, solid un-fragged-up genes? Who cares, it’s who you know. Except I had this golden ticket of being a big damn war hero.” She spit the words with distaste.
He raised one eyebrow.
She sighed, steeling herself. “And you know how young and stupid I was? I was fool enough to think a junior officer actually cared about me.”
“That doesn’t seem foolish.”
“Feels like it in hindsight. He wasn’t in my chain of command, of course. But he only stuck around long enough for me to help him with his career. Know what I got for it?”
“What?”
“He got a promotion off my recommendation, then another. Then he demoted me. All after he found an admiral to screw. He couldn’t even leave me for another marine.”
He winced. “Ah, hell.”
“I know. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. I got transferred out. I couldn’t stand to look at him, let alone take orders from him, even indirectly. Later, he commanded a ship full of my colleagues straight into a Puritan ambush. Mirror’s Light was outgunned four to one, and those Puries had the wormhole for backup. Not us.” Her voice quieted, slowed, now dark. “A lot of good people died. A lot of my friends died because I let him sway my thinking.” She took a much longer drink of her latest beer now, finishing it. “Never again. Never, ever again.”
