Black Hull (16 page)

The day of departure came. Rain pattered
against the glass of the hospital windows. Thunder tore the sky. A nurse’s cold
hand led her to the two incubators: Her family. She looked at her father. He
appeared the same as he always did, as if ready to spring from a nap and head
into work. Her brother looked different; somehow, he had sadness in him. His
arm bore the scar of his injury, the body healing long after his mind had
departed.

The nurse quietly left the room.

Goodbye.

She stepped closer. It had felt nothing
like she thought goodbye was supposed to; it was surreal and blank. Suddenly,
the veil of denial was lifted with overwhelming force and three words crawled
from her gut:

I love you.

You didn’t say you loved me back, Teddy.
You didn’t tell me on the dock, dad.

It was my fault. I should have told you
then. I shouldn’t have went out. I’m sorry.

“Please don’t leave! I love you! I don’t
want you to—I’m sorry.”

Tears welled up, erupted, rolled in
lines down her cheeks, soothing her cracking lips. Salty, painful sobs throbbed
through her tiny body. A flash briefly lit the room—lightning ripping the sky.
I’m
sorry.
She ran to them, their covers lifted, hugged them one at a time. She
nested herself into her father, closed her eyes.
I promise you, I’ll save you.
I don’t care if it takes the rest of my life. I’ll save you both. I won’t let
you die. I know you’re still here.

Eternal seconds passed. Sleep intervened
with her sobbing, and a dream of the future took hold of her: She rode upon
starlight, tracing the skies on a quest to save her family—there in front of
her were her father and her brother. They smiled, but no words came from their
mouths. It was enough, she realized they didn’t need to talk. She ran for them.
Together they joined, were bonded, a warm hug of three. Light and shaking
wrenched her from her happiness:

“Darling—Sera darling.” The nurse led
her out of the room. She wasn’t ready to go—she was too young, her job too big
to do alone, too much for a little girl.

“You’re going to a military world.
There’s no safer place in the galaxy. Your aunt and uncle will be waiting for
you when you arrive. We will keep in touch. If anything happens, you’ll be the
first to know,” Doctor Shaw said at the spaceport. Sera looked at him one last
time, feeling as though it would be her last chance to ask:

“Doctor Shaw, I want you to tell me. It
was my fault, wasn’t it?” she said softly, looking up at the gentle man whom
she’d wished would take her in instead of the aunt and uncle she’d never known.
His kind face smiled at her:

“No, Sera—not at all. You need to
realize that. And you will, in time.” And that was the last she ever saw him.

She boarded the metal-shining transport
and left her family behind.

“Do either of you two want to wrestle?”
Sera asked. She looked anxiously in at Mick and Axa.

“Is she serious?” Axa said to Mick.

“As serious as she can be,” Mick smiled.
“Not right now. Maybe later.”

“Okay. You know where to find me. And
Mick—” Sera said, glancing in on them again, noticing their proximity to each
other.

“What?”

“Don’t get attached.” She abruptly left
the room.

“For a pirate, she worries a lot,
doesn’t she?”

“How’d you know she was a pirate?” Mick
asked. Over the course of half a week, Mick and Axa had gradually accepted
their fate as hostages, though more than once Mick had entertained the notion
of convincing Axa to team up with him to overtake Sera and retake the Fogstar.

“Sera Carner. It’s hard not to know her
if you come from the Bessel system.”

“Did you say Carner?”

“Yea. Does it mean something to you?”

“We stopped off at a trade post, I met
an old man there.”

“Her uncle.”

“Uncle?”

“So far as I’ve heard, they’re related.”

“What’s her deal then? If people know
about their racket, why hasn’t she been caught yet?”

“She’s good at what she does. Maybe the
best in this part of space.”

“Listen, I have to tell you something.”
Mick looked into her wide, beautiful eyes; they were huge, placed at perfect,
symmetrical distance between her ears and above her slender, immaculately
shaped nose. “I think she plans to sell you.”

“Sell me?”

“Yea. XJ told me she’d get twenty
thousand UCD for you.”

“She’d risk tainting her plant? You know
what—let her. I’ll have better luck escaping from someone else.”

“You’d rather end up sold?”

“I can deal with sex trade. That’s what
my model was engineered for. She wanted to let me die out here—and given enough
time, she might still kill me. I’d be in better hands with someone who lets me
serve my primary purpose.”

God, she really is meant for that—look
at her: her hair, her body, her face—how’d I not guess?
Mick wondered at
her creation, her past, and how she’d ended up running to Utopia, married. What
had Carner said about marriage?
A useless vestige of ancient civilizations…

“And her—she’s a cellbot too, isn’t she?
What’s her model built for?” Mick asked.

“Sera?” Axa asked. “Soldier. That’s why
you’re stuck here with me. That’s why you can’t kill her in her sleep, take
this ship, and complete your T-jump. She’d snap your neck the moment you
stepped foot into her room.”

I’ve been in her room before. She didn’t
snap my neck. She didn’t harm me at all. She did the opposite of harm.
Reason snapped
back:
Quit your dreaming, she’s right: Sera’s too strong. She’s been holding
back. She could have twisted me in half, but I wasn’t a threat then.

“What’s your plan?” Mick asked her.

“Plan?”

“You and your husband were going to
Utopia, right? What was your plan?”

“Our plan died when we found out the
price jumped. There’s nothing now. Get away from her, do what I was meant to
do. Earn a living.”

“Maybe you can stay, help me out.”

“How?”

“What could you make—in your trade, I
mean?”

“No. I won’t give her the money.”

“Look—I’m the one who’s going to be
murdering people for their bodies. Maybe she’ll let you go in with her after I
leave, if you contribute.”

“She’d never allow it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because once soldiers have picked their
target for reproduction, they become extremely territorial. She’s picked you,
haven’t you noticed? I’m a threat. She wants me off.”

Picked me? Impossible.

“Trust me—she doesn’t want to reproduce.
Those robots, XJ and GR? They’re her brother and father, at least they have
their .HUMs in them. All she’s after is fully mounting them and getting into
Utopia. That’s it.”

“She might not want to reproduce. But
it’s in the military cellbots—it’s part of their cycle. They target once every
ten years. Military keeps its numbers high that way. It’s just, she’s a
rogue—not too many get away from their service.”

“You did.”

“Okay, give it a shot. Talk to her. It’s
your neck, not mine.”

Mick walked into the gym. Sera was
running. He flagged her down.

“You ready?” she asked. Sweat soaked her
hair, arms, legs.

“No—I’m not fighting you. I have to ask
something.”

“You want her, don’t you?” Sera asked.

“No. I want my wife. I want to get back
home as soon as possible. But seeing as you’re keeping me hostage here, and
you’re a damned robot—”

“Cellbot Mick. And I’m really no
different from you—I am you, with improvements where nature fell short.”

“I don’t care. The point is, I know
you’re going to sell Axa.”

“You’re close. You’re going to sell her.
I can’t risk tainting my plant on human trafficking—I risked enough on the size
of that Magnadraw and Hoila transfer. I’m lucky Carner and I have a history, or
we wouldn’t be flying right now.”

“I have an idea. Something that will get
us the money for your tickets faster.”

“What’s that?” she said, moving close to
him. He smelled her exercise.

“Do you know what she’s built for?” Mick
asked.

“Ah—clever idea. One thing—it won’t
work.” She started to run away.

“Why not?”

“Because where we’re going, there’s no
market for that.”

No market for that—no market for sexual
desire? Sterile cellbots and droids. Useless.

“She told me you targeted me,” Mick
called out.

“What?” she said, stopping midstride.
She looked back.

“For reproduction.”

“A nice thought for a different life.
I’d take it from you, if I wanted it. But I don’t. There’s only one thing I
care about, and it’s a promise I made to my family.”

“I promised my family I’d see them again
too. Why do ours count, and hers doesn’t?”

“Why do you care so much about her? It
won’t matter where you’re going anyway.”

“You’re right, it won’t, but I spent too
long not caring about people. You
are
people, aren’t you—you cellbots? I
thought so, but now I’m not sure.”

“So that’s it? You’ve lost it all, and
you’ve changed into a good person?”

“I have.”

“The good murderer.”

Fire lit in Mick’s eyes. Weeks before he
would have charged her, knocked her down, strangled her. Not now.

“You seem very angry, Mick. Don’t be. We
both believe that the end justifies the means, otherwise we wouldn’t have come
so far together already. We do whatever we have to to take care of our own.
It’s self-centered, but that’s the way of nature. Technology cannot outstrip
self-interest. Reality by its very existence is self-interested.”

“Do you know how they train FRINGE
operatives where I’m from, eight hundred years ago?”

“No—enlighten me.”

“They rip apart your brain and rewire
it. You have to be able to fly for a month straight, awake and alert, and after
the brain fry, you can. But it comes with a price, you become a shell of a
person. Nothing but anger.”

“Oh, is that why you murdered that man?
Is that why you’re so angry? Should I feel sorry for you now?”

“I don’t think you feel a god damned
thing,” Mick roared.

Sera sprinted to him, dug her ankle
behind his leg, and threw him to the mat. She lay on top of him, exerting
terrible force to keep him down.

“Is this what she said I wanted?” Sera
said, her arms sliding around his neck, craning it toward him. She kissed him.
“She said I targeted you?”

“Let her stay, Sera.” Mick looked up,
stopped fighting. She pressed her body into him, denying his limp pacifism.

“You’ll do whatever I say until we have
the money. No more crossing me, hitting me in the head when I’m not looking,
trying to kill me in my sleep and steal the ship.”

“Could I if I tried?” Mick said,
half-smiling. Sera ground her pelvis into him, pleasurable at first, but
continued until it became raw pain.

“Whatever I want, you obey me. Once we
have the money, you can leave.”

“If I agree, she stays?” Mick said.

“Shut up,” Sera said, kissing him again.
Mick grew wet. Their bodies writhed on the floor as a slender, perfect figure
watched them from the doorway. Mick struggled, then succumbed.

She wants her to see this.

The strange lives that exist at the edge
of time. The strange desperation that compels us to continue when there is no
hope. What happiness awaits me at the end of this—what happiness is there here,
is there now?

Sera changed course and steered the
Fogstar toward the Glisreel system.

“You’ll take as many as you can.
Understood?” Sera said at dinner.

“Yes,” Axa replied. She looked to Mick,
trying hard to repress a smile.