Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) (21 page)

“Over twenty years ago,
when I was seventeen,” Fitz said.

“And nothing since? Not
in the past few months?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Yes, and when this is
over, that’s another nasty little surprise you’re going to start getting every
twenty-eight days. I knew I shouldn’t have waited until the next day to put
that thing in. Did you and Wolf…? What am I saying? Of course, you and Wolf had
sex.”

“Only once,” Fitz said.
“Or twice.”

“The lament of every
pregnant teenager since humanity started walking upright. It only takes once,
particularly if this thing wants to reproduce.”

“What do you mean?” Von
Drager asked.

Ski ticked off two
items on her fingers. “Survival and reproduction. They’re the two primary needs
of every living organism. We provide its survival. We give it a place to live,
we feed it, and by the very act of fighting to stay alive, we’re protecting it.
In exchange, we get enhanced healing and a greatly extended lifespan. I’d say
that’s a pretty nice bargain, for us anyway. And that leaves the symbiont with
a single biological imperative—to reproduce itself. And it does that through
us. From Garion, we know that our offspring will be born carrying the organism.”

Ski was warming to her
subject now. “It can control every function in our bodies. Think about that
night Garion was conceived. Wolf and Ari’s affair was over. From what he told
me, there had been no attraction between them for years. Yet, as soon as they
met, the old hormones started flowing, and the next thing you know, they’re
going at it like a couple of gerbats. On Ari’s part, all her symbiont had to do
was stimulate the ovaries to produce an egg and,
bang!
You’ve got a
fetus. I suspect the same thing happened with you.”

“That would explain why
the symbiont isn’t reacting normally,” Von Drager said. “It has to go partially
into remission, otherwise it would assume the fetus was foreign biological
tissue and try to expel it.”

A sudden giddiness surged
through Fitz. “Then it’s not the TKS returning?”

“Probably not, but we
need to check you out to be sure. No arguing this time.” Ski hooked her arm and
dragged her along the corridor.

“But I can’t be
pregnant. An augie can’t… With all the equipment inside me… There’s no room for
a baby.”

“I know, and that’s why
we need to get that little tyke out of there and somewhere safer than in a
momma who’s always getting shot at and insists on defusing bombs.”

This time Fitz didn’t
argue. In the exam room, Fitz stripped to her underwear and stepped into the
scanner, the bed reclining so the imager could sweep over her, building its
three-dimensional picture of her body.

“Well, Hansue be
praised.” Ski’s sudden exclamation jarred Fitz’s already frazzled nerves. “Will
you look at that? It’s beautiful. I haven’t seen anything like this in far too
long. A fetus in utero. It’s just not done that way in many places anymore. As
a mercenary physician, I see a lot more of life’s end than its beginning.” She
swung the scanner’s display around so Fitz could see it.

Stark and pale, her
armored skeletal system stood out, supporting a jumble of computer modules,
pumps, reservoirs and actuators, but floating serenely at the center of all the
hardware was a tiny curl of life. Tears welled up in Fitz’s eyes and rolled
down her cheeks. She touched the image on the screen. Wolf’s child.
Their
child. She had to force herself to breathe.

He should be here,
beside her, to share this, but she didn’t know if she’d ever see him again.
He’d been there yesterday on the ship, in control of his body, and she’d
hoped—no, she’d prayed—that he’d be waiting for her at her office or their
home. But he hadn’t been. He hadn’t contacted her either. She had to assume
Cypher had regained control.

How would Wolf react to
the news that he was to be a father again? His relationship with Garion was
somewhat strained and distant.

“Will he be angry with
this new development?” Fitz hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until Ski
answered.

“Angry? Hell, no. He’ll
love it. It’s a new life, a unique being that you and he have made together
with your love. He’s in love with you, so he’ll be crazy about the baby.”

“But he’s not getting
along with Garion so well.”

“That’s different.
Discovering you have an adult son forty-some years after the fact has to be
tough. And he no longer has anything but a professional relationship with the
mother. Give him time, he’ll come around. He loves that mangy overweight cat of
his, doesn’t he?” She squeezed Fitz’s hand. “Despite all his family’s money,
Wolf had a horrible childhood. I know he’ll do everything within his power to
see that his child has all the love and protection he never received.”

“But with our jobs, our
crazy schedules—how can we raise a child?”

“I’m not going to kid
you; it won’t be easy, but you’re two of the savviest people I know. You’ll
figure it out, you’ll see. Now, get dressed. I’m going make arrangements with
Fleet’s Birthing Center to have an operating room and artificial womb ready to
transfer her out of there tomorrow.”

“Her?” Fitz asked.
“It’s a girl?”

“Pretty sure. We’ll
know for certain tomorrow.” She wiped the tears from Fitz face. “Your hormone
levels will rebalance quickly after the procedure, so you won’t feel quite so
weepy.”

“Good. I couldn’t
understand what was wrong with me. All I wanted to do was cry. What about the
nausea? Will that go away?”

“The morning sickness?
Yep, that too. You’ll be back to your old kick-ass self by this time tomorrow.”

Ski walked away,
signaling Von Drager to join her, leaving Fitz alone with her thoughts, and the
image of their child. She stroked the screen as if she could caress her
daughter.

I promise you, Little
One, that you’ll have all those things I longed for as a child. You’ll never
know hunger, or have to steal to stay alive, like I did. And you will know the
love of both a mother and a father. Have no doubt about that. If I have to tear
apart the Empire with my bare hands, I’ll see to it that Wolf is there to see
you grow up.

Fitz rose and slipped
back into the emotional armor of her black uniform.

Ski returned with a
data chip. “Here’s the address. Be there at 0800 hours tomorrow. Now go pick up
that scroungy cat and tell him he’s about to be an uncle.”

Minutes later Fitz
stepped off the lift, thoughts adrift, attempting to locate solid footing in
the shifting future her life had taken on. Her comm activated: a series of
howls, hisses, and growls rip-sawed through her head. She launched into HK
before the mental screaming identified the sender.

“Gerbats. They’re all
over me. Get ’um off. Get ’um off of me!”

She charged into the
office and the veterinarian, Dr. Krizova, glanced up, along with the SpecOps
cyber-tech.

“Someone’s attacking
Jumper,” she yelled.

“Nothing to worry
about, Colonel,” the vet said. “He’s having a bit of trouble coming out of the
anesthetic. That often happens with Kaphier cats—something to do with their
telepathic abilities. That’s why I always wear this thing when I operate on
one.” He pointed to a headset that held a tele-suppressing module against his
temple.

“Wish you’d told me
about that,” the cyber-tech said, her teeth bared in a pained rictus. “I hope
you’re not planning to set a precedent on augmenting animals, Colonel.
Otherwise I’d suggest you dragoon my ex-bond-partner next time,” she said, and
hurried for the door.

From the adjacent
recovery room, Fitz heard the cat’s howls overlaying the broadcast in her head
as his mental voice launched into a particularly raunchy Fleet drinking song.
She shut down her comm.

“With the exception of that
little problem, the surgery went remarkably well,” the vet said. “He may be a
little wobbly for a while, but he’ll be back to normal by tonight. You do
realize that all he can broadcast are cat sounds—meows and such.”

“I’m aware of that, but
since he can’t receive telepathically, I needed a way to contact him quietly.”

Dr. Krizova packed his
equipment back into his case. “Yes. He does have some rather interesting
limitations on his abilities. That, along with the missing tail, must be a
throwback to a pre-genetically-engineered ancestor.”

A tech brought out a
cat carrier. Jumper lay on his back giggling, waving paws wrapped in bright
pink bandages.

“What’s with his feet?”
Fitz asked.

“The bandages are there
just to keep him from scratching himself, until he wakes up fully and gets
accustomed to the claw caps.”

“Claw caps?” Fitz
didn’t like the sound of that.

“The plexisteel claw
caps I installed.”

“I didn’t authorize
that.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel,
but he requested it. A Kaphier Cat is a Class-2 sapient, and therefore able to
make all legal decisions concerning himself. As long as he can pay for it—or in
this case, convince Special Operations to foot the bill.”

“But he’ll cut his ears
off with those things.”

“I did point that out
to him, but he insisted. Relax, they’re not permanent. In four to six weeks,
when the nails grow out, they’ll drop off. If he wants to keep them, they’ll
have to be reapplied at that time—if he hasn’t slit his own throat.”

“Doctor, did he mention
anything about hands?”

“Yes, but that
procedure is a bit more complicated and will require extensive preparation.”

“He’s not getting
hands.”

“I’m afraid that’s his
decision. Second level sapient, remember. Good luck, Colonel.”

Fitz ignored the
puzzled looks that followed her as she carried the yodeling cat through the
med-center to the landing pad on the roof. As she deposited him on the
passenger seat of her aircar, a shout caught her attention.

“Chima!” The mercenary
sergeant raced across the pad and embraced Fitz in a bear hug. “I talked to
Ski. I’m so excited for the both of you. A little Wolfalina. I can hardly wait
to spoil her. Ski said you’re headed home. Swing by Bray’s place and I’ll pick
up my stuff and join you.”

“If you don’t mind,
Sergeant, I think I’d like to be alone tonight. I have a lot to think about.”
And if there was even the remotest chance that Wolf was there waiting for her…

“Okay, Chima.”
Bartonelli released her. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, but I
suspect Lieutenant Pike might benefit more from your attention tonight.” The
young officer had eventually managed to catch up with them. There were dark
circles under his eyes, and a decidedly greenish cast to his face.

“Yeah, that tranq he
took was formulated to put Wolf down and keep him there for a while, so it
kinda knocked Bray for a loop.”

“Damn, Lieutenant,
you’re lucky we didn’t kill you.” Fitz should have thought about that earlier,
but so much had distracted her. Chalk it up to fluctuating hormones.

“I’m fine, just won’t
feel like running any PT qualifications anytime soon. I broke the encryption on
Doctor DeWitt’s files, and should have a report to you by tomorrow.”

“No rush. Look, I need
to get this drugged-out cat home.”

At the SpecOps hangar
they transferred over to her shuttle. She placed the carrier on the co-pilot’s
seat and dropped into hers. “Take us home, Lizzy.”

“About time.” The ship
climbed out, turning north-east for the flight to Sea Spires.

Jumper’s discordant
singing finally began to wind down.

“Ooh, my head hurts.
Don’t ever let me do that much catnip again.”

“It’s just the comm
unit. It makes your head feel stuffed up for a day or two. You’ll get used to
it.”

The carrier rocked as
the cat thrashed around inside it.
“What’s this?”

More banging inside the
case ensued, and an unwrapped paw poked out through the wire door. Jumper
flexed his toes.

“Wow. Will you look at
these babies?”

Light gleamed on the
needle-sharp tips of the plexisteel claws.

“Put your bandages back
on,” Fitz said.

“I’m fine. I’ll be
careful.”
He plunked the claws against the wire door until
Fitz was ready to scream.
“Boy, wait until those gerbats get a load of these
beauties. They’ll be running for the tall grass.”

His screech a few
minutes later sent Fitz lunging to open the carrier door. Jumper stared back at
her, blood running down his nose.

“Sorry. Cut myself.”

She grabbed the
brightly-colored bandages and wrapped his paw back up. “Now leave those on.”

“But do they have to be
pink? Everyone will think I’m a calico.”

“You wanted those
claws, Jumper. You’re just going to have to deal with it.”

“Now let me get this
straight. You’re going to have a kitten?”
The cat’s green
eyes were wide and unfocused.

“A baby, Jumper. Humans
call them babies,” Fitz said.

“Oh, yeah. But they
take years to grow up, not weeks like proper Kaphier kittens; they crawl around
on the floor, puking, peeing, and pooping everywhere. And I’ve heard they often
pull cats’ tails.”

“That wouldn’t be a
problem for you.”

“I should hope not.”
Jumper
twitched the puff of fur on his behind and staggered. He hadn’t quite shaken
off the effects of the anesthetic.

Fitz crossed her arms
and glanced sideways at him. “After the baby comes, there’ll be no more
plexisteel claws.”

“Yeah, yeah. I give up.
You were right. It was a dumb idea.”
He inspected a paw
swathed in bandages, now white. Two additional red welts crisscrossed his nose,
and a patch of neu-skin held a long slice together on one ear.
“How do you
plan on telling him?”

“I’ll tell Wolf, but I
don’t want to let Cypher know.”

“Considering that they’re
stuck together in the same body, that might be a little tricky.”

“No, it won’t. I just
have to get rid of Cypher.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve
been trying to do?”

Anxiety made her words
harsher than she intended. “Wolf was there yesterday, Jumper. In that hangar
bay. I know it.”

“Then why hasn’t the Big
Guy come home? He only has to yank out that lousy spike and he’d be free.”

“You don’t think I
haven’t asked myself that a thousand times? I can understand him not coming out
then. Showing up on the
Mad Dog
after he’d boarded as an assassin would
have raised embarrassing questions, but all the way back down from Coronia
Station, I expected him to contact me. Or that he’d be waiting in my office. Or
here…” Her voice broke, and she shook her head before she could continue. “I
expected him to be here. Every time I hear a noise in the house, I think it’s
him.

They stood on the
balcony of Sea Spires, the ocean beyond the railing gray and restless as her
mood. Carved by the waves, the rocky towers that gave the estate its name stood
offshore, a bank of clouds shrouding their tops. The weather front that had
brought cold rain to Striefbourne City carried the promise of snow here,
hundreds of klicks to the north. Flurries danced in the wind and salted
Jumper’s black-furred back.

Her inhead signaled an
incoming call on the residence’s comm. She snatched up the cat and hurried
inside to take it. The caller wasn’t who she’d hoped.

Braylin Pike slouched
behind his desk, jacket off and sleeves rolled up. A half-eaten sandwich lay on
a plate at his elbow.

“Lieutenant, I thought
I ordered you to relax,” Fitz said.

“I am relaxing. I find
data mining very soothing.”

Bartonelli leaned into
view on the monitor, sliding a cup of coffee in front of Pike. “Yeah, but she
expects you to do your relaxing in bed.”

The fact that Pike
believed this was vital enough to get it to her immediately made Fitz nervous,
and that it had to be in person even more so. “Couldn’t this have waited until
tomorrow?”

“You won’t be in until
late in the day because of your procedure, and I thought we needed to go over
this information.” He waved his hand in a spinning motion. “When we spoke
yesterday, I’d only examined the official records on the experiments, and they
indicated they were terminated because of disappointing results.”

“Personality
disruptions could certainly be disappointing,” Fitz said.

“I finally got into
DeWitt’s private notes on the outcome, and the word he used was a bit stronger
than that. He called them devastating.”

Fitz pushed upright in
her chair. “How so?”

“They started the
experiments with five test subjects, referred to as the Resident Personalities.
The actual owners, if you will, of the bodies. Each of them received a
Secondary Personality who would be the cover for the sleeper agent. Before a
month elapsed, three of the test subjects had committed suicide. In two of the
cases, the Secondary killed himself. One even left a message in his computer
stating that he couldn’t exist any longer with this monster living inside him.”

“Then he became aware
of the other person’s presence?” Fitz asked, remembering that second when she’d
seen Wolf slip in and wrest control from Cypher.

“It would seem so, but
in the third case, the Resident Personality smuggled a weapon into the medical
facility and gunned down a doctor and four med-techs before he took his own
life.”

Prickles flashed across
Fitz’s cheeks. “If he could fight free of the Secondary’s control, why didn’t
he just shut down his computer and terminate the experiment?”

“These were Normals,
not augies. It wasn’t as simple as pulling a spike to block the computer’s
access to his mind. The Secondary Personality ran on a small dedicated computer
implanted subcutaneously.” Pike tapped his shoulder, just below the collarbone.

“It appeared that the
shooter had taken a knife and dug his out. DeWitt hypothesized that this
awareness of one another had prompted the psychic breakdowns and eventual
suicides. He warned about a phenomenon he called ‘flickering’, where the
personalities could switch dominance of the body, first one then the other, as
if fighting for supremacy. The length of time one could hang on to control grew
shorter and shorter until they were flickering so rapidly that it almost seemed
as if they were both present at the same time. From that point on, personality
disintegration set in quickly. Tell me, Colonel, you haven’t seen anything like
that, have you? Say, Wolf would be there, then gone and suddenly back again?”

Fitz looked away and
voiced the fear lodged in the back of her mind like a piece of gravel in a
boot. “But wouldn’t he just shut his computer down? Pull his spike and end it?”

“Not necessarily. Both
men who survived to have the Secondary program removed began to exhibit
non-typical behavior…outbursts of anger, defiance, and risk-taking. Traits that
had not been part of either of their original personalities. Eventually one
flew his aircar into the side of a mountain, and the other resigned his
commission and disappeared. I’ve attempted to track him down, but haven’t had
much luck…” He placed both hands over his mouth to hide a huge yawn.

“Lieutenant, go home. I
think I have the gist of this. We’ll discuss it further tomorrow. Bartonelli,
see that he goes to bed,” Fitz said, then added, “and gets some sleep.”

After she disconnected,
she scooped up the now snoring cat and carried him through the house to the
bedroom. A crystalline vase held the bouquet of Blue Nova roses Wolf had
brought her when he returned from the Alliance. Beginning to wilt, their fallen
petals lay scattered across the tabletop. She picked one up and rubbed its
velvet between her fingers, painfully reminded that there hadn’t been time to
enjoy them together.

She’d fought too long
and hard to free Wolf; she couldn’t lose faith now. The stakes were higher now,
with this new life they’d created together. She couldn’t allow herself to
believe it might be too late, that the man she loved could be damaged beyond
repair.

The specter of an immortal
madman sent a shiver down her back.

__________

Cypher centered the
crosshairs of the sniper rifle’s scope between the gray eyes of the small woman
in black standing on the balcony. He held his finger against the guard, careful
to avoid the firing stud until ready. This weapon had a notoriously light
trigger.

The image wavered. He
lifted his cheek from the stock and wiped moisture from his eyes. He didn’t
want to kill Gray Eyes; he wanted, instead, to hold her, brush her skin, to
make love to her…but she didn’t want him. She belonged to The Other, and she
would have her man back even if she had to condemn him to some empty cyber-hell
like a piece of digital garbage. Wasn’t her life worth his freedom? Just pull
the trigger and end her, then it would be over. Tritico would release him.

You’re a bloody fool if
you believe that.

The Other. He’d been
silent so long, Cypher had begun to hope he’d left, but that would never
happen, would it? Their minds were bound together, their body one. He could
escape Tritico, but would
never
be free of The Other. He would always be
there, in his mind, whispering, criticizing, condemning him until nothing
remained for them but madness.

“It’s my only chance to
be free of his control.”

You don’t understand,
do you? He’ll never take his boot off your throat, because this is about me,
not you. I’m the one he sees squirming beneath his thumb; you’re only a tool.
Killing Fitz is meant to hurt me, not gain anything for you. He’ll always find
one more reason to keep you crawling back as long as he sees that I’m
suffering.

Cypher centered
himself, erected mental walls around his thoughts and doubts, sealed them up
along with The Other’s words, and flung them into the darkness at the back of
his mind. He leaned against the rifle’s stock again, peering through the sight,
but a drift of clouds hung between them, obscuring the woman’s form. Even the
universe conspired against him. He raised his head and scrubbed his hand across
his face. When he looked back, she stood there. No longer trusting his shaking
hands for the precision of a head shot, he shifted his aim lower. A spread of
needles in the chest would work as well.

A tsunami of rage and
fear rose in his mind, rolled over him, and snatched him back into its
darkness.

__________

Wolf flung the rifle
away, skittering backward until he landed on his butt. He rolled onto his side,
curling into a shaking ball. He’d almost allowed Cypher to kill Fitz. This
madness had to stop; he had to end it now. His plan had been to use Cypher to
get to Tritico, but after the fight in the shuttle bay and the extensive healing
to his injuries after crashing the construction pod, all his energy resources
had been depleted. He was the biological entity, too dependent on the state of
his body’s reserves, while Cypher was only a program running inside a computer.
The interloper could feel the exhaustion, the hunger, and the cold shakes of
plummeting blood sugar, but it didn’t affect his silicone-based mind the way it
did Wolf’s flesh and blood one. He’d pushed himself too hard trying to save
them both, and paid for it with a mini-coma, a mental shut down he’d awoken
from with barely enough time to prevent Fitz’s murder.

His awareness of his
surroundings had been somewhat limited under Cypher’s control, but now he could
see the other’s memories. Most were faint and indistinct, like the recollection
of a book he’d read long ago and almost forgotten, but some stood out in
crystal clarity. Like the terror of the monsters in the warehouse, and the
night at Star Henge with its killing and killing…

His mind shied away
from that thought like a skittish animal. Better not to look too closely at it;
there would be time to extract the price for those actions later, but not now.

Wolf struggled to his
knees and glanced around, recognizing the top of one of the rocky islands that
jutted out of the Hapkean Sea facing their home. He and Fitz had climbed to
this clearing many times, to enjoy either the view or intimate moments under
the stars. He could navigate the path down the back side in the dark and be
home in minutes, home to the woman he loved.

He crawled to the edge
of the cliff. The balcony was empty.
Good girl. Stay inside. I’ll be there
shortly. Back to Fitz, if only for a short time.

Then a visit to
Tritico. Wolf had been to that warehouse three times; always in Cypher’s
perspective, but he could locate it, could lead a contingent of Special Forces
troops there. Or better still, perhaps Donkenny and his people were still on
the planet. A back-up of Gold Dragon mercenaries would feel like old times.

Tritico had bugs here,
on the homeworld. In all the years of the War, the enemy had never got closer
to Scyr than a hundred light years, but now they’d been invited in by one of
our own. Anger flashed through him, but he quelled it.

The madness ends here;
the spike comes out now.

He reached behind his
head.

“I knew you’d never be
able to do it, boy.”

Two heavily-armed men
stepped into the clearing. Wolf remembered the pair from Cypher’s last visit to
the warehouse, but the florid-faced redhead he recognized as one of their
attackers at the coronation. Ian Chorickus. One of Tritico’s bodyguards, part-time
enforcer and full-time asshole. And an augie. The second man had the short
build and massive shoulders of a heavy-worlder. Though he couldn’t identify
him, Wolf had no doubt that he, too, was augmented.

Chorickus held one of
the modified needlers, loosely pointed in his direction. That Wolf knew from
Cypher’s memories. The augie had come armed to hunt Lazzinairs. He knew about
them. Wolf glanced toward the sniper rifle, abandoned in the scree, but
dismissed it. In close combat, a rifle was little more than a high tech club,
and he’d be dead before he could reach it. He did a quick inventory of his
body. Cypher was stupid—there was no hide-out pistol on his leg, no knife in his
boot. Sloppy; a way to get seriously dead fast.