Maylo frowned as the man left. “Enjoy ourselves? What does he mean?”
“Sorry about that,” Six replied sheepishly. “Malon knows his stuff, but doesn’t have much class. See that tank down there? The blue one? It’s filled with life-forms from Alpha 001. It’s against the rules... but I swim in it from time to time. Want to join me?”
Maylo looked from the man to the tank and back again. “We don’t have suits.”
“Yeah,” Six said unabashedly. “I know.”
Maylo was amazed by the clone’s effrontery, amused by his boyish charm, and surprised to find that she was tempted. It had been a long time since she’d done anything that crazy. “All right, Senator, you’re on.”
Six, stunned by the extent of his good fortune, turned and started to strip.
Maylo smiled at this strange manifestation of modesty, unzipped her dress, and wriggled free. Her slip, bra, and panties followed.
The clone shucked his shorts, turned, and took a sudden breath. She had smooth skin, dark-tipped breasts, and a narrow waist. “You’re beautiful.”
Maylo placed her hands on her hips. “Are you sure? I’m not a clone, you know.... My right breast is larger than my left.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” the politician said sincerely, “and I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful than you are.”
Maylo smiled and looked downward. “It appears that you mean what you say, Senator.... Thanks for the compliment.”
Six looked down, realized he had an erection, and blushed bright red.
Maylo laughed gaily and took his hand. “Come on! The last one in is a Parithio tree snake!”
The clone spent a moment at a control panel and gestured toward a ladder. “Ladies first.... The snake will follow.”
Fully aware of what the man would be able to see, and determined to ignore it, Maylo climbed toward the top. The grating felt cold under her feet. An inspection hatch was open, and blue-green water was visible below.
“Go ahead,” Six shouted. “Dive in!”
Maylo took a deep breath, dove through the hole, and felt the water wrap itself around her. It was cool and soothing. She turned and looked upward as the clone entered the tank, his straight black hair streaming back from his head, bubbles escaping from the corners of his mouth.
The inside of the tank reminded her of the south Pacific. There was colorful coral, a thicket of slowly swaying kelp, and a multitude of quickly darting fish.
Then he was there, taking her hand and pointing toward one especially large fish. Maylo recognized it as an emperor snap-per. She wondered if it was edible or there to support fish that were. Then it was time to kick toward the top, surface, and gasp for air.
“So,” Six said, “what do you think?”
“You were right,” Maylo replied, wiping water from her eyes. “It’s beautiful. More than that ... it looks like Earth.”
“Not too surprising,” the politician replied, “since that’s where all of the Founder’s seed stock came from.”
“Including you?”
“Including me. Or a version of me.”
The humans looked at each other for a moment, came together, and embraced. The kiss tasted of salt and ended when they sank. They kicked their way to the surface, took deep breaths, and tried the same thing again.
It had been a long time since Maylo had been with a man. She welcomed the feel of his hands on her skin, and the strength of his arms.
They surfaced after that. Maylo held onto the pipe that circled the inside of the tank, and opened her legs. Six allowed himself to be captured, searched for the opening, and nudged his way in. It felt wonderful ... and they took their time. Enough time for Maylo to enjoy two orgasms before her lover allowed himself the same privilege.
And it was then, while the pleasure was at its height, that she remembered the cell, the door, and the man with the gun. How he had called her name, swept her off the floor, and carried her away. She screamed then, not in pain but in pleasure, and the sound echoed off the walls of the tank.
Malon, who returned early on purpose, discovered their clothes, grinned, and made himself scarce. Hey, so the senator wanted to have a little fun? Who the hell was he to object? Especially when the pay was good.
None of them, not the technician, the senator, or the executive. noticed the barnacle-sized machine that crawled out of the tank, inched its way toward the deck, and sent a half-second burst of code.
About a mile away, safe within the privacy of her cabin, Svetlana Gorgin-Three watched the video, ground her teeth, and wished it were her.
21
By making warriors of their misfits, criminals, and sociopaths, the humans have purified their society and strengthened it at the same time.
Grand Marshal Hisep Rula-Ka
An Analysis of the Legion
Standard year 2594
Legion Outpost NB-23-11/E, aka
Rust Bucket
, the Confederacy of
Sentient Beings
The Thraki armada was more than five thousand ships strong. They formed an enormous three-dimensional diamond, which, when threatened, would morph into a globe with the arks at its core and warships all around.
Consistent with the fact that the Thraki had no home world beyond the one mentioned in ancient legends, and needed to do everything they could to simplify the manufacture, repair, and maintenance of their ships, they allowed themselves only five types of vessels.
There were moon-sized arks, on which most of the civilian population lived, worked, and eventually died; supply ships, which carried the raw materials required to sustain the armada; and three types of warships, including battleships, destroyers, and fighters.
The fleet had been traveling through space for more than a millennium and would continue forever. Or would it?
The Facers, so named because of their desire to put an end to the journey and “face” the Sheen, had become even more powerful of late, raising the possibility that things might change. Not that the Runners, who had ruled for so long, could be ignored.
Grand Admiral Hooloo Isan Andragna stood on the gallery that extended out from his private quarters and stared up past the hanging gardens and through the ark’s transparent dome. The stars seemed especially thick in this sector—as if blown there by some cosmic wind. Very different from the wasteland th
e armada had traveled through only a hundred ship years before. But that had been many jumps ago—back during his father’s time.
As he stared upward, Andragna knew that no less than 172 grand admirals had stood there before him. Most had died in battle, fighting the Sheen, or whatever race blocked the armada’s path. A lucky few passed in their sleep.
What will
my
fate be? the officer wondered. The horn sounded, thousands of feet padded through the ark’s labyrinthine passageways, and the stars wheeled above.
Legion Outpost NB-23-11/E had been a spaceship once, but those days were more than forty years in the past, when thousands of vessels had been decommissioned after the second Hudathan war.
Many had been scrapped, or sold into civilian service, but not the DE-507, an honorable hull that had seen action off Algeron and been credited with seven kills.
No, she had suffered the indignity of having her drives removed to enlarge the onboard living accommodations.
Then, as if
that
insult was insufficient, the one-time warship had been loaded onto a giant transport, carried out to the edge of the rim, and dumped into orbit around a world so hot, so shriveled that the crew called it Raisin. That in spite of the fact that the original survey team had deemed the planet too insignificant to merit a name.
Now, her globular hull marked only by the designator NB-23-11 /E and a hand-painted sign that read
Rust Bucket
, the one-time destroyer escort turned endless circles around the planet below.
Angie Anvik waited for the hatch to open, aimed her miniscule spacecraft at the blackness outside, and fired the sled’s jets.
Cybernetic bodies were expensive—
so
expensive that most borgs were limited to one. That being the case, Angie Anvik had selected the vehicle she believed to be the most versatile—a body that allowed her to work yet blend with human society.
That’s why the woman who steered the space sled out of the lock
looked
human in spite of the fact that no mere bio bod could have survived hard vacuum without benefit of space armor.
Even more incongruous was the fact that she was dressed in a one-piece shipsuit, wore a ball cap with the Chien-Chu logo emblazoned across the fron
t, and stood only five feet, five inches tall. Nothing like the hulking Trooper IIs and IIIs that the Legion favored.
Anvik eyed her instrument panel, compared the readouts to those provided by her onboard computer, and nudged the power upward. Thanks to the fact that there was no gravity to cope with, the otherwise overloaded sled was quite responsive and fun to fly. Yes, the cyborg reflected, I can’t really say that I
enjoy
being a freak except during moments like this.
The technician aimed her tiny craft for the second of Raisin’s diminutive moons and gloried in the moment. She had a purpose, the means to fulfill it, and a lot of elbow room. What more could your average dead person want?
Legion Captain Dal Nethro completed the second set of fifty push-ups, flipped over, and lay on his back. Physical training, or PT, was a daily ritual on the
Rust Bucket
, just as it was on any other outpost. The only person who enjoyed the process was Staff Sergeant Paula Jones, who led the drills and managed to look good while she did it.
The truth was that the sergeant was worth the price of admission. First came her body, which was damned nice to look at; then came her vocabulary, which other noncoms strove to emulate. Sweat gleamed on her dark brown skin as Jones grinned and eyed her victims.
“All right, you worthless, scurvy, odoriferous mounds of maggot-infested Dooth dung, let’s see if you can do a couple of sit-ups.” The count began, and all thirty-six of the legionnaires, Nethro included, groaned as the sergeant passed one hundred and kept on going.
The session ended not long thereafter. Nethro delivered the usual “Well done,” saw Jones grin, and returned to his cabin. The shower felt good in spite of the fact that every ounce of water had been sipped, gargled, and pissed by everyone on board. Not just once, but
countless
times. But it was wet—and smelled better than he did.
He sang the last stanza of
The Stand
, which, like most of the songs associated with the Legion, focused on death.
The very tip of the Thraki formation consisted of a ship equipped with highly specialized sensors and protected by a swarm of two-seat fighters.
The purpose of the vessel was to probe the system ahead, locate threats if any, and warn the armada.
No less than forty-three ship cycles had elapsed since the vessel had last detected anything of substance, but that didn’t matter to Basida Folo Ormoda, who never shirked his duties.
The electronic warfare section occupied an entire “slice,” or deck, but one of the smaller ones, since it was topside rather than lower down.
The deck was split into four sections, each of which duplicated the others. The technicals spent each watch sealed into their own pod—an arrangement that made it virtually impossible to kill all of them with a single missile.
Ormoda felt at home in his U-shaped console—which made sense, since nearly all of the previous two years had been spent there. A single light blinked on and off, his right index finger tingled as a mild current passed through it, and a tone sounded in his ear. Electromechanical activity had been detected somewhere in the darkness ahead. The sort of activity produced by a Class III or better civilization. The Sheen, waiting in ambush? Or still another sentient race?
It made no difference. Activity equaled threat. Alarms sounded, messages flew, and fighters arrowed away.
The cloaking technology that protected the interceptors had been stolen from a race called the Simm, and, barring the possibility that the target had something even better, would allow the attack craft to approach undetected. Ormoda wished the pilots well.
The moon called Two Ball was not all that different from Earth’s moon, to which humans compared all other moons, since it had been their first step to the stars.
Small when compared to the planet below, it not only lacked an atmosphere but was covered with overlapping impact craters. Anvik steered the utility vehicle toward a large depression. The surface dropped away and rose on the other side.
The prefab equipment blister had been erected with help from Nethro’s legionnaires. It was nearly invisible against the dark gray background. A tone plus a single red beacon guided the cyborg in.
Anvik closed on the light, gauged the distance, and fired her retros. The sled slowed, hovered on its repellors, and settled into a cloud of dust. It was fine, like volcanic ash, and hung waiting for Two Ball to pull it down.
Anvik released her harness, kept her movements slow, and approached the blister. The shelter sensed motion, sent power to a pole-mounted spot, and lit the much-churned soil.
The cyborg stopped in front of the access door, punched her mother’s birthday into the keypad, and waited for the hatch to open. She didn’t need a lock, but the bio bods would, so the designers provided one.
That accomplished, the technician returned to the sled and released the tie-downs. The shrink-wrapped payload included a nonsentient computer plus the armor required to protect it. Because Anvik was extremely strong, and had gravity on her side, the load was more awkward than heavy.
Anvik carried the unit to the blister, entered the lock, and lowered her burden to the floor. Once that was accomplished, she thumbed a button, waited for the external hatch to close, and heard oxygen enter the lock. The inner door opened two minutes later.