There were no machines on this vessel, at least none of the thinking machines from the last war that now held the inner planets of the system in a death grip. Her thoughts flashed to Kath and the trees, Michael and the
“You’re a mercenary?”
“A trivial term at best.” He sipped from his meaty cup. “An appropriate term at worst.”
“I need a ship, and a team of—”
“Slow down, woman.” Black beads surveyed the mess interior. “You can’t just come to my home, kill a member of my crew and expect service immediately. First I have to get to know you.”
Her gaze was the empty that encompasses all of fury.
“I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions, and I want them answered immediately.”
“And if I—”
“If you refuse, I’ll have my troops space you into Seychelles. Not a nice way to die.”
Eyes dimmed.
“What’s your name?”
She placed her shiver on the tabletop and thumbed the echo chamber release.
“Maire.”
“Where you from?”
“Seychelles Edge, two-seventy under.”
“A local girl!” He grinned through teeth that were somewhat there, mostly broken. “But you’ve been gone a while, haven’t you?”
“Long enough.”
“Fantastic.” Another sip, his eyes still gouging into hers, and now a playful flash. “So that’s where your taste for flesh came from. Your entire family? Friends? Did you have to eat your children, or did you escape before—”
Her bared teeth and a barely-audible hiss cut him off.
“Poor girl. You stink of inner worlds. Why’d you come back?”
“Business.”
“Yes, business. You need a ship, and troops. And you’re heading deep into the Drift, looking for something. Sounds like standard fees are in order.” He pulled a data panel from a pocket at his side, placed it on the table. His fingertip traced over schematics. “We can work together.”
“This isn’t your usual fuck-and-run. I’ll need the best vessel you have, your strongest troops, your—”
“Tall order from a stranger.”
Her eyes scanned the ceiling, fell back to meet his. “I can see you fought in the wars.” She tapped her temple, indicating the regiment brand not gracefully gracing his own. “And this vessel,” she waved around them, more indicating the raucous crowd drinking goofy gravy, smoking the copper from old wires, and savagely fucking in the darkened corners of the mess than the superstructure of the gutted ship itself, “is an Inner Worlds destroyer from the machine conflicts.”
“Your point?”
“You hate the machines. I’ve not seen a single thinker since I arrived, save that glorified abacus with which you’re about to take my order.”
His frown, a constant until now, explored deeper definitions of itself.
“There’s something out there in the Drift right now. I need to go get it.”
“And why’s this ‘something’ so important to you?”
“It’ll be important to you, too.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because when I have it, we’ll use it to kill all the machines forever.”
He smiled.
Back arched, she swung down through the cockpit tube, her grasp on the ladder releasing when she felt the not-unpleasant suck of the vacuum chair on her buttocks and thighs. She adjusted her robe to allow a better grip.
“You don’t have to wear that here, you know.”
Cork had paused long enough from his startup routine of toggling switches and locking interface ports to his wrists and eyes to crawl his vision over her drab-draped form. His tongues absently explored the corners of his mouth.
“I get cold.”
“Right.”
She wondered how the mercenary had managed to squeeze through the access tube into his nest. Rolls of hairy flesh poured over his pilot chair, pulsating to the suction. His breasts dwarfed her own. Above, his cardiac shield heaved for breath. She checked and double-checked the enclosure on her garment.
“Comfy?”
“I guess.”
“Okay. I’ll lock you into waste systems—”
“No.” She couldn’t take the risk of slaving into the ship if the urethral, vaginal, and anal links were fully aware biosensors. Cork would find out in an instant that she wasn’t exactly normal anymore. “I can hold it.”
His eyes narrowed. “Suit yourself.” His hand waved over the dashpanel. He grunted as his body loosed to the ship’s probing and gave a satisfied exhalation. “You can clean up the mess yourself if we hit rough water. And shitting on my boat costs double.”
The bulbous drives forward and above the cockpit began the resonance cycle. Maire felt the vessel shudder and jerk against the docking grips.
Tickle.
She studied the panel, the levels, the systems. “What’s your mix?”
“Dark, seventy over.”
“How’s she run?”
“She gets by.” Cork patted the viewshield affectionately.
“Try boosting the dark level to seventy-two five. It’ll compensate for outside interference from resident dark streaks as we get farther out.”
Frown. “Ever sailed the Seychelles, woman?”
“Just trust me.”
“Fine.” He bumped up the level of dark matter in the shred drive to 72.5%. The vessel immediately calmed, the drives above them shivering steadily instead of randomly. “Well, shit. You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“I try.”
The shred peeled away from the belly of Cork’s destroyer and fell into the black endless of Seychelles, the jungles of empty, the machinery of night. Maire felt the ratcheting of the mercenary sleepers as the pods fell into place in the chain of the vehicle. Snaking through the debris of ancient and [recent] wars, the shred spermed around the hulks of abandoned warships, metal worlds whose interiors had been torn into the suck and cold. Occasional freeze-dried soldiers sparked and ceased before the forward energy sweeper.
“How long’ve they been asleep?”
Cork’s fingers traced over the biologics readings. “Brand new batch. Twenty, thirty years.”
“Good.”
“What’s it matter?”
She shrugged. “I prefer fresh meat.”
His eyes performed unmentionables. “I bet you do.”
The passage through the vessel graveyard was uneventful. Maire froze images as Cork’s ship increased speed: the shell of a destroyer, a planetship scuttled and taken apart for spares, smaller shreds transporting reclamation teams through the complex of spinning metal and hollowed asteroids.
Cork yawned.
He caught Maire’s glimpse and tossed it back.
“You’re different.”
“Hmm?”
