Vincent lifted his glass. “Here, here!” he cheered, getting into the spirit of Regers’ madness, a broad grin splitting his boyish face.
The Daulk ale had started to do its work and Regers reeled to his feet. “We’re the Robin Hoods of the new age. Stealing from the poor and giving to the rich!”
Deakes laughed, choking on his drink. “That’s rich.” The men were warming to the idea, encouraged by Regers’ no-holds-barred sense of wild adventure, or insanity, hardly daring to believe that they were free from the oppression and macabre reality of the locust tanks.
“How be steal from the poor and rich and enrich ourselves!” Deakes suggested.
“Not bad, Deakes. There may be a place in my fleet for you yet.”
Deakes snorted, drunker than ever, swaying in his seat, his eyes blurring over. “Not if our horned-headed Ramra here doesn’t wash himself. The man reeks of that locust piss water.”
Ramra sneered. “Hardee har har. And you think you smell any rosier?”
Regers leaned back in relaxed comfort. He and his merry band would get along fine. So they enjoyed their jests and insults, and for the moment, their loose-knit alliance, formed in a most improbable place, in a nowhere land. He figured they were beyond the edge of the Dim Zone, between the pirate belt and Perseus Major, somewhere in the haze of hyperdrive.
Regers looked around, pleased with the proceedings, but he grew wary. There were too many details to work out. Risks and perils lay ahead.
Deakes snapped Regers out of his reverie. “So, what you got planned for us, boss? Trolling the dives on Thieves World first for some choice wenches?”
Regers grunted and waved his hand. “That’s kid stuff. I got my sights set on bigger fish. Right after I get this hand looked after. Kinda getting used to it though. Could plate it up with some tempered steel,” he mused. On a sudden impulse he scrambled on the table, did a cakewalk, wiggling his ass. “I’m your Captain Hook, your baddest, meanest, bloodthirstiest Bligh. Shiver me timbers!” he croaked and lifted his stump and play-chopped at Creib’s neck.
Deakes snorted out a laugh. Ramra, having drunk too much, fell nose-first in his mash of half-finished shepherd’s pie on the aluminum tray.
Deakes probed. “So what’s so important in Perseus, Regers? You got a boyfriend out there?”
Vincent laughed.
“We could as easily land in Taurus, or jump over to Betelgeuse,” growled Deakes. “Thieves World, like I said.”
“Nearest hub to Phallanor,” said Regers. “There’s a guy I have a score to settle with. But first that fucker, Mathias.” He jumped down from the table, jolted out of his jocular mood.
“Mathias?” Vincent queried, “as in the Mathias of Cyber Core, or whatever it’s called? You got to be mad.”
“Keep the course set for Phallanor, Vincent,” Regers said grimly. “There’s going to be some hell to pay...”
AUDRA
BOOK III
(247 Sol years earlier)
I
Miko peered to starboard. The viewport showed interstellar dust, faraway clouds of glowing gas. The colours were magical. For a moment he was lost in its beauty when a sharp flash swarmed across his horizon: the sun Veela’s luminescence blazed some fifty million miles out from port. It slipped beneath the planet Numa’s slightly oval moon like liquid glass. Still very close, too close, the pilot thought. The mission was suicide at best at this distance. Scores of planets needed to be surveyed by next holo-check and he was as likely as any, the next guinea pig to get the job done.
The solar wind raged. The charged-particle stream seemed to play havoc on his craft’s navigation system. How could it be so fierce? The force was an order of magnitude above what his vessel was made for.
A terror crawled down his neck.
The flux was directed from the sunward side of Numa, the flat green disc rearing below him now. The pulse tapered off, stabilizing to a normal level. It jagged up again, as if some sinister intelligence were controlling the burst.
Miko felt an eerie tingling working at the base of his spine. What was it? Instinct had him feeling that something bad was in the works.
Sitty II, the most advanced human-meld-VR-machine, was engineered by the NAVO Military—the New-Avionic-Vanguard-Order. The craft supported a complete interface to human and machine, exposing its machine core to the pilot for best navigation and tactical operation. Miko had been struggling with the concept for a long time now. At best, it was an eerie alliance; at worst, a VR prison. Snugged into his warm liquid socket, a bio-matrix of plasma and electronics, he felt his limbs confined to a cocoon of organic VR. A sleek console rendered holographic visuals. A new holo-vision scattersplay linked his senses to all regions of the ship, including the viewport out to space.
The ship was larger than he had imagined; also a merger with its human host. Food was administered through various lumo-sensitive tubes, waste expelled by not dissimilar means. Mind, senses and soul were integrated as parts of the machine. Spine-chilling, but Miko had adapted. He could not help but feel a sense of exhilaration, as his own perceptions were enhanced.
The pilot looked over the empty cockpit and its tangled seat-harness. He shuddered, recalling the last time the hookup had been used. The apparatus radiated potentials of doom. They made Miko grimace. Its inner workings involved a merging of souls of pilot and co-pilot—as the more mystically-minded designers at NAVO had explained to him.
The co-pilot socket was attached
