“I’m trying to find it!” Her fingers danced over the surface of her data pad, changing the hull camera viewport display to a different angle every second.
The Vostok lurched as we cleared the hangar’s magvac field and hurtled into space.
“Hang on!” Narcissa slammed the throttle and I felt the momentary crush of acceleration before the ship’s inertial dampeners cycled to compensate.
“He made it!” Chiraine exclaimed.
There on the hull camera display I saw the Sean bot, locked on to one of the landing struts.
“How long can he hang on out there?” she asked.
“Not long,” I said. “Tap the brakes, Narcissa!”
“On it!”
This was an incredibly risky maneuver, since we were still in range of the Baeder’s weapons, but we didn’t have a choice. We had to get the Sean bot inside.
“Narcissa, get down there and let him in,” I yelled. “Ana-Zhi, just keep us alive for three minutes!”
Narcissa’s long legs gave her enough speed to make it down to the lower hold in less than two minutes. “Cut the prox plates!” she yelled over the comms.
“Done!” Ana-Zhi said.
“Exterior doors open!” Narcissa said, over the comm.
“We have eyes on him,” Chiraine said.
I took a deep breath, my gut churning with anxiety.
“He’s in!” Ana-Zhi yelled. “Prox plates coming back online!”
“Get us out of here!”
I clambered down back to the bridge, then sprinted down to the lower hold. Narcissa had just closed the bay doors and cycled the atmosphere of the airlock. Then I saw the Sean bot appear through the airlock door porthole. He gave me a thumbs up and I let him in.
“Well done, JJ.” He clapped me on the shoulder with enough force to almost knock me off my feet. “You, too, new girl. Did you see those bastards?”
“Yeah, you were pretty amazing,” Narcissa said.
“Me?” he scoffed. “I’d say it was Ana-Zhi who gets the prize for this round. That was some shooting—especially while being jammed.”
“You knew about that?” I asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, it was actually me doing the shooting. Ana-Zhi flew the ship.”
“Are you serious?” he asked.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Well, that’s great. That’s just great.”
I didn’t know if it was because my father was a robot, but I kind of expected to hear a bit more enthusiasm in his voice.
“So where are we headed?” Narcissa asked.
“The Fountain,” the Sean bot said.
As we ran back to the bridge, the Sean bot explained that he had taken out the Baeder’s central targeting system and the three redundant units.
“It won’t last long, but it will buy us a few hours at least.”
“Won’t they just follow us?” I asked. “Sic some stingrays on us? I don’t think I got all of them.”
“You might be right,” he said. “Get back up on the guns.”
When Ana-Zhi saw the Sean bot, she shook her head in amazement. “You have more lives than my cat.”
“Jones is still around?” the Sean bot asked.
“Actually, it’s Jones the Third,” she said. “He’s a clone, but I hope I see the little guy again.”
“We’re working on it, Z.” He pointed to the pilot’s seat. “May I?”
“Sure.”
I climbed into the gun turret and extended it out into position. “Okay, I’m in position.”
“No sign of pursuers yet,” Narcissa said.
“They’re probably still standing there with their dicks in their hands,” Ana-Zhi said.
“Language, Z!” the Sean bot chided. “There are ladies present!”
“Sorry, gals.”
“I give them another twenty minutes,” the Sean bot said. “In the meantime, I need to find something in the hold. Jannigan, I want you to run full diagnostics and calibration on all the weapons systems, and make sure the prox plates aren’t shorting or draining or anything other than running at full opt. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said.
It felt weird to be here with my dad—or this simulation of my dad, if that’s what he was—working side by side, like I was a member of his regular crew or something.
We had never really done anything work-related together. Sure, one summer when I was seventeen I went to work on a dig Beck Salvage had on Trandrilla 3, but my dad never showed up there except when he dropped me off. And after that everyone knew who I was, which turned out to be kind of an unpleasant experience.
Once I graduated from college, old Sean wanted me to enter the Beck Salvage training program, and we had a lot of discussions about it. But by that time I had set my sights on being a professional partier and ne’er-do-well, so I really couldn’t be bothered.
But if you pressed me, I would have to admit that the past ten years hadn’t really turned out the way I imagined. Yeah, I traveled the galaxy, did a freighter full of drugs, went to roughly 3,000 utterly sick parties, and had sex with almost that many women.
Okay, maybe not that many, but a lot. More than I can remember—unlike Lirala. She has what she calls “a pornographic memory” that allows her to remember exactly which sexual acts she’s done, how many times she’s done them, and who she did them with. First name, last name, hair color, family pedigree. She remembers everyone. It’s a little scary.
But beyond the sex, drugs, partying, extreme sports, going to incredibly expensive restaurants and clubs, and bullshitting with my friends, I really hadn’t done much. Up until now, that is. I really think I’d packed a decade’s worth of really living into the past ten or eleven days or so.
The question was, would there be any more living after today?
We were stuck in this system with a Hammerhead-class Mayir carrier getting ready to blow us into oblivion once they fixed their weapons systems. They knew we had no place to go, because the only way out of this system was through a jumpgate that they had taken out. With the help of a traitorous Rhya, of course.
That’s what really got me. It was almost laughable. You had this mighty advanced race of beings who portrayed themselves as benevolent guardians
