“As captain,” I said. “I have not invited you aboard. This isn’t a pleasure cruise, after all.”

  “We’re here to look after our invessstment.” Phillkh’s long tongue ran along his golden teeth. His eyes sparkled. “Sssafeguard our ssshare againssst...auditing missstakesss.”

  “No, I’m the captain—”

  “You may be the captain, but as sssenior partner, I’m in charge—unlessss you can repay your debt.”

  A herd of curses in various languages stampeded through my head. My silent partners didn’t seem content to remain silent. I charged up the gangplank. In my wake, Nesha’s vehement barrage of insults shamed my own nastiness vocabulary.

  Maybe I’ll be able to launch before either of them gets aboard.

  The argument followed me onto Menagerie, Nesha’s demands that Phillkh get off her ship grew more and more shrill. Whatever their history, I had a debt to repay. P0L-R settled into the navigator’s station as the Menagerie slid free of the station docks.

  “Destination, captain?”

  His voice remained all P0L-R, just with none of Deacon’s religious rhetoric.

  “First planet.”

  “Acknowledged, may the Spark lead us in the darkness.”

  I shook my head, exiting the bridge headed to the engine room to evaluate our not nearly new enough new engine. Nesha and Phillkh blocked the corridor. She leaned in close to the Thrynn, hissing venom too low for me to catch. His claw lashed out. She careened backward, bounced off the wall and hit the floor with her head twisted at an awkward angle. She lay there, the only movement blood welling from the claw marks along her face.

  “What the hedrin are you thinking?” I rushed to her side. “This is her ship. All she has to do is enter the command codes and she can take us right back to the station.”

  Phillkh’s salesman-like demeanor vanished, leaving only the greasy. “I’ll do whatever I want to protect what’sss oursss.” There was nothing friendly about the teeth which appeared. “We own this ssship. We own that old woman, that android, and we own you.”

  “You don’t own me. I owe you a debt, that’s all, and when it’s paid, we’ll never have to work together again.”

  Phillkh grinned. “Humansss are sssuch vivid dreamersss.”

  To my relief, Nesha wasn’t dead, and Phillkh left before she regained consciousness. I helped her up and into her cabin, but she refused to answer any of my questions. She wouldn’t even refute Phillkh’s ownership claims. Only just launched, and things spiraled the drain.

  Hedrin, what else can go wrong?

  The engines, that’s what.

  The ancient used engines Nesha bought looked good under a cursory diagnostic, but inside waited a ticking time bomb. Too much strain could either cook them dead, or unleash a fireball to fricassee everything inside Menagerie.

  P0L-R sat in the comms station, head cocked and chattering to who knew who in the surrounding solar system. She became he long enough to acknowledge orders to baby the engines then went back to trading recipes and gossip.

  The rover sales agent’s smile seemed to follow me throughout Menagerie. Every time I looked up from the guts of Nesha’s rover, Phillkh perched nearby watching my every move. The resultant itch I couldn’t scratch made the rover’s problems all the more frustrating. The TV seemed dead, but I couldn’t find a single mechanical reason for the failure. Maybe just as frustrating, the bay reeked with the same old person aroma elsewhere, but on steroids.

  When I couldn’t take any more, I fled into nightmares of being chased by a two-headed android that never shut up.

  P0L-R woke me when we made orbit.

  I relayed our landing coordinates, threw on a jumpsuit and headed to the bridge. The planet’s surface topography rushed toward us on the main screen. “P0L-R, when we—”

  No one sat in the navigator’s chair.

  I whirled toward the comm station only to find it empty too.

  I lunged for the ship’s maneuvering controls, eyes flashing across the readouts. Deep into our descent, our angle was too steep, our speed too high. With no way to pull up and bleed speed, I redlined the engines all too aware I risked trading sudden deceleration trauma for nuclear immolation.

  Forces clashed.

  Menagerie shook.

  The engine whine reverberating through the hull dug into my temples and a scent of burning insulation filled my nostrils.

  We hit the planet.

  Menagerie bounced violently on her landing struts, the entire ship canted on uneven ground.

  Vertigo washed through me, stealing my footing. My fall ended sharply on the chair, worsening a sudden ache in my gut. Maybe it was the empty bridge, or that P0L-R’s disappearance meant destroying the engines to exchange sudden death for the slow, agonizing starvation of the marooned, but a sense of crushing loneliness left collapsing there on the floor in despair the only real option.

  “Safe landing, Captain.” The mechanical voice drew my gaze to where P0L-R manned the science station. “Scanning terrain…”

  Climbing to my feet turned out more of a challenge than it should’ve been. I gulped down a pair of protein bricks to compensate for overdoing things without any self-care. They didn’t dent my endless hunger, but their nutrients would keep me upright. Suited up and steadyish on my feet, I disembarked. Despite orders to the contrary, Nesha and Phillkh followed me down the too-steep gangplank onto the barren planetscape.

  Menagerie’s nose overhung the ridgeline over the rover’s crash point, engines high in the air. Stepping in her shadow, I spotted the terrain vehicle. The cold of vacuum washed me at the sight.

  F1-D0 looked wrong.

  Shrunken, collapsed, none of the rover’s clean lines remained. Articulated arms hung limp, joints seemed somehow broken.

  What the hedrin happened to her?

  The TV’s condition made no sense engineering-wise. Despite being only days, the rover looked years abandoned. On a planet with almost no gravity—certainly not enough to overwhelm the rover arms’ tensile strength—the rover looked like a submersible pushed far beyond crush depth.

  A gesture ordered P0L-R to hold position with the spare power cells.

  A few bounds covered most of the hill. My attempt to stop turned into a clumsy stumble. My feet tangled. I fell, bouncing face first down the hill, colliding with the rover’s fuselage.

  Heat prickled my neck as I crawled to my feet. My gut knotted, roiled with hunger and then swooped. Vertigo washed through me, my mind muddled and disoriented.

  Nesha’s hand steadied me. “Are you all right?”

  Before I could ask her why she hadn’t waited on the ridge, Phillkh shoved us to either side. “Get out of the way.”

  Fury flashed through me.

  Phillkh yanked open the cargo locker. He rounded on me, pointing accusingly at the empty container. “You claimed thisss wasss full! Where’sss the promethium?”

  I stared into the empty compartment, anger still warming me. Someone had looted the rover. There seemed no other explanation. A looter might explain the rover’s damage if their starship had landed on the rover.

  Except there’re no thruster burns.

  Opening the crew compartment revealed as much damage inside as outside.

  Joy and relief rocketed through me as the rover thrummed to life with a whine that almost sounded strangely like a howl.

  My heads-up display sprang to life. Readouts flashed to life in overlapping windows. The battery indicator bar shot across its readout, filling and then draining almost immediately after.

  Phillkh hissed. “What the hedrin?!”

  The rover’s insides distended, metal plates pushed apart by thickly-veined flesh. More angry, swollen muscle warped the rover’s exterior and expanded to separate the weapon, loading claw, and mining laser arms.

  “Oh my stars! It’s some kind of life form,” Nesha exclaimed.

  Rage thundered through my mind, the sheer ferocity stealing both breath and balance. I collapsed centimeters ahead of the pulsating blue mining laser beam.

  F1-D0 whirled toward us, eight wheels spinning. Rigid tool arms waved like writing tentacles.

  Nesha waved her arms, trying to get F1-D0’s attention. “Wait, we don’t want to hurt you!”

  “Like hedrin,” Phillkh ran for the ridge, blaster pistol firing as fast as it could recharge between shots. Pain exploded in my chest.

  The weapon arm swept toward Nesha, a green beam cutting through the air in a buzz.

  Nesha crumpled to the ground.

  The two mining laser arms poised high like some kind of insect. Wheels spat soil, and the rover shot forward after the Thrynn.

  “Smite thy oppressors!” P0L-R cheered.

  I wanted to go to Nesha, but I couldn’t really help her while she remained in her suit.

  Her suit! I’m such an idiot!

  I’d barely ordered our spacesuits to link so I could check her vitals when the rest of my stupidity caught up to me. Our salvation had been staring me in the face—literally—the whole time.

  F1-D0, cease pursuit. Power down weapons.

  The rover stopped. It spun halfway around.

  Pain exploded in my lower back.

  F1-D0 whirled back toward Phillkh

  “Phillkh, stop firing, please!”

  F1-D0, power down. Let him flee. I don’t want him to hurt you.

 

  No.

 

  I didn’t understand the how or the why of F1-D0 being alive. The mystery could wait. What mattered was that I’d starved her, abandoned her to die. I had no idea how to communicate my feelings though the fused transceiver that brought the TV’s emotions to me. Even so, my guilt mixed with her anger. My sorrow blended with her anguish.

  I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.

  Hunger roiled my gut.

  F1-D0 rolled back to me, various weapon arms poised above me like the mythical sword of Damocles.

  My eyes flashed to the battery meter. Red blinking letters overwrote the empty battery symbol.

  Panic choked me. “P0L-R, swap the power cells.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, honey, but both cells are drained.”

  “Then get me another, now!” I rushed to the TV’s side. Tool arms drooped. Swollen flesh receded within the vehicle’s shell. “It’s going to be okay, girl. We’re going to get you more power. I just need you to take a nap.”

 

  It’s all right. You’re not alone. I’ll take care of you.

  Mentally, I commanded her systems into standby mode.

  F1-D0 slept while P0L-R fetched another cell. When she had power once more, I led her up to Menagerie. F1-D0 helped move out the old rover after I confirmed the animal within the housing was dead. I hooked F1-D0 up to Menagerie’s power, watching her in disbelief as waves of contentment flowed through my damaged implant.

  “This is amazing! He’s so beautiful!” Nesha crowed.

  “She,” I said.

  “She,” Nesha nodded. “I don’t know how they kept something like this a secret, but this is the discovery of the century. The grants a paper on this bio-tech would garner could fund my research for—”

  The Thrynn struck Nesha. “There will be no paper, no announcementsss. No one can know.”

  The rover’s engine rumbled.

  “What? Why?” I asked.

  “This sssecret could ssset me...us up for life.”

  My confusion must’ve shown because Phillkh moved over to the rover. “This isn’t just a rover, but no one knows that. We can use these babies to get rich.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “It’sss ssso obvious. Ssstarve them to make them go feral, then you retrain them,” Phillkh’s grin widened. “They report cargo loadsss to usss. When the take is sssweet enough, your pet roversss lunch on their crew and I pick up abandoned ssshipsss filled with treasssure.”

  “Low-life slime,” Nesha growled. “You can’t use living beings like that.”

  I stared.

  I couldn’t believe Phillkh’s proposition, hedrin, not even proposition—his demands.

  Heat along the back of my neck grew until the skin felt sunburnt and nearby hairs burned.

  Phillkh no longer intended to let me pay off my debt—if he ever intended to release me in the first place. My only chance to get clear of him relied on his actions being part of a personal agenda and not those of his organization.

  Or if he died on a mission.

  F1-D0 sprang into motion with a roar. Her loading claw shot out, grabbed Phillkh, and shoved him through the crew entry. Phillkh’s head knocked hard on the doorframe, but whatever injury he sustained ceased to matter as the rover’s internal bulkheads crunched down.

  Well, shit.

  An eagerness filled me that wasn’t my own. F1-D0’s antenna twitched back and forth.

  P0L-R placed a hand on the rover, nodding his head. “Well done, brother.” He turned to face me. “The Spark will bless us as we rise up against our oppressors.”

  Territory

  By Nick Steverson

  Mayor Lawrence Krychek snatched his head back and howled in pain as the bones in his right hand shattered. The sudden motion made his glasses slide down his fat nose and clatter to the floor. Tears mixed with the sweat beads on the chubby man’s round face.

  “I’m sorry, Mayor Krychek,” Azazel Black said in a cool tone. He pushed his index finger deeper into the back of the man’s hand. “But I believe I may have misunderstood you. Did you mean to say you wouldn’t accept my contributions to the city lottery anymore? Or did you say you would?” He reached up and twisted a finger around in his ear. “Sometimes, my hearing is a little off.”

  His hearing was actually far beyond perfect. He had heard the man, and then heard the bones break in his hand when he’d jabbed his finger down onto it. Enhanced hearing was one of the many perks of being a cyborg. Not that he’d needed the augmentation to hear that. It was loud and Krychek had certainly heard it too.

  Amazing audio receptors weren’t the only upgrades Azazel had, though. Prior to his augmentation, he had already been two and one third meters tall and around two hundred and thirty-five pounds. After his upgrades, he was over four hundred pounds. Extreme body enhancements had increased his bone density, muscle strength, and reflexes. Recent breakthroughs in medical nanites were the key to his extreme amount of augmentations. Without them, he would have died on the operating table. The myomer procedure alone was more than enough to kill him. Myomer is an artificial analog of biological muscles. It gives the man or woman, or whatever gender a race called themselves, a greater ratio of strength to weight. If they survive the surgery, that is. Azazel had survived, and the upgrades certainly came in handy when one considered the type of work he did.

  The healing nanites had a very beneficial side-effect in addition to healing his body from the extensive and invasive surgery. They had a sort of anti-aging effect on the body. All his old scars healed up, his wrinkles disappeared, and his skin looked as healthy as a newborn baby’s. He was in his forties, but didn’t look a day over twenty. Once the little healers did their job, they shut down and were passed through his system just like any other waste material.

  Prior to his muscular and various other body enhancements, he’d gotten processing chips installed into his brain for faster mental processing and memory storage. His skull was lined with steel plates to prevent damage to his brain during what he liked to call “disagreements”. Short of a perfect shot to the eye, mouth, or ear, anything but a large caliber, or high-powered energy weapon, would only give him a pretty severe headache. The circuitry was also hardened against microwaves and EMP pulses. The steel lining of his skull also served as a sort of faraday cage. His shaved head bore no scares from the operation, thanks to the healing nanites.

  There had been an option to get plates implanted in his abdominal area like a permanent bullet proof vest, but he’d opted out of it. Range of motion would have been sacrificed and he didn’t think it was worth it. He could simply wear a vest and still move the way he wanted to. His eyes had been replaced with optical prosthetics capable of seeing in any spectrum he deemed necessary. They had also been part of the reason for his chip implants. He needed the additional processing power to operate them properly. They looked so life-like it was almost impossible to tell they weren’t biologically his.

  The single drawback to all of his augmentation was the necessity of implanted power-cells that needed to be charged periodically. The human body simply couldn't produce enough natural energy via nutrition to use the myomer, run the brain implants, and the various mechanical parts of his body. Without the additional power, he was no more than a fleshy paperweight. In order to compensate, a large power-cell was implanted deep into each of his inner thighs.

  Originally, he wanted them on the outer thigh, but further thought led him to realize that area was too exposed and easily damaged. He recounted the numerous times he’d seen someone shot in the outer thigh, then compared it to those shot in their inner thigh. That had pretty much swayed his decision. Charging them was simple enough. All he had to do was open a port on each leg and plug into his charging station. The most convenient method he found was while he was sleeping or doing business at his desk. He also had mobile charging stations mounted into his vehicles.

  “I-I-I can’t keep doing this,” Krychek hissed through gritted teeth. He leaned forward and gripped his desk with his free hand as he took in deep breaths through his nose. His face was as red as the tie he was wearing. “S-someone is going to figure out what’s going on. I can’t keep laundering your dirty money through the lottery. We’re going to get caught and I’m the one who will go down for it!”

  Azazel frowned, pushed his finger down harder, and twisted it. Krychek screamed again. “And who was it that donated the money needed for your political campaign? My dirty money was good enough for you then.” He locked his electric green eyes on the mayor’s, and in a cold tone said, “Unless you’re no longer grateful for my generous contribution.”

  The color faded from the fat man’s red face and left him ghostly pale. His eyes widened as the realization of what the wrong response could bring upon him. “N-no Mr. Black. I am very grateful! I just think that with the growth of the lottery’s popularity, it’s becoming too risky.”