Ashes and Metal Read online

  She closed her eyes and tried to ignore him.

  “Boy-o, you gotta grow a thicker skin.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” another nearby prisoner yelled. Jacob’s distant cry started back up.

  Kallan drew up to the bars between them, pressing up as close as he could to her. Elodie moved away, against the bars she’d shared with her dad. Kallan had reached for her frequently but she never let herself get near enough for him to grab her. At least not close enough where she couldn’t easily twist away. But she watched as he settled in and lowered his voice.

  “Chesnik your real pa?”

  She gifted him with a blank stare.

  “You two look alike. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. Must be nice to know someone in this hellhole. Too bad he gone up and abandoned you. I guess that means I can be your new daddy.” The smile he flashed made her sick. “Always been wondering how a frail, twig-armed boy like you chose work in a field that could lead to this.” Kallan cupped the bars. “You know they ain’t taking us straight to the slave rings.”

  “What do you mean?” Elodie asked.

  He grinned. “I’ve been on the other side. No. If we were just slaves, we’d have been sold off by now. No. We’re for something else.”

  “Else?” she asked. Do I really want to know?

  Kallan reached through the bars and tried to grasp at her but his fingers didn’t even make it halfway. “Maybe your pa has the right of it. But is the risk worth it?” He drew his hand back and shifted away.

  She lifted the collar of her work shirt and breathed in the scent of her sweat. It grounded her; although unpleasant, it was better than the reek the rest of the brig often had. Everything, every square inch of flesh and cloth on her body was filthy. Her skin itched, her short hair fell in clumped strands around her face, her nail beds were broken and lined with dirt, sweat stains sported her undershirt, but the worst part about her current state was the extra-tight, double-banded sports bra underneath it all. She’d been wearing it for weeks and Elodie was certain the skin underneath was as desperate as her lungs for fresh air.

  She didn’t have large breasts, or really any breasts at all. Elodie couldn’t be sure, not having spent much time in the presence of women, but not being well endowed had saved her a lot of hardship.

  The tips of her fingers skated over her pulse. Feeling life under her skin, literally touching it, reminded her how lucky she really was.

  “You and your pa plan it?” Kallan’s voice stopped her fingers from trailing under her shirt to itch.

  I’m the epitome of stupidity. She streaked her fingers across the scrapes on her knuckles instead, feeling a slight twinge of pain. It helped distract her from her thoughts.

  “Plan what?” she asked.

  “Him gettin’ recruited and you staying here? You two got a plan?”

  Elodie dropped her hand, suddenly tired.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You two got a plan!”

  She turned away and lowered to her side.

  “You better cue me in before it goes down. Or your being related won’t stay a secret. You listening to me boy-o? They’d find a way to use you two against each other.”

  She closed her eyes. It didn’t shut the pain away but it kept her from staring off into her dad’s empty cell. It allowed her to pretend, in short, desperate bursts, that he was still there. That, in some miraculous way, she wasn’t locked up at all and that she had no secrets to hide.

  I don’t care if they know he’s my dad.

  I care if they find out I’m a girl.

  I need a plan.

  Slumber teetered out of reach even though Kallan went silent. Elodie curled one arm over her empty stomach and prayed to whoever—whatever—out there that might listen and help get her out of this cell before she could hide no longer. She allowed one single tear to make its way down her cheek. Just one.

  Chapter Two

  A SINGLE AMBER TRICKLE of beer caught his eye.

  Gunner pumped the wort through the calandria that marked the end of the boil. He sat back as it flushed into his jacked-up whirlpool tank to separate out. Some of it dripped onto the floor from where a minor leak had formed. The beer dribbled until it fell from the tank to splash onto the ground, where it was quickly caught up in his ship’s ventilation.

  He couldn’t see behind the copper piping—which was foraged from other parts of his ship—while the centripetal force pushed the debris into the bottom middle of the tank. And as such, the fragrant aroma of hops filled his bathroom.

  He grabbed a nearby cloth and wiped his hands but didn’t try too hard for cleanliness. His eyes drifted from the machinery to his nails, cracked and tainted. His hands would never be clean again. Not even a chemical cloth, designed for sanitization, could scrub the grease, sweat, and blood that had long ago fouled his cybernetic skin. Not even if he released the beast inside him, letting the metal shift and having his cybernetic cells rebuild him from the inside out.

  He was dirty.

  And doomed to remain so.

  “Take it.” Gunner thrust the cloth at Browning, his partner in beer brewing, and number three in his life. She came after his AI, his second due to unwavering loyalty based on cracked-up codes.

  “Yes, sir.”

  His steps echoed through the small lavatory-turned-brewery as he checked the process over. The silence that followed was a low hum to his ears. Even Browning was a quiet little lamb beside him, holding his garbage as if she was created for it.

  Which, in a manner of speaking, she was.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he was in the direct presence of a living, breathing human. The toys he surrounded himself with were all he knew now, and as he calculated how long it would take for his beer to finish brewing, he also knew the inevitable quickly approached.

  The next drop-off point with Stryker.

  Gunner turned full-circle, grounding himself in his enclosed territory, and taking it all in.

  The heat in the room was rising, albeit slowly, which would spoil the fermentation.

  He swiveled on his heel and headed for the control panel, pressing his hand up against the greased-streaked glass.

  Two of a kind. We’re both covered in grease.

  He programmed the temperature to lower once the whirlpool was done, setting himself a countdown to remind him to return. The time ran down by seconds. It felt like an internal pull, the kind of pull that kept your eyes checking the clock on the other side of the room while you’re trying to fall asleep.

  Gunner ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back, and pulling it tightly before letting it go.

  Just then, the ghost of something warm, teasing, with soft skin, edged with a porcelain nail ran from the middle of his neck to slide in subtle waves down his spine, ending with a light tap on his lower back at the waistband of his jeans. When it left him, he rolled his shoulders and accepted the calculated touch for what it was.

  Fake.

  Browning stepped away from him like a shadow at dawn, there one moment, soft and shaded, and gone the next, bleached out by the sun’s ever-watching spotlight.

  But the countdown and the swirl of the whirlpool continued on in reality.

  Browning was fake—a specifically designed android—and he hated and loved it every time her programming pretended not to be. Gunner grabbed hold of her long brown hair and tugged lightly, eliciting another response out of her: a coy smile just for him. He dropped his hand and shook the feel of her off.

  “Need something more from me?” she asked ever-so-sweetly. He didn’t answer.

  Maybe it’s time. His lips fell into a frown. Time for fucking what? Gunner glanced away from her, uneasy in the way his contraptions always made him feel. He moved to the whirlpool to watch the deep amber liquid swirl.

  Time for what? The swell of rushing waves filled his ears. It was the same question that plagued him day in and day out, ever since he accepted his exile. What’s there to do?

  �
��There’s an abnormal structure in our path.’

  His ship’s AI, APOLLO, interrupted his thoughts. With his head still deep within his ship’s systems, he seeded through the data from the sensors, moving to re-press his hand to the control panel.

  ‘What kind of structure?’ he asked.

  ‘According to the most recent scans, another ship.’

  Gunner downloaded the scans and checked them over. A ship. Or a large chunk of debris left behind by another larger ship, or both.

  ‘Keep scanning. Move closer. Use the active sensors if you have to, we aren’t sneaking around,’ he ordered.

  He felt the change before the command was uploaded and they went off-course altogether, heading toward an abrupt anomaly instead of the drop-off point and Stryker. Browning moved to stand behind him, anticipating his needs, half-controlled by APOLLO herself, but made no move to close the distance or to take over the brewing.

  ‘Approaching obstruction in five...’

  Four.’

  Three.’

  Two. Scanning again.’

  He flexed his bicep and tapped his finger on the panel, waiting. There was no one in the universe who hated waiting more than he did. ‘Check for power,’ Gunner added.

  Several moments went by before the AI responded. ‘Ship confirmed. Power detected inside, including minor electrical signals. No distress call or any correspondence outward. One human on board.’

  He lifted his hand away from the wall and snagged the cloth from Browning, wiping it clean again, and dropped it on the floor this time when he was done. He pulled a joint out of his pocket and lit up, taking a deep drag, waiting.

  His timer ticked along in the back of his mind, evaporating against the heat of his concentration. His eyes roved over the haphazard machines strewn about once again and he filled his nose with the scents they created. Burning, musky, earthy scents.

  Gunner knew everything about this room, everything about his ship. There wasn’t a line of code out of place, a smell he couldn’t detect, or an android or sexbot he hadn’t reconfigured to his exact specifications. Dommik had his standard model androids, the Bins, and Stryker had alcoholic Matt. He, on the other hand, had his beautiful robotic crew. What better than to spend countless days looking at something beautiful?

  “Follow me,” he ordered over his shoulder to Browning as he left the room, leaving for the bridge.

  The dark grey tones and the streak of low LED lights that lined the floor glinted as he moved past a dozen shut doors and portholes that looked out into space. He flicked his gaze to the left where he could see the hulk that APOLLO was currently scanning.

  Fucking salvagers.

  The doors to the bridge slid open silently as he neared. Colt and Flashbang, two more bots just like Browning, were already in attendance, manning the controls in his absence. They moved to the edges of the cockpit when he neared, Browning joined them at the sides.

  “Send them a communication, try and reach whatever lifeform is in it,” Gunner barked out. APOLLO responded to the order instantly.

  They waited for a response that didn’t come.

  Gunner sourced out stashed clothes and tossed on a simple undershirt, foregoing his EPED uniform to don his camo cargo fatigues and jacket. The pockets were lined with more supplies than on his person.

  When he sat down on his self-styled throne—a used-up, beaten captain’s seat—there was still no answer from the smaller, broken vessel.

  He ordered APOLLO to send another message. Updated scans alerted him to movement and activity and again confirmed that there was only one lifeform on the downed salvage ship. Whoever was on the broken-down heap was well enough to move. Hopefully, they were well enough to talk as well.

  Gunner knew his curiosity was far from helpful. He was just bored. But here he was regardless, waiting, anticipating something to happen, and feeling a twinge of annoyance that he gave any of his precious time to anyone based on curiosity alone.

  His eyes flicked to the several unanswered missives he’d sent to Stryker. They had begun to pile up and although he loved a good pile, he wondered why his co-worker wasn’t responding.

  One more cycle... One more wormhole... Several more jumps... Then he would have been at the meet-up point on the outer edges of Earth’s solar system—as close as he was allowed to go.

  He was banned from commercial spaceways and all known paths of travel between humanity and the Trentian aliens.

  Which brought him back to the broken hulk outside his ship and the mystery of its presence.

  Boredom. Grade-A fucking boredom.

  He trailed his finger over his lower lip as an odd surge of anticipation hit him.

  “Call the team,” he announced.

  Colt and Flashbang stepped forward. Gunner’s eyes trailed after their lithe bodies through the reflected glass as they did what they were told. He wasn’t a complete perv—his sexbots-turned-crew were clothed in uniforms, and they even carried weapons he had trained them with. If something were to happen, they could fight by his side and defend themselves.

  No one touched what was his. No one.

  Each of his girls had a learned personality, albeit coded, and the conversations he sometimes stumbled upon them having broke up his monotony.

  Just then, a response came back and he sat forward. Who would he be dealing with?

  The bridge doors zipped open, ushering in the sounds of a dozen reconfigured androids taking up position.

  Colt, Flashbang, Winchester, Remington, Glock, Super Soaker, Gatling, Turret, Smith, Wesson, Weatherby, Ammo, and his personal favorite, Browning, all lined up, flanking his sides. His beautiful, perfect, plastic sexbots. His fake kingdom all in one room. A beacon of the technology that made up his quiet empire.

  His gunner girls.

  They would as easily kill you as fuck you. His lips crept up into a smile, remembering the chaos that he created when he reprogrammed them to kill him. Thirteen monsters of his own making going after their own master’s blood. At the time he wanted to give them a chance, to see if they could actually harm him, allowing them to learn and calibrate throughout the exhilarating process.

  But in the end, they couldn’t even touch him.

  APOLLO powered up a visual and fed it straight to his mind before projecting it onto the hologram screen across the bridge.

  A young man appeared, standing but hunched over a control panel of his own. Gunner leaned forward and the man leaned back. Human. Not half-breed, not alien... human.

  “Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?” the man called out.

  “I can hear you.” Gunner rested his elbows on his knees. The boy couldn’t be older than his early twenties. The visual was clear but not without some grain, and he didn’t need to seed into the currents to know that power fluctuations on the boy’s end were causing the disturbance between them.

  “Some good news at last,” the boy laughed and shifted his eyes across his visual. Gunner knew what he was seeing, knew what the sight of his favorites behind him looked like, but kept his amusement to himself. “Been out here for months now, and nobody has come by.”

  “What’s your name?” Gunner asked.

  APOLLO responded before the boy did, ‘Encrypted documents on the ship suggest we’re speaking to a Nickel Smith, one in a crew of twelve on a ship named Blessed.’

  ‘Blessed?’

  ‘Blessed’s history suggests its origins come from the Gliese new wave star carriers, made from the parts of war battlecruisers that were beyond repair. It is one in a three ship series for the missionaries of the moon, followed by Touched, and preceded by Reborn.’

  “Name’s Nickel, yours?” the boy said.

  Gunner groaned. Religion.

  Even in deep space, he couldn’t get away from it. Browning snickered at his side and it was enough to bring a smile to his lips. She’s my favorite.

  “Gunner. So, Nickel,” he sat back, “what happened?”

  Nickel noticeably looked away from the unifo
rmed beauty of his gunner girls. Entertainment could still be had, while Gunner waited for that snake-faced Stryker to get back to him and answer his latest message.

  “Will you help me if I tell you?”

  “Depends on my mood,” he said, shrugging.

  “I can help him,” Flashbang suggested, cutting in. The other bots tittered and agreed until he held up his hand, silencing them. Nickel’s eyes widened, and Gunner zoomed his screen in on them, making his girls laugh anew.

  “I’m the one with all the cards, Nickel. Why ask inane questions?” Get back to business.

  “Because if I’m going to waste my time telling you when you’re planning on killing me anyway, I would just like to speed it up. I’ve come to terms already,” the boy admonished.

  “Terms with what?”

  “That my death is inevitable. That my life, currently, is an unending punishment.”

  Gunner cackled. “With an attitude like that, it sure fucking is.”

  “The goddesses of the holy moons have turned their back on me and the crew,” the boy’s voice quivered then hardened. “And I have given up hope that they would help.”

  “Maybe I’m the help they’re giving.” Gunner hardly tempered his sarcasm.

  He didn’t believe in fate or karma, or any other mystical, spiritually-washed up element out there. Religions spread like disease and from the most idiotic sources possible: a tree growing to adulthood overnight; a million falling stars landing over a field of crop; the sudden, inexplicable death of a tyrant; an abrupt end to a war that raged terror for a hundred years.

  Fucking Lysander.

  He knew a fair bit about the various spiritual sects that had found footing throughout the new wave of colonies on Gliese, Kepler, and Elyria. The universe was a big place after all, and unusual, unexplainable wonders happened every day.

  Unless you were a Cyborg. Nothing held wonder to a Cyborg. His god was science, and his belief ran through his veins like the nanocells that coursed through him. There was always an explanation. Even if the explanation was pure bad fucking luck.