Star Navigator Read online

She’s looking right at me and she doesn’t know it.

  The wariness in Captain Reina’s eyes was unexpected. He watched as she slowly came forward and acknowledged his presence.

  He scanned her body and, as he did so, he felt a shock to his system when he tried to get a reading on her arm.

  So it repels me too.

  Atlas couldn’t help but acknowledge her presence as well.

  His new captain was a monument, a statue, sculpted by a being who worked on her with an obsession that approached insanity. She was pretty in an unconventional way.

  Shoulder length chocolate brown hair, pulled tightly back from her face, that accentuated obscenely sharp cheekbones. Cheekbones that could make an S.I. think twice about what was more painful: flesh and blood beauty, or not being able to appreciate it like a man could? Her facial structure almost bordered symmetrical perfection and it all tapered down to full pink lips. Lips that could have been luscious if they weren’t pulled into a taut, straight line.

  And that was where the odd symmetry ended. Her nose was slightly crooked and her face was sallow, pale, as if she had never been under the rays of a sun.

  Atlas could not imagine the body that belonged to his captain’s face under the bulky, stiff military uniform she wore. It hid her sex well as a uniform should. He assumed she was as fit as anyone in her line of work.

  Her eyes were too large, too open, and framed with thick lashes. They magnified her hazel irises.

  Atlas downloaded all images of Captain Reina into his database. Few appeared.

  “I thought ‘Creedence’ was a good name for a ship, Commander Anders,” Atlas stated absently with a modicum of irritation befitting anyone who felt ignored.

  “Thank you, Atlas.”

  They want to name my ship.

  He wasn’t giving the honor to name it to a woman ranked beneath him. Or the insolent man who stood next to her.

  Atlas wasn’t surprised when his captain and the commander left his presence in the cockpit without saying goodbye. What did surprise him, as he followed the girl, was that Anders addressed him specifically within the hull, pulling him away. His voice loud was enough with an intent to catch his attention.

  As if my attention could be caught.

  But catch it he did.

  “Atlas,” Anders barked.

  “Yes, Commander Anders?” Atlas answered immediately, the man stiffened.

  “Bring her home alive.”

  “You could have taken this mission, Commander.” You could have been the next one to die.

  “It was never an option.”

  “That’s a poor excuse,” Atlas challenged. Watching the man’s jaw clench, his mouth opening up to say something more before aptly shutting it. He no longer wanted the commander on his ship, and as he watched him walk away, Atlas couldn’t help but taunt him once more. “Captain Reina couldn’t be safer with anyone else.”

  Chapter Three:

  “You have been cleared for takeoff.”

  Reina gritted her teeth and checked her controls once over. When she sat in the captain’s chair, a translucent screen powered on to envelop her; her arm connected.

  It was the only thing that could touch the screen.

  “Ready for takeoff, initiating in three.” The light of Atlas’s station washed over the room in a chilly blue. “Two,” she kept the unease out of her voice as the flow of the systems powered up around her. “One.”

  The gravity fields shifted as her ship lifted into the air and shot into the sky.

  Reina followed the sky-path laid out for her, cleared by the Earthian air-ways. A course charted through their solar system, it changed and updated constantly as she checked the numbers.

  “Good luck on your mission, Captain. Let the stars guide your way,” an ambiguous voice said before shutting off communication. She left the protective shell of Earth and sped into the channeled space of the Earthian-controlled sector of the Milky Way.

  She stole a lingering glance at Earth as they flew away, knowing she may never see its metal cities again, hardening her heart she turned away.

  In an attempt to get a feel for her ship, she ran diagnostics on its infrastructure–the readings came back perfect.

  The projected course changed again.

  “Atlas, what is our current route?”

  “In two planetary sun rotations of approximately forty-six hours, we will reach the boundaries of this galaxy. We will maintain as much distance as possible from Trentian sectors until we warp to the Nexus Galaxy.”

  “Are you updating our route? It keeps changing.” Coordinate updates rolled down her screen.

  “I recalculate it every second as new variables present themselves.”

  “That’s amazing. Thank you.” Reina moved to get up as he continued to work.

  “Captain Reina?”

  She looked up at the pillar of light in the middle of the bridge.

  “May we go over access systems? I can be of better use to you if I could monitor more than the navigation,” Atlas asked.

  “Sure, yes, what would you need access to?” She eyed the light curiously.

  “I would like the ship’s diagnostics access, weapons access, sanitation access–”

  “You want access to the whole ship?” Reina hedged.

  “Are you offering it?”

  Reina shook her head. “No. The Council would have made you captain if you had access to everything.”

  “A sentient intelligence? Captain of a ship? Do you think that’s possible?”

  Reina smiled at the fake robotic awe in his voice. “Have you captained a ship before, Atlas?” she asked as she ran her hand through the beam.

  “Have you?”

  Reina looked at her timer. “I have for twenty minutes.”

  “Hmm, well, you got me then.” The beam vibrated. “A whole twenty minutes of you-got-me.”

  “Is that humor, Atlas?” Reina went back to her chair and sat down.

  “I don’t do humor, Captain Reina. I’m efficient and logical.”

  Reina smirked. Maybe this trip won’t be as lonely as I thought it would be. “Hmm, I’m surprised you didn’t have access to any system prior to this conversation. Why is that? It seems redundant to make me delegate everything.” She looked at her arm and mumbled, “Cybernetics can’t be that powerful...”

  She opened up the ship’s database and granted him control of sanitation.

  “Thank you, Captain. I only have navigational systems, and yes, only you can give me access to anything else, and yes again, your arm could make you power-hungry,” he answered vaguely. “This ship’s navigational structure was built around my specific requirements, but the other systems were not. Your arm is the key to the rest of the ship. The Council did not have access to grant because when you went under the knife, you were granted that power with your arm.”

  She frowned at his words. “Why would they do that?” The pause that followed was ominous. “Atlas?” Reina looked back at the beam.

  “Liability? If you die, the ship can’t be commandeered...Why do you think?”

  Reina unlocked and swiveled her chair to face his voice. She knew he was avoiding the question, leading with another. He was keeping something from her, and she mulled over the possibility that Atlas might not be here willingly. “Why didn’t they just send you?” If he could manage everything, then why need me? Protocol and space law be damned.

  “That, Captain Reina, is the billion dollar cyber-systems question. But I believe it is because I can’t be integrated into the ship, not without a direct connection like yours.”

  “They don’t trust you.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re smarter than you sound,” Atlas teased. Reina’s face fell, and she felt her mission become a little more complicated. “We’re going to make a great team, you and I.” His sarcasm was palpable. The blue light pulsed again. “Although I am a sentient intelligence now, and have been for qu
ite some time, I am still a conscious mind with the same duplicitous nature as a human.”

  Reina canted her head. “They must trust you. Why else would they give you reign of their systems and cyber designs? Not only government access, but military technology?” Her confusion grew.

  “Have you researched me, Captain? I’m flattered. Did you find a picture of me within the banks? Was I to your liking? I was once told I was devilishly handsome.”

  “Stop evading the question–” she trailed off as the ship flew past Jupiter, catching her attention.

  “Painfully, horribly, incredibly handsome.”

  Reina barely heard him, her eyes on the mega-storm on the giant planet. It looked to her like a frighteningly lifeless eye. It blurred as they sped by. A wink.

  “What...?” She continued to stare at it.

  “I think we started off on the wrong track. I can tell your blood pressure has risen,” Atlas taunted. Reina continued to stare at swirling, dead sphere until it vanished into the distance. “You can trust me. I believe it would be in your best interest to sit down and take several deep breaths.”

  Reina glanced away from the window and back at the coordinates rolling down her screen. She ran the back of her hand over her forehead.

  Is my fever returning?

  A strange sense of vertigo hit her and she reached out and grasped her chair. Once she caught enough sterile air in her lungs, she felt the excess heat leave her body.

  Her uniform clung to her curves.

  Reina took off her jacket and folded it over the handle of her seat. The air cooled the inflamed skin of her arm. When she looked at it, she noticed Atlas’s silence, and wondered if he knew something was wrong with her.

  That she was not mutating properly.

  She sat up and re-tied her hair painfully away from her face.

  “I apologize for my lapse.” Reina wiped the back of her hand across her brow and tried to regain her composure.

  “You are still in recovery. I believe it is imperative that you allow me to help you. If you lapse again, I will be able to monitor your vitals and alert you before any damage can occur.”

  “That won't be necessary. I’m sure it was just the pressure of takeoff.”

  “I hope you are right but Captain, please let me help you. I am here.”

  What does that mean? What game is he playing? The sarcasm from before was gone and replaced with strain, an odd tension between them.

  “I’ll remember that,” Reina said eventually, sitting back down and getting back to work.

  “Very well. I have navigating to do. Out.”

  She felt the sudden dismissal from her subordinate as a chastisement. Well, screw you too. She frowned, knowing she was being baited, and that she was giving into it.

  Reina bit back a retort, not willing to play into whatever alpha games Atlas was pulling. And she knew he was playing. Men in power challenged each other in front of her every day, sometimes subtly, sometimes violently, oftentimes to prove themselves against others–or to impress the only female onboard.

  What did Atlas have to prove with her? They had scarcely met. Their roles were concrete but she knew it was something more. He was something more, and it put her on edge. She couldn’t relate, and the more she tried to wrap her mind around a digital consciousness, the harder it became.

  Unsure if he was still monitoring her, she asked one last question, one she needed to know before they could continue to work together.

  “Can you see me?”

  A vacuous quiet met her, and Reina thought it was answer enough. She turned to the controls and watched the stars fly by. Several minutes passed.

  “I can.”

  HE WANTED COMPLETE access to his ship.

  MY ship.

  The ship that was an extension of the woman onboard. Atlas knew it was more than he originally thought the cybernetics unit capable of. But leave humans to their theories and science, and they were bound to break all barriers: they were bound to created godly things like the Cyborgs, and ungodly plagues like the breeder’s disease.

  Atlas would have laughed, maybe even sighed as he had seen more than most being stuck for decades in the network. Humans had an amazing polarity.

  There were blurred streaks to their pursuit of knowledge, one couldn’t know all the outcomes to their accomplishments, good and bad, when they had a greater goal in mind and that was dominion

  It was part of the deal.

  Atlas watched the woman who he was going to be cohabitating with for the next several months, maybe even more. Not many females served in the fleet, especially not within the army.

  He would be alone, for a substantial length of time, with a young female. A supple one with bright brown eyes, which were wide enough he could read her face from across an arena. With a taut, tight, form hidden under layers of synthetic cloth. The confused, yet intelligent pout she gave when he teased her about being granted the rank of captain was enough to cool his anger. It was one of the only shifts in her frozen facade.

  I can let her pretend that this is her ship. No harm would come from it.

  He probed the shielded, digital barriers, but his forte wasn’t hacking. His power lay elsewhere.

  The ship continued to pick up speed. He looked back again at the girl who was his only obstacle.

  A loose strand of hair snuck out of her bun and fell over her cheek. Her new arm sat heavy and limp at her side. It didn’t take a genius to know that her body wasn’t coping well with the mutation. He had been serious about helping her.

  The girl leaned back in her chair with a soft sigh and she turned around to look at his projection system. Her wide eyes narrowed in his direction.

  Is she going to say something? Does she feel me watching her?

  She got up, her hand rubbed her robotic piece, and she walked over to the system–to him.

  Her face was right in front of him, and for a moment, he had the urge to project and scare her with a fake kiss.

  Wouldn’t that be a memory to keep forever in the back of my mind. A stolen kiss from an unassuming woman.

  But the charged moment passed as she waved her hand through the beams, through him, and walked out of the bridge.

  He was just an intelligence to her, not a man. There could be nothing between them.

  And very quickly, his frustration came back. His anger that he spent every digital day of his life tamping down, hiding from the overlords that controlled him.

  Atlas left the bridge after the woman but he did not follow her to the lounge where her heat signature was located and instead channeled down to the bowels of the ship. Into a cold, hidden cybernetic laboratory, where he was locked in the frigid, endless chill of cryostasis.

  Atlas looked down at his almost-corpse, iced over under a thick layer of glass, and wished his rage were enough to melt it.

  He had taken a precise shot to the heart, unguarded for mere seconds, but it was enough time for a Trentian berserker to snipe the vital organ. He remembered time stopping, the armor-piercing bullet that sank through the small hole in his interior metal plating and hit home. The bloody valentine of a kill-shot that exploded in his chest. His cybersystems went into overdrive and tried to repair the damage immediately, but there was little that could be done to a pile of hot, wet, goo.

  His squadron was able to stabilize his body, sending electrical impulses to his system. They kept him connected to the network long enough for him to wheedle out of his body like a slimy wire and into the lifelessly charged online world–where his mind had found a hostile home.

  With a view into the physical world he no longer inhabited, he came back, then reached out to the other Cyborgs. Finally, he made his way back into the Earthian Council’s cybernetic lab where his body was being stored.

  A body, a promise that hung over his head like a wretched curse; with it, they used and manipulated him into being a sentient intelligence. His databases swarmed by deceit and data that he could do nothing with, he was power
less because his compliance was bought with the promise that he would be brought back to life.

  Atlas looked down at his body, the slime of his biological heart removed long ago, and he simmered.

  Those bastards created me, then enslaved me, and now they send my corpse out to deep space to use me as their insurance that we’ll return. That I’ll return. Because I would never risk the one thing that could bring me back to life.

  Chapter Four:

  Chris was right. This ship may bring out the fear of claustrophobia in me. If the dry, quiet space doesn’t, the loneliness might. Nothing happened; not even the drama of other people could be relied on to keep the days going forward. It was only her, the dark void, and the stars.

  Everything was so, so quiet.

  She had taken the blanket and stiff, straight pillow off of her bed and dragged them into the cockpit at the end of her first night on board. After one annoying communication with regard to her response time on data updates, Reina had beat the pillow against the wall and then neatly folded it over the handle of her chair, which had also become her bed and lounge. The fake cotton maintained its shape and now she had a place to rest her arm.

  It was a small sort of satisfaction.

  Her arm. Reina looked back down at it. Even after nearly a week of travel, including two warp jumps, it had remained the same. Regardless of the amount of salve she spread across her reddened skin, even though it soaked it up like dry dirt, her arm remained the same.

  It began to lead to an uneasiness she felt throughout, and she knew that her interrupted sleep cycles were not helping.

  She ran her shaky hand through her hair, the bun she usually wore fallen out hours ago. But why should she care? There was no one there to judge her.

  It’s not like Atlas cares. He hasn’t said more than several sentences to me in over a week.

  The loneliness should have affected her more but it was kept at bay for now by captaining a ship that had no crew. What affected her was the intermittent quiet between communication pings.

  She had no doctor here to help her.

  Reina laughed. I’m completely incompetent.