Aramus (5 page)

What would you like me to do with them?

Place them in our holding room. I’ll be by to question them later. How is the download of their computers going?

Slowly.
Someone began a wipe not long after they discovered we’d infiltrated. I managed to save some bits and pieces. Hopefully Einstein can make some sense of it. I’ve got Kentry yanking out drives as we speak in case Einstein can restore the information.

Try to make it quick
. We have no idea if the ship that escaped is going to return with friends. We might have taken them by surprise with our ambush, but we’re not equipped to take on a fleet of attack cruisers.

Understood.

Excellent. I’ll be coming aboard shortly with my human prisoner.

Marching
the doctor up the gangplank, Aramus found she didn’t require any added incentive to keep her moving—she remained glued to his side—but she also didn’t remain silent.

“Who are you?”

He didn’t answer. She wasn’t deterred.

“Is this your ship? Where are you taking
me?”

“I’m going to take you back to your cell if you don’t shut up,” he finally growled.

He immediately regretted his harsh tone as her thin shoulders rolled in, making her petite frame even more compact, as if she braced for a blow. For some strange reason, a part of him wanted to offer reassurance.

Reminding himself she was a human and not deserving of pity didn’t help. Damned human emotion frailties. They sought to overcome his common sense. He’d reboot himself the first chance he got and cleanse himself of
the defective feelings that threatened.

I will not let my weaker, human side win. I am cyborg.
Logic is all that matters.

Riley didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, when the imposing
figure dressed head to toe in space gear had shown up at her cell door, kicking his way in like some movie action hero, she’d felt such fear then hope as he stated his intention to rescue. Then he’d made it clear with his tone and words that he didn’t consider her a victim, but a prisoner. And the way he spoke of her, as if they weren’t from the same species…

She sneaked peeks at him as they strode up the violence
-splattered hallway to the loading bay. With the environmental suit he wore, she could discern very little about her rescuer other than the fact he bore a human shape. Then again, the mutant bodies she’d examined were also bipedal.

Was this
a rescue party for the poor experiments? Had she gotten flung from one untenable situation to another?
Oh god, I hope they’re not going to run tests on me like they were doing on the corpses I examined.
Given what she’d seen during the past few months, she wouldn’t blame them if they felt a need for retaliation, but how to make them understand she was just as much a victim? Would they even care?

A hole blasted in the bay doors show
cased another of the suited rescuers standing guard. To preserve the pressure and integrity of the installation—a fact she appreciated—a sealed tunnel had been suctioned to the hole leading onto a very military spacecraft.

“Are you from earth?” she asked
, forgetting his order to remain silent.

The big being didn’t reprimand her, but his reply didn
’t really answer her question. “Not anymore.”

What was that supposed to mean?
“So you’re human?”

“Nope.”

“Alien?”

“Most definitely not!” Before sh
e could query further, he growled, “Zip it.”

She clamped her lips shut. No use provoking him. Not until she knew more
about the situation.

Marched into a barren room, if
she ignored the huddled forms of other prisoners, she jumped when the door behind her slid shut with an ominous clang. Bolts slid shut, locking her in.

Great. I exchanged one prison for another.

Straightening her spine, she decided not to let herself despair. They obviously didn’t intend to kill her, or the big fellow would have done so already.
But he could be saving me for some torture later.

Yeah, she wouldn’t let her mind stray in that direction. Not yet. She needed to stick to the positive if she wanted to stay sane.
So what do I have going for me?

One, she was alive
with all her body parts intact.

Two, he’d not actually harmed her.
While he’d tied her arms behind her, he’d done so just enough to keep her from acting out.

Three, she was out of her cell and hopefully getting off this godforsaken planet.

Four, the unknown meant hope.

Five
…

W
as it her, or did she hear ominous hissing? Up went her gaze and she forgot about listing the positives about her new situation because, sure enough, a white gas oozed from the ventilation grills.

“We’re g
-g-g-oing to d-d-d-ie,” moaned one of the other occupants.

“Oh shut up, Percy. It’s a decontamination cloud. You can tell by the smell.”

“D-d-don’t tell me to shut up!” The fellow named Percy shot a glare at the woman who’d rebuked him, his index finger pushing up his thick glasses.

“
Then don’t be such a whiny baby. Or would you prefer to be back in your cell?”

“You were prisoners too?” Riley ventured.

“We all were. It seems our captors aren’t interested in the soldiers.” A fine mist enveloped them, the scent acrid and vinegary. It tingled on the skin. Holding out her arm, the pretty Latina pursed her full lips as she glared at the gas. She bore red marks around her mouth as if something had recently covered it. “Would it have killed them to give us a shower?” she grumbled. “I am so sick of smelling like a locker room.”

A shower would be nice, one without a guard leering
, with warm water and actual soap. Funny how the small things Riley used to take for granted seemed like such luxuries now.

Taking a closer peek at the group, Riley realized she only recognized one other person,
David something or other. He’d sometimes been a silent presence during the autopsies, taking blood and tissue samples. He lay prone on the floor, a bandage stained in red covering his midsection.

“Who are you?”
asked the woman. “I’m Carmen.”

“Riley.”

Carmen pointed to the male wearing glasses. “And that stuttering idiot is Percy.”

“I-I’m not an id-
diot,” he stammered. “Bitch.”

Carmen blew Percy a kiss while he scowled.
It seemed they knew each other but didn’t necessarily like one another.

“
Anyone know where we are?” Riley asked, straying closer to the Latina, who seemed to have the best handle on things.

“Some kind of military ship.”

“So the federation has us?”

“Ha. Like hell. Did you see the suits those guys were wearing? Nope. My guess is pirates or cyborgs.”

“Cyborgs!” Riley recoiled from the word. Of all the options, that one scared her the most. Everyone knew how much the cyborgs hated humans. How their programming had failed and they’d turned into killing machines, murdering anything with a pulse.

“Don’t tell me you believe that hyped-up mumbo jumbo the newsfeeds have been spouting?”

Riley
shifted her weight from foot to foot as Carmen stared at her, disdain curling her lip. “I saw the footage of the chaos they leave behind when a colony is invaded.”

“Chaos
, yes. Done by them? No.” Carmen motioned for her to turn around. Riley wondered why for only a moment before the fetters around her wrists fell to the floor.

“Where did you get the knife?”

“I had it on me when they captured me. None of them bothered to search us. I guess they don’t see us as a threat.”

Eyeing the two females sitting on the floor staring into space, the
unconscious male prone on the floor, Percy who kept wringing his hands, and Carmen, who tucked the knife away to finger comb her hair, Riley could kind of see why.

“So what do they see in us?”
Riley asked. If they weren’t here to save them, then why had they taken them prisoner?

Carmen
shrugged. “Hopefully not parts.”

“What!”

“Just kidding. That’s another rumor falsely circulated to get you all freaking. My guess is they’re looking for answers.”

“Aren’t we all
?” muttered Riley.

“M-Maybe they want to know about the aliens.”

“They’re not aliens,” Carmen stated.

“Are we talking about the gray ones?”

“What else? Did you get to see them?” Carmen’s attention focused on Riley.

“Yeah.”

“And what did you think? What were they? Did any of them talk to you?”

Riley’s nose wrinkled. “
Dead bodies don’t say much.”

“What are you
, a coroner?”

“Forensic anthropologist. I study corpses.”

“So you should know then. Were they alien or human?”

“Neither and both. It’s almost as if they mashed some foreign DNA with human. You obviously dealt with them, what was your take?”

“I was hired as a psychologist. My task was to get them to communicate.”

“And?”

“They didn’t have much to say. I mean, they spoke English for the most part, but most of our conversations were along the lines of ‘Help me’, ‘Kill me’, or ‘I’m going to kill you’. Then there was the one guy who kept saying he wanted to fuck me, but I don’t know if he was part of the same project because he was the only one they didn’t keep in a gas chamber. Actually, I’m fairly certain he was cyborg.”

“They had cyborgs too? I didn’t see the bodies of any.”

“Maybe because they didn’t die like the others. They’re tough sons of bitches.”

*

Tough indeed. Aramus had tuned in to listen to the prisoners, seeing what he could glean before he began his questioning. The installation was secure. The only living beings left were the cyborgs performing sweeps and the rats, which seemed to follow humans no matter where they went in the galaxy.

By all indications, the prisoners they’d acquired
weren’t major players for the faceless company who seemed to constantly stay one step ahead of them. However, they had information, answers to some of the questions plaguing him.

“What are we going to do with them?” Aphelion asked.

Aramus muted the live feed and drummed his fingers on the armrest of his seat. “Kill them.”

“Even I know you’re not seriously contemplating that.”

No. He wasn’t. Human or not, they seemed to be victims, not perpetrators. “I guess we question them.”

“And then?”

Then…what? They couldn’t just put them back where they found them. The installation was compromised, and once they unsealed their ship from the hole they’d made, the planet would reclaim the mountain. Dropping them off on earth, also not a possibility. So what did that leave? Not much.

“
Termination would be most efficient.” Even if he lacked the enthusiasm to mete out such an extreme to a group that obviously didn’t deserve further punishment.

“
Why did I know you were going to say that?” Aphelion shook his head in clear disgust. “Why must everything with you end in death? There’s got to be another option.”

“I guess we could dump them on a colony planet and let the settlers deal with them.”

“Won’t the company go after them?”

“Only if they know they’re there.”

“Which will happen within an hour of their arrival as soon as the first notification is sent back to earth. It’s a death sentence not only to them but the colony who gets them.”

Aramus scowled. “What the hell else am I supposed to do with them?
I can’t kill them. I can’t drop them off. What do you suggest then?”

“We could keep them.”

“Keep? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“My mind is quite intact and functioning at a ninety
-eight-point-three percent efficiency.”

“I’d run a diagnostic to be sure
, because your suggestion is highly illogical.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because is not an acceptable answer.”

If ever there was a time Aramus hated cyborg logic, now was that time. “Because we can’t have a gaggle of humans running around my ship causing trouble, that’s why.”

“So we keep them confined until we get back home and let Joe deal with them. They wouldn’t be the first humans brought back for the good of our society.”

True. Despite the general dislike for humans, or the ones who’d done them wrong at any rate, some of his brethren didn’t mind them. Heck, some of his brothers even took humans as cohabiting partners. They even had humans working amongst them. But they’d been taken from harsh punishing environments where earth politicians had dumped them. The cyborgs came along and gave these society rejects a second chance to live as free men and women with rights.

The prisoners
he’d just picked up though? They worked for the enemy. They’d abetted the torture and experimentation of cyborgs and others. How could he and his crew knowingly bring them into the fold? What if one or more of them were spies?

“What if they’re lying? What if their apparent abuse is a ruse to get us to let down our guard, allowing them to infiltrate and send back information to their superiors?”

“I think I’m not the one who needs to run a diagnostic. You are letting paranoia control you.”

“It’s called caution.”

“Semantics. You can’t live suspecting every human you meet is out to get you.”

“Why not? It’s kept me alive.”

“And miserable.”

“Says you. I am perfectly content. I am the commander of this ship. I get to travel. Explore. Bring back goods for the cyborg colony.” Kill humans who got in his way. What more could a cyborg ask for?

An end to the emptiness inside me that plagues me whenever I am alone.
But that, he kept to himself.