Chapter Text
“I could always kill them all for you.”
My generous offer hit the floor with an almost audible thump. Arada looked alarmed, Pin-Lee and Ratthi blinked at me in concert, Bharadwaj got that “We need to talk” look, Gurathin rolled his eyes, and Mensah sighed.
“Unfortunately, we don’t even know who all of ‘them’ are,” she said. “And I would rather find a diplomatic solution.”
Of course she would. Mensah suffered from the inability to write people off. That worked out for me (and Gurathin, come to think of it), but it also made for an unnecessary number of not-dead enemies of Preservation. Right now, we were discussing gathered intelligence that hinted at power players in the Corporation Rim setting their eyes on the Preservation Alliance for a hostile takeover. There was always some corporate asshole with designs on the Alliance, but the current threat was worrying Mensah more than most.
The short version was that a relatively new corporation called Noventa was attempting to chisel away at Preservation Alliance’s independence by buying up its offworld contracts. In turn, a bigger, politically-connected corporation called TriBaron was trying to undercut Noventa. Between the two of them, Preservation was bleeding financially. Those were the two we knew about. There was evidence, though, that either another corporation was in play in the background, or someone was backing Noventa financially for reasons unknown.
“What we need is to find out who all is involved,” said Gurathin. “Also, why. Once you know their motivations, you have leverage.”
“I agree; however, our current intelligence got locked out of their usual channels,” said Mensah. “That’s part of what’s so concerning. Whoever this is, they’re scaring people into silence.”
I checked my archives for TriBaron. During the last Corporation Rim year alone, they had executed four hostile takeovers of smaller corporations. They had offices on every major station in the Corporation Rim. Noventa was smaller, but smart about their investments, and they were gaining influence. Their corporation was headquartered on Port Free Commerce.
The others discussed what they knew while I ran scenarios and simulations of possible solutions. One showed promise.
“I could go to Port Free Commerce and gather intel for you,” I offered, interrupting the chattering humans. “I have gone undercover in the past.”
“We couldn’t put you in that kind of danger, SecUnit!” Arada protested.
“I’m built for danger.” Yes, it was a quote from Sanctuary Moon.
Gurathin held up his hand to forestall the objections that the others were about to start blurting in their impractical way. “It’s not the worst idea. Also not the best. If you need someone undercover – and I think we do – a former corporate spy would be the better choice.”
The flood of objections poured in. Mine was the most sensible.
“I can do everything you can and more,” I said.
Gurathin looked at me in the assholish way he had. “You are not a spy.”
“I could be.”
“No, you couldn’t. Not with your grand repertoire of two-and-a-half facial expressions per standard week.” I glared at him. “That’s one of them, yes.”
“Come now,” said Ratthi. “That’s not quite fair. It has a wide variety of microexpressions.”
“How many microexpressions make up one macroexpression?” Arada asked, smirking.
“Has to be at least ten,” Pin-Lee felt the need to put in.
They were so annoying. I powered up my arm cannons to shut them up. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
“Would you really hurt me?” Ratthi fluttered his eyelashes at me.
“I could.”
“But you won’t, and they know it,” said Bharadwaj.
So annoying.
“And I believe you’ve made my point for me,” said Gurathin, the most annoying of the bunch.
(Yes, he’d carried me home. Yes, I was grateful. Yes, we’d had what Bharadwaj described as “a moment.” But I didn’t know what to do with that knowledge, so I was currently ignoring it. I knew how to deal with annoying Gurathin; I didn’t know how to deal with Gurathin who risked his own neurons to save me and then gave me the gift of understanding when I left. And I didn’t have time to have an emotion.)
I glared at him again. “What point is that?”
He returned my glare. “You lack finesse. You’re good at pretending to be human in broad strokes, but being a spy is all about reading the room and making yourself into the person who can get the most out of the situation. Could you really walk into a group of people and figure out, in a short amount of time, who the power players are? Who to flatter, who to avoid? Who to purposely unnerve, and who to make feel comfortable? Who to show deference to? Who to fuck, if necessary?”
Ugh! There was a repugnant thought.
“Ooh, is that a new expression?” Pin-Lee asked.
Arada shook her head. “Nah, I think it’s the same one as when Bharadwaj asked if it wanted to hold her newborn grandchild.”
That was best forgotten. Human newborns are disgusting little squirmy things that are constantly wailing and/or leaking.
“I could get the fucking part done,” Ratthi offered with a grin.
“No, you couldn’t,” Gurathin snapped, quieting the room. He took a breath and closed his eyes, then looked at Ratthi with a bit more gentleness. “You couldn’t use a sexual partner that way, Ratthi. It’s not in you. And trust me, you don’t want to become the sort of person who could.”
“You shouldn’t have to be that person, either, Gura,” said Mensah.
Gurathin looked at her. “I won’t leave any tools on the table when it comes to protecting Preservation, Ayda. Right now, you need someone on the inside, and I’m the best qualified. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Mensah shook her head. “I don’t want you going in alone or unprotected.”
Gurathin looked up at me, and I yet again had that uncomfortable feeling that we were thinking the same thing.
“I’ll go with him,” I said.
He turned to Mensah. “Yes. I can make this work. We can set up a convincing cover story to go in together. In fact, having it along could make it easier.”
“What do you have in mind? Can I help?” asked Pin-Lee.
“I’ll probably need you to help mock up some documentation,” Gurathin said. “We do have some wealthy CR transplants here. I can pretend to be one of them, and SecUnit can play my bodyguard.” He glanced up at me, and there was a highly suspicious twinkle in his eyes. “My looming, silent bodyguard.”
My “eyeroll-sigh” subroutine triggered without my conscious permission.
I think I ‘ship it, Ratthi sent into the feed.
Everyone turned to stare at him.
“I, um, only meant to send that to Bharadwaj,” Ratthi stuttered. Bharadwaj lowered her face into her hands with a small groan.
I was puzzled. “What do you ship?”
Gurathin smirked at Ratthi. “Yes, Ratthi, explain it to SecUnit.”
I accessed my slang dictionary (one of my more useful downloads). “Ship” was short for . . . relationship? As in, sexual or romantic relationship?
“That’s definitely a new facial expression,” said Pin-Lee.
“Please don’t kill him,” begged Arada.
Ratthi waved his hands defensively. “I mean, in a bickering platonic life partners sort of way!”
Gurathin sighed, long and deep, and I was in full agreement. “Since I don’t believe this could get more awkward, I’d like to start work on our backstories now.”
Because Ratthi loved to prove people wrong, and had absolutely no instinct for self-preservation, he practically crowed, “Seccy and Gugu on a mission together!”
“Don’t call me that,” I told him, and realized as I said it that Gurathin had said exactly the same thing in exactly the same tone. We made pained eye contact.
Ratthi grinned even wider, pointing at us. “See? This is the synergy I love about you two!”
***
Two Preservation weeks later, Gurathin and I boarded a bot-driven ship headed for Port Free Commerce. We brought with us an unreasonably large wardrobe for Gurathin and a comfortably small one for me, along with an assortment of stealth drones and other spy equipment.
Gurathin and Pin-Lee had discovered the perfect identity for him in a Corporation Rim transplant named Kamir Farahnakian. He was from a very wealthy family and had been deeply involved in their business, with holdings in some major corporations, until an insider-trading fiasco had caused him to resign under scandal. He’d fled to the free polities, where he’d lived quietly until his recent, untimely death.
Three things made him perfect. First, he bore a superficial resemblance to Gurathin, being tall, slim, and pale with dark hair and eyes. He was a little older, but with cosmetic surgery and rejuvenation treatments, facial aging was largely optional for those who could afford it. Second, news of his death had barely made a ripple among the free polities, let alone reached the Corporation Rim. Pin-Lee had pulled some strings and had the news buried. Finally, the statute of limitations had run out on his crimes, meaning it wasn’t unreasonable for him to reappear in CR society, but he wouldn’t be likely to try to get involved in his family business again. Fortunately, they had no holdings on Port Free Commerce and had more or less washed their hands of him after the scandal. Not because of the insider trading, of course, but for having the bad taste to get caught.
In the end, all we had to do was alter some documents to make it appear that he’d lived on Preservation for the last few years. It wasn’t unheard-of, though Preservation was very strict about the number of ex-corporates it admitted; corporate refugees were a different story. The documents and some very convincing pictures of a luxury home on a picturesque stretch of coastline were the finishing touches to Gurathin’s cover.
I was going as his valet/bodyguard/fixer, lumbered with the name Hansel Juergen and, to add insult to injury, male pronouns.
“Why is that necessary? Do I have to have a gender?” I complained.
“The trick to making yourself unnoticeable is to meet expectations,” said Gurathin. “I’m going as a flamboyant ex-corporate desperate to get back to the luxuries I miss, while being aware that there might still be those holding a grudge. Having extra security in the form of an intimidating male bodyguard is what they’ll expect. For all our evolution, men are still perceived as being more dangerous than people of other genders. Why do you think SecUnits look male?” He shook his head. “Foolish. The most dangerous person I ever met was a woman barely taller than Arada.”
I grudgingly admitted he had a point. A quick scan of my media told me that a disproportionate number of fighting and action scenes were given to male-presenting actors.
Speaking of media, we were going to be in transit for the next six days, and there was only so much time we could spend going over our plans. Since we were alone on the transport, I figured that meant quality time with premium entertainment. Fortunately, this transport had a media room.
“Do you wish to watch media?” I asked Gurathin, quietly hoping he wouldn’t.
He hesitated, looking uncharacteristically unsure. “I . . . brought some with me. I have a few seasons of a show I sometimes watched when I was young.” He fidgeted, scratching at his nail polish. “We didn’t get a lot of opportunity for fun things in the orphans’ creche, but one of the caregivers was a big fan of this show, so whenever he was on duty, he’d put it on.”
I couldn’t quite identify the look on Gurathin’s face. Embarrassed, perhaps? No, that wasn’t quite it. I ran a synonym search. “Bashful” came up as a likely match.
“We can watch it,” I said, intrigued. Gurathin and I had shared a brain briefly, but I still didn’t know much about him.
He sat on the couch, touched his data port, and flicked his fingers toward the interface. Hope Quest was the title of the show. I’d never heard of it, but a quick search showed that it had been a popular show a little over three decades ago.
The premise was the adventures of the crew of a ship called the Hope. They were: Captain Harlan, an ex-soldier with a scarred face and an honorable heart; Jace, his hot-headed adopted little brother; the Lady Knight, a combat cyborg seeking answers about the human she’d once been; Vidi R-8, an engineer bot with a personality that reminded me somewhat of ART; and Dr. Lukasha Falk, once a ranking surgeon at a prestigious hospital before she’d been forced to resign after the son of a prominent politician died on her table. In the first episode, they acquired Rizki, a petty criminal who stowed away on the ship while evading authorities with his pet bot Buggy; and Goshen, a mysterious child with paranormal abilities caused by exposure to an alien artifact when they were in utero. The final member of the crew was the ship, which contained the comatose body and remarkable brain of Captain Harlan’s sister, Hope. She sometimes appeared as a holographic avatar, but she also contributed a voiceover.
It was . . . really quite good. Also, there was something about the Lady Knight. Her hair was cropped short, and she had silver eyes instead of green, but –
“Isn’t that Matriarch Kaneko from Lineages of the Sun?” I asked.
Gurathin smiled and nodded. “Sanna Iwamura-Umberto, yes. This was her first major role. She was a dancer before going into acting, so she did almost all her own fighting.”
On screen, she was in (impractical, though aesthetically-pleasing) armor and fighting a robot with her electro-sword. The fighting, like the armor, was beautiful to watch and would never have been effective in the real world. Just like I preferred.
We watched the first five episodes, portioning out the rest for later. Some sort of shadowy agency was after Goshen, there was unspoken sexual tension between Jace and the Lady Knight, and much of the show’s humor derived from Rizki and Buggy’s ill-conceived plots.
The Lady Knight interested me. Combat cyborgs had been phased out in favor of constructs around the time this show had aired, so it was rare to see one in the media now, except on some historical shows. Her inability to remember her past or why she’d become a cyborg made her feel familiar, though.
“What if I did something terrible?” she asked Captain Harlan in the final scene of the episode we were watching. “What if the reason I became a cyborg was because I was a criminal? What’s in my past, and should I want to remember it?”
Captain Harlan took her by the shoulders. “Your past isn’t who you are, my friend. I know you now, and that’s enough.”
“My friend wanted to be her,” said Gurathin, sounding relaxed and a bit fuzzy, the way humans got before going to bed. “She used to get into trouble for grabbing sticks and waving them around like a sword.”
Gurathin didn’t often talk about his past, and I had to admit to being curious. “And you? Did you want to be Captain Harlan?”
He shook his head. “No. I wanted to be Rizki. I used to dream about the Hope setting down in our little colony so we could sneak aboard and have adventures in space instead of our hard life in the creche.”
“We? All the orphans?”
“No.” He laughed harshly. “Most of them were assholes. Not that I blame them; when life kicks you, you tend to pass it on. I was short, skinny, way too much in my own head, and to make things worse, my vitiligo made me stand out from the crowd. You don’t want to get noticed by bullies. I had all of one friend, Maren.” He bit his lip. “I was lucky enough to be a free agent once I aged out. She was destined for indenture, though. I never saw her again after I reached the age of majority. I’ve often wondered how her life turned out.” He yawned.
“You should take a rest cycle,” I suggested.
He nodded. “I should.” He stood, but hesitated. “Thanks for watching the show with me. I get . . . nervous about going back to the CR, and I find Hope Quest comforting.” With that, he walked away.
And I was left alone to deal with the fact that I had something else in common with Gurathin.