All he got was a grunt for an answer. He clicked his fingertips on the armrest, a spool of rope in his lap. “Is he meeting up with us?”
“Yeah. The man is a system behind me. I think he’s planning to stay in the city for awhile, at least until I finish this shipment and wire him his payload.”
“Odd.”
“A little but who knows with him? He’s just on the edge of psychotic. Maybe Brash is lodged at the city as well and he’s fixing to get himself another tattoo. I’m assuming you got my payment then?”
“Yeah and then some.” Dommik looked down at the bundle of rope in his lap, his hand buckled and split in two as he picked it up and started to weave it. Rough cord slid across the metal appendages as his extra fingers unclipped from within his arm until he had three working hands. He could split his legs as well until he was nothing but a torso, a head, and a man with eight pieces. He was truly terrifying in his other form.
“An imp of a girl, I heard.”
Dommik’s hands crashed back together in a crunch, the rope torn into pieces and dropped to the floor.
“Who told you about Kat?”
“A kitten? Even better.” Stryker laughed but it came through fuzzy. “Mia told me. She’s pissed at you.”
“She has no reason to be. There’s no way she was getting on my ship. I took this job with the understanding that I work alone.”
“Yeah until they can’t trust you anymore with their equipment. What about the girl?”
Dommik sighed. Bin-One’s electronic footprint walked up beside him, Dommik raised his hand to keep the android silent. “What about her?”
“She’s obviously there to spy on you, you gonna keep her, or drop her off? If she’s registered, I’ll take her off your hands. Could use a little conversation now and then. And I’m as boring as they come, nothing to tell the pegs back at base.”
“What happened to your crew?” Did he want to drop Kat off at the port? He liked her, he hated to admit, and she smelled nice. Better than any other human he had encountered. He avoided her for the same reason.
“Hold up.” A crash and a curse came through the channel.
“What’s wrong?” Dommik leaned forward. He turned up the volume to listen in.
“Help...Ever...dead. Trapped. Anyo…”Several minutes went by in silence.
“Distress call.” His voice had lost its ease.
“Are you going to answer it?”
It was quiet for another minute before Stryker responded, “No. I need to turn in these acquisitions. It’s on an unregulated channel. Probably a trap.”
Dommik’s thoughts turned back to Kat. His feet hit the cords lying at his feet. “If you’re sure... It sounded like a woman.”
Would he answer it? Even if it was a trap? What if it was Kat on the other side calling for help? That was the problem about distress calls, only one in five were real...the rest were fake. And they always filled you with doubt. Doubt, guilt, death or enslavement.
“I’ll relay it over to Gunner and see what he thinks,” Stryker’s voice went hard.
“You already know the answer he’ll give you.”
“Yeah, well, it’ll ease my mind.” The Cyborg let out a short laugh. “‘Fuck it into the dirt. Shoot it twice in the temple. Make it swallow bullets. Grab their balls and make them bleed.’”
Bin-One remained as a statue at his side, except for the intermittent flashes, each flash was a correspondent between his androids...and the flashes had been picking up. Dommik glanced at the robot. It flashed again as he stared at it.
“‘One and done,’” Stryker continued.
“I need to go. See you at Ghost.”
“Yeah...maybe.” The comm clicked off as Dommik swiveled his seat to face his android head on. He kicked the rope away from his chair. It flashed again.
“What?”
