‘Docking now. The perimeter is clear aside fromBlessedand us. Two moons are in range—’
‘That’s all.’
Gunner waved at his bots and they all returned to their positions.
Colt, Flashbang, and Browning remained with him on the bridge. He fingered the AutoMag under his jacket lapel, his back to the screen and the boy. When his ship trembled, he knew the docking was complete and that he and Nickel were now connected.
“Nickel, step away from theBlessed’scontrol panels,” he barked with his eyes still on his girls.
“What? Why?”
‘TakeBlessedover.’He gave APOLLO the order without waiting.
His AI flushed from his own ship and flooded into the dying one, bringing life with it. Gunner dipped into the channels after, wincing, hating the weak connections and flickering currents. He fell out and back into his body quickly.
But not before he locked Nickel out, rewriting the current programs and security access. Gunner couldn’t hold back an unpleasant groan, his digital-self shuddering from penetrating half-dead tech.
“What are you doing? It’s not responding to me anymore?” Nickel’s frustration poked at the edge of his consciousness.
“Are you okay, sir?” Browning’s voice gripped him and pulled him the rest of the way out of his uneasy disgust. Gunner returned to the screen without answering her, his eyes again falling on the unanswered messages to Stryker.
Piece of cybernetic snake shit.
“I locked you out,” he said. “Get ready for boarding. I’m on my way.”
A fucking conversation for an energy sap.
Gunner shut the communication down without waiting for a response. The reflected glare of his eyes receded as the hologram screen shot back into the bridge paneling. He moved to Browning and drifted his fingers across her cold, fabricated cheek. The contact did nothing for him.
“I need to you take care of the beer, dolly.”
“Need me to take care of anything else?” A smile graced her lips as her eyelids dropped. He drew a soft lock of her long brown hair away from her neck and shoulder and pushed it back, leaning into the crook of her neck to breathe in her fabricated scent of arousal and the very real smell of hops.
“Always. Everything,” Gunner whispered quietly against her skin. A series of goosebumps raised in response but he didn’t touch her further. He drew back and gave Browning a once over. “I’ll be back soon but be a good girl and make sure the crew behaves. I don’t want to come back to what you did last time.”
“You liked what I did last time.”
“Sure.” Gunner turned away and checked his jacket pockets. “But I like my orders being followed more.” He grabbed Browning’s wrist and pushed her skin back, revealing control overrides and suppressed the fake free-will he usually allowed her, before he dropped her arm. Her head snapped upright and her eyelids raised. The gooseflesh that had flushed her skin settled back down into her.
He lifted her other hand, kissed the back of it, and left.
***
“NICKEL.”
“Gunner?” the boy greeted back, glancing beyond him to see if he brought any of his girls.
Joke’s on him. I need all thirteen.
“Goddesses, your eyes! Are you... are you actually blind?”
“Am I?” His eyes were an oddity, a malfunction from times past. There was no color to his irises, just a milky grey like that of a fully blind human. The real color never showed unless he focused on something or was feeling particularly hyped.
Gunner stepped around the kid and made his way to the ship’s mainframe, the blueprints in his head and his AI leading the way. The disarray and interior abuse was on par with some of the ancient vessels. He took in the dented metal—rust coated the edges—and dirt and skid marks across the floors. His nose twitched, filling with must, body odor, and what he could swear was bodily decay.Old bodily decay.
“You get rid of the corpses?” he asked as he continued through the ship.
“What? Uh, what? Yes. How did you know? I sent them out to space.”
