Which brought him back to the broken hulk outside his ship and the mystery of its presence.
Boredom. Grade-A fucking boredom.
He trailed his finger over his lower lip as an odd surge of anticipation hit him.
“Call the team,” he announced.
Colt and Flashbang stepped forward. Gunner’s eyes trailed after their lithe bodies through the reflected glass as they did what they were told. He wasn’t a complete perv—his sexbots-turned-crew were clothed in uniforms, and they even carried weapons he had trained them with. If something were to happen, they could fight by his side and defend themselves.
No one touched what was his. No one.
Each of his girls had a learned personality, albeit coded, and the conversations he sometimes stumbled upon them having broke up his monotony.
Just then, a response came back and he sat forward. Who would he be dealing with?
The bridge doors zipped open, ushering in the sounds of a dozen reconfigured androids taking up position.
Colt, Flashbang, Winchester, Remington, Glock, Super Soaker, Gatling, Turret, Smith, Wesson, Weatherby, Ammo, and his personal favorite, Browning, all lined up, flanking his sides. His beautiful, perfect, plastic sexbots. His fake kingdom all in one room. A beacon of the technology that made up his quiet empire.
His gunner girls.
They would as easily kill you as fuck you. His lips crept up into a smile, remembering the chaos that he created when he reprogrammed them to kill him. Thirteen monsters of his own making going after their own master’s blood. At the time he wanted to give them a chance, to see if they could actually harm him, allowing them to learn and calibrate throughout the exhilarating process.
But in the end, they couldn’t even touch him.
APOLLO powered up a visual and fed it straight to his mind before projecting it onto the hologram screen across the bridge.
A young man appeared, standing but hunched over a control panel of his own. Gunner leaned forward and the man leaned back.Human. Not half-breed, not alien... human.
“Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?” the man called out.
“I can hear you.” Gunner rested his elbows on his knees. The boy couldn’t be older than his early twenties. The visual was clear but not without some grain, and he didn’t need to seed into the currents to know that power fluctuations on the boy’s end were causing the disturbance between them.
“Some good news at last,” the boy laughed and shifted his eyes across his visual. Gunner knew what he was seeing, knew what the sight of his favorites behind him looked like, but kept his amusement to himself. “Been out here for months now, and nobody has come by.”
“What’s your name?” Gunner asked.
APOLLO responded before the boy did,‘Encrypted documents on the ship suggest we’re speaking to a Nickel Smith, one in a crew of twelve on a ship namedBlessed.’
‘Blessed?’
‘Blessed’shistory suggests its origins come from the Gliese new wave star carriers, made from the parts of war battlecruisers that were beyond repair. It is one in a three ship series for the missionaries of the moon, followed byTouched, and preceded byReborn.’
“Name’s Nickel, yours?” the boy said.
Gunner groaned.Religion.
Even in deep space, he couldn’t get away from it. Browning snickered at his side and it was enough to bring a smile to his lips.She’s my favorite.
“Gunner. So, Nickel,” he sat back, “what happened?”
Nickel noticeably looked away from the uniformed beauty of his gunner girls. Entertainment could still be had, while Gunner waited for that snake-faced Stryker to get back to him and answer his latest message.
“Will you help me if I tell you?”
“Depends on my mood,” he said, shrugging.
“I can help him,” Flashbang suggested, cutting in. The other bots tittered and agreed until he held up his hand, silencing them. Nickel’s eyes widened, and Gunner zoomed his screen in on them, making his girls laugh anew.
