“I’m the one with all the cards, Nickel. Why ask inane questions?” Get back to business.
“Because if I’m going to waste my time telling you when you’re planning on killing me anyway, I would just like to speed it up. I’ve come to terms already,” the boy admonished.
“Terms with what?”
“That my death is inevitable. That my life, currently, is an unending punishment.”
Gunner cackled. “With an attitude like that, it sure fucking is.”
“The goddesses of the holy moons have turned their back on me and the crew,” the boy’s voice quivered then hardened. “And I have given up hope that they would help.”
“Maybe I’m the help they’re giving.” Gunner hardly tempered his sarcasm.
He didn’t believe in fate or karma, or any other mystical, spiritually-washed up element out there. Religions spread like disease and from the most idiotic sources possible: a tree growing to adulthood overnight; a million falling stars landing over a field of crop; the sudden, inexplicable death of a tyrant; an abrupt end to a war that raged terror for a hundred years.
Fucking Lysander.
He knew a fair bit about the various spiritual sects that had found footing throughout the new wave of colonies on Gliese, Kepler, and Elyria. The universe was a big place after all, and unusual, unexplainable wonders happened every day.
Unless you were a Cyborg. Nothing held wonder to a Cyborg. His god was science, and his belief ran through his veins like the nanocells that coursed through him. There was always an explanation. Even if the explanation was pure bad fucking luck.
It was his damn job, after all, getting the materials needed to the EPED to figure out those explanations.
Gunner smirked.The mood killer of all mood killers... Let me fuck with your mind.
APOLLO’s final scans flooded his head and all the information that he needed to know about Nickel’s dying ship.
“Nickel, even if you are a degenerate, bloodsucking, brainwashed religious zombie,” the glare of his eyes going red spilled across the glass screen, “it appears that your reactor is dying, and what power you do have left stored isn’t enough to get you anywhere. I’d give it, ehh, eight maybe nine cycles before life-support shuts down. You’ll die from depressurization over a span of several excruciating hours. But that all depends on how much food you have left, and considering the way you look, your supply is low.”
“Considering.” Nickel shifted on his feet. “Unfortunately, this brainwashed zombie has nothing to offer you in return for your help.”
“Unfortunately not,” he agreed. Over his dead body would he employ a human like Nickel. “Make me an offer with what you do have.”
“My soul?”
“Nah, ain’t a soul collector. What else?”
“The chance to corrupt me?”
“Are you so desperate to live that you’d give up your beliefs so easily?”
“Achance. Not a conversion,” Nickel bleated back. “Men like you—I can see it in your mechanical human eyes—need a distraction.”
Gunner pondered. “Cute. But you’re way below my pay-grade and corrupting young boys isn’t my thing, not that you would ever be able to distract me long enough to care.”
His eyes drifted to the unanswered missives to Stryker.Maybe the boy’s onto something.His jaw ticked.
“Ah.” Nickel canted his head. “Too bad I don’t have a pussy to trade with? Is that it? Or is it money you want?”
“Money is a means to an end and even pussy isn’t worth the amount of siphon your ship will need to get out of here. And I have enough of both already.” He indicated his girls and his gleaming silver-streaked bridge walls. “My guns don’t get a chance to say no. It’s the beauty of pulling the trigger.”
“What about a good conversation?”
“Deal.” Gunner snorted, having already decided to help the kid out a little. Not many looked into his eyes and didn’t turn away.
“Really?” Nickel guffawed before recovering to spear him with a suspicious glare.
‘Dock our ships,’he ordered APOLLO.‘Scan the perimeter.’
