Assuming the spark of life clung, the organism would grow, according to what she had learned from the med lab computer. She would not be able to fight without risking the life of the organism, and her own life for that matter. As a parasitic type of organism, as it grew and its needs increased, it would integrate its own system so thoroughly with hers that it would, literally, be almost like ripping a part of herself loose to break its hold and could devastate her own system.
Of what use was a hunter who could not hunt?
Despite her value as a hunter, she knew that she was expendable as far as the company was concerned. The task she had been trained for also insured her death, sooner or later. The extensive training and biomechanical enhancements they’d paid for had been to extend her usefulness. Perhaps, though, they had conceived a project they considered even more useful?
But, if that was the case, why then destroy both her and the experiment? Wouldn’t it have been just as effective to destroy the organism? Very likely she would have been no wiser, just as she hadn’t known that they had placed it there to begin with.
That seemed to indicate that the company had not sanctioned the experiment. Someone within the company had decided to experiment without the company’s knowledge or consent, and then they had realized that they must destroy the evidence.
That seemed far-fetched, but it still fit most of the facts she knew. It seemed the most logical answer.
If they had been completely unaware of the experiment, and therefore unaware of the perpetrator’s efforts to conceal his crime by killing her, then they would have seen her act as murder, not self-defense. That was why they’d put out a sanction on her. They thought she’d gone mad, become dangerously unstable.
Unfortunately, there were a number of things that didn’t seem to fit and most of it revolved around the incident in the examination room. The tech, it seemed to her, had found something he had not expected to find. Moreover, he was merely a lowly tech, no more than an assistant, certainly not educated or intelligent enough to have conceived or executed any sort of experiment on his own. He’d not taken it upon himself to destroy her. He’d been ordered by someone to do so.
There was another problem with her theory, as well. Ordinarily, she was only called upon to present herself for a physical examination directly before and directly after an assignment, the first to make certain she was in peak condition before she left, the second to repair any damage accruing from completion of her mission. Over the past four months, she had been called back repeatedly, however, each time for something supposedly minor that had been overlooked before, a test that had been badly performed and needed to be done again.
How could the company, who was rather a lot like the god the New Religion worshipped and knew all, have been unaware that experiments were being performed on her?
Finally, realizing that she didn’t have nearly enough facts to fit all the puzzle pieces together--perhaps never would--she dismissed it and turned to study the captain’s cabin.
It was luxurious enough to tell her several things about Reuel--he enjoyed the better things of life, liked his comfort, and he probably spent the better part of his time in this ship--or he was adept at stealing the better things in life and had an eye for quality.
The bed took up almost half the space and was certainly not typical of the bunks generally found on cruisers much less racers. On course, Reuel was massive--she should have known instantly that such magnificence was not naturally occurring--standing six foot four easily, probably a good three feet across the shoulders, his back, chest, arms, belly and legs taut and at the same time bulging with muscle.
The musculature would need to be massive, of course, and generally was in cyborgs because the alloy skeletal system was notably heavier than the calcium based skeletal structure of a human being, but Reuel was notable even among others of his kind, and the human males, hunters, that had been enhanced to track them.
There were only a handful of females like her. Despite enhancements, they could not be made to be even nearly as strong as their male counterparts, and certainly not the cyborgs. Their strength was in disarming their quarry, which was also the reason there were only a few of them. If it became widely known that there were female hunters, their effectiveness would be diminished.
The thick carpet beneath her feet hummed as she wandered about the cabin, alerting her to the fact that the craft was preparing for departure. She moved to the chair before Reuel’s desk and sat, strapping herself in, and then studied the charts on his desk briefly. She had no knowledge of navigation, however, and soon lost interest. Behind the desk were shelves containing row upon row of strange rectangular objects. As the humming increased to a tooth-rattling shake, she pulled one from the shelf and studied it, discovering that it was a very rare, ancient book of paper. There were few in existence any longer since they had not been produced in several hundred years, and many of those produced then had not been designed for the wear and tear of time. She’d seen them, though, in museums. She’d never actually touched one.
The first thing she noticed when she parted the pages was the smell. She held it a little closer, sniffing it, then sneezed. It smelled--more like dirt, she decided, than anything else, but also as if, over time, every smell around it had been absorbed into it and held so that it was such a collection of differing things as to make any single part unidentifiable.
It wasn’t particularly pleasant. On the other hand, she didn’t smell very pleasantly herself at the moment. It wasn’t uncommon, in the field, for her to find herself without the facilities to bathe, but she had never grown accustomed to it, never been able to simply ignore being dirty and unkempt. As soon as the craft settled back into the smooth glide that told her it was safe to unbuckle herself, she placed the book back on the shelf, unfastened her restraints and got up to check out the facilities.
As she’d suspected, Reuel had his own, private, facilities. Doubtless, considering the size of the ship, the other cabins shared a community bath, but she supposed, if she was to remain in Reuel’s cabin, that she would be allowed to make use of his. She intended to, in any event.
The stockings she’d taken had been little protection to begin with and had long since worn through. She tossed those into the incinerator unit. The trousers and tunic were in nearly as bad a shape, but she stuffed them into the cleaning unit before she climbed into the particle shower. To her stunned surprise, water shot from the jets, nearly drowning her when she gasped instinctively. Coughing and choking on the water she’d inhaled, she felt around blindly for some way to turn the thing off. She wasn’t certain if she found it, though, or if the unit was designed to go on and off at five second intervals, for it did just that, startling her all over again the first few times.
Finally, she realized that the water itself was not supposed to clean her. There were cloths and some sort of thick gel-like chemical substance to rub on herself to remove the odor and dirt. The water was to remove the gel.
It seemed curiously inefficient. A particle shower would have cleaned and sanitized her in a matter of moments. Having to scrub herself was more of a job that she particularly cared for, and she wasn’t convinced that she had been sanitized properly even when she was done.
She discovered she rather liked the way the water felt crawling over her bare skin, however. It felt--strange--but at the same time pleasurable. Finally, almost reluctantly, she got out of the unit and discovered two not very pleasant side effects. Scrubbing her hair had felt good, but it had left it in a wet, tangled mess. Moreover, the water still ran down her body and dripped off onto the carpeted floor.
Rain had a similar effect and since she’d been on many worlds unprotected by domes from nature, she knew from experience that neither her skin nor her hair would dry very quickly.
She was still standing in front of the unit wondering whether to put her clothing back on as she was or to stand where she was and wait until she dried when the door opened. She jumped reflexively, whirling to face the threat.
Reuel stood in the opening, surveying her with interest from the top of her head to her bare toes. Finally, he leaned casually against the frame, folding his arms over his chest as if he was getting comfortable to stay a while. “I see you figured out how to use the shower unit,” he said after a moment.
Dalia shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, uneasy with his curious interest for no reason that she could immediately perceive. There was nothing threatening in his stance. “I think so,” she said a little doubtfully.
His brows rose. “But you are not certain?”
“I’ve never used anything but a particle bath. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as this water bath. Is it something new?”
His lips curled in a half smile. Oddly, her belly clenched as she looked at it. “It is something very old--ancient--from the age of decadence.”
