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  This case was looking like a laser-guided flyer heading straight for the dark side. The news would screen on five thousand channels. When she and Thirteen had entered the crime scene there had been media everywhere, not just from the channels but also citizen reporters. There would be many more waiting by the time she left. And sooner or later when they found out what she now knew, her life would turn to hell.

  Captain Dalbraith was going to have a fit – she could already see the botbrained mute turning an angry shade of red, followed by shouting and screaming, a lot of hand waving and the obligatory accusations as he blamed her for the thousand and one problems in his life.

  The detective didn't want to think about that as she gave her preliminary report to the bot for filing with her bosses. She didn't want to think about it at all.

  Chapter Three

  The sickbay had never been Carm's favourite part of the ship. He doubted it was anyone’s. He only went there for check-ups or if he hurt himself or developed a fever. He seldom needed any medical care – except occasionally for a hangover and there were pills you could take for that. Generally he tried not to go near the place. And thanks to the ship's design he didn't have to.

  The Nightingale was a very flat, extremely elongated triangle with the tip cut off much like many others. The layout was nothing particularly special either. It had originally been a freighter, and it still was; only now it had some extra astrometric and geological survey equipment thrown in and a hold filled with specialist excavation equipment. There was also a small refinery where ore samples were processed.

  The ship had been built to a schematic, three decks high, and a hundred and fifty metres long. The only aspect of it which was even vaguely aesthetically pleasing was the curved hull. The entire hull served as a solar energy collector, and the slight curvature allowed it to pick up maximum light even when not directly facing the sun.

  The medbay was at the front of the ship on the bottom deck, two below the bridge, and to access it he either had to descend several flights of stairs or else wander almost the full length of the ship. He spent his time either in engineering at the rear of the ship, on the bridge or in the top-deck labs. When dirtside, he would usually be processing ingots. The medbay simply wasn't on his daily path. And he was happy about that.

  So waking up to find himself lying on a hard bed staring at its smooth steel ceiling was less than thrilling. Having the medbot with its arms full of sharp and pointy looking medical equipment hovering over him was even less pleasant. And seeing some of those instruments covered in blood – which even as fuzzy as his thoughts were he knew had to be his – was the stuff of nightmares.

  On the positive side at least he’d woken up. The bed was uncomfortably hard – it felt as if it was built out of the same timag alloy as the ship. He was also wrapped in bandages, his head throbbed and much of his body ached too. But he was alive – that had to mean something. Also, he could move his arms and legs – nothing had been amputated, which was always good.

  “How bad?” he enquired, finally. Asking the medbot anything was always a mistake, though. Like a typical bot it had no ability to either summarise or just give him the salient points.

  The bot burst into life, spewing out an entire list of all the injuries he'd sustained and all the surgeries it had done. That meant every vein and artery it had glued back together, every injection he'd been given, and every test it had done. It could diagnose and treat but not engage in conversation. It had no ability to filter either. If it was asked for information it gave it – all of it.

  Most bots were the same. They possessed the mechanical intelligence they needed to perform their functions flawlessly, but nothing more. They were tools designed for a particular purpose. The medbot knew exactly what it needed to do to repair a human body and it had everything it needed to do it. It didn't need to make a patient feel comfortable or at ease. It didn't need anything else.

  It also lacked a humanoid body. The bot was designed for what it did, being heavy and stable, and able to transport a patient from anywhere on the ship, and to perform operations. It certainly didn't need a face or to be able to crack a joke.

  For those that were needed for human sorts of activities, they had androids. But there were no android doctors – they couldn't operate as capably as the medbots.

  “Recovery time?” Carm enquired, once the bot had finally finished giving him its over-detailed report which in essence meant he was going to be alright. He needed to get back on his feet and start repairing the ship.

  “Light duties after the drugs have gone through your system. No more.” The medbot's mechanical voice gave him the news he'd been hoping for. It was probably also the best he could have hoped for. He had a lot of work to do.

  “Thanks doc. If you're done with me go and sit in the corner. Ship!” Carm turned his attention to getting the Nightingale space ready again as quickly as possible. That was going to be a problem. The ship had only just returned to Aquaria before everything had gone wrong: it hadn't had its servicing done, nor had it been checked or even refuelled.

  “Yes Carmichael.”

  The ship at least answered him with a modicum of human warmth in its mechanical voice. It wasn't even being sarcastic for once though Carm was sure that was coming. Maybe it was just going easy on him because he'd been injured. It was an artificial intelligence able to not just hold a conversation but also learn and make novel decisions. The Nightingale had been designed to be run by a crew of eight, but like so many others out there had only one. And because of that the ship had to be able to cover as many functions as possible. It had already been massively upgraded when he'd bought it but he'd added to its automation since.

  “Status report.”

  “Bad. There are hull breaches and de-pressurisation in sections nine, twelve and forty-three. As much air as possible was saved but stocks are still low. Service bots have been assigned to do patching. Two thirds of the ship has lost artificial gravity. Power failures and conduits have been destroyed along the entire port side. The translation and EM drives are down. Charge levels are at forty-three percent. Anti-matter is at nineteen-percent. Astrogation is down.”

  The AI carried on for quite a while telling Carm all that he had suspected and feared: the ship was crippled. But the thing that concerned him most was the air. How bad were the breaches and how much had the ship lost? That was the reason the ship had deployed repair-bots to the patching, as maintaining atmosphere was its first priority. It had to be his too.

  “Do we have the raw materials to repair those breaches?”

  “Unknown. The size of the hull breaches has not yet been assessed.”

  “We have a hold filled with test ingots. Use those first in the fabrication units.” Carm hated giving the order. It felt like failure. Those few thousand test ingots were the product of nearly two months of survey work on the last planet he'd visited. They were what he would give to his clients to assess before they prepared to bid on the claims. They were his fortune – however each ingot was also a hundred kilos of metal that could be taken by the fabricators and turned into sections of hull or whatever else they needed. And a few hundred tonnes of metal – steel of whatever grade they could make – could patch a lot of holes.

  He was just lucky that he was an extra-solar geologist and had the ingots and ore samples. Most ships had a fabrication and repair bay – there was always the danger you could end up lost in space without anywhere within reach. But only a few carried anything like as much spare metal as the Nightingale.

  “Done.”

  “And after the hull is repaired and critical systems stabilised make astrogation the next priority. Find out where we are. Lock in some coordinates. Get us some full views of local space. We need to know our location and what's nearby that we might be able to use.”

  He had to hope that they were somewhere near a good star. Conversely they could be light years from the nearest star, or even further if they w
ere between galaxies. That meant they might have to jump blind again, in the hope they arrived somewhere more convenient. Assuming they could even jump – the translation drive might be beyond repair. Regardless, the sooner they knew where they were the sooner they could get moving by whatever means.

  If they could reach a good star, or better yet if they found themselves in a system, they could start refuelling. The hull could start absorbing charge from the light and radiation of a nearby star. The generators could start producing the antimatter they needed. It was a back up system, slower than simply going to a depot and refilling, but they could do it. Every ship had the same system, just in case it got stranded.

  Eventually, once their tanks were filled and the repairs completed, they could start jumping regularly and build a universe map, one that would allow them to begin exploring. Twenty or thirty jumps would be enough as each would give them another point to work with. A hundred jumps would be better, especially if they could place a few of the translation coordinates spatially. That was the theory.

  First they had to get their hull repaired, their systems online and their tanks filled.

  Lying there feeling helpless Carm found himself wondering just how many other pilots had been in this position over the years. The translation drive had been around for a thousand years give or take. Ninety-eight colonies had been formed as humanity had ventured across the universe and the Commonwealth had been formed. He had no idea how many ships had been lost. He wasn't sure if anyone knew.

  Neither did he know how many of those who had been lost – or “spaced” – had survived. When exploration had been more common and travel less reliable, ships had had larger crews and carried resources for such eventualities. There had also been private colonisers, groups that had wanted to leave both Earth and the fledgling Commonwealth, in which case there could be many more than ninety-eight colonies out there. And maybe, if he couldn't find his way home, he could find one of them instead.

  Of course that might not be such a good thing. Some had left because they were unable to live within the Commonwealth's restrictions. Among them had been anarchist movements and religious sects, as well as political movements. Even criminals had sought new lives far from the Commonwealth's law.

  Then there were the outliers who had set up camps neither in nor out of the Commonwealth. If he could find one of them he could buy some translation coordinates home. On the other hand, if they realised he was spaced, they would charge everything they thought they could get away with. Outliers were mercenary in the extreme.

  Most frightening of all were the mutes who were supposedly out there somewhere. Mutes were the product of the Progressive Genetics Programme – mutants. It had been a genetic engineering programme which had begun with high ideals before it had collapsed when it was realised that the scientists were creating monsters instead of men. The programme had been outlawed. The mutes were psychopathic, paranoid, delusional and psychotic killers. Wars had been fought – terrible wars that had threatened the very Commonwealth. In the end the mutes had been defeated, but the survivors had fled and had vowed, according to the stories, to one day return and destroy the Commonwealth.

  Mutes were the stuff of nightmares, a bedtime story told to children. If you weren't good the mutes would come and get you! No one actually knew whether they were out there. There were also stories that some had remained within the Commonwealth, and the Navy spent its days hunting them. The only thing Carm was sure of was that if the mutes were still alive somewhere out in space, he didn't want to find them.

  But there were potentially many other groups out there. If he could find a friendly colony with some engineering ability and some coordinates he might have a chance. It was a faint hope to cling to but that was all he had. He finished giving his orders to the ship and in turn received ever more detailed reports of the damage and the repairs being done. It wasn't much of a hope, though. The chances were that he was going to spend the rest of his life alone in space, without seeing another human being.

  He was alone. Lost. Spaced. Destined to grow old and die in space. No matter how he looked at it, that was his destiny. As he lay there the thoughts kept circling through his tired brain, spinning around and around like drunken comets. And though he tried desperately to concentrate on what mattered right then, they kept coming back, threatening to break his soul.

  His family would be forever lost to him. His mother, so filled with love and good humour; his father a man of wisdom and compassion. His brothers and sisters. Always so close. They would all go on with their lives without him, all of them wondering one thing about him: whether he was a terrorist, a bomber responsible for killing scores of people.

  Had he made a mistake in jumping wild? He might have died if he'd stayed. In fact the police would almost certainly have killed him. But was death that much worse than this? Maybe he'd made a mistake in his desperation and fear.

  They were dark thoughts which refused to go away, instead threatening to overwhelm him. Carm was spared that fate, because at some point fatigue claimed him. He fell into a fitful sleep, filled with dark dreams and even darker fears.

  Until ….

  “Sweet love, what have they done to you?” Kendra's soft, musical voice unexpectedly entered his dream, waking Carm up from his doze, for which he was grateful. Where he had been had not been a pleasant place. So to hear a familiar voice, especially hers, was a blessing. It was a voice he loved.

  And that was the truth: he loved her. It was wrong and stupid, he knew. She was an android. A bangbot, no matter how advanced. But she was warm and soft and she loved him, and he had no choice but to love her.

  As always, the moment he heard her voice he had to see her.

  Kendra was gorgeous. Soft and willowy, with cascades of long blond hair that fell all the way down to her waist, just as he loved it. Her big blue eyes were filled with concern as she looked at him. And when she walked she appeared to glide across the floor in a sinuous dance of seduction. A movement that was somehow enhanced by the way her shimmering garment of body-hugging iridescent sequins flowed over her curves. He was mesmerised, as he always was.

  How could he have forgotten her? Forgotten that she was on board, always there for him?

  Then she touched him and every ounce of pain and fear vanished to be replaced by desire. The power she had over him was unimaginable. If he'd been dead she would have brought him back to life. Her hair fell about him as she leaned over, her scent overpowering his senses and when she bent down to kiss him, her lips were pure heaven. Kendra was the perfect woman and the absolute pinnacle of the android maker's art.

  Carm didn't fully understand the effect she had on him. She was a perfect replica of a woman, designed according to a psychological analysis of his deepest desires. But he felt that she was far more than that. She always appeared to know exactly what to say to make him feel better, what to wear to drive him crazy. Her loving was beyond compare with any other pleasure he’d ever known. Even her scent was that of pure desire.

  She was still a machine and yet she wasn’t, her kiss was fire bringing him all the way back to life. Kendra was everything: flesh and blood, heart and soul, beauty and passion. She was the very essence of a woman, of love itself. She was the answer to an ancient question – when did an illusion become so real that it was the truth?

  In the old days spacers had had pets to keep them sane on their long, lonely journeys. But they hadn't been enough and too many had been lost when their owners had given into despair. More had simply given up the stars and become grounders. The android companions were the answer, keeping their owners sane and working.

  “I'm fine. Better for seeing you again.”

  Why did he say things like that to her he wondered? He'd wondered it many times before. She was an artificial woman programmed to keep him company on his long, solitary missions. He didn't have to compliment her. But he wanted, no needed, to. He would have done anything for her.

&n
bsp; “But you're hurt!” she pouted in disbelief and worry. “Who did this to you?”

  “The police. But it doesn't matter. They're a long way from here.” And it really didn't matter. The only thing he wanted was to make love to her. Surely he was fit enough for that? He glanced across at the medbot. It didn't seem to be saying anything as it sat in the corner doing nothing. Surely if there been a problem it would have said something?

  “The police? But why would they hurt you?”

  “I don't know. It’s some sort of misunderstanding.” He could have told her the full story and unlike the bots she would have understood it. Androids were smart, android companions more so. But right then he couldn't think about anything but her, and the other bed in the room. Kendra saw where his gaze led.

  “Ohh! So that's what's on your mind.” She let a small teasing smile grace her face, telling him she was thinking the same thing. “In the sickbay too. You want to play doctor!” Her smile grew.

  “You want to examine me perhaps?” She turned and let Carm get a perfect view of her bare back before she walked gracefully over to the second bed, her hips swaying seductively. She didn't need to look back to know where his eyes were pointed.

  “Or maybe you need to operate?” She turned again to lean against the bed, bending backwards just the exact amount needed to treat Carm to a perfect view of her. Her voice had somehow become just a little gravelly too – she was seduction on steroids.

  “Stars yes!” Carm's throat had gone dry and he could barely even get those two words out.

  “Then Doctor you have a patient who needs your attention.” She breathed deeply, letting her chest fill out and causing her breasts to push against the shimmering fabric of her dress. Letting Carm see the way her nipples were already poking out, the slight flush in her cheeks. “But that will have to wait until you tell me what's happened so I can launch a complaint with the authorities.”