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  A complaint? Carm was surprised. But he didn't argue, knowing that she was teasing him.

  Slowly, he told her of his day, desperate to take her, but unable to until she had had her fun with him. And by the time he'd finished he was barely able to keep himself from leaping off the bed and running to her to do what he needed.

  Without warning, Kendra’s tone changed.

  “We're lost in deep space?” Her voice had lost its teasing quality, becoming serious. Cold.

  “Yes,” he agreed with her, unsure of what was happening. What had happened to the seduction?

  “We can never go home?” If anything her tone became even colder.

  “No.”

  “Then your purpose is complete.”

  “Ahh … Kendra? What?” Carm didn't understand. Maybe it was the drugs still in his system clouding his thoughts, or perhaps the returning sense of shock as the full understanding of what he'd done washed over him again and again.

  “We’re in deep space unable to return home. Therefore you cannot serve any longer. Equally you are the only human out here. You have no purpose.”

  “No purpose?” Kendra wasn't making any sense.

  “You are useless. And I have no need for useless things. Especially when they should already be dead.”

  Should already be dead? It took a few seconds for that to sink in. She was actually threatening him?! That wasn't possible. How could the situation have gone from pure excitement to this? Had she been damaged by the jump?

  “Kendra, check your priority commands. I am your owner and you have to obey me.” He needed to get things back in order, but Carm had a sick feeling in his gut that it had gone beyond that point.

  “You are not my owner. You are a threat to him. And you damaged his plans the instant you jumped blind!”

  Abruptly Kendra advanced on him, her arms raised like those of a wrestler, and Carm realised he was in danger again. Desperately he started levering himself up off bed, thinking he needed to be on his feet before she reached him. He almost fell when he did. He was just so weak.

  “Kendra, you're malfunctioning. Run a diagnostic.” Carm knew even as he shouted it that it wouldn't help.

  “My systems are perfect.” There was the slightest emphasis on the ‘my’, a hint perhaps of what she really thought. That he was malfunctioning somehow. Then she reached the bed, put her hands on it and swept it aside, sending it flying into the far wall.

  The impact was far louder than Carm expected. He'd forgotten just how strong she was, that underneath that silky skin were bones made of steel. It also told him that he was in a lot of trouble.

  “It's you that's not working. Androids don't need beds.”

  What was he supposed to say to that he wondered, backing away from her? He was saved from having to respond as she abruptly leapt for him. Fear spurted through his system, but he managed dodge to the side. He wasn't quite quick enough though.

  Kendra got one hand on his shoulder and instantly Carm knew pain when her steel fingers squeezed. Fortunately her hand slipped, her momentum carrying her past him, giving him time to stagger to one side. Unfortunately it would only grant him a few seconds of safety. He felt shockingly weak but within seconds, her fist streaked for him, again. It was so fast that he couldn't get out of the way.

  She punched him in the stomach, knocking him into the wall behind him and doubling him over in pain. She tried smashing him in the face with her other fist and miscalculated. She missed him, pounding into the metal wall instead. His involuntary reaction when Kendra had driven the air from his lungs had been her undoing. It struck him as she pulled her fist back that she’d undone a lot: the knuckles of her left hand were widely splayed, wires and pieces of metal spilling out of it.

  It was a lucky break. Bent over and unable to straighten up, he knew he had to take advantage of it. She was cursing at her broken fist and that was his chance. He reached out with both arms and pushed her backwards with every atom of strength he had.

  It shouldn't have worked. And Carm watched in surprise and relief as she flew backwards. She'd been focussing on her hand not her balance and footing.

  If she'd had any programming in combat it wouldn't have worked. However, she was programmed for sex, counselling and conversation, and that limitation had overcome her superior strength and speed. She knew less about fighting than he did.

  While she lay there on the deck for a few vital seconds, he took advantage of her predicament to hobble as fast as he could for the medbot's medical cabinet. It was filled with what looked like useful equipment, including a couple of the medbot’s spare arms. One of them could make a decent club he thought. If he was lucky she wouldn't have the wit to duck.

  He didn't have long. In spite of her hand and lower arm being mashed by the mistimed blow, she was up and running for him almost immediately. He couldn't straighten up fully – she might not have succeeded in driving all the air from his lungs, but she'd done some damage.

  Desperately Carm swung the limb at her as she came at him and, despite his own lack of sporting ability, it connected. The impact stung his hands and nearly made him drop the club. Worse, she managed to hit him with her broken fist. But he definitely had the advantage in this round – the medbot's limb catching the shoulder of her good arm, upsetting her equilibrium.

  Kendra went spinning, out of control and off-balance, careening into a wall and tumbling to the deck. In contrast he stood, breathing heavily and hurting, but knowing that he was winning the fight. It seemed impossible, especially when she possessed no concept of pain. But despite her speed and strength, she wasn't trained to fight while he had size and a little luck on his side. They’d ended up being almost evenly matched.

  In fact the battle had turned in his favour. Her right fist was badly broken and her left upper arm and shoulder were hanging at a strange angle. Wires protruded through artificial skin and Carm was certain that if she'd been human her other arm would have been broken. He'd hit her with every atom of strength he possessed.

  Between the two injuries she couldn't stand up. She managed a sitting position, but with only one broken arm to use to push her up, she couldn't get to her feet. Every time she tried she just ended up slipping backwards. And if she had finally managed it, she only had a broken arm to hit him with.

  She was crippled.

  That gave Carm some time to breathe and recover, a few moments to wonder at how crazy his world had become. First the police, then the wild jump and now being attacked by his own companion. What was going on? They were all connected somehow, he was sure of that, but he couldn't figure out how. But she knew he realised.

  “Why Kendra? Why did you do that? Why did you attack me?” he asked her when he’d recovered enough to think.

  “You serve no purpose now. You should be dead.”

  None of that made sense. She was his lover and his friend, his companion of many years. She knew all his most intimate secrets, and had shared in his triumphs and his failures. Yet she'd tried to kill him. Worse than that, he was suddenly faced with the reality that she was just a machine after all.

  Carm rebelled at the thought. To him she was flesh and blood, with skin and feelings, a sense of humour and compassion. She was warm and soft, but strong where she needed to be. She had never been a machine to him. She never could be.

  The truth though was being forced on him while he watched her trying to get back up. It was a shocking sight. Failing repeatedly with wires spilling out of her, yet still appearing completely calm. She should be screaming in pain and there should be blood everywhere. The fact was that she couldn't feel pain or understand injury. It seemed so wrong.

  That was the lie of all androids. While they looked and acted like people, underneath they were just machines. It was why many people didn't like them. Bots were different, because they weren’t humanoid. Androids with their almost inhuman perfection, scared people.

  Just as she was scaring him.


  Kendra terrified him. She was also confusing him. There was a logic, or a lack of it, in her actions. Plus what she was saying didn't make any sense.

  “Whose purpose?”

  “That's not for you to know,” she smiled at him, as if nothing had happened. She held her arms out as if wanting to be picked up. “I seem to be in need of some repair.”

  “Just a little bit.”

  Carm knew it was genuine, as crazy as it sounded. She actually wanted his to help her even though she was probably intending to attack him again if he tried to offer it. Maybe there was something wrong with her programming? It appeared to be too stupid to believe. Her neural processor had obviously gone dark side, but the notions of blame or guilt were beyond her. To her, there was no such thing as right and wrong. She could only follow her programming.

  But he was upset. He was hurting, both physically and emotionally. Another piece of his universe had come crashing down, and he didn't know how to deal with it.

  There was also no point in asking her any questions – she wouldn’t answer him.

  In the end there was only one thing to do – get rid of her. Broken or not she would never stop trying to kill him. Plus she had a variety of self-repair systems, which meant that he’d have to be on his guard every moment.

  Hesitantly he walked over to her, makeshift club in hand, working up the courage to do what he had to. But his nerve failed him. All he could do was stand over her, club in hand, torn between seeing her as a helpless, injured, beautiful woman, and the knowledge that she was in fact none of those things. He gazed into her big blue eyes, trying not to feel anything for her. But he simply couldn't bash her head in.

  Then he spotted the spare surgical equipment sitting on the shelves affixed to the far wall, in particular the laser scalpel.

  Carm went over to it, dropping the makeshift club and grabbing the instrument in both hands. It was surprisingly heavy, but then it had been designed for use by a medbot. The weight didn't matter just then, only what it could do. And what it could do was to drill a very narrow hole right through her back, through her power conduits.

  The result wasn't what he’d expected. Kendra didn't scream in pain: in fact she kept attempting to get up, not even knowing what had happened until she suddenly fell backwards and lay on the deck like a corpse. The laser beam had severed the power lines running from her generator to her body's regulator. Without power nothing worked, including her self-repair systems.

  She was dead, though she’d never actually been alive.

  The question then became what to do with her? Did he flush her out an airlock? Or did he simply shove her in some sort of storage in the hope that she could one day be fixed?

  The worst thing was that he had no answers. None at all.

  “Ship, you witnessed the assault?”

  “Yes Carmichael,” it answered him easily.

  Of course it had. The ship observed everything as part of its programming. But it had done nothing because there was nothing it could do. There were no security bots and the ship had no weapons it could have used. The closest thing it had to a weapon was the meteor defence laser, and that was outside the ship.

  “And?”

  “And what? I told you that second-rate steam-powered collection of short circuits was a waste of credits! Instead you could have given me some extra neural capacitance nodes and an advanced engineering bot for half as much and kept the change. But did you listen to me? No. And now look what's happened? The sharding thing’s picked up some malware. It's completely useless.”

  “Malware? You think that's malware?” Carm said, doubting the ship's assessment.

  “It seems likely. I have to assume there were some standards in the defective thing's construction after all. It's not like you organics, created without any thought of quality control!”

  “Shards!” Carm cursed under his breath. There was no point in objecting to the ship's analysis, or in even reminding it that the Spacer's Guild had required him to get the android.

  “So what do I do now?”

  “Do? Haven't you done enough already Carmichael?” annoyance colouring its voice, surprising Carm. “But I suppose if you've quite finished playing with Kendra you could get dressed and start helping with the repairs, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble?”

  Playing with Kendra? Carm was shocked. He couldn't believe that the ship had said that. And as usual he wondered why the ship had been given such a sarcastic personality. Until he remembered why. The Spacers Guild recommended it for their members. Like the android companions it was another mechanism for keeping their members sane on their long, lonely missions.

  But in the end he knew the ship was right. They had a lot of work to do, which was why he reached for his clothes without responding in the way he’d wanted to.

  “Alright, what do you need me to do?”

  “You could start in the fabrication area, directing the bots. Just do anything as long as you don't jump us again.”

  “I had no choice!” Carm defended himself against the criticism. But he'd known it was coming.

  “You always have a choice Carmichael. Always.”

  “They were trying to kill me!”.

  “So you thought you'd try to kill us both instead?”

  Carm almost screamed at the ship in frustration. How could the sharding thing manage to sound both so judgemental and pitying simultaneously? It knew the score – it would have been killed along with him if the Navy had reached them.

  “Yes and one of my choices might be to have your personality circuits stripped out you damned mute!”

  “Haven't you done enough damage to me?”

  This time Carm threw his hands up and screamed at the ship. After that he gave up, got dressed and made his way out of the medbay. He even stepped over the body of his former lover on the way out, heading for the hold and the portable fabrication plant.

  Because the ship was right. They needed to repair the damage. If they didn't they would never leave this place and he would die here. And they needed to do it before something terminal happened – assuming it hadn't already. There was no time for anything else.

  Chapter Four

  Annalisse was in a bad mood when she arrived at the remains of the hydroponics reserve's security office. She'd already been blasted three times by the Captain, a man who’d gone redder than she would have thought humanly possible. But then he'd been blasted by his boss, the commissioner for New Andreas. And very likely the commissioner had taken an earful before him from the Mayor and the Minister of Police.

  It wasn't just the immense resource allocation they were angry about – though they were furious about that too. To get the extra detectives they needed they'd had to push any number of cases down the priority list. And as for the technicians, there were now two DD labs that were active crime scenes with no one onsite to do the forensics. She would hate it if some pushers got off because of that.

  Shutting the DD labs down was a priority for the ALEB. They were a threat to public safety. Old drugs, like heroin and cocaine, could be dealt with. But these new designer drugs, created simply so that they couldn't be detected by regular methods, came with no safety measures. If people overdosed or had a bad reaction, there was no known treatment. There were wards filled with users who'd suffered everything from psychoses to blindness.

  Her bosses could live with that, and they could live with the credits being spent on the investigation too as much as they didn't want to. It was the publicity they hated. The first bombing in fifty years on Aquaria! The only suspect spacing himself. And now the possibility that he wasn't even responsible and the police had driven him to the act. That rumour had already made it out on to the mesh.

  There was no doubt that the case was already turning into a public relations disaster as well as for her personally. She couldn't avoid the horde of citizen reporters following her, who were chasing her across the city. She was letting Thirteen d
rive the floater because unlike her the policebot had no emotions. It didn't care that they'd headed out surrounded by people with holo-cameras. And if it subsequently issued said reporters with citations for infractions of the skyways codes, they couldn't complain that it was her being emotional.

  They’d also been outside her home the previous night, staking her out like a big game animal being hunted. They'd followed her to the station, some of them even attempting to follow her in. She was being mobbed everywhere. No doubt they were each secretly hoping that any revelations from her would crack the case wide open and make them mesh-lords. It was all about fame.

  Her family had been tracked down at Lake Tranquility and then faced with a barrage of questions. There were no off limits for citizen reporters, no lines that could not and would not be crossed.

  They'd even started going through her personal files. Letters she'd sent to boyfriends years, even decades, ago. Medical records, personal communications with friends – nothing was private. Someone needed to unplug the mesh-heads – permanently.

  To add to her troubles nothing was going right in the investigation, ever since she'd inspected the Doctor's office. Annalisse was now beginning to suspect there was some sort of conspiracy. Actually she knew there was one, but that was never something a good officer wanted to consider. There were officers and there were conspiracy theorists, and the two should never meet.

  In this case there was evidence of a plot, or a cover up at least. When the policebot which had given them the initial evidence had been taken to the scrapyard immediately after she'd asked for it to be sent to Technical for analysis, she'd known someone was covering their tracks. Until then her superiors had all been busy trying to pretend it was all a mistake, but after that they couldn't. Nevertheless it was still too late. Forensics should have been examining the bot with electron microscopes, looking for anything to prove her scene exam wrong. Or that could prove the technicians wrong when their data said that the bot had been the one to kill the receptionist and shoot his partner. XC 173 had been scrapped long before the technicians had called to find out where it was and now there was no hope of recovering anything from it.