Aries Revealed Read online

  Heat wriggled insidiously through her, adding another wave of dampness to her panties as she pushed off from the door and flicked a glance toward the bedroom portion of her open-plan quarters. Later, she promised herself. Later she’d head on down and recover her “toy” case from her locker in the hold and spend some quality time with her battery operated friends. She sighed. But not yet. The console on the desk built into the opposite wall was blinking to notify her of unread messages so she headed that way instead. Work came first.

  She pulled the desk chair free from the wall, watching and waiting as it swung out in an arc and unfolded into a full sized seat pad. Even though these were the captain’s quarters, space was at a premium. Everything on board was designed to save space, to fold or slide away and make more room, even in here. Not for her the expansive and plush suites of some ship captains.

  No, she got a bed built into the wall, a bubble shower enclosure and a rotating toilet which operated like a false wall in the old movies she’d watched as a kid. One moment a book shelf, press a button and hey presto, the wall turned and the ivory throne was right there. But she wouldn’t trade it for the world, or several worlds. The Starflame was the last thing she had to remind her of her beloved grandfather. After spending many years in high society, the daughter-in-law of a Fleet Admiral with all the rules and protocol that made her want to scream and run naked through the corridors just to alleviate the sameness of everything, the ship, running cargo, represented freedom.

  Sliding into the swing-out seat, she logged onto the console and waited as the comms screen opened up. The Starflame’s computer core was an older model, dependable, but slow. She drummed her nails on the extenda-desk, watching the screen scroll up to the latest messages.

  “Bill. Bill. Rubbish. Notification of docking. Bill. No, I do not need ocular enhancement. I’d like to keep the eyes I was born with, not have them replaced with some vat-grown monstrosities, thank you very much.” She yawned as she rapidly flicked through the messages, filing or deleting them as appropriate. She reached the last and her eyes widened as she recognized the name. Why was Jason contacting her on her personal comm channel?

  Her fingers shook as she tapped on the message. She’d once thought that Jason Templeton was the perfect man. Tall, blond and handsome, he’d been the epitome of charm when they’d first met. She’d told him she didn’t want to date a fleet officer, but he’d worn her down. Within three months, they were married. He’d started hitting her within six, each time full of apologies, then in the next breath blaming her, twisting his words until she didn’t know up from down or left from right. Convinced it was her fault and cowed by his threats, she’d stopped seeing her friends and avoided her family as she became a master at using body makeup to conceal her bruises.

  It had taken her years to work up the courage to leave, squirreling a little of the money he allowed her away into a secret bank account. Her grandfather dying and leaving her the Starflame was the catalyst she needed. She’d left the same night and filed divorce papers against him.

  “You little bitch!”

  Jason’s face appeared on screen, twisted into a familiar mask of anger. Every part of her body tensed, ready to flee. She recognized the look in his eyes, the rage and hatred a precursor to taking his frustrations out with his fists. He’d been drinking as well, the high flush on his cheeks a warning sign she’d learnt to heed.

  “You’re sleeping with that fucking judge, aren’t you?” He was in his office, the logo on the wall behind him familiar. “Got him wrapped around your little finger so he’d do what you wanted in the hearing. Dirty little slut. How’d you do him to get the ship? On his desk while the dried up old prune was still in his robes?”

  She winced, trying to hide the movement even though he couldn’t see her. A habit she’d yet to break. She’d learnt never to show fear, it just made him worse. Yelling and screaming until his fists started to fly.

  Taking a large swallow from the glass by his side, he leaned in as though he could see her right through the screen. “That ship is mine, bitch. For putting up with your pathetic moods during our marriage.”

  His lips curled into a sneer.

  “After all, I need some compensation for having to fuck a frigid, barren little bitch like you. If your grandfather hadn’t been who he was, you think I’d have ever bothered with you?” He laughed, the sound harsh and derisive before he turned serious and gave her a chilling look. “I want my ship, Milly, and no matter what some pansy-assed judge says, I’m going to get it.”

  The connections had to be bad.

  Johnny paused for a moment, squinted inside the torso panel of the android he was working on, frowned and upped the magnification in his ocular implant to check the wiring out. Yeah, he was right. The cellular connections in the upper portion were badly connected which meant that the current was only getting through to the left arm of this model sporadically, making it jerk as if it was a maniacal puppet on a string. Funny, until it had thrown carrot soup over the client. What the client had a sexbot doing with carrot soup Johnny didn’t want to know.

  “So what was with last night?” The query was light, the voice feminine and absentminded. It was also a trap. He knew it was a trap. It didn’t stop him getting sucked in.

  “Last night?”

  He arched an eyebrow and carried on working as his partner in crime, Cyn, plunked down on the stool next to him. She peered inside the open front of the android and grunted in approval at his neat cellular resoldering. At least he assumed the grunt was approval anyway. If he wasn’t working to her standards, Cyn had no problems with slapping him around the back of the head and doing the job herself.

  They were two of a kind. Both cyborgs, they’d been created in the same lab facility, “born” within days of each other and assigned to the same team on activation. So when their world had gone to shit and the fleet had issued a termination order on all of their kind, it had been natural for them to disappear and go native together.

  Templeton, no… She’s just a kid! The memory tried to break free as Johnny’s thoughts touched on the past, but he forced it back down and concentrated on the present. Harris was dead, the rest of them were dead. There was just him and Cyn left.

  “Quit the innocent act, Johnny. I know you, remember?” Her voice was amused, but with an edge he knew. She would just keep going until she got the answers she wanted. A grin twisted his lips for a second before he managed to hide it, concentrating on the work in front of him.

  “No, you don’t.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Sharing some of the same DNA, they’d never gone there and never would. They were siblings, or as close to as created beings would ever get, and he cherished that relationship.

  Now they were hiding in plain sight, as Cyn called it. Him as a stripper and her as the uppermost sexbot creator this side of the Kelantrian expanse. People came from far and wide for a bot from the “House of Cyn”. She had a reputation for exquisite custom creations that catered to any and all fantasies and the deactivated bots that lined the walls around them bore testament to that fact.

  There was everything from an imperial slave-girl to a dominatrix clad in red and black leather, right through to the latest stars of the holo-screen. All achingly lifelike, it was as though someone had simply pressed pause on life and transported them here. They were as near to the real thing as it was possible to buy or purchase time with, Cyn’s talent shining through in each and every one of them.

  “Oh, get over yourself!” She grinned back and punched his shoulder. He rolled easily with the blow, the tap light despite the fact that she could have punched a hole in sheet metal if she’d wanted to. “You may have gotten all these other women convinced you’re sex on legs, but I’ve seen you in states no woman ever wants to see a man. And you snore. Although I’m willing to admit your spinal implants are a work of genius.”

  He snorted. “That’s only because you fitted them.”

  “Too right. Now tell me about
the woman last night. Before I decide to lock those spinals and make you watch a marathon of Love Colony,” she threatened.

  A shudder streaked through his large body, shaking his shoulders. He hated that damn space soap opera. She would, he knew she would.

  “Bitch.”

  “Don’tcha just know it.” She smiled sweetly, twirling a diagnostic wand between her slender fingers. “Now spill.”

  Johnny sighed, he wasn’t going to get out of it. He carried on working, large fingers deft despite the delicateness of his task. Although the stripping brought more than enough money to support them both, he spent most of his time in the back room here at the shop doing routine maintenance on the bots to free Cyn up for creation and development of new models.

  The Krasis gladiator line had gone really well last year, still were selling well. They just needed a few more of those and they could sink all the credits they needed into a colony start up and disappear off into the wilds of space where no one cared how much metal they had inside their skins.

  “Not much to tell,” he finally admitted. “She’s been coming into the bar for a couple of months. Never dressed up, no makeup. Always cargo pants and a t-shirt. Figure on her like…”

  He whistled and traced an hour-glass shape in the air with his hands.

  “Hot. I asked her to dinner. She ran out.”

  Grumbling in frustration, he went back to soldering. The patch job was almost done and they could put this one back into service. “That was new. Never had a woman walk out on me before. Was almost like she was scared.”

  He slid a sideways glance to find Cyn watching him with a peculiar look.

  “What? I’m not that bad a dancer, you know. People actually pay to watch me.”

  “Yeah, and some people will pay to watch Sartorian slug-worms duel to the death, so don’t get above yourself, lover-boy.”

  She grabbed a diagnostic pad from the bench when he put his tools down to check the android they were working on. She pursed her lips as the thing booted up and displayed a readout on the androids base systems. Routine stuff she didn’t need to think so hard on so he wasn’t surprised when she spoke again.

  “It was the Aries 7000 act wasn’t it? You sure you didn’t scare her with the ‘big, bad, killer cyborg’ thing?”

  Above them the android snapped its eyes open, staring blankly at the wall ahead. It was the Deloriat dancing girl model. All slender lines and tits like globes on a stick, it did nothing for him. He liked soft curves and give in his women. A little padding on the bones so he didn’t have to worry about hurting them if he was a little rough or breathed on them wrong. His mystery woman from last night was his idea of perfection.

  Johnny shook his head as he waited for her verdict on the work. “No, couldn’t have been. She was really getting into that. Her heart rate went through the roof and pupil dilation? I lost sight of the color of her eyes at one point.”

  He might have lost sight of them, but it made no difference. He knew what color they were. A rich, warm brown, they reminded him of roast wayalla nuts from Feneris Three or the deep, dark color of kruss, the outer systems answer to expensive terran chocolate, in his opinion better than the original. He’d never been into food during sex, but the urge to cover her in the stuff just so he could lick it off hit him and he shuddered, cock hard and aching in his pants in a heartbeat.

  “I need to find her.”

  The door chime jingled from the front room of the shop, alerting them to the fact a customer had walked in. Cyn shoved the pad into his hands.

  “She’s hot to trot. Close and seal while I go and deal with whoever that is.” She rubbed her hands together. “Hopefully a nice fat sale so I can go buy those components I’ve been drooling over at Big Vinnie’s.”

  Johnny shook his head as she disappeared through the door into the main shop. Typical Cyn. No interest in the usual female type things like flowers and chocolates. The one time he’d bought her jewelry, she’d been delighted…then broke it apart and used the stones in a jeweled bearing. He’d been pissed, but the sight of her sitting in her pj’s, ruined bracelet scattered around her as she showed him the bearing excitedly had melted his heart. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t like most women, she just hadn’t been built that way.

  It seemed his mystery woman from last night wasn’t like most women either. He’d offered it to her on a plate, an offer that would have had most women at his beck and call or pinned against the wall in his dressing room as he took them hard and fast to slake the lust that surged through his body at the mere thought of her.

  “Sheesh, get a grip of yourself, Johnny-me-lad,” he muttered as he ran a shaky hand through his hair, sending the short spikes into disarray. The way he was reacting, cock hard and heavy in the loose combat pants he favored off stage, anyone would think he was a Gemini, an infiltration cyborg with a predilection for honey-traps. He wasn’t.

  Aries 7000, the name he used in his act, was a reflection of his true nature. An Aries class, he was designed for heavy combat and demolitions and he was damn good at it. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do with explosives. No building, ship or safe he couldn’t crack with a little inventiveness and a shaped charge.

  In his hands, demolitions became a work of art. He could parallel and string mines to bring an enemy force to their knees before they’d fired their first shot on the battlefield. Hell, give him a tea trolley and some spare time and he could take their entire command structure out while they had their morning brew.

  And here he was acting like a damn randy Gemini looking for a lay. Shaking his head, Johnny shut the android’s front plates, his hands under the plastic and synth-skin covered breasts as he found and pressed down on the latches with his thumbs. To anyone watching it would look like he was copping a quick feel, but nothing could be further from the truth. The latches caught, the tiny click more felt than heard, and he twisted to pick up the sealing wand, running it down the cut in the synth that had the ‘droid open from clavicle to pelvis.

  “You’re looking for a cyborg bot? Are you sure?”

  Cyn’s voice filtered through from the main shop, the tone in it making Johnny frown as he finished closing the android. Using his implants, he uplinked with it and sent it off to stand between a gladiator and a sexy secretary model.

  “We don’t tend to carry many like that because of the potential for panic. Yes, they really can be that lifelike. Just last week I had to recover one of my gladiator bots from the arena because the client misplaced it and the authorities thought he’d escaped.”

  Moving to the door, Johnny stood behind the one-way mesh, the iridescent fabric concealing his form while allowing him to see the interior of the shop clearly. Like most bot-shops, it was large, with several circular podiums dotted along the walls. Each contained an android, the wall mirrored behind them to show the product off to potential customers. Down the center of the room was a runway of sorts, its edges marked out with tiny strip lights. Every so often a model would activate and take a walk down the runway, pausing to pose before returning to its original place.

  That was where Cyn had the opposition beat hands down. Her bots walked and talked like the real thing, none of the time lag or wooden movements and expressions of her competitors work as her skill with android mechanics shone through.

  What astounded him was that it was just a hobby, something she’d picked up on the side while they’d been deployed in the ass end of beyond somewhere with just themselves and androids for company. The damn things always broke down, and as the squad’s cybernetics expert, Cyn was the only one who’d had half a clue what to do to get them working again. It was that or dig their own latrines and they were so not going there.

  “Com’on, shift that ass,” he muttered as one of the dancing girls shimmied across his field of vision and blocked his view of the customer with the query. Like Cyn, his hackles had gone up at the request for a cyborg. Sure, they were well hidden through a combination of new identities, hacked fr
om some provincial backwater planet’s governmental mainframe, and Cyn’s ability to replace most of their implants with shielded tech that foiled every scanner they’d come across. The worry that something new would come out that she couldn’t foil, that they would be caught with their pants down, was always there in the back of his mind.

  The bot moved. Johnny dragged a startled breath in.

  “Shit.”

  There, in the center of the shop, was the woman from last night. Stunned, his gaze took in every inch of her appearance, from the dark curls piled on top of her head, secured haphazardly with a pair of chopsticks right down to the heavy boots of a dockworker. The docks…why hadn’t he thought of that? The timing of her visits, her relaxed style…all the clues clicked into place. She crewed on the freighters.

  He watched her carefully, scrutinizing the straightness of her bearing without getting distracted by the sexy curve of her neck revealed by the messy up-do and the direct look and firm manner she used dealing with Cyn. No, she wasn’t crew. He’d bet his last credit she was an owner-operator of one of the big rigs currently on the docking ring of the station.

  “So you have no androids that resemble cyborgs at all?” Her disappointment was evident as she looked about the shop. The gladiator model was on the runway and it stopped as it sensed her looking its way and posed. Johnny growled, the urge to knock its plastic teeth down the back of its throat almost getting the better of him. Hell, he had it bad if just a bot looking at her had him ready to kill it.

  “Stall her.” He sent to Cyn via their internal comms link. It was one of the few implants they kept active while on station. A lot of people had cyber-implants, most were medical-grade, but comms units were also common, the small implants so tiny they hardly impacted on the five percent cybernetics every citizen was allowed before they had to register as a cyber. No one wanted to do that and become a second-class citizen, so most stayed well away from the five percent.