Wild in the Highlands Read online

After working with Jessa for the last several months, he’d come to esteem her. Though she was not yet thirty, she’d been an officer for a decade already and had received several commendations from the company for her actions during various firefights.

  During their shifts, she was thorough and thoughtful in her work and he’d witnessed her cleverness and grace under pressure during an emergency evacuation when a pipe had burst and flooded the neonatal infirmary on L deck.

  Which made her reaction to the security breach on E deck even more anomalous.

  Jessa slept now, her form curled on her bunk under a lightweight wool blanket, abundant hair a golden pool around her head. He ran a quick check of her vitals. Heart rate in the mid-thirties, which was within normal range for her. Respiration even. Temperature and circulation normal.

  Earlier, when they’d encountered the couple in the storage compartment, her readings all spiked.

  His initial assessment that the breach had been the result of an altercation had been incorrect. The man and woman had instead been engaged in what his BCI and neuralnet informed him was sexual intercourse. The specific position was referred to as ‘rear entry,’ or colloquially ‘standing doggy style.’

  Mack knew that, in the past, intercourse was a means of procreation. The male of the species delivered sperm to the female’s womb during ejaculation in the hopes of fertilizing an egg. But it had been over a hundred years since the last ex vitro conception. Human children were engineered as embryos in the lab for implantation into healthy mothers. There was no need for males and females to engage in intercourse any longer.

  Perhaps shock had been the cause for Jessa’s reaction earlier?

  Like him, she was aware that human procreation began in a lab. Logically, she had likely never witnessed humans copulating before. Maybe she had reacted instinctively to an unknown situation.

  But no, that couldn’t be right. Mack reviewed his data from the encounter from the moment they’d received the call.

  Jessa had behaved according to her personality and protocol right up until the moment before he’d stepped into the storage compartment. His lashes fluttered in the dark as he remembered her strong, slender fingers wrapping around his wrist and squeezing.

  She’d tried to stop him, and then placed herself between him and the couple.

  Protocol dictated that in an unknown situation, bio-mech partners were always to precede their human counterparts in order to ensure their safety. It was one of his primary functions.

  Jessa had never violated Directive #97 before.

  Mack could only conclude that the situation hadn’t been unknown to her, that she had become aware in that moment outside the compartment what they would find when they entered and believed that they were in no danger.

  Which meant her physiological response was unlikely to have stemmed from shock. In fact, when he reviewed the data again, he realized her heart rate, respiration, and temperature had not risen until they’d been in the compartment nearly a minute. And it had been a gradual increase the longer they remained, not the dramatic spike he would expect from an adrenaline-fueled reaction to fear or the unknown.

  He frowned.

  Once they returned to their quarters, Jessa had remained uncharacteristically quiet as well. Instead of her normal nine minute shower, she had instead bathed for nearly three times longer.

  Mack slid from his bunk, careful to keep quiet. He didn’t want to wake his partner. Humans, he had learned, required several hours of sleep each night to function at peak performance.

  He made sure to tie the security system for their rooms into his BCI as he slipped through the main door into the barracks corridor. The dim lighting meant to simulate moonlight didn’t bother Mack. He could navigate easily under much darker conditions.

  Still contemplating the issue of Jessa’s anomalous behavior, Mack strolled through corridor after corridor, his BCI running various subroutines and scenarios.

  Humans fascinated him.

  His first memory was of awakening in a miniscule mining camp on a stable asteroid in the Seti quadrant. The only other occupants of the camp were drones. He received all his orders via neuralnet.

  For decades, he’d gone from one such camp to another, his only interaction with humans coming from the infrequent incursion by pirates.

  That’s where his fascination began. While fighting off the attacks, he learned that different bands had vastly varied reasoning for their assaults on the camps. Even among a single band, some of the people were simply greedy, while others were just desperate for the money they could earn to care for families and loved ones.

  Mack’s people were rather uniform by design. At least when it came to their thought processes and motivations. Those things were programmed into their BCI at their inception.

  There were rumors on the neuralnet, however, that what had begun as a game between a few techs was becoming a movement. Initially, a few units had been given bits of modified code — referred to as ‘quirks’. Little things that were mostly unnoticeable and completely untraceable. The company didn’t even mind, as long as they didn’t interfere with the primary functions.

  Cyborgs still weren’t the same as humans, but with the proliferation of these idiosyncratic quirks, they were closer than they’d ever been before.

  Mack didn’t think he had any quirks, but then he might not know. Jessa could probably tell him. Or Godfrey.

  That thought sparked another, and Mack turned his not-entirely-aimless wandering (he’d been sweeping the area of the 23rd sector where Christof Bevins and Padma Arnoux’s sleeping quarters were located) into a focused stride aimed at the tech shop on H.

  He felt no surprise to find Godfrey Medvedev awake, hunched over his work station, and tinkering with some small bit of circuitry. The tiny, wiry man had dark brown hair that stood out in a wild halo around his head and a wide, toothy grin. He laughed loudly, and a lot.

  Though he often didn’t understand what the man was saying, Mack found Godfrey… amusing. Aside from Jessa, God — as he insisted on being called, usually with a cackle — was the only human who treated Mack with some degree of affection.

  “Mack, my boy,” God said without turning, his quick hands flitting over what looked like a tangle of wires. “What are you doing so far away from your luscious partner? Need a repair?”

  He frowned at the other man’s odd characterization of Jessa, but responded to the portion he understood.

  “No, I am functioning well, thank you.”

  “Of course you are. Upgraded you myself, didn’t I?” God snorted.

  “You did.”

  Mack knew that God annoyed Jessa, but he didn’t mind his self-assurance. Based on the files his BCI could access, God was one of the most skilled techs in the galaxy. Cantra Corp compensated him astronomically well for his abilities and gave him his choice of positions. He could be working in any lab anywhere, station or planet.

  God said he preferred Lyra because it was small, well-kept, and no one tried to micro-manage him or ask him stupid questions. He hated stupid questions.

  While waiting for God to finish his tinkering, Mack checked on Jessa. She slept on, her breathing indicating she’d entered REM. He wondered suddenly if she dreamed, and if so, what about?

  His mouth turned down as he contemplated this thought. Cyborgs had organic brains fused with CPUs. They dreamed, and the dreams were downloaded to their storage drive where they could be reviewed or wiped as the unit saw fit.

  Mack had always dumped his, sight unseen. He’d considered them unimportant.

  But the idea of Jessa’s dreams… well, that was intriguing to him.

  Before he could follow the line of thought any further, God set aside the small bit of circuitry and spun on his revolving stool to fix Mack with deep brown eyes.

  “So.” He clapped his hands together briskly. “To what do I owe this little visit, then?”

  Mack leaned back against one of the few spaces of bare wall in God’s work
shop and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Do I have quirks?”

  God blinked and scrubbed a hand against his smooth cheek. Mack had noticed that the tech’s hands were rarely ever still.

  “Well, now. Do you have any quirks? Don’t you know?”

  Mack felt his frown deepening, the skin on his forehead tightening as he brows drew down.

  “If I knew, I would not be asking you.”

  God pointed at him. “Good point, my boy. Good point. Well. I’ve only poked around in your head a little, you realize, but… I would say, yes, you do. Just a little one.” He held up two fingers about three millimeters apart.

  Mack’s spine stiffened. “And what is it?”

  God laughed, rocking on his stool. He stopped and spread his hands, palm up like an offering.

  “Why, that right there, my boy! That’s it.”

  “If anyone is a boy, it is you. You are significantly younger chronologically speaking than I am,” Mack reminded him. “And I do not understand.”

  Godfrey nodded. “I know, I know. I’ll tell you what. I will answer your question if you will answer one for me. Do we have a deal?”

  “Of course. I will answer any question you ask to the best of my ability, unless it poses a security risk to the station, the company, or my partner.”

  He checked in with Jessa again, noting her slower, deeper breathing and steady heart rate.

  God rubbed his palms together. “I’d have to run some tests to be sure, but I suspect your quirk, MCK-397, is a little extra inquisitiveness.”

  Mack cocked his head, processing that information. “The drive to understand my environment and surroundings is hardwired into my BCI.”

  “True, true. But I’ve never encountered a cy unit with such a sense of curiosity before. Most of them only feel the need to acquire as much information as is required to perform their duties.”

  “As do I,” Mack replied, brow furrowed.

  God cracked each of his bony knuckles with a loud pop. “You told me that one of the mothers taught you a lullaby to calm the infants during the nursery evacuation.”

  “Yes. That is true. She did.”

  “Why did she teach it to you?”

  Mack shifted against the wall, a sudden curl of uneasiness in his belly. He checked in one Jessa again, but she was fine.

  “Many of the infants were scared and crying. It was adding to the chaos of the situation. The mother was singing to her child and it calmed. Calming the others in a similar manner seemed beneficial.”

  “And?”

  Mack’s fingers dug into the firm muscle of his biceps. He felt a sudden, irrational spurt of anger at God for his question and shut it down. “And I asked her to teach me the lullaby in order to calm the rest of the infants. Teaching me calmed her as well.”

  God said nothing. Mack scowled.

  “It was very effective.”

  The tech twirled a soldering iron between his fingers as he laughed.

  “I’ve no doubt. But you asked her, is my point, my boy. You could have simply used your BCI to record, source, and download the lullaby to your brain. Hell, you could have played a recording from the ‘net.”

  Mack opened his mouth to argue, but God was right. He could have done any of those things. He also could have ignored the crying infants. Their distress didn’t prevent them from being relocated in a safe and timely manner.

  It was true it had added to the chaos of alarms and spraying water and hurrying people, but it hadn’t hindered his ability to do his job.

  The truth was, that had been one of the few occasions he’d been in the presence of humans who were not full grown adults and he found them puzzling and fascinating. So, he’d asked the mother about the lullaby.

  God was correct. He was inquisitive. Still…

  “I do not think this is a quirk.”

  The wiry tech huffed a laugh through his hooked nose. “Obviously. But I answered your question, will you answer mine now? Or do you want me to hook you up to the God machine?”

  Mack eyed the small, complex machine that was Godfrey’s creation. Other techs had diagnostic scanners, but nothing on par with the tiny white plastic box God used. The man was a genius.

  He shook his head. “No. I believe you. What is your question?”

  God steepled his fingers beneath his chin.

  “Why did you really come here tonight?”

  Once again, Mack felt his forehead crease with his frown. But, he realized, reading his internal routines, God was right. There was something else he wanted to know.

  His BCI provided him with a playback of the scene from the storage compartment. The man — Christof, a grade 4 botanist — was above average in height, with pale skin and red hair. He’d been almost fully clothed, though both his regulation shirt and his pants were undone.

  The woman — Padma, a grade 2 engineer — had been nude, with light brown skin and dark brown hair. Her physique was slender compared to Jessa’s. His partner’s arms, legs, and torso were more muscled. Her hips and breasts were fuller as well.

  He remembered Jessa’s odd reaction, the way her cheeks had flushed pink. She dug her fingers into his chest, and for a moment she had stared at him with an intense look that he could not interpret. He’d searched his neuralnet for a comparable expression and found nothing.

  Mack didn’t like not knowing. And in order to understand Jessa’s reactions, he needed to know more about the incident.

  “Does sexual intercourse between humans serve a purpose other than procreation?”

  For the first time in the eight months that he’d known him, Mack watched the tech go still.

  ***

  Jessa finished her sweep of Sector 317 and marked it clear on her wristlet just as her comm pinged in her ear. Mack’s deep voice slid inside her head.

  “The Oubliette is nearly in docking range.”

  She did one last visual check of the high-security vault before closing the bulkhead door and rekeying the lock with her personal code. Mack stood at the end of the wide corridor, broad back rigidly straight as he blocked the only point of entry.

  At the chunk of the door sealing shut, he turned to her, handsome face as placid and unreadable as ever.

  She’d been a little worried after the incident in the storage room. Mack watched her closely for the rest of that night. Jessa had no doubt he’d pinged her vitals more than once. The intense scrutiny had put her on edge, but she’d brought herself off a few times in the shower with only her fingers and her fantasies and that had calmed her right down.

  Unlike her, the questions she’d expected had never come.

  Mack always asked questions. It was one of his abiding traits. It had taken her awhile to get used to, but now that she was, she found it kind of endearing. Mack was this perfect physical specimen, a combination of the ideal soldier and a hyper-intelligent machine. But, about some things, he was adorably naïve.

  But when she’d awoken the next morning, he’d been as stoic and silent as the Apollo Monolith on Centauri 2.

  She found herself somewhat relieved she didn’t have to have the sex talk with her cy. And despite her worries, the awkward incident hadn’t affected the way they worked together.

  Jessa nodded. “Let’s go.”

  He turned without another word. She fell into step beside him. Jessa might allow him to take point when they were entering a dangerous or unknown situation, given that he could withstand much more damage than her, but in all other things, they were equal.

  Martinez and his cy, TSE-938, greeted them both with nods as the stepped onto the loading bay. Martinez was short and broad with dark hair and a goatee. He was also a damn good officer. As was TSE-938.

  The other cy appeared waifish at barely 5’4, but Jessa knew the almost willowy frame was misleading. 938 possessed one of the new allow skeletons, lighter and more flexible than the tungsten and just as durable.

  If you didn’t know she was a cy, 938 (Martinez called her �
�Tessie’ but she refused to answer to any name but her number designation) could pass for an average twenty-something Japanese woman. But she was far from it. She’d seen combat planetside and bore the scars to prove it.

  Jessa nodded to them both in return and crossed to Martinez.

  “Mack says Oubliette is nearly here. We all set?”

  “You know it. Tessie and I got this.”

  She caught the female cy shooting Martinez a narrow-eyed look at the use of the name, her irises almost as black as her short cropped hair. Jessa tapped her fist against his shoulder.

  “Yeah you do. Central’s just jumpy since that last run to Polaris got hit. Mack and I will just stand back and watch in awe while you two —”

  A red light strobed across the room and the proximity claxon buzzed. 938’s eyes snapped toward the loading bay doors.

  “They shouldn’t be that close yet.”

  Martinez frowned, pink lips folding into his dark goatee.

  “Oubliette, this is Lyra Station Officer MZ-313. Do you copy?”

  They all heard the garbled crackle over their comms. Jessa’s gaze slid to Mack. She jerked her chin toward to control room. He nodded, lashes doing to stutter-flutter thing they did when he accessed his neuralnet with his eyes open.

  Jessa hoofed it up the short staircase that led to the loading bay control room. “Central, this is Officer JS-824 in Loading Bay 6. We’ve got a possible situation. Officers MCK-397, TSE-938, and MZ-313 on premises.”

  Central Command, Lyra Station’s security hub, crackled in her ear. They had no other reports of activity and no readings showing anything but the supply trawler Oubliette approaching.

  “Let’s hope we’ve just got a faulty sensor then,” she replied as she straight-armed the control room door opened. The single harried-looking Bay Operator raised wild eyes to her and jammed a shaking hand into his curly brown hair.

  “It’s not showing up on anything! I don’t understand.”

  Down below in the bay, Martinez was having no luck raising a response from the Oubliette. Jessa crossed the long, narrow control room in three great strides.

  “What isn’t showing up? Talk to me.” She glanced at the name on his uniform shirt. “Talk to me, Greg.”