I am ill-equipped.
“I CAN feel it. You really don’t want me here, do you?” Kelly accuses, hands planted firmly on her slim hips, lips pursed in a pout that would be fucking adorable if it didn’t precede our unavoidable upcoming argument. It’s been a week since I had to call her en route home from the last mission. This is a new one, what should be a less stressful assignment, except for one thing. Kelly’s with us.
Lyle and Alex take this as their cue to scurry out of the cockpit of the transport I’m piloting.
Cowards.
I turn back to the controls, feigning a need to concentrate more fully on our approach to the small moon that is our destination—a hidden slave-trade operation on the rock’s surface not unlike the secret base my father lived in, though they are some lightyears apart.
Kelly laughs, though there’s no humor in it. “Don’t try to fool me. VC1 could fly this thing by herself, and we both know it.”
“Indeed,” comes VC1’s familiar yet inflectionless response through the overhead speakers.
You are not helping, I admonish her.
Her chuckle carries much more emotion than her words.
Okay, then. I mentally turn everything over to my AI symbiote and swivel the pilot’s chair to fully face my life partner. Her eyes flash in anger, so I focus on the ring on her finger instead, a testament to our lifelong, if not legal, bond.
Machines can’t get marriage licenses on Earth’s Moon. Dead women can’t get them on Earth. In other words, our partnership will remain purely symbolic until Kelly’s politically connected mother can convince one of the governments to change its laws.
I have lots of love and respect for Kelly’s mother. I still believe she doesn’t have a chance in hell.
I draw my attention to the more immediate problem.
Technically, I could lie to Kelly and deny her accusations. She can’t discern untruths for certain unless we are in physical contact. However, lying to her has never turned out well for me in the past, and I don’t expect that to change.
“No,” I say, going for forthright. “I don’t want you here now, or on any of the Undercover Ops missions.”
I spare a glance at her face, regretting it when her glare narrows. “This isn’t like the others,” she says. “It’s not….”
Even she can’t say it, but I hear it easily enough. It’s not an assassination. The team has been with our new division of the Storm for almost six months, and the four missions I’ve completed with them so far have all been fatal for my targets. U Ops wasn’t foolish enough to force Kelly to go with me, considering what she’d feel from my murder victims.
Not murder. Assassination. And always for good reason. They do extensive research before accepting contracts, VC1 interjects.
Whose side are you on?
Yours. Always. I am attempting to make your career path more palatable.
It’s not working.
She shuts up.
Turns out my conscience, which always struggles with killing, even when done from a fair, face-to-face, defensive position, cannot handle shooting people from a distance or stabbing them in the back or pulling a weapon on someone whose trust I’ve gained.
My hard-earned mental stability began to slip, hence the reason why—
“Vick. You need me on this one.”
Yeah, that.
Her tone has lost its edge and I risk another glance—softened features, sympathetic eyes. We can have a conversation now.
It’s not that Kelly’s unreasonable or anything, but sometimes I wonder if being calm, collected, and stable for everyone else makes her more volatile when she does get angry. I don’t want to make her angry. I try so hard not to.
“I know,” I say, attempting to placate her. “It’s just not something I want you to see.”
She frowns, a wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. “I’m not following you.”
I drop my elbows onto my knees and rest my chin in my hands. A stray auburn curl tumbles in front of my right eye, and I stare at it a long moment before recognizing it as my own. I brush it away, more violently than I intend, pulling it in the process. “Geez, I don’t even look like myself.” I wave my arms about, frustrated by my lack of ability to explain what I’m feeling.
Nothing new there.
Kelly frowns further, then comes to kneel beside me on the carpeted deck. The civilian shuttle we’re using has all the luxury extras: high-end shielding, illegal military-grade weaponry, shiny new furnishings, and of all things, deep blue carpet. My boss, Carl, assured me it was the current rage among slave traders.
She catches my hands and pulls them down to rest on my lap. “Come on, Vick. Help me understand. I can feel how agitated you are, especially when you look at me.” Her gaze bores into mine. “One thing at a time. What does your hair color have to do with any of this?”
“It’s not mine,” I say. I gesture to my whole body, dressed in what amounts to a dark gray business suit cut to fit my curves. Masculine black dress shoes press indentations into the sea of plush navy at my feet. “None of this is mine.” Especially not the hair.
Kelly, at least, looks like herself, though her hair is pulled back into a tight bun. She’s wearing black spiked heels, a very short, straight skirt that barely covers the upper half of her thighs, and a low-cut, filmy white blouse leaving little to the imagination. Every bit of the costume screams both sex and assistant—in everything. She’s agreed to it to be there for me. I don’t know how to deal with that kind of loyalty or my kind of guilt in response.
“Clothes can be changed. Hair can be dyed back and restraightened. You had to do something to disguise yourself. You’re a little too well-known as a merc.”
Yeah, VC1, aka Vick Corren, is becoming a name to fear, according to the Storm’s intel. And my picture has been circulating through some of the darker networks. Hence, the clothing choices and auburn, slightly curled long hair.
I can’t cut it. I don’t think even Kelly knows the extent of that aspect of my manufactured appearance. Either that, or she’s caught that detail in my file and doesn’t ever mention it. My hair is a synthetic construct, since much of my skull is metal. Even though I’m a clone, the scientists and medical personnel had to make room for my implants, which meant removing a large section of my skull and more than half the brain within it.
The irony is not lost on me. My clone would have had a normal brain, duplicating my genetics. But to transfer my personality, my knowledge and memories to it, the clone had to have implants. To have implants, they had to damage me in exactly the same way the bullets in the airlock had. To live, I had to become a machine again. I’m told it’s much more precise and neater than the damage caused in my airlock accident, but I refuse to look at the scans.
I have enough nightmares, thank you very fucking much.
However, that means everything that was built into me before the cloning is still built in. Including the hair. It takes dye and curl easily, which is convenient, but it doesn’t grow. If its length is shortened and I should change my mind and want it back at some point, well, I would have to go in for a pain-in-the-ass procedure to replace it to make it look… natural and have it stand up to a DNA scan. I have to do that often enough anyway due to damage on missions and such. I’m not going to ask for it.
Add to all this a set of aqua-colored contact lenses over my mechanical eyes, and, well, “I feel like I’m cheating.”
Kelly blinks. “I’m sorry?”
“Cheating. Not playing fair. It’s bad enough that I’m pretending to be their business associates, distant relatives, friends, but I don’t even look like me. In my head, I’m not facing them as VC1 or even Vick Corren, which is already hiding my skill set—”
VC1 lets out an amused snort.
“—instead I’m presenting myself as a nonthreat. It gives them no reason to suspect, to begin to defend themselves. If they could put up some kind of fight, I’d probably still win, but at least then—”
“It would be self-defense.”
I nod, the fucking curls bouncing against my cheeks. “Yes, and it wouldn’t be so damn… easy. I’m winning. I’m cheating to do it, and that fucks with my head.” I turn hopeless eyes to her, the burning in them threatening to become something much more embarrassing. I blink it away. “Does that make any sense?”
Through our bond, through our physical contact, I read her surprise at my admission. It’s growth of a sort, being able to admit weakness out loud, or shame, or guilt. She’d know it, feel it anyway, but to say the words, that’s a rarity for me.
Standing, she climbs into my lap and wraps her arms around my neck, resting her head on my shoulder. Her fingers find my hand again, toying with the ring she gave me, a smooth black titanium band inset with three equally flat bright blue gemstones. Smooth and flat so as not to catch on anything when I fight. Blue because she’s determined that I do, in fact, have a favorite color despite my denials of caring about aesthetics. She knows me better than I know myself.
I’m glad, now, that Lyle and Alex fled. It allows me to be affectionate with her without the rise of discomfort that a public display would cause.
“It’s not cheating,” she whispers, her breath tickling my neck. “It’s an attempt to keep you safe. Anything that protects you is something I’ll support. And as for easy… well, it might be easy for you, but it isn’t easy on you. It bothers you, and it should. When it stops, when it becomes as simple for you to forget as to commit, then you should worry, about your sanity and your soul.”
Except that I never forget anything. Not without it being erased from VC1’s memory, and I have forbidden her and the doctors back on Girard Base from doing that. With the exception of Rodwell’s rape, I resent any memory taken from me, even the bad ones. If I am going to do immoral things, then I should suffer. At least for as long as any normal person would. That’s when the scales of my self-measured justice become unbalanced and cruel.
Kelly’s reminder that I am suffering and not just strolling through my life without care does help. I’m not some kind of monster, at least not yet. That doesn’t solve my other problem with having her along on this mission.
Kelly sighs. “There’s more,” she says, seeing through me. “What else?”
I pull my hands from hers, raising them in frustration. “Isn’t it obvious? Of all the missions to send you on, it had to be the one where I’m posing as a slave buyer. And worse, you as my assistant. My slave assistant.” With everything that title implies.
“It’s not like we’ll be giving public demonstrations or anything.”
I close my eyes. Maybe, maybe not. My research says things can get out of hand very quickly in this sort of environment and make the Purple Leaf sex club back on Girard Moon Base look like a toddlers’ playground.
My team will enter the slavers’ base of operations under the guise of being buyers at an imminent auction, Alex and Lyle posing as our bodyguards in this charade. The goal? To map out the installation via VC1’s technology, then send the schematics to U Ops’ strike forces holding position just out of scanner range. They will extract us, or we’ll extract ourselves. Then they launch an attack, wiping out shield generators, weapons centers, and the leaders’ quarters while hopefully avoiding areas where the slaves are held. Once the base is taken, they free the slaves and obtain data revealing where the operation’s other bases are located so they can deal with them later.
It’s a multiplanetary initiative, our fees paid by a cooperative of governments who’ve lost citizens to the slavers but have been unable (or unwilling) to annihilate them themselves.
“If I’m going to maintain our cover,” I say, the muscles in my jaw clenching, “I will have to do whatever they expect of their buyers. I’ll stall and avoid as much as I can, but in the end, I’ll have to do things I don’t want to.”
In other words, I’m programmed, no, brainwashed as Kelly insists because programming is too inhuman, to not let this mission fail if it’s in my power to prevent it.
“One more good reason to have me here,” she says. “I can run interference for you, make up excuses for why you aren’t participating in all the ‘fun.’ I’m not going to let them force you into a situation you can’t live with.”
I’m still not thrilled with her presence, but I shoot her a grateful look.
“And the smaller ones we can’t avoid?” she continues. “I know it won’t really be you. It will be Valeria Court.” Kel grins at the ridiculous alias, but U Ops suggested that having a name vaguely similar to my own would make it easier to remember. The manufactured persona with complete and impressively trackable records is a slave keeper/buyer from the opposite edge of the outer rim worlds who has traveled across the known universe hoping to purchase something more “exotic.”
Gah! Someone, not something. I’m already beginning to think like a fucking slaver.
Kelly will keep her own first name and a last name of Laroe, since her real surname, LaSalle, would turn up her diplomat mother in a background check.
She reaches out to caress my cheek, fingertips trailing along my jawline. “Vick Corren, however, is unwaveringly faithful.” Her lips find mine, and I allow my mind to forget my concerns for a few pleasurable moments. They don’t last.
Unwaveringly faithful. Yes. But to whom? Kelly or the Storm? No matter what I want, I know which one will always force itself to the forefront. I hope our relationship can withstand it.