“You shot me, you fucking prick,” Naomi growled from the chair they had tied her to in the engineering space aboard the Osprey .
Baxter was standing next to her. “She has a colorful vocabulary.”
The angry woman looked up at the combat droid. “Fuck off.” She turned back to Jax, her face scrunched in anger. “You shot me. You didn’t have to shoot me.”
Jax tilted his head. “Well, you seem to have no concept of boundaries, don’t seem to take no for an answer, and somehow knew a lot more about this job than you should.” He leaned against the reactor control panel. “Mind explaining?”
“I gotta pee,” his prisoner retorted.
“Then you’d better talk fast.” He grinned. “Long way to Themura, and you’re not getting up until I get answers.”
“Fine. Untie me, gimme a tablet or your gPhone.”
Jax nodded to Baxter, who extended a wicked-looking blade from under his forearm. One quick motion freed Jax’s unwelcome guest from the chair. Baxter stood back, the blade sliding back into his arm.
Jax reached over and picked a data tablet up off the workbench next to the console. He tossed it to Naomi.
The moment she caught it, the screen lit up. He seemed to recall that happening on Mariposa, too. As she held the device, Jax could see data scrolling across the screen, the regular user interface gone. Naomi coughed, and that was when Jax noticed glowing blue lines running up her arm. Slowly more and more blue lines were tracing up her other arm, along her neck, up to her cheeks. A line traced around her left eye. The blue lines pulsed. Occasionally one would fade and another pulse brightly.
She looked up from the tablet in her hands. Each finger had a blue line running its length, ending at her fingertip. “Ever hear of the interface program?” She tossed the tablet back to Jax. By the time he caught it, the screen had the familiar user interface, no visible sign of what had just happened.
“Never heard of it,” Jax admitted.
“It was an Imperial—” she started.
Jax stood bolt upright, interrupting her. “Imperial?”
She held up both hands to stop whatever he was going to say. The blue glow had faded completely from them. “I’m not an Imperial. At all. Fuck those guys.” She grinned, but it was in no way a happy expression. “Toward the end of the war, the Emperor wanted to create something to counter the Independent’s use of intel-droids.” She looked up at Baxter. “Those things could infiltrate any system they came near.” The matte black combat droid didn’t move.
She held out her right hand, turning it over, the blue glow seeming to turn on and off at will. “So, he created interfaces.”
Jax leaned forward. “So...you’re a cyborg?” He reached out to poke her forearm. She batted his hand away.
Her face crinkled. “No. Not that there’s anything wrong with ‘borgs, but no. It’s more tightly coupled than that.” She shifted in her seat, clearly not comfortable with the topic. “Interfaces needed to be able to pass for,” she gritted her teeth, “human. One hundred percent un-modded human.” The blue tattoo like patterns on her face lit up. “Biological circuitry, organic storage media.” She pointed to the base of her skull, then her midsection.
“Cool,” Baxter said, breaking his ominous silence.
Jax looked at his mechanical friend, then turned to Naomi. “Okay, so you’re some type of Imperial science project. Why are you here?”
She inhaled. “The war ended before the Emperor deployed us. Once he had his empire, he had no use for us. He terminated the project.” She looked around. “I really do have to pee.”
Jax sighed. “Fine, come on.” He turned to leave Engineering. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. “When they ask, you stowed away.” He didn’t wait for her response.