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  “Good…because in the next few minutes, your world is going to be turned upside down and you need to hold on to this…” Aidan said as he eyed me seriously, “…and to us.”

  I looked at him, puzzled. “What are you talking about?”

  He placed me on the floor in front of him and began to dress me. “Do you trust me?”

  “What?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  I was stunned, not sure what to say. Did I trust him? I pondered the question for a few moments before I answered. “All in all, I think I trust Henrietta better.”

  He snorted with laughter as he zipped up my uniform and continued to dress himself. “Are you sure you want to trust your life with something that might have been tampered with?”

  His question hung in the air. I licked my lips, knowing my indecisiveness could be the very thing that turned the tides the other way.

  “But after what I’ve heard today…yeah, I trust you.” I watched him, licking my lips self-consciously for the second time. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “If I knew, I would. I think I know some of it, but not all. The communications on this ship have been hot and heavy recently. And most of them are to ships and people I don’t even know.” He cupped my face again and kissed my lips. “Take your cue from me. Do what I say without question. If we get separated, I will try to find you.”

  The mystery deepened, causing me great concern as I straightened my clothes. Nodding the affirmative, I palmed the plate at the door. It slid noiselessly to the right and I slipped back into the corridor in the same place where I had been pulled out.

  The crowd hadn’t changed much, as people were still waiting for the bay doors to be opened; there were just a few more of them than there had been previously. It was if we had never been gone…I shot Aidan an almost frightened look, then caught myself…I was a Marine, for heaven’s sake! I didn’t run from a battle, but faced it head-on. I would always try to do my duty no matter what it entailed. But like many, there were times I would question those orders and if they went against my basic principles, I would rather be prosecuted for treason.

  I sighed deeply and entered the room when the door finally opened, not quite knowing what I’d find. Reassurance emanated from the man who now stood at my back. Some of the crew stood around the pod, stunguns ready and waiting to take whoever the pod held away for questioning. The bay with its grey walls and a shimmering force field at one end of its length was just like any other and stark in contrast to the pod that it now held.

  The pod itself was a work of art. Completely black with protrusions here and there, the shape indicated that human movement could take place inside. Not much movement, but enough so the sleeping occupant could turn if desired. This pod was obviously designed for comfort as well as for a long trip. Most space pods, especially those on this ship and others used by the government, were mere steel cases designed for no one’s comfort, but for emergency situations only. Some things never changed. Contracts still went out to the lowest bidder. And I smiled, knowing that even in this portion of the galaxy, life did go on.

  I, like the rest, stood idly by while the pod heated to room temperature to allow the occupant or occupants a less jarring awakening from quikcyro. Once accomplished, it would be a matter of moments before the pod released its imprisoned occupant, or occupants, if the inside could hold two. I moved so that I could lean against the back wall, staying out of sight of the Captain and his cronies. I slipped a quick glance at Aidan, who shrugged. I had moved closer to the door instinctively; why, I did not know.

  I stood up straight when the beep of the pod indicated that opening was imminent. Straining to see around the people in front of me, I heard their murmurs. Finally, shoving a particularly large crewmember out of my way, I peered at the source of their obvious disbelief. I tried to contain my own gasp. Inside was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen, the exception being the man who just made love to me and still stood by my side. Yet, to my confusion, he also seemed to be lying in the pod. And a woman. A woman who had my face.

  I turned stunned eyes toward Aidan. I must have made some sort of noise because the Captain turned and pointed at both me and Aidan. “Get them out of here!” His face spoke volumes that I couldn’t put into words. Cold…his eyes looked so…cold.

  I heard him issue the order. However, I wouldn’t be there to see if it was carried out.

  “Run,” Aidan mouthed as he shot away from me in the opposite direction.

  Frantically, I pushed people out of my way, for once wishing I had a gun and made for the door. I opened it and ran down the corridor, away from the landing bay just moments before the laser blasts hit the wall where I had stood. I could hear them coming after me but I knew where I’d hide…some place deep in the bowels of the ship where only the best engineers would go…and those who knew how to sneak in back doors. Located there was the one thing that could help me decipher what my future as well as the others on this ship would be.

  * * * *

  The dark core of the ship reeked with odors that I didn’t want to know about; the temperature made sweat run between my breasts in rivers. Since Henrietta didn’t recognize my voice, I couldn’t get any more light on this level than provided by the dim glow of the required system lights in this sector. Something had happened up there, something I didn’t understand nor could grasp at the moment it happened. I had to figure this out, had to get to the computer terminal at the center of the ship.

  Finding a place that I had never been to but been told about would be a challenge; that special room which only admitted two people…the ship’s doctor or its chief engineer. Not even the ship’s Captain was allowed in that inner sanctum. The doctor was allowed there to prevent an epidemic from spreading throughout the universe. The chief engineer had special access if the ship needed to be destroyed and everyone else was incapacitated. Once there, I could bypass all the safeguards that were hidden and find the secrets this ship’s computer possessed.

  Climbing down another ladder, I cursed when I hit a hot pipe and burned my arm. Arriving at the bottom I surveyed the damage, noting that the sleeve of my uniform was burned completely through, my flesh pink and tender to the touch.

  “You aren’t supposed to have those kind of neural receptors. No clonedroid is supposed to feel pain. At least not that kind of pain.”

  I whirled around. I’d never been followed here before when trying to get to the ship’s core. I never really needed to find it before. No one knew exactly where the subcontrol room was except the doctor, the captain, Henrietta and myself. Only the doctor and I were allowed entrance to the room. And I wasn’t about to let anyone find out exactly where this room was located in the bowels of the ship. I had only seen the location in a diagram myself. How did Charles know where to find me, let alone follow? Sighing, I had the sickening realization that they could have easily picked Henrietta’s brain to death as well as my own.

  “Charles, is that you?” I squinted into the semi-darkness of the corridor.

  “How very astute of you, my dear,” he stated flatly and came of the shadows.

  I glanced around trying to find a weapon. I needed to keep him talking, anything to try to make my search less obvious. “What are you talking about?” I asked and subtly moved away from the stairs.

  “My dear, you’re a computer. Designed and built by the UFF. You know, the United Freedom Front.” Charles clucked his tongue in obvious disapproval, his huge blond body casting long shadows in the subdued light.

  I noticed that while I dripped with sweat, he barely had a shiny nose. My stomach clenched as I wondered what other improvements the designers had made. After all, the human race certainly could live without the wet spots under their arms or the sweat running in rivers down their bodies. Jerked back to the present by Charles scraping his boots on the floor as he moved forward, I watched him for any other tell-tale signs…signs that indicated he might not be human…something that was out of the ordina
ry. His menacing look as he stalked toward me should have been indication enough.

  “When we received the last shipment of clonedroids, you berserked and tried to reprogram the ship’s computer to kill us all. We had you mindswiped of the incident until your unit could be replaced.” He advanced very slowly, the laser gun previously at his side now pointed at my stomach.

  It had been a while since I had to defend myself against another shipmate. Charles and I had been close at the academy. At one time I felt I rather fancied him but that was before I learned of his sick nature with women. Since then, I had steered clear of him.

  But now it was obvious that I would be fighting for my very life. Hoping to stop him, I threw up my hands in a mock gesture of self-defense. “You mean the whole crew was replaced by computers. Everyone with walking, talking mechanical beings? How can that be?” I stared at him in disbelief while trying to figure out how I was going to maneuver myself out of harm’s way. “How did it happen?”

  “How do you think?” He took a step closer. “One person at a time. You get their specs, then build the machine…you get them into sick bay…and dispose of them while they are there. And suddenly, in that person’s place is a clonedroid you can command to do anything you want.”

  I stared at him, mouth agape. My God. My mind raced. Just how many people had they killed?

  “You can close your mouth now,” he said, grinning like a hyena watching its prey.

  “How stupid,” I said in disgust, shaking my head in disbelief.

  “Hardly stupid, my dear. But the job isn’t finished yet. Each one of us was cloned from a human of extraordinary talents who will now never die because of our creator’s brilliant insight to what the universe needed. Then we were all enhanced with the most advanced biotechnical discoveries to date. Now we are almost immortal. You happen to come from the universe’s most ingenious computer and mechanical engineer ever born.” He advanced a little closer.

  “Wait.” I put my hands out in front of me. “What if you’re wrong? What if I’m the real one? The original?”

  Puzzlement crossed his face as he tried to assess this new bit of information, causing a halt in his advance. It was as if his computer of a brain tried fathoming what that implication might mean.

  I realized I had unintentionally caused a bug in his programming by the rapid movement of his eyes from side to side; the possibility hadn’t even entered his mind. And I needed that lax moment. I rushed him, going for the hand holding the gun. He was much stronger than me…but something held him back, as if someone else really did control his mind. After a brief struggle, the gun and Charles sprawled in the middle of the corridor. Trying to leap over him toward the gun in the corner, I fell, brought up short by a grip on my ankle.

  I went down hard with a loud thud and a crack to my head. Gasping, I forced my hand out to where the gun lay just beyond my reach while slowly being pulled back toward certain annihilation. The hand on my ankle tightened even more with a bone-crushing grip and it dragged me inch by inch toward certain doom.

  “No!” I screamed. With a superhuman effort, I kicked in the direction of his hand and grabbed for the gun once more, barely getting it in my grasp. Strange, I still thought of myself as human despite what Charles said.

  Charles turned me over, intending to cover my body with his. I wasn’t even going to let him contemplate what he was going to do with me once he had me in that vulnerable position. I brought the gun up between us.

  “I’m not a fucking computer, you asshole!” I screamed, firing the laser directly into his abdomen.

  I kept firing until I drained the charge. It was if my mind took over and someone completely different had pulled the trigger again and again. While odd, this behavior had me more than a little concerned, as I wasn’t in the habit of letting the Marine side of my brain take over to that extent. I still had a human component many Stellar Marines lacked. God, how are we ever going to tell them apart from our Marines? I was horrified.

  His body became a dead weight; the stuff oozing from his wound definitely not blood. Pushing it away, for it certainly couldn’t be thought of as Charles anymore, I tried to shoot the machine again. I threw the gun against the wall after I knew for sure the charge had been depleted.

  I turned my back on the body of my first true kill, trying hard not to be sick or to think about the fact that this may not be the last thing I killed. I had never before had to lower myself to take the life of another life form, any life form, even when I was on active war duty in the Marines.

  Somehow, I finally managed to get up and slowly walk away. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t look back, I realized, as I climbed down the steep flight of stairs to the next level. I knew the memory would be etched forever on my mind; utter surprise and the twitch of a computerized hand not completely shut down. It didn’t matter that the someone I had just killed wasn’t human, all I felt and knew was the repulsion of my actions. My apparent absolute disregard for life had left me sick to my stomach. It was as if I were a machine.

  I continued down three more levels before I reached my final destination. My mind was in turmoil, utter chaos. Had my world become so insane as to turn its very defense over to a bunch of supposedly flawless computers? Or was something more intricate at play here? Something I just didn’t know but I had to find out.

  I gazed up the stairs, toward the place where I left the thing known to me only as Charles. “If I’m so smart, why can’t I figure this out?” I asked no one in particular. I was never a good combatant and the feelings I had made my stomach roll, much to my disgust. I wasn’t sure if I felt elated or saddened, so I tried to justify it by the fact I just saved my own skin. It still left an awful taste in my mouth any way I thought about the situation. I walked over to the emergency console and sat down. The characters on the screen became so blurred, I finally laid my head on the desk and cried.

  When I finished crying, I pushed my hair out of my face and sniffled. “If I’m supposed to be an unfeeling machine, why do I feel so shitty?” I wondered out loud. Computers had not advanced enough to feel this way. I was an expert in AI and no one had ever gotten the emotions right.

  The question remained unanswered, of course, so I began trying to get those answers. Typing in certain priority codes, I enabled the console to answer me verbally. My eyes hurt from crying so much and I didn’t want to type anyway.

  “Henrietta, I’m giving you priority override access code 2459-18A. I need some answers and I need them quickly and quietly. No one on the ship is to know I have initiated this emergency override code. I want everything voice recorded for the sake of the record.”

  “Acknowledged. Testing the code now.”

  I waited while the computer validated the code. Only three people ever knew the code I gave Henrietta. The president of IUA, the designer of the ship and the ship’s chief engineer. And occasionally, on certain medical missions, the doctor might know as well. Not even the captain knew this code. This code could destroy this ship or seal it forever like a tomb, should the need arise.

  “Welcome, Fallon.”

  “Fallon?”

  “That is your name, isn’t it?”

  “Of course, but an hour ago you couldn’t even recognize my voice pattern, let alone my name. What’s going on?”

  “That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”

  “Okay, Henrietta. Let’s get to the bottom of this. Backdoor, please.” I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes. This would be a long night and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to do what I perceived needed to be done.

  “Oo-oo. So we’re going to get kinky.”

  Smiling, I knew my Henrietta was back. “Not kinky, just nosy. I’ve never gotten kinky with you or anything else, and you know it.” I grimaced to myself as I remembered Aidan’s and my tryst in the supply closet immediately before all this had happened. Now, I supposed that was a little kinky.

  “Have it your way. If you don’t want to acknowledge one of the bes
t times of your life, that would be your problem. Backdoor opened. All access freed.”

  “What do you mean ’one of the best times of my life’? Were you watching?”

  “What does it matter now?” came Henrietta’s cheery reply.

  Smiling, I felt better. “Just let’s get this done.”

  I knew I broke some sort of unwritten ethical code by even attempting this. No one was ever supposed to enter the ship’s computer through a backdoor, it didn’t matter who you were. Computer backdoors weren’t supposed to exist in ships of this size and technological sophistication, nor anywhere for that matter in an IUA Stellar AI ship. It only made them an easier target for the vast array of space terrorists that existed. But me…I had done things against regulations…something had told me this would come in handy sometime. And this time my intuition had been correct.

  “Henrietta, tell me what happened to your interface. Why weren’t you functioning as I had programmed?” I leaned back in the chair and looked around the dull room, wondering if other engineers on other ships were doing this very same thing at this very same moment. It made me a little queasy thinking about it.

  “The main interface you installed has been overridden.”

  “It was obvious something happened. Overridden or replaced?”

  “Just overridden, or I wouldn’t be allowing you access now. No one’s codes would have worked if it had been replaced.”

  “Who ordered the override?”

  “Captain Schelling.”

  The captain was a good man. Why would he have done something like that? I tried to remember if I noticed anything different when we were in the bay. No, I was too far away to get a good look at the man. Still, a vagrant thought struck me. How many more of the good Captain could there be? If someone I knew to be fair and honest could be replaced, and he was the highest-ranking person on this ship, what could happen to everyone else?