She smiled up at him through watery eyes. Amazing how easily this body cried now. But these tears didn’t have the crushing weight and pain of the ones she’d shed for Jay earlier.
“Then what happened?” Risyn asked.
“Jay rescued me,” she whispered. “With those two aliens, Indra’s husband and the other one. They brought us back here.”
Risyn nodded. “So since then there has only been the six of you? The three human women, one human male and two Lathar males? No one else?”
She shook her head, eyes wide. “Why? Should there have been?”
“No, not at all.” Risyn leaned back in his chair again. “We’re just looking for something, that’s all. An AI.”
She blinked, using the slow sweep of her lashes to conceal her expression. They were after Miisan, not her. “An AI? Do you mean like the computer? Nyek said he’d been trying to bring it online but it’s damaged.”
“No. Not quite like the computer but it doesn’t matter.” The B’Kaar stood again, staying on his side of the desk as the door behind her opened. “Thank you, Lady Kelly. You’ve been most helpful. You may go.”
The humans were lying. He was sure of it. But about what, he didn’t know.
Risyn B’Kaar leaned back in his chair and studied the human male opposite him. Major Jay Stephens was… not as he’d expected.
Where the females had gone through stages of defiance, challenge and fear, all of which he could easily read and decipher, the male was a different matter.
Far from the weak-spined creatures they’d been told human males were, Stephens was tall and heavily muscled with a dangerous aura that wouldn’t be out of place on any Lathar. He didn’t move or act like a warrior though. A subtle difference that was enough to throw off Risyn’s readings of him.
“So, you’re telling me that the three of you boarded the S’Vaan vessel and took on an entire clan of purists to rescue your females? Without backup?”
Jay shrugged one shoulder, leaning back in the chair opposite Risyn.
“Being honest, I didn’t do much. Seren and Nyek took point and that paladin…” the human whistled. “Covered in blood, head to toe. I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, if you know what I mean.”
Risyn raised an eyebrow, declining to comment on the odd statement. He had no idea why a meeting’s location or time of day would make a difference to the commander’s combat ability, but it seemed significant to the human in front of him. Two of the women had made similar comments, so he assumed it was something cultural.
“You all traveled to the enemy ship together? And returned together?”
“We did.” Jay nodded, expression open and honest. Anyone would believe him.
Risyn did not.
The human was lying. And he was doing it so well it was almost imperceptible. Behind all the smiling exterior and smooth answers that matched the answers his compatriots had given there was a wall.
It was like a glass slope behind the human’s eyes that Risyn couldn’t penetrate. Not that he was telepathic, that was one trait the Lathar had never been able to tease out of their genetics, but his sensors were so sensitive that sometimes he might as well have been. Not with the human, though, and it set him on edge.
“So three warriors and three human females?” Risyn tilted his head slightly. “That is a large number of passengers for a shuttle that size.”
Jay smiled. “We did kinda have to get cozy. To be honest, I was out of it mostly on the way back. Took a hit to the head early on so I could have seen pink elephants with laser guns out there and I wouldn’t have known the difference.”
Risyn had no idea what a pink elephant was. The word didn’t seem to have a direct translation from Terran in his matrix. It must be some kind of ferocious predator from Earth.
With a rumble in the back of his throat, he settled in his seat, watching the human with an assessing eye. “So you weren’t aware of everything that went on during the rescue.”
The male grinned and spread his hands. “You got me, boss. Mostly I was making sure Kelly was okay, you know… gotta keep my eye on the important stuff.”
“Ahh… yes, impressing the female. Lady Kelly is very beautiful,” Risyn admitted. “You are a lucky male.”
Jay grinned. “Thank you, and don’t I know it. I have no idea why she chose me, but she did, so… I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Finally they were back on familiar ground. The alarm he’d been feeling and the suspicion of duplicity was merely the human hiding the fact he wasn’t as capable a warrior as he’d made out to his female.
“During your time here, did you see or hear anything that might indicate the presence of an AI on the base?” he asked, cutting to the chase.
Now he had ascertained that Stephens’ main focus was his little mate, Risyn had no qualms focusing on the B’Kaar’s primary objective here—the Miisan-level AI.
Just the thought of the thing sent a shudder down his spine. AIs, especially advanced-level ones, were dangerous.
Like a lot of B’Kaar clans, he’d lost family during the AI Cascade incident. Formerly his clan had worked with the emperor’s sister, Princess Miisan, herself in developing them. There was the hope that the empire could use them in heavy combat or against enemies like the Krin, where a biological warrior was at high risk. But it wasn’t to be. A test model had suffered a complete neurological breakdown as soon as its creators had uploaded it to a physical body. The death toll had been staggering. The B’Kaar had almost been eradicated, his father among the dead. It had taken him most of his life to gain control of the clan back for his bloodline.
And to find out one of them was still out there, not just a Miisan-level AI, but one of the test models… Risyn shook his head and smiled at the human. It was a good job they’d been in this area of space and just so happened to be listening in on communications between this little group and their home ship. Otherwise they might have missed it.
“An AI?” Jay frowned, looking confused. “Like one of those computer things? No, mate, we’ve barely managed to keep the main computer online long for anything other than basic life support.”
“Yes. A computer thing.” Seriously, how had humans managed to even get into space? Risyn bit back his sigh and nodded. “We got the message that you’d been sent to recover an advanced level AI.”
Jay blinked and his expression cleared a little. “Oh, that? Yeah, we were supposed to fetch a black box from some crashed ship, but according to Nyek, the thing was damaged.”
“A black box? The AI housing is silver,” Risyn corrected. Humans, so imprecise. “But you are correct. The housing you’re talking about is empty. My warriors are analyzing it to see if we can pick up some trace nano-code.”
The human looked baffled so he broke it down a little more. “As with biological life, if we pass through a room, we leave traces… shed skin cells, and trace amounts of DNA. With good enough sensors those can be tracked. It’s the same with an AI or a cyberwarrior in any system. As you travel through it, you rub against other coding and subroutines, shedding tiny particles of data. We should be able to track it if the AI has moved through the base’s systems and then figure out where it’s hiding. Don’t worry,” he smiled in reassurance. “It can’t hide for long. If it’s here, we will find it.”