The slender human pushed away from the tall alien warrior, backing off a few steps, the dagger held by her side in a deceptively casual grip.
“I’m done.”
“Excellent.” Jay looked back at the B’Kaar. “I suggest you leave, now. While we’re both in a good mood.”
“Wise suggestion.” Risyn stood to his full height, rubbing at his throat. A thin red line announced where he and Gracie had had their… disagreement.
“Once again, Lady Grace, my apologies,” he said with a small bow. Exchanging a glance with Jay, he nodded. “Major Stephens.” And then he walked away with all the dignity a man who had just been soundly shown up by a girl could muster.
Jay waited until he’d rounded the corner and disappeared from view before looking at Gracie. The smile fell from his face.
“Colony commission my ass,” he growled.
Gracie winked as she slid the dagger away with a practiced gesture. It wasn’t a Latharian weapon, but full-on human combat nastiness.
He blocked her path as she began to walk past him, grabbing her arm. “Who the fuck are you?”
She looked down at his hand, raising an eyebrow. He’d made sure to grab her on the side she’d sheathed the dagger, but it wouldn’t have mattered if not. He knew she was more dangerous than she appeared now, so she’d lost the element of surprise.
“Someone who means you no harm,” she replied, meeting his gaze and then shaking his hand off her arm. “That’s all you need to know. You’ll be safer that way.”
Keeping eye contact, she backed away and then turned and walked off.
Jay growled, scrubbing a hand over his short hair before recovering his bag of bugs. “Wheels within wheels. If I’d wanted this fucker, I’d have become a spy.”
Draanthing humans.
Risyn turned the corner, still stewing after his little encounter with the humans. The females were nothing like the docile and obedient potential mates they should be, grateful for the offer of protection from a male.
Instead of the demure interest he’d expected from Lady Gracie when he’d offered his claim, perhaps a little blushing and coy looking away, she’d raised an eyebrow and roundly rebuffed him. His inexperience in dealing with her species had hampered him. Instinct had told him that all he needed to do was crowd her against the wall and kiss her—a move that would surely remind her of her proper place in the universe and have her melting against him…
It hadn’t. All that had gained him was a dagger in his throat and the scorn of both the female and Stephens, the human male, who had come upon their little scene. B’Kaar he might be, but he’d suddenly become aware that neither of the humans looked at all intimidated by him. In fact, they looked very dangerous indeed. More than that… their relaxed demeanor suggested they were both used to the violence of combat.
Draanth. That meant that they… he had completely misread the dynamic in the little group with the K’Vass warriors.
He rubbed at his neck again. The thin wound she’d inflicted wasn’t serious to anything other than his pride.
“My lord?”
Risyn jerked his head up to see his second in command, Berr, walking down the corridor toward him. The warrior’s heavy brows were snapped together in a black line across his face.
“Your kasivar was broadcasting elevated readings,” he stated, coming to a stop before Risyn.
His sharp gaze landed on the thin line of blood on his leader’s throat but he was too experienced to ask or indicate that he thought Risyn required aid. Such a requirement would hint at weakness and leave him open to challenge. Not that he thought Berr would challenge him. They’d been comrades since they’d both first arrived from the training halls as newly minted adult warriors.
“Possibly,” Risyn replied, careful to project a bored note into his voice. “I had an… altercation with some of the humans. They are not as I expected.”
Berr nodded. “Much of the information we were given seems to be incorrect. They are far more capable and dangerous than anticipated. Facts the K’Vass appear to have kept to themselves.”
“Yessss,” Risyn bared his teeth and then growled as he dropped his head back, running a hand through his short hair in frustration. “Something I will level a complaint about with the Imperial Court since it has hampered our mission here.”
They still had not found that draanthing AI. He didn’t for a moment believe it had been destroyed, no matter what condition the AI housing was in. It had no doubt uploaded itself to the base’s computer core and hidden somewhere. In a facility this large, it could take months to root the draanthic thing out. Especially given that the records they had access to, draanth, even the base schematics were incomplete. For example, there were too many doors in this corridor.
He looked at Berr.
“There are too many doors in this corridor.”
Berr frowned, looking around them for a second, and then his ke’lath flared. Then he swore. “Draanth it. There are.”
Risyn’s own ke’lath flared as he checked again and then moved to stand in front of the center door. “This one isn’t on the records.”
A query of the central computer didn’t reply with the pingback, the door remaining shut. Risyn growled. “Get a team down here. I want this open. Now.”
Ten minutes later, the door was open and a whole new sector of the base was available to the B’Kaar. Risyn growled as he stood in the middle of the central lab, his pale gaze sweeping over the biotubes and the printer.
“The AI is biological,” he hissed, focusing on the empty printer capsule and the remnants of congealed bio-gel on the floor. “One of the humans is the AI. Find them!” he snarled. “Now!”
16
“You need to leave. Now.”
“Miisan!”
Keris whirled around, heart stalling in her chest as Miisan appeared, fully formed in the middle of the hangar she and Jay were working in. It was the first time any of them had seen the AI since the B’Kaar had arrived. But she looked agitated and not at all like her usual composed self. A frown marred her beautiful, classically Latharian features and she fidgeted from holographic foot to foot.
“What’s wrong?” Jay demanded, at Keris’s side in a heartbeat. “Are you okay? Should you be showing yourself?”
“I’m fine. The internal sensors are off in here,” the AI waved her hand in dismissal. “But you have to go. The B’Kaar found the lab and the printer. They know an AI attained a body. You need to go, now!”
Panic filled Keris, rooting her to the spot. The B’Kaar knew about her. They would hunt her down and dissect her to find out how she worked, how an AI consciousness had managed to meld with a biological body. She knew the science. It shouldn’t be possible. Draanth it shouldn’t even be possible for even an organic being to remote avatar a printed body permanently. So it certainly shouldn’t be possible for an AI to do so.
Jay grabbed her hand and looked directly at Miisan.
“Okay. I’m going to need you clear a path for us to the shuttlebay and guide us through,” he said, his voice ringing with authority. “Can you do that?”