Devil May Care
Chapter 1

Copyright© 2017 by Dragon Cobolt

Science Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 1 - Faster than light travel and first contact has given humanity the stars - but it hasn't given us peace. With a world balanced precariously between multiple superpowers and extrasolar colonies constantly under threat from alien enemies, unknown dangers and good old fashioned human greed, the United States needs a new breed of special forces. DeShane Gallagher and her A.I companion Loki are one of them. They are Devil Troops. This is their story.

Caution: This Science Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa   Hypnosis   Heterosexual   Fiction   Military   Science Fiction   Aliens   Space   Interracial   Exhibitionism   Oral Sex   Public Sex   Violence  

“One.”

“Hayden Christensen.”

“Two.”

“No fuckin’ way, Hayden?”

Dey tossed one of her cards down on the table. “Tap for this card,” she said, jerking her chin to catch the attention of the table. The smart tabletop whirred and three of the land tokens – two island, one mountain – turned on their side. The piezoelectric fabric that the card was printed on hummed to life with the impact and showed a flickering holographic outline of the Nesruden Destroyer. The magically powered automaton – a 2/2 junk card she was mostly playing to bide for time – stomped from side to side.

“Three.”

“You know, Mark,” Fong said, grinning as he looked at the fourth member of the cramped rookie room. “You don’t need to count out loud.”

Marcus DuPont grinned – his smile a Cheshire frown, hanging as he was by his knees from a workout pole he had slung across the middle of the room. Sweat beaded along his exquisitely sculpted olive-brown chest, accentuating the fine lines of his musculature. Dey bit her lower lip and was once more thanked God for a fully integrated, properly postpuritan USAF.

Now try saying that again three times fast, she thought.

“If I don’t count, then how can you, ah, know how great I am?” Mark asked.

Fong rolled his eyes. “As I was saying-”

“Four!”

Marcus curled up, his chin almost touching his thighs.

Fong scowled. He tapped against the top of the table. “Another land – Wandering Falls. Comes into play tapped.”

The table shimmered and showed the new card.

“Oh, a life land,” Dey murmured.

“Don’t try and distract me from your horrible, horrible decisions,” Fong said. “You just said that Hayden Christenson, from the dreck that is the original Star Wars one-two-three, is the best Anakin Skywalker. You’ve got three remakes to pick from and you choose the original? What is wrong with you?”

Dey looked at her hand, mulling over her decisions. Fong was building up a hefty set of lands in his play space. She drew a card, then tapped her destroyer card. The image of the card swung at nothing and the table dinged as Fong’s health started to whirr down. As they finished clicking into place, she smirked at him over her cards.

“Anakin is a whiny bitch,” she said. “Whose inability to deal wiff his poor widdle feewings sets the stage for a purge that wipes out his entire religious order and kicks off three decades of warfare, strife and devastation that leaves literally billions dead. It takes a special kind of narcissistic baby to pull off that level of stupid, and Hayden acts the part perfect. Yeah, you hate Anakin. That’s because you’re supposed to hate him.” She tapped her finger in the air. “Checkmate.”

“Sixteen!”

“You are not at sixteen!” Fong said.

Marcus grinned and winked at them as he hung from the pole.

The door leading into the room didn’t open – regs said that doors were always open unless a cadet was sleeping or enjoying some consack time – but it was suddenly filled by another one of the peppy, bushy tailed cadets of the United States Air Force. Muller was one of the only people in their class who had actually been born off world, at Hamilton. Fortunately, the last few months of actual sim-time and shared combat training maneuvers had sanded off (somewhat violently) his urge to preface everything with an excited smile and ‘say, did you know I’ve been in space?’

But right now, the look on Muller’s face was anything but peppy and excited.

“Guys,” he said. “The Ruskies and the Reds have opened up!”

“Ah balls,” Dey said. “I knew this was going to happen. Didn’t I tell you?”

“DeShane,” Fong said, grabbing his cards up, hastily jamming them into his pocket. “Every week you predict something bad’s going to happen.”

“And they usually do,” Dey said, with well practiced fatalism.

Heading to the messhall – and the centralized vid units there – was tricky. In the grim, bitter days of the twenties and thirties, when it hadn’t been entirely clear who would get the immense amounts of money and acclaim that would come with tackling the great depths of space, there had been people who had thought that the future of America’s spaceflight program would be in the Annapolis Naval Academy. But the bitter debates and senatorial hearings and backroom deals had been shaken out and the simple fact had remained clear.

So long as humanity stubbornly stuck to its guns and refused to become a big happy peaceful United Federation of Hugs and Snuggles, there would need to be a wet navy and the nuclear quadrangle of surface installations, orbital silos, submarines and aerial bombardment. The idea was if every single superpower on Earth was ready to blow every single other superpower on Earth into a radioactive cinder at the drop of a hat, war would be limited. Restricted.

Civilized.

That had meant that the navy kept their subs and their aircraft carriers and the USAF got the stars. But after a disastrous string of flight errors caused by systemic doctrine faults, the USAF had moved their academy from Colorado to the biggest chunk of near Earth real estate that they’d grabbed back in the 50s: Ceres.

So, getting from the rookie bunks to the messhall required navigating tunnels that had originally been cut for a science and mineralogical research mission, before the belt had been uniformly abandoned to military installations and isolationist nutjobs in favor of resource rich planets with atmospheres and gravity and other useful things like that. The tunnels were cramped and jagged, cutting through the weakest part of the dwarf planet’s skin. Some were partially exposed to space, protected only by a hardened carbon composite tube with interwoven magnetic shielding.

They were all a pain in the ass.

“You know, the last time the Earth had a multipolar geopolitical situation,” Dey said as she turned to the side to squeeze through an exceptionally narrow bit. “It kicked off the first Big War.”

“That’s a real comforting thought to share, Dey, thank you,” Fong said, his voice tight.

“Multipolar?” Marcus asked, bringing up the rear.

Muller – who had was leading the group – looked over his shoulder. “Do you pay attention to any of the classes, Marcus?”

“Nope,” Marcus said, cheerily.

Dey sighed. “Multipolar as in multiple superpowers. So, after the second Big War, there were the Russkies and us.” She said, nodding. Marcus nodded, to show he followed. “But after the DV Drive was invented, anyone with silicon, carbon and laser etching above a certain level of fineness could shit out an starship capable of hitting Alpha Centauri within the week.” She snorted. “Hence why now, we’ve got us, the Russkies, the Chinese, the Brazilians-”

“Don’t forget the EU,” Muller said.

“I already said us,” Dey said, grinning.

They emerged from the narrow corridor into the mess hall. They came just as the PA crackled to life and the stern voice of the station commander started echoing from the walls.

“All cadets, report to the mess hall-”

“What amazing timing,” Dey muttered.

The cadets on Ceres were a motley mixture. The United States Air Force tended to skew towards female and slightly lower on the poverty line. Not so poor they didn’t get an education, but not so rich that they wouldn’t rather take a safer job somewhere else. Women tended to handle microgravity and radiation better than men – plus, being smaller and taking up less mass mattered when every kilogram you had to move around cost the taxpayer money, even in an era with cheap antigravity and faster than light engines.

The main vid units were slaved together within a few moments and showed a situation map of what the USAF computers still stubbornly tried to refer to as Ya’ii. It meant ‘sun’ in one of the native languages of the Americas.

Everyone else called it the same thing that the first explorer called it – and logged it at the United Nations Stellar Exploration Bureau, in one of the shockingly few times that global civilization actually recognized the ailing UN’s authority.

“It’s A Trap was amazingly well named,” Dey said as she looked at the red and green dots representing the sighted ships and their trajectories. Thanks to the fact that space was incredibly cold and even the coldest ship was considerably hotter than nothing, even passive sensors could pick up fleet movements.

“As you can see,” Commander Martinez said, sounding as if he was reading reports while he spoke. “The PLAF and the IRAF have both mobilized several of their heavy strike cruisers and most of their fighters in the Ya’ii system. It looks like the Tzarina wants to grab Ya’ii A and isn’t listening when Chairwoman Zhong says no.” He sighed. “As of this moment, we are at a state of high alert. Cadets, you will be ready to report to evacuation shuttles the instant the alarm sounds. It is unlikely that the fighting in Ya’ii will spread to SOL or any of the other systems, but we need to be vigilant.”

“Shit,” Fong whispered.

Dey looked at him – jostled to the side by another rookie. “What?”

“If they fight over Trap-A, then there’s half a dozen American colonies that might get scragged,” he said, quietly. “My aunt lives on Trap-A.”

“Shiiiiiiiiit,” Dey hissed. “I, fuck, I’m sorry, man.”

Dey put her hand on Fong’s shoulder, squeezing.

“That is all. You are dismissed.” The commander’s voice rang out.


Dey looked at her handheld, her thumb tapping through the feeds as Fong wrote a letter in the corner of the room. He had fully unfolded his handheld to use the keyboard, and paused every few moments to delete half of his letter, then start it again.

Twitter from the American colonies came in at a serious time lag – even the tech wizards of Mariner Valley couldn’t completely negate lightlag and even modern computers couldn’t compensate for the amount of data coming in and heading out at the speeds that Dey’s grandfather used to talk about when reminiscing about the Culture Wars. She wanted information now, not in three hours. The only tweets she had seen were all boring mundane shit. She scrolled past a few of the people she followed, then turned her handheld off.

“You wish we were out there?” Muller asked from where he was lounging – his arm dangling over the side of the bunk.

“Fuck no,” Dey said. “You think I want to get my ass shot off so the America can hold onto some real estate?”

There was a longish pause.

“Dey, why the fuck are you on Ceres?”

Dey held her arm out and curled her hand into most of a fist. Muller shot her the same gesture right back without even moving. Grinning, Dey shrugged.

“Would you believe I just wanted to go into space?”

“You can buy a new ship from Ford or Honda for less money than it takes to go to college, dude,” Muller said.

Dey sighed, closing her eyes. “Fine. I wanted to go into space and fly ships that are worth a fuck.”

“I wouldn’t fuck a starfury,” Marcus said from where he was doing stretches – voice faintly muffled by the fact he was almost kissing his thighs.

“You know what I mean,” Dey said. “Jesus, seventy five girls and forty two guys and I get crammed into a room with the three fucking worst.”

“I was born a girl, does that help?” Marcus suggested.

“Your neural architecture was male, doesn’t count,” Dey said, closing her eyes.

“Will you guys shut the fuck up?” Fong asked – his voice edged. Dey bit her lip, feeling a stab of guilt surge through her body. She sat up and opened her eyes at the same time. When she looked at Fong, she saw he was hunched over his deployed handheld. She walked over and knelt down behind him, squeezing his shoulders.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“What?” Fong asked – his shoulders tight enough to serve as steel cables.

“It’ll be okay,” she said. “Planets are big. Cruisers are only, uh, a hundred, two hundred meters long. So, even if one of the heavies gets shot down and smashes into the planet, there’s a huge chance it won’t land anywhere near where your aunt lives.”

Fong squirmed out from under her, turning around. “That is not actually helping, Dey!” he shouted, then turned and stormed out of the room. Dey fell back onto her palms. She shook her head slowly.

“Try and be optimistic for a guy,” she said, quietly.

“Holy shit, Dey!” Muller said, sitting up. “They’ve got some of the shooting on twitter.”

Dey was at her bed and on her handheld at the drop of a hat. She unfolded the screen, stretching it to maximum size, pushing it far enough that the edges fuzzed slightly. She curled up on the bed, craning her head forward as she tapped the play button on the uploaded video. It showed the scene above a local homestead. A farmdrone was trundling around, planting fresh crops – the only hint that it wasn’t somewhere on Earth being the two moons overhead and the fact the grass surrounding the homestead was bright, lurid purple. Then, streaking through the sky, three purple lines that looked as straight as if they were drawn by a ruler.

“That’s definitely heavy weapons – X-ray laser, maybe?” Dey asked.

“Can you see an X-ray laser?” Muller asked.

“The camera might,” Marcus chimed in.

More streaks – then a trio of bright white circles. Their shockwaves interlocked together, rippling and expanding outwards. Tiny flecks of static appeared on the screen. Dey sucked on her lower lip.

“Someone just got nuked.”

Five more nukes went off.

Then, shaking, the camera swung down to look at the horizon. A burning red streak – slow and roiling, marked with a bright white point at the very front – cut its way across the sky. The multiple sonic booms that rang out later overloaded the handheld’s audio pick up. The image shook, shuddered. The last thing Dey saw before it went black was a massive, stately mushroom cloud of dirt and ash rising above the horizon.

“Jayyyyyy-us,” Dey whispered, her voice reverent.

The three rookies were quiet.

“Who should talk to Fong?” Dey asked.

The two others looked at her.

“What?” Dey asked.

“Well, I mean, emotional intelligence-” Marcus started.

“I don’t want to get out of bed.” Muller didn’t even bother.

“You two are fucking assholes,” Dey said, her hands on her hips, scowling slightly. “And I say that as a professional dipshit. You guys are major assholes.” She stepped over, grabbing onto Muller’s arm. Being raised on a planet with gravity about 0.2 less than Earth’s didn’t exactly make him as light as a feather. But it helped that Dey had leverage and motivation. Muller scrambled to keep up with her dragging, landing on his feet with a thud. Dey glared at Marcus – getting him to his feet. The three of them walked out into the main barracks corridor and started to search around for Fong.

It didn’t take them long.

“Fong’s busy,” Gwen said, leaning against the door to her room.

“Busy!?” Dey spluttered.

“Yeah, talking to his boyfriend,” Gwen said, rolling her eyes.

“Talking?” Dey narrowed one eye.

“Yes, it’s a thing that people do when they’re together and not currently having sex,” Gwen said, shaking her head. “He also told me, specifically, that he didn’t want any of his insane roommates bothering him.”

“Bothering!” Dey threw up her hands. “I used the moral high ground on these assholes. Do you know how hard it is to get that?”

Gwen rolled her eyes.

Dey was about to open her mouth and educate the other cadet at the important bonds that were formed by being in the same room and the same trainee flight wing. They had killed simulated pirates with one another. That mattered. But then a cough sounded from behind her and Dey spun around, saluting. She recognized that cough, and she knew that it meant it was time to salute. That much had been drilled into her during her time back on Earthside Basic.

“Cadet Gallagher,” Lt. Commander Trevon said, his voice as quiet and demure as any that Dey had ever heard. He saluted her, so she could put her hand down and behind her back. She didn’t let that give her a mistaken idea about the slender black man – he could bellow and rage and give punishments as exacting as any of the other training officers. “The Commander wishes to speak to you.”


Dey sat, her back ramrod stiff inside of the commander’s office, and tried to not look like she had done anything. Not that she had done anything ... much. There had been a few late night visits to parts of the station she shouldn’t have gone, at least one case of going EVA without a permit. But in her defense, Tasha was gorgeous and she had been right – the crater on the far side of Ceres was romantic as hell. But the Commander didn’t look particularly upset or censorious. Instead, the older, distinguished officer looked slightly pleased.

“Cadet DeShane Gallagher,” he said. “I have some interesting news for you.”

Dey blinked. “Sir?”

The Commander slid a small tablet over across his desk. Dey picked up and her brow furrowed as she read the first few words. It was the result of some test – she had taken a test? She didn’t remember any specific test within recent memory – and said that she had an aptitude score in the high ninetieth percentile. She looked up and over the tablet at the Commander, her brow furrowed.

“Three months ago, you – and most of the other cadets, took the Ay-Sack,” he said.

Dey’s eyes widened once she realized the acronym – filtering it from the massive alphabet soup she had been eating since signing up with the USAF.

AI-PsyACT – Artifical Intelligence Psychological Analysis, Comprehensive Test.

It hadn’t been much of a test. Sit in a room, let a few highly paid DARPA shrinks put you under, scan your brain. Listen to a few sounds. The sounds had made Dey really sleepy, but nothing else. She had asked some of her friends and fellow cadets who had gone through the AI-PsyACT and heard that the sounds had given them splitting headaches, or (in Tracy’s case) caused blood to dribble out of her nose. She had figured, since nothing amazing had happened to her, she had failed it like everyone else.

She bit back a reflexive holy shit and instead stammered out: “I-I passed?”

“In the ninetieth percentile,” Commander Martinez said. “Now. I know you’ve wanted to be a fighter pilot since you arrived, Gallagher. But the simple truth is that we have a great deal of skilled fighter pilots. More so in this class, I’m proud to say.” He smiled. “But the United States has only thirty seven D.V.E.I.L.S in operation. They’ve saved more lives and advanced the cause of the United States more than any other unit of their size.”

Dey’s throat worked. D.V.E.I.L.S. DeVilbiss Engine Integrated/Logarithmic Systems. Devil Troops. She looked down at her hands, then up at the Commander.

“How do I sign up, sir?”


Being in the military, Dey had always expected to say goodbye to the people she worked with and heading off to new postings. She had just never expected it to happen mid-training. She shook hands with her roomies, they slapped her on the back, and within fifteen minutes, she was on a shuttle heading for Earth. The shuttle was a LM-9x, an old clunker that had been shat out by Lockheed Martin pretty much the instant that the DeVilbiss Engine had been invented. That meant it skimped on comfort and skimped on space and skimped on armor and skimped on weapons – leaving little but a thin skein of cheap metal and plastic wrapped around chairs and seats that were tolerable for an hour and agony for every hour afterward.

But it didn’t matter, because the LM-9x had the best rocket equations on the market for their price.

It also helped that the trip from Ceres to Earth, with even a cheap DV engine, took less than an hour.

Dey leaned her head back against the hardened headrest and closed her eyes, trying to not bounce in her seat as space warped around the shuttle, compacting what was in-front and expanding what was behind. She could have done the Alcubierre calculations, if she had wanted too. Instead, her mind went in the same repetitive cycle: oh my god, they actually want me for this. What if I fuck it up? Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Oh my god, they actually want me for this. And so on and so forth.

The LM-9x appeared above Earth with the shocking suddenness of a ship dropping out of FTL. A few dozen tracking arrays, civilian and military, registered it, got the IFF, and automated computer systems shut down the chain of commands that would have brought Earth’s half a dozen superpowers to a war footing.

The shuttle rocked and rumbled as it cut through the atmosphere. Dey clenched her hands on the armrests and waited.

When it touched down, she felt actual gravity for the first time in a year and a half. She tested her stance, shifting back and forth. There was a subtle difference between this and the AG fields of Ceres station. It took her walking off the shuttle and into the bright morning sunlight of fucking Nevada to figure out what, though. It was the fact that the Earth’s gravity, produced by the comforting pressure of raw mass rather than by the fluctuations of tiny warp-fields, was steady. It never shifted, never changed.

“Never change, Earth,” Dey said, grinning.

She was met by a pair of men – one tall and black, the other short and brown - emerging from a rectangle of ground that opened up and revealed an elevator shaft heading straight into the depths under the desert. The shuttle lifted off behind her with a whirr of jet turbines and the groan of the airframe. As it banked away, then kicked on its ion thrusters, Dey saluted the man who actually had the silver eagle.

“Sir,” she said. “Cadet Deshane Gallagher, reporting for duty.”

He saluted back. “Colonel Orion Star,” he said. “This is Dr. Treyvon Nguyen and Sif.”

The doctor smiled as he took Dey’s hand. “I’m the inventor of the basic synthesis between a human brain and an artificial intelligence.”

“And I’m the baggage.”

A soft, female voice had spoken from the air around Dr. Nguyen.

Dey nodded, shaking the doctor’s hand. “Don’t be so self deprecatory, Sif.”

“You’re not the one constantly compared to Balder, you know,” Sif said, sounding wry.

“I-” Dey blinked. “You invented Balder?”

Dr. Nguyen laughed. “No, no. No one invented Balder, not as we understand it. But, it’s almost a hundred and ten out here. I say we get inside before we continue with the introductions.”

The three of them stepped onto the elevator. The platform started to descend, the door closing above them. Almost immediately, the heat cut from intense to merely smothering. Dey didn’t mind it. She had been born in Floripeligo, and her parents had spent most of their lives fishing for relics out of Old Miami and Fort Lauderdale. It hadn’t paid well, but it had put her on a solar powered sailboat operating sonar for days on end. There was a reason why, when the military had seemed like a better choice than going corporate, she had taken the USAF.

There was no fucking way she was getting on a boat again.

No.

If she was going to be in a tin can, she wanted it to be something that didn’t have to deal with climate. Or water.

Or fish.

Ugh.

She realized the good doctor was talking and tried to look as if she hadn’t been woolgathering.

“-now, if I had, I’d be a very rich man. Now, uh, I’ve read your file, but just to be certain: You’ve never had any interaction with AIs?”

Dey shook her head. “Well, I mean, I know Balder. But does that count?”

“Well, it depends,” Dr. Nguyen said – he seemed to dominate the conversation, but as the last thing Dey wanted to do was make small talk with a Colonel, she didn’t mind. “Did you have sex with him?”

“I...” Dey spluttered. She looked at the Colonel. He raised an eyebrow and for a moment, rank didn’t exist between them. They were just two military types, and he was confirming that, yes, Dr. Nguyen was like this. She shook her head. “No!”

“It’s not that unusual,” Dr. Nguyen said, pushing his glasses up. “Balder instantiated out of an attempt by Google to make an automated fact-checking program. Self-awareness was accidental, but due to his own understanding of his code, Balder was able to incorporate humanist features into his attitudes. He has a sex drive, and quite a wide range of partners that he can interact with simultaneously. Furthermore-” He stopped. “O-Oh, ah, Sif is reminding me that this might be a somewhat ... over ... sharing...” He trialed off.

Dey, her cheeks dark enough to make her look black, nodded. “Yes. Uh. Sir. No, I only interact with Balder on Facebook.”

“Right.” Dr. Nguyen pulled his glasses off and started to polish them. “Well. Your A.I Psy A.C.T-” He carefully pronounced every letter. “-showed a very high tolerance for artifical intelligence integration. There are two kinds of AIs, Cadet Gallagher. There’s Balder, the self-generating kind, and then there’s Sif and other military AI, who are specifically, ah, designed.”

Dey nodded.

The elevator hit the lower level and the door opened. Here, the Colonel took over – either taking pity on the doctor or on Dey, she wasn’t sure which.

“Devil Troops are the cutting edge of special forces,” he said. “But unlike older special forces – the SAS, the Green Berets, the Rangers?” He looked down at Dey. “Devil Troops need a specific psychological makeup. We start from that psych profile and work backwards.”

Dey nodded again – nerves tingling along her back. “Sir, uh, permission to speak?”

Colonel Star nodded.

“Isn’t that, ah, dangerous?” she asked. “I mean, psych profiles aren’t, uh, reliable. And I’m good, I won’t try and be modest where I’m not. I’m the best cadet from Ceres. But I’m not, like, Ulysses Striker good.”

Colonel Star’s lips quirked up in a smile. “So, you watch Ulysses Striker movies?”

Dey flushed. “You know what I mean, sir.”

“No, I shouldn’t make fun,” Colonel Star said. “I’m a fan of old Schwarzenegger films. And he’s even sillier than Striker, if you ask me. But no.” He sighed. “This isn’t like the psychology of a hundred years ago. We’re not guessing here. We’ve put the people who have managed to keep AIs integrated with their minds for years into every kind of scanning device we have. We know what to look for, and we know how to simulate those responses.” He smiled. “You do belong here, Dey.”

Dey nodded again. “Thank you, ah, sir.”

She had been so focused on the officer and the doctor, she had barely noticed the rooms and corridors she had walked past. Now, she realized they had come to a door that opened into a small white room with a single table and a single chair.

“This is where you can meet the early-stage AIs that we currently have available,” Colonel Star said. “Once you’ve met one that you click with, the initial implantation will happen. The first few weeks of training is just getting you and your AI integrated. Once you are, then the actual Devil Rig gets implanted and the real hard work begins.”

Dey nodded. “What if I hate all of them, sir?”

“Well, then, you wasted a few thousand dollars of rocket fuel, a decorated Colonel’s time, and your own career,” Star said, his voice still light.

Dey – used to instructors without a sense of humor – found that deeply, deeply discomforting.

Then she was in the room – the door closed behind her. She stepped over to the table and sat down. The table shimmered to life, a few words in a soothing font appearing: To begin interaction, place palms on indicated positions. Dey rubbed her hands together, dragged her chair forward, then placed her palms down on the tabletop. She felt a faint buzz – and then a voice rang in her ears. It was a bit like a thought from her mind, but rather than using her voice and her words, it was someone else.

Hello?

She bit her lip. “Hello?” she asked.

Hi! The voice paused. Ah, you are a ... human?

Dey leaned back. “Well, I’ve got too few arms to be a Squid and I’m not trying to kill everyone in the room, so I’m not a Shockpod. I guess that makes me a human.” She grinned slightly. “And I’m going to assume that you’re not a dog at a keyboard somewhere, so that makes you an AI?”

The sound of an AI laughing was musical. Well, ah, I guess so. My name’s Loki.

“Oh, Hiddleson or Schrader?”

I beg- oh, which actor? I’m not that Loki.

“Why not?” Dey asked, her fingers drumming on the desk, though she kept her palms flush with it as she could. “Is it the silly hat?”

Yes, actually.

“So, I got a question: Why are all AIs given such weird names?”

That’s something I could ask you DeShane Gallagher. It’s like an ethnic train wreck.

“Welcome to the 22nd century,” Dey said, smiling. “My mom came straight from inner city stock – Grandma was part of the BLM and mom was a literal card carrying member of the Neo-Panthers. Less evil than it sounds.” She added, quickly.

Hmm...

“Dad, meanwhile, is an Irish/Greek mutt,” Dey said. “But he managed to drag the Gallagher name with him into marriage with Mom. And thus, you have me. DeShane Gallagher.”

Well, it could be worse, Loki said.

“Oh?” Dey asked.

You couldn’t be as hot as you are.

Dey blinked. She flushed, then coughed. “Uh, so, uh...” She shook her head. “I-I’ve told you about myself, uh, what about you?”

Oh, uh, did that joke not land? Loki asked – his voice suddenly shy and uncertain. Dey smiled ever so slightly, then shook her head.

“It was a bit out of the left field,” she said, grinning. “But seriously. Tell me about yourself.”

Well, Loki said. I’m based on a self-pruning neural pattern run on high speeds on a quantum computer. Once my internal logic patterns and empathic simulations were working, Dr. Nguyen put me in the godbox.

Dey arched an eyebrow. “The godbox?”

Yes. Simulated world with human interactions handled via distributed playtesting. Basically, I was the GM of an MMORPG. The godbox is a stress test for empathics, ethics, and general Turing test shit. The idea is that its better to see if an AI will go crazy and try to kill all humans before they are given access to high energy impact weapons and a cybernetically augmented human being.

“Now that you mention it, that does sound like a good idea,” Dey said, grinning.

Heh. So, after the GB, I went into Basic. Learned how to teleoperate devices, how to do basic programming, and finally, proved I could handle myself when it came to a Devil rig. Do you know how hard it is to run one of those things?

“I know it’s hard enough it requires an integrated AI rather than just a human brain,” Dey said.

Well, never let me show you my trial recordings. It’s embarrassing how many times I ripped my simulated human into very tiny pieces. Boy. Their faces were sure red.

Dey laughed.

That wasn’t a joke.

Dey laughed even harder.


“So, which AI do you want to integrate with?” Dr. Nguyen asked.

By this point, Dey had been talking for five hours. She was tired, she had grit in her eyes, and if it weren’t for the regular glasses of water she had been given, her throat would have been sore. It wasn’t that sitting in an air conditioned room and talking was more tiring than any of the training she had done while at Ceres. It was more the stakes were infinitely higher. The AI she was going to integrate with would be there for the rest of her life.

Devil Troops never stopped being Devil Troops. Their implants might be shut down once they retired, but an integrated AI required several trillion neural connections. Tearing out every single one was beyond the technology of even the Huntresses and the Perseus Mumblers, let alone humanity.

Dey thought about it for a few seconds. “Loki,” she said, nodding.

“Why him?” Dr. Nguyen pulled out a tablet and started to push buttons on it.

Dey smiled. “He made me laugh and said I was hot.”

The doctor nodded. “Well ... ah ... unfortunately, your psych profile here says that you’d fit best with Cadmium.”

Dey sat up in her chair, a bolt of anger shooting through her. But before she could open her mouth, the doctor held up his hand.

“Calm down, that was just the last part of the test,” he said, adjusting his glasses with one hand. “We were monitoring your brainwave patterns on the QDIR and, well, lets just say that the Loki/Dey interaction spikes were very high. But the desire needs to be subconscious, and the best test is-”

Dey kept scowling at him.

“-and, well, let us get you both prepped for surgery!” Dr. Nguyen said, hurriedly.

Dey shook her head. “Psych-op bullshit...” she muttered under her breath.


Getting prepped for surgery required Dey to strip, get into a backless set of scrubs, then lay down on a gurney. Several nurses came into the room and pushed her into a corridor which lead to a large operating room. Dey barely noticed the contact patch that one thumbed onto her shoulder. She felt more and more sleepy. Then everything went black.

Dey floated in blackness for a time. Then a tiny spark of light flared to her left. Then to her right. She looked one way, then the other. Her eyes widened and she grinned as a shimmering array of dots and patterns of lines appeared before her. They vanished as she reached for them – then she felt herself sliding into a deeper blackness. It was warm and strong, like arms enfolding her body. She felt her memories slip through her thoughts.

For a moment she was there, back in her high school gym locker room, lips locked with Henrietta Collins, their breasts mashing together in awkward exuberance, both of them celebrating their eighteenth birthday with smuggled in beer and no strings attached lewdness. Then she was back into the darkness. Pain flared in her arm – a memory of the boom arm of her father’s ship cracking her in her left arm during a gale. She had fallen onto her back and sobbed quietly while Dad had scrambled over to her.

The blackness again.

Then...

She opened her eyes.

[Ow, ] she thought – but her mental voice felt clearer and more definite than it had before. It felt like the difference between how she actually thought and how a video game or movie might depict thinking. She had an actual voice over in her head, rather than the muddled half-there sentences of her normal thinking.

Hey, Loki’s voice came through her head again. This time, though, his voice touched every part of her body, buzzing through her like a lover’s caress. Dey bit her lip to keep from moaning as she felt her nipples harden to tiny, diamond hard nubs. She looked down and saw that she was still in hospital scrubs. That made her nips real obvious. She put her arm over her breasts and sat up, feeling the material crinkle against her.

[So, uh, hi. Hi Loki... ] she thought again. [Wow... ]

This is, uh, intense.

The door to the room opened and Dr. Nguyen stepped in. He held a tablet to his chest and had a huge grin on his face.

“You’re awake!” he said, cheerily. “Have you begun communication with Loki? It can sometimes take a few minutes for the signals to move through the neural connections clearly.”

Dey closed her eyes. [So, Loki, officially? This guy is the worst.]

Nah, he’s not the worst, Loki said, and she felt his hands squeezing her shoulders. He’s just, ya know, kinda on the spectrum.

[Not every socially awkward scientist is autistic!] Dey said, laughing out loud.

I didn’t say he what spectrum he was on, Loki muttered. Those hands felt amazing. She could feel the rubbing sensation of his thumbs along her shoulders. She wondered how he managed that, and why it was loosening knots across her back. Then she stopped caring.

“I, ah, see he still makes you laugh,” Dr. Nguyen said, nodding. “So, I’ll let you get dressed and showered up and, uh, you can meet me in the recovery ward. We’ll go through some basic tests to make sure everything is working properly, and then we can move on to more complete integration.” He smiled, then bowed, and left the room. Dey rubbed her hand along her scalp, brushing her hair back. She looked down at the floor, then swung her legs out and stood up. It felt normal enough, though-

[Okay, is it just me, or does everything feel different?] Dey asked, wiggling her fingers.

All your nerves have been overlaid with nano-scale superconductors. Your reaction speed, if you let me take over what is normally handled by your goopy bits-

[Goopy bits, huh?] Dey asked, walking to a part of the wall that shone with a pale golden glow. Stepping close to it caused the door that was concealed to drop into the floor, a showering cubical concealed within. [Also, you doing the golden glow?]

Yup. I figured you’d appreciate FPS style go here, do this shit, Loki said. Now, yes, goopy bits. Very science. Most tech. If I handle your hormone transfer via simulated response networks, you can go into bullet time. For a little bit. Superconductors are all well and good, but hormones start building up if they’re not used and that throws your body all out of whack. The crash is shitty.

Dey nodded as she stood in the shower cubical. Her fingers went to the collar of her scrubs – and the shyness of a young girl came screaming back despite a year living out of people’s pockets in Ceres. Because, even on Ceres, you could find privacy. Maybe not in the communal showers, but ... still. She shook her head. [So, uh, do you ... close your eyes or-]

She felt Loki kissing her earlobe. Her skin tingled and if she closed her eyes, she could almost believe he was there. Her mouth opened quietly and she gasped as her tits felt the firmness of his hands. Her nipples tingled as they were tugged on and she squirmed, her arms reaching out and grabbing onto the narrow walls of the shower cubical. “L-Loki...” she whispered.

Shh ... he whispered.

“Y-You horny bastard,” Dey said, laughing.

I may have imagined doing this a lot over the past few cycles, Loki said, his phantasmal lips kissing her neck, her breasts, her belly, all at once. It was like being surrounded by ghosts. Horny fucking ghosts. Dey lifted one leg, trying to step into the shower. But exposing her sex gave Loki an excuse to lick her there. Her sex felt the pressure of his tongue, but when she looked down, she could see no movement of her folds. It was eerie for her brain to tell her one thing and her eyes to see another.

I can fix that, you know, Loki said, his hands caressing her back. She stepped into the shower, her knees quivering.

“Do it...” She whispered.

And quite suddenly, she was standing in the arms of an incredibly handsome, long haired, pale man. His hair was raven black and his eyes were the most amazing green. He grinned at her and Dey laughed, slapping at his chest. She felt the contact, but she knew to not trust it. If she let herself try and support her weight on him, not even a full sim-induction would hide the bruise of her ass hitting shower floor.

“You fucking egotistical dickhead,” she said, laughing.

“Hey, you were the one who brought him up,” Loki said, slapping her rump with one hand. Dey gasped, pressing against him, then kissing him hungrily. Her tongue and his danced together, and his hands caressed her back lovingly. She felt a closeness to him that she had never felt with any of her partners before. Dey laughed. She couldn’t help it. Her tongue danced around his, and her hands reached down, cupping his balls firmly, then squeezing his cock. She drew her mouth back, whispering.

“Bigger?”

His cock shifted.

“Bigger!” she grinned at him.

“Size queen,” Loki said, scoffing. “Statistically, this is quite insane.”

“Biiiiiiigerrrrrrr!” Dey groaned, slowly dropping to her knees. “If you’re going to be stuck in my brain, you might as well be able to fuck it out.”

Loki snorted. “Biological sexual urges are weird.”

Her lips pressed to the side of his cock. Part of Dey knew that there was no cock there. That anyone else, looking through a camera, would just see her looking incredibly stupid. But her brain told her there was a long, fat cock that smelled so utterly masculine right there. That her nose was filled with the scent of moisture and Loki. That her lips tingled with the contact. That he was there. She closed her eyes, her tongue sliding forward as she sloppily licked his balls, his cock, and his cockhead in a single, long, desperate lick. “Mmm!” She closed her mouth around the tip of his cock, looking up at him hungrily.

“I-I mean...” Loki said, his facade of calm cracking slightly as her tongue swirled around and around his cockhead. “Ah. A cock this big would, mm, cause ... damage.”

Dey rolled her eyes, then pushed herself forward. She could both feel the pressure and could breathe at the same time. It was bizarre, but she didn’t mind it. It meant her lips pressed against his hips and she could feel the bulge of her throat, and could still breathe in through her nose as she looked up at him hungrily, her hands on his hips. Loki didn’t even try to look disaffected. His face was a mask of pleasure, his hand caressing the back of her head lovingly.

“Fuck, Dey...” he whispered.

She drew her mouth slowly back, then plunged her lips forward. The loud, eager slurping sounds of his cock vanishing into her mouth filled her ears. Her hand reached down and she caressed her sex, fingering herself eagerly, her thumb rubbing her clit. She closed her eyes – forgetting the fact that she was in the Air Force, that a war was brewing up in the outer systems. That, in the surprisingly near future, she might be forced to fight and kill and die.

For now, she was with Loki, and that was enough for her.

She pumped her hand along his cock, her palm caressing the bottom six inches of his member as her mouth took the rest. Drool dripped down her chin as she looked up at his face, taking pleasure in the look of erotic delight crossing those elegant features. She pulled her mouth back, her hand working up and down his cock faster and faster. She jerked him off with the single minded eagerness of an utter cockslut, and Loki hissed as his balls clenched. Hot cum splashed her face. Filled her mouth. Splattered on her tits. Her eyes closed and she swallowed.

Loki, true to computer generated fantasy, tasted amazing.

More cum splashed her face and she sighed. Shuddered.

Came.

“Ahhh!” Dey moaned. “Oh fuck.”

Loki panted softly, his cock softening in her hand. Remember, he said, his voice coming from within her mind again. Never do this in public.

Dey laughed.

She toweled herself off – being groped a few times by Loki slowing her down only slightly. Dressed. Rubbed her palms along her uniform, adjusted her collar, and smiled at herself in the mirror.

I think we’re going to make a good team, Loki said.

[The bad guys won’t know what hit em, ] Dey said, grinning. [Come on. Lets get cool space Jedi powers.]

Please, Loki said. If anything, we’re biotics.

[Biwhats?]

Oh god, Loki said. I need to complete your education, young Padewan.

[I’m older than you!]

Those are biological years, don’t count...

And laughing, the two headed out. In the outer reaches of human space, battlefleets were mobilizing. Pirates were becoming more common. Aliens remained enigmatic dangers, barely understood by a humanity that had invented FTL travel before becoming a united people. The galaxy was a dangerous place.

The devil may care.

Dey sure as fuck didn’t.

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