Chapter 7

“Your AI is pretty helpful if she was able to tell you that,” Sheba’s image said to Sol over the com. “Why?”

“I don’t know, and I’m not guessing on an open line. I can tell you that we saw some hoppers from Naxos en route while we were coming in though,” she said. “There are supposed to be protests or riots in Goshen.”

“There’s more to this story. Are you going to need help getting out with two ships?” she asked.

Sol considered. “Is that an option?” he asked.

“If they’re scurrying off anyhow ... She can spare the people. Where is it?” She asked. Sol noted that she hadn’t used the ship’s name.

“Antioch,” Sol said. “Rendezvous at our normal place. I’ll explain everything then. Hopefully, by then, I’ll know what’s flying.”

Sheba nodded and the screen went blank.

A few minutes later, Sol brought Sophie back up on the com.

“Where are you?” he asked.

The screen came to life, and Sol saw Erinys standing in the lobby of the resort. It looked like a hustle and bustle beyond what was likely usual. “Am I looking through your eyes?” he asked.

“Yes,” her disembodied voice answered.

“Ok, change in plans. We’re leaving the other ship. Send a note to its computer thanking the agency for moving it to another location, and make sure to sign my name.” Sol said.

There was no agency, of course. But Eliza’s pirates would need something explaining why they had Sol’s ship if they were stopped on the way out.

“So you’ll pick us up at the resort,” Sophie said.

“Yeah. Go the docks,” Sol told her.

“Good,” she replied. “The resort is a mad house. Getting to the port is going to be crazy.”

“I’ll see you in five,” Sol said.

–

Erinys sat down in the First Mate’s chair and Sophie stood behind both seats as the ship made its way out of the atmosphere.

“I recognized Bertram Baio, the CEO of Naxos Agricultural, which is basically a subsidiary of Alphan,” she said. “He isn’t even from Naxos. He grew up Inland, and was sent out to Naxos by Alphan just in time for the federalization of their economy. Anyhow, I knew if he was in Thiaki, something had to be up. It isn’t a tourist spot for people who have his kind of money. So I befriended his daughter, and used her to get into their suite. Then I hacked their computer,” she said.

“Why did you have to do that in their suite?” Sol asked.

“I might have been able to do it remotely, but I didn’t want to break through a bunch of firewalls. All of that is traceable. And a forensic analyst might wonder what the fuck they’re looking at the first couple of times they see my hacks, but at some point they’ll figure it out. I know I’ve fucked around with some low-level government servers. This is a little different. Corporations mean business. In the room, all I had to do was break into the computer. It was already synced with Baio’s com,” she explained.

“So that’s what you were doing with those boys?” Erinys asked.

Sophie grinned. “Really with the girl. The boys were an excuse to get Vanessa Baio to drop her guard and let me into her room.”

Sol smirked. “You’re good,” he said.

“I know,” she responded.

“Anyhow, the messages were between Baio and some Naxosian feds,” Sophie said. “They needed an excuse to clean up Thiaki, which I think means that they want to take over the local industries, selling water, distributing commodities and the like, and replace them with federally licensed industries. So they came up with the idea of the riots.”

“So the riots were started by the feds so that the feds could restore order in the form of a new licensing regime?” Sol asked.

“That’s what it looks like,” Sophie said. “So we needed to be not there. I have a record of the messages, of course, so that we can leak it later. But not now.”

“Sure,” Sol said. Then he continued, half to himself “the targets of the crackdown are going to be legal businesses. Not pirates. But if we’re there to make money, we’re targets.”

“And Eliza is a bigger target,” said Erinys.

“True. I hope she got her people out alright.” Sol said. Sophie said nothing.

“So how did you get into Baio’s room?” Sol asked her, after a brief silence.

“You won’t like it,” Sophie said. When there was no response, she explained “I told one of the boys that Vanessa Baio told me she was kinky and she wanted to give him a beej. So he whipped it out on her in the bathroom, thinking she was going to give him the blowjob of his life, and instead it terrified her. So I took one of the other boys into her room to comfort her. He might still be getting it on for all I know.”

“So we orchestrated sexually assaulting someone in order to spy on her dad’s communications with law enforcement,” Sol said.

“That’s one way to put it,” Sophie said.

“Are we the good guys?” Erinys asked.

“I don’t think there are good guys,” Sol said. “There’s the world, there’s suffering, there’s the government’s friends profiting from the suffering, and there’s us.”

“Also profiting from the suffering,” Erinys pointed out.

“True. True. But we’re also trying to take some of the suffering away. And I don’t think you get to do that without some people being hurt in the process,” Sol reasoned.

“I don’t like it,” she said.

“Neither do I. But I like it more than being locked up on waterworld while some feds take Sophie apart to see how she works,” Sol said.

Erinys grimaced, but she didn’t argue.

“We have another problem,” Sophie said. “There are two hoppers coming at us from different directions.”

“What do you think they’re interested in?” Sol asked.

“They probably just want to make sure we’re not criminals,” she said.

“We are criminals,” Sol pointed out.

“True, but they won’t know that. That isn’t the problem,” she argued.

Sol looked at Erinys. “There’s an APB on her, isn’t there?” Sol asked.

“Nicole ... your last name was Doukas?” Sophie asked her.

Erinys turned around to look at her. For a moment, she seemed confused by the attention. Then realization dawned.

“Yes. If they search the ship and find me...” she trailed off.

“They’ll send you to Milos,” Sol said.

“I’m not missing; I’m here. And I’m not going to Milos,” she said.

“Then we’re all going to spend some time in a federal station tonight trying to explain what the fuck is going on,” Sol said. “They’ll want to make sure I’m not pressuring you or something.”

“I...” she started to speak, then stopped.

“Whatever we’re doing about this, we need to do it fast,” Sophie said. “I think if we jettison the tender in the next five minutes, they won’t realize it came from this ship. Any longer than that, and it’ll be too obvious.”

It was clear what Sophie was suggesting. But Sol didn’t think Erinys would want to do it.

“I don’t want to go back there, Sol.” She said.

“The APB will continue to be there. I’m not going to hack a federal law enforcement database to change it. That’s playing with fire. I can issue her a new identity if the APB is gone,” she said.

“And the only way for the APB to be gone...” Sol said.

“Is for me to be found ... is that it?” she said. The lack of options were dawning on her. “I want to stay here, Sol.”

“Sophie, what are our options?” Sol asked.

“Get her in the tender, and let the feds take her to Milos. We can be there in a week to pick her up and give her a new ID. That or hope these feds are too occupied to take too much of an interest in us. But we need to make a decision right now if we’re going to get her out of here before the tender will be picked up on their scanners. They can’t know its coming from Sinaan Reis or we might as well turn ourselves in as the kidnappers,” she said.

“Erinys doesn’t run,” she said. “Ok, dealing with my husband for one more week is a small price to pay for freedom.” But it wasn’t, Sol knew. For her, it would be a big price. He wished she didn’t have to pay it.

Sophie stayed in the foredeck as Sol ran Erinys to the tender at the back of the ship.

“You can fly this thing?” he said.

“Flying’s easy. And I won’t be flying it that long,” she said.

“What’s the name of the café where you worked?” Sol asked.

“Its stupid,” she said.

“I don’t care. I want to know where I’m meeting you in seven days,” he told her.

“Its called the Galloping Reindeer – stupid name. There aren’t any reindeer in Milos. I don’t think there are any left anywhere,” she said. “And I don’t even know if they gallop.”

“I’ll buy lunch,” he said.

She opened the door to the tender, then turned around and kissed Sol. Her body melted into his as she did it. He put his arms around her and held her. Her breasts pressed against his body. Her kiss was tentative, even cautious, as if part of her was fighting against it. She pulled back, looked Sol in the eyes, and said “thanks, Sol.”

Speechless, Sol backed out of the room and closed the door. The bay doors opened and the tender lifted off. As soon as the tender was clear of Reis, Sophie banked away from its flight path.

–

“We’re just coming back from a short vacation in Thiaki, sergeant. We were in a resort, nowhere near Goshen. So I didn’t see anything about any protests,” Sol heard himself say.

“Yeah, this is all just a formality, and I apologize for it,” the cop said to Sol. “You recognize my stripes?”

“I was drafted to provide unarmed support for the Federal military during the rebellion,” Sol explained.

“We fought on the same side,” the officer said. “What brings you to a separatist shithole like this?”

“Curiosity, more than anything,” Sol answered him. “I’ve never seen a planet that’s just water like this.”

“The beaches are nicer in Kithira. Even Kimolos, if you can deal with the sun. This place ... I don’t know what the fuck you were thinking,” he said, smiling faintly as he said it. “You can have your documents back. The resort has a record of your stay. I hope you learned your lesson,” he chuckled. “And take care.”

The whole thing had lasted a handful of minutes, and Sol was on his way. The officer hadn’t asked how many people were on board, leading Sol to conclude that he’d scanned the ship for bio-signs. Ditching Erinys had been the right move, as much as it hurt. Sophie waited for the officer to completely shut the door to the ship behind him before coming out of the foredeck where she’d been hiding.

Small moments underscored for him that she wasn’t human. This was one. She met his gaze without any problem. Perhaps she realized that Sol used her cold logic to convince Erinys of what he already knew. Perhaps she did not. Either way, social awkwardness wasn’t in her program. And sometimes, that made her truly awkward. Sophie smiled and said “good going, cap’n.”

“Thanks,” Sol said. He headed up to the fore-deck and took the helm. He yelled back to Sophie, “any news if...”

Sophie, of course, had followed him to the deck, and interrupted him. “If Erin’s safe? She is. They’re talking about her on an open channel. Good news, Sol. It sounds like she made up a story about how she got the tender and they’re buying it.”

Because Sol was worried that he was out a tender.

She waited a few more moments and then, in a more serious tone, gave Sol the second piece of evidence that she was not human, and never could be. “You know we might be better off this way,” she said. “I know you’re upset. She was growing on me, too. She treated me with respect, even though she knew what I was. And I know you and her were becoming close. This lifestyle, though. Its not anything she knows. And its only going to become more and more dangerous the further outside of the law we go.”

Sol knew that to be true as well, but he resented hearing her say it.

“My job is to offer you the other perspective, Sol - the one you don’t see because of your emotions, or because of your good character,” she continued, seeing his scowl.

“I thought you wanted me to have a moral compass,” he said.

“Then Milos is only a week away,” she said.

“Ok, lets get to Corfu,” Sol said. The dark expanse of space between Thiaki and Corfu suddenly, and for the first time, seemed foreboding to Sol. He hit the FTL drive and settled in for the journey.

–

Sophie waited almost a complete day before broaching the subject with Sol again. “Sol,” she said, “I’m sorry you’re upset.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Yeah, asshole, really,” she said. “My job here is to make you happy and do what you want. If you told me to blow my head off, I wouldn’t even think twice. I have emotions like you do, but they don’t inform my decisions. Talk to me.”

“I think we sent her back to an asshole. She was opening up. I’m worried we betrayed her somehow,” he said.

“We didn’t betray her any more than we would be betraying her by forcing her into our lifestyle. Are you kidding?” she asked.

“Are you suggesting that we leave her in Milos?” Sol asked.

“I think you ought to strongly consider it,” she answered, “if for no reason other than that if it isn’t an option, you’re not really making a choice. And this is a big one.” Sol didn’t respond for a few minutes.

“I’m keeping my promise,” he finally said.

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘if you love something, set it free’?” she asked him.

“No,” he said.

“Well, it’s an old expression, and my memory is better than yours,” she said, grinning. “If she chooses to stay in Milos, then having her aboard Sinaan Reis would have been a real problem. It would mean that she never really wanted to be here in the first place. And, lets be honest, its challenge enough having someone on this ship who is inexperienced. Having her here if she doesn’t want to be here would be a disaster. But I think the more likely outcome of all of this is that she’ll face whatever it was that she was running from, now that she’s seen some real danger, and the monsters of her past will be revealed to be phantoms. She’ll come back to us refreshed and even more eager ... if that’s what you want.”

“That was pretty poetic for a machine,” Sol said.

“It wasn’t poetry. It was my observations of you sacks of blood and flesh,” she offered. “Now, lets deal with present problems. Thiaki. If its compromised...”

“Regardless, I need my damn tender back,” he said, not yet ready to change the subject. Then, after thinking about what Sophie said for a moment, he added, “its going to make things with Eliza even harrier,” Sol said.

“Yeah. But it also means that nearby Cepha may be next. Thiaki’s water industry wasn’t exactly a high priority of the federales. That didn’t stop them,” she said.

“You’re right,” Sol realized.

Realization dawned on Sol. She was right, but what she was suggesting was that Eliza and her merry band had a limited time before their situation became extremely dangerous. Sophie was telling Sol to keep his options open.

“You’re pretty cold,” he said.

“Someone has to be,” she said, smiling as if to take the edge off of what she was saying.

“Maybe there’s a way to...” He let the thought dangle. He wasn’t going to be able to work out how to protect Eliza until he better understood what their working relationship would be. And he had a feeling that had changed – however new their working relationship was – in the crackdown on Thiaki.

Left unsaid was what the feds were doing about Dolgas, and whether any of this had to do with him somehow. Whether Sophie was thinking about it – Sol had no idea if androids daydreamed of electric sheep – Sol didn’t know. One problem at a time.

–

Before she landed the tender, Erinys practiced the controls for a few hours. The controls were simple enough, even for someone whose experience sailing these boats was pretty limited.

By leaving Sinaan Reis when she did, she kept the feds from asking too many questions of her. However mad she was about the circumstances of her departure, she had to admit that, if silently, to herself. So after taking her story – she’d left Milos after an argument with her husband and made her way to Thiaki without letting him know where she was or where she was going – they let her go. She had half a mind to fly after Sol, but realized it would jeopardize both of them – to say nothing of how hopeless it would have been in a sub-light speed tender. The feds might not be paying her any mind, but that would change if she appeared shifty to them, and she had no idea how well they were watching the skies over Naxos or Thiaki.

So they’d taken her and her tender as far as Naxos, and let her go there. With the credits Sol had given her, she was able to hitch a ferry ride to Milos with the tender. Though the feds didn’t give her any assistance in regard to getting back to Milos, she noticed that one of them did check to make sure she had boarded the ferry. He claimed it was to make sure that she was safe. It wasn’t too long ago that she’d have believed him.

The world seemed different to her now. It was as if someone had tainted her view of picturesque Kastro. It had been beautiful and inviting once, a perfect resort town, even if her own living conditions were less than ideal. Now it looked like a plaster façade. The beautiful people who were willing to come with their credits brought dark secrets with them. The people who lived here were indentured servants, either dumb to their own subjugation or miserable about it. Like Erinys, they’d been willing to work too hard to make too little, and for what? The right to continue existing?

As she brought the tender down in the White Valley Lodge’s small port, she considered how far she’d come. Not too long ago, the idea of flying a ship into the lodge and parking it there would have seemed crazy. She wasn’t one of the beautiful people, coming from all over to spend time at the resort. Even walking into the makeshift port authority to sign in, and pay the requisite credits, made her feel somehow out of place. And yet...

After leaving the port, she walked into the small town that abutted the Lodge. From there, the restaurant – her old haunt, and her old employer – was only a five minute walk. When she got there, she peeked inside. It was roomier than Sinaan Reis’ mess room. But it immediately looked stuffy, like it had squeezed her into an oversized coffin for the years she’d lived here in Kastro. She knew that the gloss she’d put on it was her own. There was a time when she was happy here. Before she met Artur. Maybe even after.

And that was when she realized that she loved him. Part of her always would. But she didn’t miss him. And she dreaded the next part of her story ... going home. She swallowed her breath in walked inside. The response was immediate. Her friend Arianna was there managing the place. She dropped the dish she was holding and yelled “Nicole!!”

Erinys ... Nicole ... ran to greet her and gave her a hug. It was nice to see her old friend again, in spite of everything. They’d been through a lot together.

“Its nice to see you! I’m so happy you’re safe!! Kristof will be so happy you’re ok.” She said. Kristof was her husband, and Erinys was fairly certain that the news that she was ok would not make an impact on his day. He was a nice guy, a good boss. But he was emotionally aloof, at least to her.

“Have you seen Artur yet?” Arianna asked.

“I just got in,” Erinys explained. She heard her own voice squeak. Old habits were just that. She didn’t think that Erinys’ would have let her voice squeak. The place seemed to bring the meekness out of her, or squelch whatever strength she’d built in the last several days. This was Nicole’s home, after all. Erinys didn’t belong here.

“We have to go! He’s been going crazy. I don’t think he knows what to do with himself!” Arianna said, something that Erinys didn’t doubt.

“Has he been working my shift at the restaurant?” Erinys asked.

Arianna almost laughed. “No, honey. I don’t think he’d know what to do. He’s just distraught,” she said. “We all have been. I mean, Debbie was saying you were kidnapped!”

Debbie was one of the cooks at the restaurant. She had a big mouth. But this time, she wasn’t far off.

“How has Artur been managing? I mean, we don’t really have any money,” she said.

“We’ve all been bringing things by. Kristof was making food for a few days. We all pitch in,” she offered.

And rent? Utilities? How were they being paid? They hardly had been before ... But all of these questions were for Artur, not Arianna. And with that, Erinys felt the weight of Kastro on her shoulders again. Working long hours to be able to afford to live ... to survive really. And barely surviving. The bills started to pile, and there just wasn’t enough to pay them. So you lived with collection notices, threats to garnish wages, and sometimes even wage garnishments. Judgments – whether from the District Court of Naxos, or the District Court of Milos – added to weight. You sold your stuff so that you could pay rent, and so there wouldn’t be anything left to move when the time came to bounce from one place to another to another. There wasn’t enough money to move back to Placka, and definitely not enough to go back to Naxos, unless ... unless ... unless what? Her worthless father agreed to front the fare? And then she’d be indebted to him, and just as broke. Being broke on Naxos was as much of a hazard as being broke in the mountains of Milos – and much drearier.

So she’d just existed. It wasn’t living. And she wasn’t alone.

Even that wasn’t true. She was alone. So very alone. Just like everyone else here.

Other than the vacationers, of course. Watching them come in and out of Kastro sealed the sense that that the people here, the regular people, were a class of society that existed for the purpose of the others – the ones who Nicole had always thought of as the beautiful people. People who were sometimes, maybe even most of the time, ugly.

One of them was trying to get Arianna’s attention. Apparently, his sandwich wasn’t coming fast enough. “Let me take care of this guy. I think Kristof is coming in a few minutes, and he’ll cover for me. I’ll walk you home.”

–

Home. For Nicole, home had never been home. She’d had domiciles, places to reside in, but never a home. Her father’s house had been a place of torment, not refuge. Gia was a judgmental slum, and it would remain a slum if it continued to turn to God as a means of ignoring the failure all around – not that secular Naxos City was any better off. Placka was the same, a commercial hub for those who made money off of commerce – and it was filled to the brim with unskilled laborers hoping to be employed either by one of the commercial outfits, or one of the businesses providing support to them. Nicole had been a janitor for awhile. Then a waitress. She’d interviewed in an office once for a job as a receptionist, but she didn’t have any experience using a com – something every five-year-old could use – professionally. A fellow waitress at one of the places she’d worked suggested that she could make more money as a dancer. But she’d never danced, and shuddered at the thought of the exploitation – not that she wasn’t being exploited as a waitress. She’d lost count of the number of customers who’d slapped her ass, both in Placka and in Gia before she’d left. In Kastro, the experience had been much the same.

Her favorite job in Placka – really in her life – had been moving boxes around in a warehouse. It didn’t involve any heavy lifting, and she could be alone for large chunks of the day.

Alone.

Arianna was with her, leading her towards the door to her most recent “home,” and all she could think of was that Arianna, and soon Artur, were intruding on her loneliness.

The place where she had lived, with Artur, was a small apartment in a building full of identical nondescript small apartments.

It was Arianna, not Nicole, who knocked on the door. There were some noises from inside the apartment, and then the door opened.

“Nicole...” he said. Nicole searched his expression ... Was he feeling relief? Joy? Anger? “What happened?” he asked.

“Lets go inside,” she said.

“I’ll let you guys talk,” Arianna said. She hugged Nicole, lead her into the apartment, and left them alone.

–

Sophie went back to being coy and coquettish. Her uniform on their second day of the journey to Corfu consisted of tight athletic shorts, like she was about to go jogging, and a tight shirt. She said little, but made sure that there was always music on so that she would have an excuse to move, even subtly, to the music. And she stayed close to Sol without being smothering.

That evening, Corfu time, Sol asked Sophie to bring him a bottle of rum.

“Whole bottle?” she asked.

Sol grinned. “No. I want you to leave half the bottle and bring the other half, dumbfuck.”

Sophie grinned too. “Ok, captain. I’ll get you your rum.”

She came back with the bottle of brown liquid, and two cups.

“You’re joining?” he asked.

“I can’t get drunk, but I can taste the rum. And this way you aren’t drinking alone,” she said. Sol poured a finger for himself and one for Sophie.

“Bottoms up,” he said, and downed the rum. Sophie sipped hers.

“Want more, captain?” she asked.

“In a minute,” Sol said. “Sometimes, you know, this job ... it isn’t for human beings.”

“You’re saying I’m specially qualified?” she asked.

“No no. Your talents would be better put to use in any place of consequence. You’re wasted on me,” Sol said.

“I beg to differ,” she said, picking the bottle up and sitting across Sol’s lap. She put her arm around his shoulder. “There are plenty of computers at fancy universities. But are there any girls as hot as me?” she asked.

“And you don’t think that, of all things, is wasted on me?” he said.

She poured another couple fingers into Sol’s cup. “Are you kidding?” she asked. “All the way out here in the dark reaches of space? Just you and me?”

Sol raised an eyebrow, and took a drink of his rum. It burned pleasantly going down.

“If there was anywhere in the galaxy you could be,” Sol asked, “Where would that be?”

“That’s a hard question, Sol. I don’t really think that way,” she said.

“Ok, that’s a cheap shitty answer, and I’m not accepting it,” he told her.

She smiled warmly. “I enjoyed being with you on Corfu,” she said. “Maybe next time we go to Kimolos, we can go for pleasure instead of business, because I enjoyed that too. But right now? The place I’d want to be more than any other in the universe? Do you really want to know?”

Sol nodded yes. Sophie put more rum in his cup.

“I’d like to be in your bunk,” she said. Sol downed the cup and grinned.

“That’s not a bad answer,” he said.

“I didn’t think so,” she replied, standing up.

She took her shirt off as she walked towards the berths, and threw it on the floor. Her little shorts came next. She bent all the way over the slip them off, then flicked them with her foot. She wasn’t wearing anything under them. Sol followed behind her, watching her saunter. When she got into the bunk, she looked over her shoulder and smiled sensually at Sol. He reached out and grabbed her waist. She backed into him.

“You’re wearing too much,” she said.

“You should fix that,” he told her.

She unzipped Sol’s pants and fell to her knees. They were hardly inside the bunk, but, of course, they had the ship to themselves. Sophie fished out Sol’s erection and put it in her mouth. Whoever had built Sophie had made her without a gag reflex. She took the whole of Sol inside of her mouth and ran her tongue against his shaft the whole way. Sol was hard in an instant. He grabbed Sophie by the back of the head and forced himself further into her mouth. She made a noise – it could have been purring as easily as it could have been protest. Sol doubted it was protest, but he didn’t stop to find out. The vibrations of her voice made him moan audibly.

Sophie pulled back and looked up at Sol. She turned her body around and bent over in front of him, leaning on Sol’s desk. Her bubble butt was delectable. Sol grabbed it in his hands and rubbed.

Sophie looked back at him. “I’m waiting for you to fuck me, Sol. Don’t make me wait.”

Sol looked at here wide-eyed. “Now you boss me around?” he asked her.

“I’m sorry, master,” she said, immediately adopting a contrite demeanor. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just miss having the feel of your cock inside of me. Its been too long, you see.”

“You don’t get to decide when that happens, girl,” Sol said. He slapped her ass with an open palm. Sophie cried out. “You understand?”

“Yes master,” she said. “Please don’t hit me again.”

Sol smacked her again on the ass, and squeezed her. Sophie shrieked again. Each scream excited him more. He did it several more times, each time being rewarded with a shriek that sounded identical to real pain.

“I’ve been good, master, please!” She pleaded. Sol reached underneath her and put a finger against the lips of her sex. They were nearly dripping wet. With two fingers, he pulled them apart and forced himself in.