Horny Gold

Hey, ya'll! Dakota here with a new freaking series!

My personality was basically formed by the movies and shows I grew up on. Terminator and Battlestar Galactica and Aliens and X-Files and Firefly and all manner of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy books. Much of my writing is me chasing the high of experiencing those stories for the first time. This series is going to be a homage to some of my favorite sci-fi stories and I'm going to shamelessly steal as much as I can. Hopefully, you'll find the resulting Frankenstein's monster of themes, characters, and settings unique while still being familiar. I don't exactly want to rewrite the Expanse or Firefly, but if you find yourself recognizing some shit, yeah, we probably read, watched, or played the same thing.

I don't know if that makes me a hack. I'm just trying to have fun.

Overall, I'm trying to write this more like an episodic show rather than a true novel. As in, a single subplot per episode with a somewhat meandering overall story arc.

Anyway, here's a story about a captain and his sexbot.

The ship looked different than she did on her listing. The polished, professional pics hid her "personality" well. She was an older model Spear-class Frigate, long ago decommissioned and converted first into a luxury yacht and then into the cargo vessel she was now.

"Is she flight-worthy?" Erwin Wu asked the rep.

"Abso, cap. She'll do you right." Friz Donner said with a typical spacer drawl. Wu thought the man looked like the spacer version of a used car salesman: the poorly worn uniform, slicked-back hair, and the narrow-eyed expression constantly studying Wu's own. "Drive got 'er overhaul two rotations ago. Scrubbers are new. Added a new fire suppression unit and an autodoc. Topline, aye. Big guns decom'd, of course. But PDGs are still opo."

Wu nodded, appreciating that the point defense guns were functional. He continued his walk through the ship. The living quarters were nicer than they had any right to be on a ship of her class, and while the cargo capacity wasn't the biggest, it would suit his needs nicely. He noticed, however, that most of the upgrades were cosmetic.

"Price?"

"Twenty million. Standard."

That was the entirety of his wealth. The totality of his haul from his astromining career and his retirement. At forty, Erwin Wu was ready for the next chapter of his life. But the idea of returning to live down a gravity well, ass to elbow with the teeming masses, filled him with such dread that he could barely conceptualize it.

No, it was the Big Black for him. Now and for always.

As dangerous as his former career was, it had been lucrative. But for every million he made, his company had made a hundred. It was time he worked for himself.

"I'm sure you think that's a fair price," Wu stated. They made it to the bridge, with Donner following as Wu opened hatches and inspected panels. "How long has she been sitting in your slip? Half a rotation, yeah? Anyone explain to you why that is?"

Donner shrugged but kept his expression neutral. "She's unique, cap. Price to match. No one has scratch enough for nothing, ain't ice hauling or passenger transpo."

Wu nodded, expecting this answer. He placed his hands on the con, the captain's main station. "She won't sell. You even updated her a bit, hoping someone would bite, but no one has. New scrubbers, autodoc... it didn't work though."

"You think overpriced, aye?" Donner stood a little straighter, his skinny arms crossed.

Wu pointed at the con's main panel. "These Spear-class models had a hefty design flaw. They were made during a time when radiation shielding was still poor and thus had major constraints in her computer systems. Highly compartmentalized. Slow. Using older, less delicate tech. These frigates were beasts in their time, though. Big, efficient drives, solid crew space, and absolutely deadly in a stand-up fight. But those computer systems... No AI and a half-second delay in processing in the Black can be a death sentence. Expensive to overhaul. Both in time and credits. An autodoc is cheap compared to that."

The skinny station rep scoffed. "She's a hauler now. No need for system upgrades, the likes you mean, for those jobs."

Wu nodded again. "Not in her days as a luxury yacht, perhaps. But piracy is on the rise. And no one wants to take chances with a boat that's fifty years out of date."

"Okay, cap. Quit icing the walkway. What's your offer?"

Erwin Wu turned, taking in the whole of the bridge. This ship already felt like home.

"Sixteen. But no financing. Direct coin transfer. I'm going to spend serious coin on updates, but she won't be your problem anymore."

He watched Donner carefully as a flood of emotions hit him in progressive waves. First, the near outrage at being lowballed, then the successful attempt to stay silent and process, the calmer calculations, then the subtle recognition that it was likely the best offer he could hope to get.

"Bargain hard, aye. That's a deal."

***

***

The jaunt from Ferris Station to Port Ever Evening was just long enough for Wu to familiarize himself with his new ship.

A working frigate usually housed a nominal crew of three shifts of four but had space for twice that. She could be operated by just one person indefinitely, though. Frigates were fast, maneuverable, and adaptable. That sort of flexibility went a long way in making them the backbone of any fleet.

For Erwin Wu, it meant freedom. No more rules other than those he made. No more following orders from assholes he was older than.

The captain's quarters, updated well beyond their military days, were almost obscene by any standard Wu was used to. He'd spent years on haulers where his "quarters" usually consisted of a coffin-sized crash couch with an attached vid screen. Here, his stateroom was larger than some ships he'd been on.

A large bed dominated the center with the crash couch tucked off to the side for emergencies. There was plenty of storage in locking cabinets that were made of actual wood. He even had a personal head and shower off the main stateroom.

The galley was large, able to churn out meals for two dozen people daily if stretched to capacity, with significant amounts of storage for extended missions. Wu calculated that, fully stocked and with a small crew, he could stay in the Black for almost a year without missing a meal.

Water and waste recycling were efficient, and the atmospheric systems operated just fine as far as he could tell. Still, he'd have those inspected just as soon as he arrived at Port Ever Evening.

There was also a small gym, a two-bed medical bay, and a community room. The armory, intact from her days as a military ship, was almost entirely empty of ordinance. Wu took time inspecting each one, making lists of changes he was going to make.

What eluded him, however, was a name. Erwin Wu had never named anything of this significance before, and the gravity of it weighed on him to get it right.

Port Ever Evening orbited a gas giant of a binary star system. It stood at a crossroads of four different jumps and thus saw a lot of traffic. The station itself was shaped like a large wheel, its spin creating a decent 0.8 standard gravity. The port was a city unto itself and was the perfect place to dock while he planned his next move.

He parked the unnamed boat in the docks, paid the fee for the next 24 hours, and disembarked.

The docks were busy with everything from traders to luxury liners to CDF military ships, with scores of Consortium citizens going about their businesses.

Humans, since reaching the stars, had adapted to the variety of places they now lived. There were squat Landrians whose large planet had high gravity, forcing their inhabitants to be shorter, with powerful legs. Spacers were nearly the opposite. They were tall, with slight builds and weak bones. Many third and fourth-generation spacers couldn't even visit gravity wells stronger than 0.5 g's without major medical interventions but, oddly enough, did fine during short periods on rotating stations.

There were pale Vidoans and skin-dyed, heavily-muscled Utadanites. The several dozen planets and moons of the Consortium were almost all represented in a few thousand meters of metal and plastic.

Wu needed three things at this port. First, he needed to upgrade his ship, especially the out-of-date computer systems. Next, he needed a job. Thirdly, he needed a crew.

No one would sign on to a ship that didn't have a run to do. And no one would hire a ship that was under repair. So updates came first.

The docking office gave him a list of on-station tech shops and Wu went calling on them.

He soon discovered, from the first shop he visited, that touching the inner workings of a frigate was both a tall order and more expensive than he'd first anticipated.

Two shops quoted him at five million and another at four. With barely four million left to his name, Wu couldn't both upgrade the ship and afford to pay for a crew or stock the ship.

His mood now heavy, Wu made his way to a restaurant and drowned his thoughts in a bowl of mushroom noodles and a tall tumbler of stellar gin. Upgrades, it seemed, would have to wait.

Pleasantly buzzed, he made his way back to his unnamed ship and was so lost in thought that he nearly ran over a woman and her pet robot.

"Pardon," he muttered, sidestepping at the last moment, not even looking up.

"Excuse me," the woman said. "Is this the way to the public docks?"

Wu pointed ahead of him. "This way. Can't miss 'em."

"Thank you!" the woman turned to the chair-sized robot. "Come along, Hatred. We're so close!"

What the fuck? Wu thought.

He turned and actually looked at her and realized she wasn't a woman.

She was a synth.

"Did you just call your bot Hatred?"

The synth girl laughed. "Yep. He's where I store my negative emotions."

The four-legged droid looked like a silver spider with a personality disorder. It shuddered and buzzed in agreement, little flaps of metal on its back fluttered in a simulacrum of purring.

"Oh. Naturally."

"Yeah, he's pretty great."

The synth girl was gorgeous in the perfect way only synths could affect. Her skin was flawless and only broken by thin panel lines across her neck and jawline; a dead giveaway that she was a synth. To Wu, she looked like one of the pleasure models found in higher-end brothels, constructed to elicit maximum lust (and coin) from her clients.

The synth girl skipped ahead of him to the docks as her bot scampered, nearly silent, alongside her.

Later, Wu would muse that if he'd docked his newly purchased ship one or two slips further down than he had, his life might have taken a wildly different course. It just so happened that he'd parked next to a transport freighter called the Anastico.

The synth girl stopped in front of the big cargo airlock and pushed the intercom to the Anastico's airlock.

When she spoke, her voice was cheery and enthusiastic. "Knock knock, motherfuckers. I've come to kill you all."

***

***

Erwin Wu stopped in his tracks.

Don't get involved, he thought.

"Little pig, little pig, let me in." The synth girl spoke into the intercom in a sing-song voice that was entirely threatening.

Her pet bot shuttered once, and then its back opened up, revealing a turret gun roughly the size of a mortar.

"Or I'll huff. And I'll huff. And I'll blow your house in."

Don't get involved, he repeated to himself. Then he looked at the heavily armed bot, then at the girl. If that weapon did what it looked like, it wouldn't just blow a hole in the airlock, but possibly the bulkhead behind it. A synth could withstand decompression. He couldn't. Also, there was a nonzero chance that thing could damage his ship in collateral damage. How the hell had she even gotten it on the station?

"Um, miss?" he said. "Are you okay?"

The synth turned to him, smiling cheerfully. "Sure am!"

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm doing what humans refer to as 'taking my pound of flesh.' In this case it will not be metaphorical. Or maybe it still is metaphorical, because I intend on taking more than one pound."

She shrugged and her bot made a hostile-sounding chirp in agreement.

"Sure but, um, why? I only ask because my ship is parked next to this one and if you're about to do what I think you're about to do, I would ask only that you delay a bit so I can leave. I'm hoping to avoid being caught in a crossfire."

"Yes! Right! How rude of me. It was never my intention to involve innocent bystanders but this does present a bit of a conundrum."

"How so?"

"Well, the meat sacks on the other side of this door are, in actuality, pirate scum. They attacked my ship and spaced my crew. I survived because I'm a synth and don't need to breathe. They stole our cargo and stripped us of valuables. Then they left the ship on the float and me along with it."

"They didn't kill you, though."

"I was offline when it occurred. The crew hid me in a secret compartment to try to smuggle me to Aurora. They don't like synths there, but my crew had a job, so Hatred and I went into a timed hibernation. When I woke, I discovered my crew was all dead, and the ship was ransacked and barely flight-worthy. I pieced together what I could from sensor data and was able to ID them by their drive signature. I've been tracking them ever since. I've waited here for approximately a quarter rotation after calculating a ninety-three percent probability that they'd need to resupply here, eventually."

"And your conundrum?"

"Oh, that if I wait even one minute longer to kill these fucks, I'll go rampant."

"Look, revenge is something I'm familiar with but you understand that if you blow a hole in the side of this station, they'll hard reset you? Scrap heap and all that?"

"Maybe. But not before I send them all into the dark oblivion."

"Okay," Wu said slowly, the kernel of a plan taking form in his head. "If you're open to it, maybe we can help each other."

***

***

Her name was Iana, and she was no mere synth.

"You're a what?" he asked her again, thinking he misheard. He'd managed to get her away from the airlock and down the docking corridor. She wouldn't be moved any further because she was keeping a lookout for the crew of Anastico.

"Decommissioned military AI," she repeated. "I served ten years as a light cruiser in the Colonial Defence Force."

Erwin Wu wasn't born yesterday. He knew that the military regarded their AIs as sovereign citizens in service of the Consortium, the same as any enlisted grunt. Military AIs were more than just smart; they were sentient. That sentience made the slavery of robots impractical for AIs if they were to be trusted with any real responsibility. AIs were expensive to create and incredibly important to the functioning of large ships. After an incident at the turn of the century, trying to subjugate them proved more trouble than it was worth.

After their term of service ended,d they were discharged with a pension and benefits the same as any veteran. Although many chose to keep the form of a ship of some type, it was increasingly common for them to choose a synthetic human body. Still, Wu had never met one before.

Iana had served as the brains and personality of an entire damn warship.

"How about that little guy?" he asked, pointing toward Hatred. "You said you store emotion in him. What's his deal?"

"His deal is me. He is me. Well, partly."

"What do you mean?"

"After my service, I had the big mopes in the worst way. I built him as a companion and also to store my negative emotions."

"Like your hatred?"

"Yep! But also anger and grief and sadness. Honestly, I don't know how you meat sacks keep all that stuff in the same head."

"It keeps life interesting."

"Yuck. With all that bad stuff stored neatly away, I could focus on my future."

"And what future is that?"

"Well, itwastraveling around and exploring the galaxy until those asswipes ruined everything. But I really like traveling. Personality holdover from my service days, obviously. So I was hiring myself out as a pilot and mechanic."

"That so?"

"Yep. Turns out I'm kind of good with running ships. Who'd have thought?"

Wu told her of his plan, with her staying silent as he talked.

"So, in return for you helping me enact justice, you want me to help do some upgrades on your ship?"

"Yeah, that about covers it."

Iana didn't hesitate. "Deal."

Piracy was almost always a crime of opportunity. Even with jump gates stitching the Consortium together and the CDF patrolling major transit lanes, space was still mind-bogglingly big. There were plenty of places for pirates to operate.

They waited until the Anastico left the port and began shadowing her.

Six hours later, Erwin Wu sent the distress signal when they were about halfway between Port Ever Evening and the jumpgate leading to the Flores system.

Faking an engine problem was relatively easy and Iana helped Wu shut down several life support systems while he got ready in an evac suit.

The tightbeam distress call was pointed directly at the Anastico, which was the closest ship to them at about a hundred thousand kilometers.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday," Wu spoke from the con, keeping his voice steady and professional. "I just had an electrical shortage to my aft inverter. And my backups don't seem to be functioning. I'm losing power fast and could use some assistance."

A wounded frigate was an enticing target for any would-be pirate. It was an opportunity that Wu hoped they wouldn't let pass.

When the Anastico slowed and then turned, he knew they'd taken the bait.

While the frigate had an armory, it didn't come with much in the way of firepower. There was a single breech shotgun with a standard ship-safe loadout. The gun's design was basically unchanged from three centuries earlier and used a lower velocity projectile that could kill a person but not pierce the hull of a ship.

The Anastico pulled alongside them, and Iana triggered the next set of "failures." Killing power to the lateral thrusters made the ship start drifting on its y-axis. Wu sent out another tightbeam, this one greeting the Anastico and thanking them for their assistance. Though he wasn't necessarily expecting a reply, one arrived shortly after.

"Greetings, comrade," a gruff, oily voice said. "You seem to be losing power along your C-line. We have a mechanic on board that can check that out for you."

Wu turned to Iana. "How many are on that ship?"

"Six, from what I was able to gather from the audio data. With us, they asked for assistance with their water reclamation system. Said they needed some spare parts, and our captain, Silas, agreed to help them. His index of suspicion was rather low, as they're a pretty slow transport hauler, and their credentials all checked out. When the airlock opened, they came in shooting."

Hatred buzzed mournfully in agreement. Iana continued, "They shot Silas first and then Margo before she could draw her pistol. We were delivering medical supplies to one of Aurora's moons. It wasn't right. All they wanted to do was help people."

It violated every creed spacers followed. In the Black, help was freely given between ships, and Erwin Wu had never heard of such a callous act of piracy. The piracy he had heard of was usually isolated between rival trade unions. Independent haulers were off-limits. Humanitarian missions doubly so.

Iana had shown him the data she'd collected. These guys were scum, and had she not survived, it was likely their crimes wouldn't have been discovered.

Wu sent a message back. "Thanks. You guys are saving my ass. I just purchased this scrap pile and, boy, do I have a bone to pick with the sellyard at Ferris Station. I'm sending over my details now."