Captured and Captivated

Chapter 2

SARHEN

Being an Augment came with its pros and cons.

On one hand, I'm a walking, talking deviant of nature. My kind prefers that term to the more apt freak, by the way. I shouldn't be allowed to exist. Shouldn't have even been made. No Augment should and we certainly weren't alone in that belief. Augments had only each other for allies- often rarely even that- and all of the Behl Sector as our enemies.

The positive though? The flipside to being a monster? Well, let's just say that having half my brain replaced by circuit boards had made me really, really good at certain things. Killing people who want to kill me. Detecting the change in tempo of someone's heartbeat when they start to lie. Making the perfect cup off kaf every time. Hacking. Oh, yes, Augments were the best at hacking. No one could beat a half computer, not even a full one.

That's how I'd found her. A human. One of the rarest creatures in all the Behl.. She was absolutely perfect. Every part of her was the opposite of everything I was. When Banedon had shown me her on that screen, it had been love at first pixel. Or at least as close to that sticky, deep inside the chest wet feeling as my onboard could process.

Now I almost had her. My human was so close it was painful. My perfect little exquisite piece of the universe. I just had to go in, get her, and maybe leave a few surprises behind for the Krynn on our way out.

My fingers flicked at the comm automatically, pinging the Krynn station and reminding them that yes, I was still here. No answer. Time dragged and my patience was falling right along with it.

They'd been ignoring my docking requests for the last sixteen minutes and thirty-three standard seconds. That wasn't good. Usually the Krynn were very punctual when it came to the business of extracting credits. Their sudden radio silence didn't bode well for my odds of pulling this off without a hitch.

My onboard didn't like the delay either. Didn't like my plan to begin with. It rarely agreed with the decisions of its other half. Of the still mostly biological parts of me. Sometimes the two of us wanted very different things.

The statistics of my plan working were only moderate, it kept reminding me. Not high. Not even within the recommended range of risk versus reward. Suggested action: reduce elevated hormone levels manually and return to a safe zone of space.

I'm pretty sure the computer in my head just told me to jack off and get the hell out of here.

Didn't matter, Onboard. I was in charge here, at least for now.

Eighteen minutes, seven standard seconds had gone by now since I'd first made contact with the station. They knew I was here. They'd given me clearance to gate in, after all. I grunted and opened up a two-way channel.

"Station Elis, I'm starting to feel unwelcome. When I feel unwelcome, I don't feel like buying."

Just because the odds weren't ideal didn't mean my plan was going to fail. I wasn't going to allow it to. Not a chance. And, despite what my fretting other half thought about all of this, I had actually planned for contingencies.

My disguise was deceptively simple. I used a low-form subcutaneous mesh to cover up my visible augmentations. All of those troublesome little ports and metal bits and pieces that made me a perpetual walking assassination risk. Then refracting contacts, pulled my hair down to give it the requisite Satu honor side braids, a few interference blocks and boom. Instant high ranking general of the Satu Army. Exactly the kind of buyer the Krynn should be bending over their own tails to impress.

Okay, maybe some serious hacking to back up the identity chip Banedon had "obtained" for me helped too.

The Krynn had already let me in their door once. They'd taken me to see her under the most strict of security. I'd gone in my real form as an Augment but under a fake identity. It had been the essential reconnaissance step of my plan, but I'd regretted it immediately.

They were holding her in a cage. A cage. Not even a proper room. Humans were an advanced species. The Behl Council had rules against caging advanced species, but the Krynn were Krynn. They weren't as bloodthirsty by nature as some of the other species in the Behl, but they were every bit as ruthless. They wanted money and they didn't care what rules they had to break to get it.

I'd wanted to get her out of there right then. First sight. Grab her and dash, somehow managing to fight off every Krynn and security turret in an increasingly statistically unlikely defiance of common sense.

My onboard had done the right thing and stopped me. We're not always friends, but self destruction no matter how heroic would get us no where. I guess I shouldn't be too grumpy about that.

There was one surefire way to make the Krynn behave: offer them money then threaten to take it away. It worked every time. Usually. Provided they hadn't seen through my fake ID and were currently sending a warrunner gating through the system to blow me out of the sky.

Twenty three minutes now and still no answer. My onboard pulsed, liking this less and less with each thought. I shrugged and counted to ten before opening the channel again.

"I was about to spend a mountain of credits, you know," I told them. "So many credits King Reyus would wonder why his account had one less digit. So many credits that, if you divvied them onto standard chips and-"

The other side of the comm opened and a pitched crackle cut through. "Cleared for dock at bay nine. Delays are an inevitable nuisance."

I grinned. An inevitable nuisance. As close to a Krynn apology as anyone in the Behl could ask for.

I pinged my onboard just to gloat a little. And it wasn't like I wasn't going to be buying anything or anyone. Not with real credits at least.

They believed that I was a Satu general. That meant they thought I had honor. Exploitable honor.

If they hadn't put my human in a cage I would have settled for just getting my girl and robbing them blind. Now, though? Now they've brought everything that's about to happen on themselves.