The Spirit of Artemis

My name is Alice

“My name is Alice.  I am Suffused.”

She paused at the threshold of the small airlock, a frown on her chiseled features.  To the untrained eye, she appeared human, a member of one of seventeen different derivations of the species scattered across the known galaxy.  Olive skin, high cheekbones, brilliant green eyes, precise yet full lips and graceful eyebrows combined with long, black hair, currently pulled into a practical tail to present an image many bipedal species considered beautiful.

Yet, if any observer thought her soft, they couldn’t have been more wrong.

A soft peep and Alice glanced down at her wrist where a bio-plas sheath in typical translucence was gently flashing.

“Go.”  She grated, her alto voice roughened by the thick pall of hydrocarbons filling the airlock from outside, its outdated filtration system unable to keep the external atmosphere completely out.

The 2-D image of a human male in miniature appeared, his face flawless except for the optic implant buried in his right eye socket.  Its brilliant blue light flashed across Alice’s face from the sheath’s display and she fought the urge to grimace.  ‘Bloody cyborgs.’  She thought darkly.

“Alice.”  The cyborg greeted her, his classically handsome face impassive.

“Baz.”  Her eyes narrowed.  “What do ya got?”

If he noticed her flat tone, bordering on the frosty, the cyborg didn’t react to it.

“High priority package for delivery.”  Was his reply to her terse question.  As the sector's premier courier, usually in illegal data, everything was high priority.  Alice mentally shrugged.  'Here we go again.'

“From who to who?”

“Telso to SecCon.”

Anger quickly rippled across Alice’s face.

“I told you we weren’t running corporate espo jobs after Epsilon Eridani, Baz.  So what the hell is this?”

The face in the display was silent for a moment as the cyborg consulted some internal database.

“No details, Alice.  Telso just said it was important.”

“Bullshit.”  She fired back.  “Tell Telso to cram it up his ass.  We don’t run espo.  Period.”  She lifted a hand in preparation to slap the sheath and deactivate the link.  Before it could drop, however, the face quickly interjected.

“It’s Arricebo data.”  And Alice’s hand froze mere centimetres from the sheath as shock rolled through her body.

“They took me as a child and filled my body with machines.  Machines that were supposed to make me an unstoppable soldier.  They called themselves Arricebo and said they wanted soldiers to make the galaxy a safer place.  They lied.”

The shock knotted her guts in an instant.  The anger that churned through her veins in the shock’s shadow pulled a single tear from an emerald orb.

“Will it hurt them?”  Her voice was just barely above a whisper.

“It’ll cripple R&D ops in no less than seven sectors.”  Baz quickly answered.  “I have Telso’s personal assurances on that.”

“He can fuckin’ cram that up his ass too, that useless bastard.”  A muscle jumped in her jaw as Alice pushed aside the anger to feverishly debate whether it was worth it to stick it hard to the corporation that had made her life miserable after ripping her from her family thirty standard years ago.  It didn’t take long, however, before the internal debate was over.  The anger began to focus into resolution, and that resolution quickly cut out a plan.