Xavier: An Omnes Videntes Novel Page 4

  “Those items are costly,” he warned.

  “We’ll discuss how much after I’m done.” She grinned when she saw a matched set of dispersal blasters that were still protected by plasti-wrap and carefully added them to the box of nanites, enzyme capsules, and tools she had selected. “Magnifier,” she said.

  The shopkeeper pointed her to another section. She found a pair of multi-function goggles that could change from sunglasses into atomic magnifiers and tried them on.

  “Now, price?”

  “Nineteen thousand credits,” he said.

  “Got an interface?”

  He showed her to one. Quickly, Sparrow masked her online presence and entered the system with all of the noticeability of air. She hacked into a credit server in Amphictyon’s business class sector taking a credit from each of the accounts there.

  “Give me a clean chip,” she said. He gave her one. “Now, another.” Sparrow gave one chip to the shopkeeper and kept the other one for herself. “There. Now, I’ve got something on you, and you’ve got something on me. From now on, when I want something, you get it for me fast. Okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the shopkeeper answered. He realized that she was out of his current league and in the one he wanted to join.

  “Dissolve this,” she said of the interface she had used to steal the credits.

  He showed her an enzyme vat, and she took a pair of tongs and slid the device into it. She watched it fizz until it had vanished. Then, she turned and walked out.

  While keeping the bodyguards under observation, Xavier had watched all of Sparrow’s actions through her eyes. His pride in her abilities made her even more attractive to him. With her very first taste of freedom, she had spread her wings and taken flight. Having spent many years as a mercenary, he could overlook her illegal activities and consider how her skills would complement his own. Sparrow was eager to protect him and was eager to begin creating weapons to do just that. When she reentered the fake storefront for the real one located in the back, Xavier smiled at her. He offered his little bird his arm, and after he showed her a mental image of what to do with it, she placed her hand on it and allowed him to escort her outside. The niceties of chivalrous behavior were to Sparrow a novelty.

  After she had taken her seat on the hover bike behind him, Xavier sped down alleys and returned to the land port. Sparrow was eager to begin her project. She had yellow-eyed problems to solve. Xavier chose not to interrupt her thoughts. Mentally, Sparrow planned out her weapons and how to construct them. Her skill was such that using a computer program to create schematics would only slow her down. Xavier took Sparrow and her purchases up to the habitation area. She sat on the couch and spread out her supplies from the tech shop on the coffee table. Once her tools were out and her atomic magnifiers were activated, her mind was elsewhere.

  Grinning, Xavier put her new wardrobe away in the storage cabinet beside his own clothing. Simply seeing her things hanging with his own gave him enjoyment. He was certain that the little female intended to remain with him. Sparrow could feel the bonds between the two of them, but not to the extent that he did. Xavier returned to the cargo hold to give her privacy to work without distractions. Clearing his mind, he began moving through training exercises.

  Izaac’s mind reached out to his. With his brother, Xavier shared his newfound joy and stability. Afterwards, Izaac shared what he had learned during the course of his investigation. Bishop had started his criminal career as an investment hacker, which explained Sparrow’s skill in that area, and had moved up by supplying clean weapons to people whose records with the Enforcers prevented them from purchasing their own. From blasters, Bishop had progressed to costlier destructive elements and had supplied them to a much deadlier clientele. Now, he supplied a few private buyers with weapons powerful enough to lay siege to a planet. To keep his operation functioning, he had no qualms about staffing his manufacturing sites with any promising technological engineers or hackers who caught his notice. Bishop shopped for tech slaves the way other people shopped for produce, and those who he abducted and forced into slavery meant as much to him as pieces of fruit. If a piece started to go bad, he disposed of it and got a new one.

  However, the genius behind Bishop’s work for the last decade or so was untouchable, and she was missing. A private offering of four billion credits had gone out to a select few bounty hunters to find Sparrow and return her to Bishop unharmed. Izaac knew this because the offer had been made to the former band of hybrid mercenaries, who now served Princess Probus of the Parvac Empire, through one of their fake identities. Izaac didn’t ask Xavier if he needed any additional back-up, because he knew he didn’t. With the same concentration that Sparrow used to create a weapon, Xavier planned his strategy to save his mate while moving carefully through his training exercises.

  Chapter Six

  Sparrow was so focused on her task that she didn’t notice his return to the deck. Her curly brown head was bent over her work. When she did look up at him with round goggles covering her eyes, he grinned. She pulled them down around her neck.

  “Xavier, good. You’re back. I need to test these. Where can we go?” Picking up the pair of dispersal blasters, she hid them in the pockets of her pants.

  “What do those do?” he asked.

  “There’s only one way for you to find out.”

  “Alright. Let’s go.” Xavier knew of a starship junkyard that had been abandoned years ago. It was the kind of place where unsavory types went to conduct business, and it was several miles away from the land port. As they climbed onto his bike, he said, “I like what you just did.”

  “What did I do?” Sparrow asked.

  Without turning around to look at her, he said, “You said my name.”

  Quietly, she said, “I like it when you hold my hand. I just like being near you.”

  Xavier reached behind him and held her right hand in his. As he did so, he banished his painful memories of paying for a woman’s touch. Sparrow was true and pure. That Bishop had used her to cause death and pain infuriated him. Xavier was putting an end to it. He put her hand around his chest. Then, she moved her left hand up to join it. At that moment, Xavier realized that he would do anything for Sparrow. He drove them from his vessel and secured it. Then, he sped them along Amphictyon’s streets until arriving at the outskirts of the land port’s city. On a long open road, he did what she had been wanting and increased their speed.

  Behind him, Sparrow was close to bursting with a happiness unlike any she had ever known. Carefully, he turned his head so he could see her eyes through her helmet’s shield but ended up focusing his attention on the road behind them.

  “We’ve got company. Hold on.” Xavier pushed the hover bike as hard as it would go. He only slowed when they arrived at the mountainous scrap heaps of broken ships.

  Sparrow turned her head and saw two sets of glowing yellow eyes. “Two of them! He sent two of them. No,” Sparrow said with gut-wrenching despair. She feared for Xavier. Never before had she cared for anyone the way that she cared for him. She couldn’t lose him, not now. The AIs were getting closer. Xavier drove them around a labyrinth of piled metal scraps. Then, he stopped. “How did they find us so quickly?”

  Xavier said, “Facial recognition drones. I wanted them to find us.”

  “Why?” she asked in disbelief. Did he want to die? Did he want the AIs to take her?

  “To destroy them.”

  “Take one of these,” she said while hurrying to unfasten a pocket.

  “No, you keep them. Stay here.”

  Xavier vanished from her sight. Sparrow got off of the hover bike and crouched down beside it. Fear made her begin to sweat. Xavier didn’t know what the AIs were capable of doing, but she did. She had designed them. They could track heat signatures, run a hundred miles an hour, tear a transport to shreds, and use their fingers as blasters. With their robotic eyes, they could record and send intelligence reports or relay information. Now, her own creations h
ad been unleashed upon her, and Xavier might pay the price for rescuing her.

  As quietly as possible, she drew one of her weapons and crouched down as low as possible. She was afraid to move but more afraid of losing Xavier. The AIs would feel nothing at his death, but she would. Fear for Xavier made her rise with the intention of helping him.

  In a loud clear voice that she heard only in her mind, she heard, “Stay.”

  Sparrow crouched back down. Xavier’s mode of communication was efficient, but she feared that he had misjudged his abilities. He could not control an AI with his mind. They had been programmed to think and adapt. She refused to leave him at their non-existent robotic mercy. She wouldn’t let them hurt him. Sparrow strained to listen. In the stillness of warped and broken metal, she could hear the sounds of battle. Sparrow ran toward those sounds.

  Xavier fought an AI with such strength and precision that she suspected he might be one. In his hands, Xavier wielded a length of metal at blurring speeds as he fended off the deadly weapons contained within the AI’s fingers.

  The hairs on the back of her neck rose as the computerized voice behind her said, “Sparrow, you have flown far from your nest. We have come to take you home.”

  The AI tried to grab her from behind. Sparrow spun on her heel but tripped and fell loudly against a pile of dismantled hull. After watching in fascination when Xavier spoke to her with his soft full lips, it was upsetting to her to look at the AI’s white plasti lips that never moved or opened. The heads of the AIs were formed of solid pieces. Only their yellow eyes moved within the white plasti casings.

  “No! I’m not going back!”

  The yellow eyes flared brighter. “Sparrow, you have made a terrible mistake. You will return to me. It is irrational to postpone the inevitable. You will go with the AI at once.” It was Bishop who spoke to her through the robot.

  “No, I’m never going back!” Sparrow said as she kicked away and tried to stand.

  “Oh, but you will. Take her.”

  With that command, the AI reached for her with white plasticized arms.

  “No, I won’t be your slave! I want my freedom!”

  Through the AI, Bishop said, “But you are my slave, and that is all you will ever be.”

  Then, the AI’s head was twisted around backwards, lifted up, and torn free of its body which fell. Its wiring was drawn out in long strings from where it was still attached to its head. Sparrow’s breath came in ragged gulps. Before her was Xavier.

  “Are you ready to try out that new weapon of yours?” he asked. With a sharp knife, he severed the wires. “Here, hold this,” he said of the robot’s head. “I’ll be right back.” He walked away and then returned with the pieces of the second AI.

  “How?” Sparrow asked.

  Xavier grinned at her. “If you want to access their processors, you can see for yourself. Here, you go,” he said as he completed making a pile. Xavier returned to her side and took the robot’s head from her. Sparrow scrambled up to her feet. Grandly, Xavier gestured to the pile for her to test her weapon.

  Sparrow was stunned. How had Xavier survived against not just one but two of Bishop’s AI soldiers? Once more on her feet, Sparrow approached the mound of broken AI parts, aimed her modified dispersal blaster, and fired. She had coded the enzymes with which she had painstakingly filled the nanites with a hunger for the plasticized polymer used to construct the AIs. Slowly, they disappeared before her eyes. When only metal remained, the nanites grouped themselves together and went dormant.

  “Good. My calculations were correct. One blast per AI is sufficient. There are two shots in each blaster. Then, I have to refill the nanites.”

  “Impressive,” Xavier complimented.

  Sparrow pointed at the head he still held. “You can’t take that back with us. A tracking beacon is located within its command center. Bishop knows where we are. We need to leave.” Sparrow’s brown eyes were wide with fear.

  “Do you want to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life? He will send more of these and keep sending them. Bishop has placed a bounty on your head.”

  Despair tried to take hold of Sparrow, but she refused to allow it. Dropping the head, Xavier stepped closer to Sparrow and looked down into her eyes. “It’s time we had a talk but not here. Put that away,” he said of her weapon.

  Xavier rode with Sparrow up and down Amphictyon’s streets and alleys before returning to the land port. Aside from throwing off any possible tracking devices, he had needed the time to think. Sparrow’s troubled thoughts and feelings had become his own, and he was forced to consider them. After securing the ship and the bike, Xavier took Sparrow up to the habitation area and sat beside her on the couch.

  “Sparrow, my name is Xavier Ponidi. I am a member of the Omnes Videntes in service to Princess Teagan of House Probus of Parvac.” He waited for his admission to sink in. “When I discovered your escape pod, I had just begun my mission to find the creator of the thermo-resonator missiles. Those weapons are part of a larger problem.”

  Nervously, Sparrow straightened all of her tools and supplies. “Well, you have found me.”

  Xavier reached for Sparrow’s hands and stilled them with his own. “I found a woman who is attempting to escape being forced to create weapons of mass destruction. We were under the misconception that we had located and removed from the market most of the thermo-resonator missiles.”

  Surprised, Sparrow asked, “How many have you removed?”

  “I’d estimate around twenty.”

  Sparrow shook her head. “Bishop has me make one of those a week. I’ve made hundreds of them.”

  Xavier saw the truth in her mind. He asked, “What about the exploding resonating pulse blades?”

  “Explain,” she said. Xavier shared with her the schematics of a blade on his vid-screen. “Crude. I’ve never made one. I make missiles, AI soldiers, and reflective cloaking systems that are powered by kinetic energy. I’ve never done any work with blades.”

  “Sparrow, there are factions at work who are intent on destroying the peace between the Parvac Empire, Galaxic Government, and Laconian Sector. Those factions are amassing weapons and recruiting human soldiers to fight in their war. They must be stopped. I can make you disappear so that Bishop will never trouble you again, but what will stop him from kidnapping another child to train as his next weapons expert? If you help me infiltrate his base, together we can destroy his research, free his tech slaves, and perhaps find out for whom he works. Don’t you want the crying to stop? Wouldn’t you like to prevent those missiles from being detonated and ending the lives of innocent civilians?”

  “Like what he did to Tory?” Sparrow asked.

  Xavier nodded. “All I need to know is if you are coming with me, or if I am first taking you to safety before completing my mission.”

  Sparrow looked at Xavier in concern. The thought of being separated from the man with mismatched eyes and strong warm hands inspired more fear in her heart than did Bishop. “I don’t want to be parted from you. I’ll go where you go. I can protect you.”

  She was serious. Xavier smiled at her. “Alright. We infiltrate Bishop’s base. What can you tell me about it? Your escape pod’s sensors were far too damaged to record your trajectory.”

  “Not much. It is on a small planetoid. There are rocks, scraggly trees, and a landscape littered with random space junk. How will we find it? Calculating my escape pod’s speed and the days it took before you found me may help place the general location of the planetoid.”

  Xavier shook his head. “I’ve already done that. There are too many of them in that sector of space. They are small, capable of sustaining life, but otherwise worthless. I would have to slowly sweep the sector for life signs and risk being detected. I assume Bishop has planetary defense systems.”

  “Yes, but just around the buildings. It’s too much of a power drain to do more.”

  “Can you make me a diagram of everything you can remember about the layout of
the base and the floor plans of the buildings?”

  “Yes. Then what?”

  “We wait for the next wave of AI soldiers to capture us and take us back,” Xavier said.

  “No! He’ll kill you. He’ll kill you just like he kills everybody else. Let someone else go with me.”

  “Sparrow, I’m the one who goes in when there is no one else. Trust me.” Xavier soothed her through their bond. “Go hop in the shower. We are going to need our rest.”

  Grudgingly, Sparrow stood and walked to the small bathroom. Once there, her mind revisited upon certain events of their day and avoided others. As they had ridden along Amphictyon’s streets, Sparrow had witnessed couples holding hands, talking, touching, and in some cases sharing kisses. She wanted to do those things with Xavier. The longing she felt for a normal life with Xavier, but knew she could never have, stabbed through her. While standing in the shower with her face under the spray of water, for the first time in her life, Sparrow wept from her soul. Now, she understood the woman’s tears. Startled, she hid her face and closed her eyes when the bathroom door opened.

  “Do you mind if I join you? It’s more efficient if we shower together.”

  Sparrow turned as Xavier joined her. She felt a blush growing from her small breasts to cover the rest of her body. Before her, Xavier stood crowding the space with his broad shoulders, well-muscled arms, and handsome face. Moving in closer, he dipped his head of short brown hair underneath the nozzle, closed his eyes, and scrubbed at his face. Sparrow looked from his jaw, along his stomach, and at the part of him that was all male. Nervously, her glance shifted over to his thighs where she could see the definition of his muscles. While she concentrated on his toes, Xavier reached for the shampoo. As he did so, the springy hairs on his arm brushed across her nipples. Sparrow swallowed and was confused by the sensation that traveled from her sensitive buds and down to the place between her thighs.