A House United Page 12

  “You are insane,” she scoffed, turning toward the door so she could exit the berth as quickly as possible—to stay alone with this man would tempt her to end his insufferable life!

  “Batch number 80, Zagros Facility,” he said just before her hand touched the door. She turned to see all traces of joviality gone from his countenance, replaced by a deadly serious expression that seemed to convey something she did not understand.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Zagros Facility,” he sighed, sitting back down on the cot, “it’s where I’m from—well, it was. Which are you? I’m guessing…” he narrowed his eyes appraisingly as he scanned her head to toe, “Guan Du, probably mid-60’s—am I right?”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said, and his look of confusion was enough to stay her hand from opening the hatch and storming out of the berth—for now.

  “How can you…” he trailed off as his eyes widened. “No way—you’re free-range?”

  “Explain your meaning—now,” she growled.

  This time when he held up his hands, it seemed that he was conveying genuine emotion as he said, “I’m sorry, I just assumed since you have a pike—and obviously know how to use it—that you were a rogue guardsman.” A grin began to tug at the corners of his mouth as he stood from the cot and looked her over with seemingly new eyes and marveled, “Wow…you really don’t know what you are, do you?” He chuckled, seemingly more at himself than her, “All right, let’s start over: my name’s Largent, but when I drew my first breath in this universe I didn’t have a name—I had a number: 80-80, meaning ‘Batch 80, Specimen 80’.” He gestured to his collarbone, “It was tattooed here just like everyone else’s but I had it removed first chance I got…never mind, that’s not important,” he shook himself before turning and resuming his seat on the edge of the cot. “Please, sit down.”

  She turned and took a few steps in his direction before planting her feet, folding her arms across her chest, and tapping her foot impatiently, “Talk.” Her curiosity had strangely gotten the better of her, and now she felt compelled to at least give this man a second chance to answer her questions.

  “Zagros was the highest-profile facility of its kind,” Largent explained, “it’s the one where most of the Senators went to pick out their bonded guardsmen—‘best of the best’ doesn’t do it justice. The standard batch had a hundred specimens, and on average just five of those proved fit for active duty.”

  “I do not understand,” she said irritably. “It was a training facility?”

  He snorted and shook his head, “Not really. It was a cloning facility. You and I,” he gestured back and forth between them, “are the direct product of decades—maybe even centuries—of human genome redrafts at the most basic level. People generally think of genetic engineering as altering what’s already there, but that’s not what you and I’ve got,” he sighed. “You and I are 100% Tanks—there is literally zero,” he held up his fingers in an ‘O’ shape, “chance that our genes could have spontaneously occurred in the infinite monkey’s laboratory that we call ‘reality.’ Intelligent design was required for us to be speaking to each other right now.”

  “I am not from here,” she shook her head firmly.

  “At first I thought your accent was a bad attempt at cover,” he mused, “but now I think you’re telling the truth: you’re from Sector 24 of the Old Confederated Spine, aren’t you? ‘Asiatic League’ world for sure,” he said thoughtfully before sighing, “but that’s as far as memory serves in terms of recognizing accents and speech patterns,” he splayed his hands as though in apology.

  Now she was well and truly intrigued, so she gestured for him to continue, “Go on.”

  “Guan Du facility’s still my best bet for where they crafted your genes,” he nodded slowly, “especially since they had their share of security breaks—one of the many reasons it no longer exists. Where were you grown?”

  “Grown?” she repeated in confusion.

  “Yeah,” he nodded impatiently, “who pulled you out of your tank?”

  “I was born,” she said with narrowed eyes as she realized precisely what he was asking.

  He shook his head firmly, “Impossible. Our bodies have built-in mechanisms that make pregnancy impossible, and even conception is so difficult it might as well be impossible—though I can assure any interested parties that such a minor obstacle doesn’t keep us from trying well into the night,” he added with a lopsided grin and a wink.

  “You are wrong,” she said flatly.

  “You were lied to,” he said with a bitter sigh, “they do that sometimes to hide the truth from us if we wash out early in the program—“

  “I have three children,” she interrupted forcefully, “I birthed them myself,” she added for good measure, feeling only slightly stupid a second later for having said it.

  He cocked his head in confusion, which slowly gave way to wide-eyed realization, “You have to be joking…but you’re not. How…how is that possible?” he stammered, and Lu Bu had no qualms about taking pleasure in seeing him at a loss for words. “I mean…you’re sure?”

  She snorted, “Quite.”

  “And they weren’t implanted there?” he asked. “I mean artificially, of course.”

  “They were implanted in the traditional way,” she assured him.

  “And the father was one of us?” he pressed, his eyes alight with hope.

  “No,” she shook her head, “he was not. But he was…special…in his own way,” she trailed off as images of Kongming streamed through her mind.

  “How many generations before you were able to reproduce naturally?” he asked, his visage slightly crestfallen but his curiosity still shone through.

  “I was told of my mother and grandmother, but no others,” she shrugged. “We did not discuss history. We were not a…loving family. They were cruel, and I was glad to be free of them.”

  “I sincerely hope you’re not looking for a sympathy hug,” he scoffed in a mixture of condescension and faux bewilderment, drawing a wrathful look of surprise from her as he continued. “At least you had a family—the rest of us had a tank followed by a host of pokers, pumpers and prodders who saw us as a really nifty opportunity to indulge their inner sociopath while treating us like show animals in need of proper diet, exercise and conditioning in order to become the ‘best of the best’ so we could fetch a high price at market. Not only that,” he continued, resuming his insufferable affect and tone as he spoke, “but you managed to do something the rest of us can only ever dream about: procreate with someone you care about—even if you were only together for a little while. No way, Girly,” he shook his head flatly, “you’ll get no sympathy from this guy for the hardships of your life. We were built for hardship—both to endure it and to bring it.”

  Lu Bu would like to have said she was stunned. She would like to have said that she was outraged by his rambling diatribe—most of which directly denigrated facets of her character. She would even have liked to be able to claim that she found every sentiment he had just expressed to be repugnant.

  But the truth was that he was right, and she knew it with every fiber of her being. She had been feeling sorry for herself. She did have the privilege to know people like Walter Joneson, Kongming, Hutch, Captain Middleton, her adoptive mother Jo Middleton and—most important of all—her three beautiful children: Su, Meng and Xun. And she was built to exceed the average person’s ability to endure and create conflict.

  “You are right,” she nodded stiffly.

  “I am?” he asked in guarded confusion.

  “Yes,” she affirmed. “I have been weak; I must be stronger than that—not only for myself, but for my children.”

  Largent sighed and shook his head in bewilderment, “Frankly that’s not the reaction I was going for. But good for you,” he nodded with grudging approval. “Now, when do I get out of this box?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He snickered good-naturedly, “May
be I didn’t make myself clear earlier: my fee’s already been paid—in full.”

  “By who?”

  Largent shrugged, “Who knows? I’ve got my suspicions, of course, but my business runs best when nobody asks unnecessary questions of their associates or employers.”

  “I still fail to see what—“ she began, only to be cut off.

  “Girly,” he stood from the edge of the cot, rolling his head from side to side with a series of audible cracks and pops, “you are the proud new owner of the second greatest freelance operative in the Empire of Man—well, not ‘owner,’ exactly,” he amended, “more like ‘holder of a lifetime lease, nullified only on the death or outright release’ of the second greatest freelance operative in the known galaxy. And, just between you and me,” he gestured between the two of them and whispered conspiratorially, “Number Two doesn’t take rejection all that well, so you’re better off just goin’ ahead and letting him splat against a bulkhead somewhere instead of trying to give him the boot.”

  “I will not own a slave,” she scoffed.

  He whistled—just as one might do to summon a dog, “Listen up, Tommy: where you’re goin’ you’ll need all the help you can get. Much as it pains me to say this, I’m just gonna go ahead and put it out there: you’re good, but not that good. You waste about three percent of your lower body’s motive force during hand-to-hand and you rely entirely too much on your—admittedly impressive,” he added with a pointed look down at each of her breasts, “physical attributes when a teeny bit better planning would make all that skip-jitsu irrelevant. Now to bring it home: you’ve got a lot to learn if you’re going to play the game at this level, and I’d be happy to impart whatever you’re capable of learning during our likely brief interval together.”

  She felt her hands ball into fists at her sides, and lowered her voice after chafing at being called ‘Tommy,’ “You have a big mouth.”

  He smirked, “Why don’t you do somethin’ about it there, Princess? Or are you too afraid you’ll chip a nail?”

  That was enough to send her into action. She launched a vicious body blow which would have broken ribs had it landed, but surprisingly he swayed just clear of her fist. She followed with a leg kick into his right thigh—which landed—but his impressively quick reflexes allowed him to trap her leg and snap a crisp, perfectly-placed punch into her collar just an inch below her throat.

  “I didn’t need to miss your larynx there, Vegeta,” he said casually as he dropped her leg and danced away from her follow-up uppercut-cross-hook combo. “But keep on ragin' if you think it helps.”

  She snapped another kick up, this one aimed at his head, but was shocked when he somehow intercepted her incoming kick with one of his own. Their shins met and, for the briefest of instants, they were mirror images of each other—then he pushed forward and authored a flurry of blows unlike anything she had ever seen.

  “There…there…there…there…there,” he deadpanned with nearly perfect rhythm as he tapped her torso and head with his fingers during the blindingly fast onslaught. It was as though he knew what moves she was going to make even before she did, and each opening she gave him was one which he exploited by landing the equivalent of a point in a touch-striking contest. “I can do this all day long,” he said witheringly—then she saw an opening and she lunged into it with the reckless abandon for which she was notorious.

  With her back nearly to the wall, she fired a series of compact strikes aimed not at his vital points, but at his upper arms and his hips. Briefly caught off-guard, he was forced to give ground—and as he did so, he failed to anticipate her foot slamming into his groin with enough force to drop a rutting Stone Rhino.

  To his credit, he kept his feet as he launched a sneaky counterattack of his own, and less than a second after she landed the groin shot they found each other with their fists—poised as though they were holding knifes with blades on the thumb-side—against the other’s throat.

  They stood like statues, silently regarding each other until finally Lu Bu conceded in muted disbelief, “You killed me three times before I recovered.”

  “Yep,” he said, his voice strained as she relaxed and took a respectful step back. When she did so, his face erupted into a look of outright agony as a hand went to his crotch—and his voice rose an octave or more as he squeaked, “You don’t think that was just a little bit uncalled for?”

  “My name is Lu Bu—or Fengxian, if you prefer,” she said with a slight inclination of her head. “You will teach me everything you know.”

  “That’s not what I offered,” he said, standing and stretching his legs comically as he attempted to shake off the lingering pain from her crippling strike. “I said I’d teach you what you could learn.”

  “As I said,” she snorted, turning on her heel to leave the room, “you will teach me everything you know.”

  He chuckled behind her as she opened the hatch and exited the room, “You know what, Girly? I think I’m going to like you.”

  She rolled her eyes wearily—but in truth his hyper-aggressive and downright rude affectations were beginning to grow on her. “I will be sure,” she said as she swung the hatch closed behind her, “to dispel that foolishness during our first training session—tomorrow at o-five-hundred.” After the door clanged shut, she allowed herself to grin in anticipation of that very training session. Since Nikomedes had left, no one had been able to push her physically.

  She intended to push him to the limit, be it his or hers, and somewhere deep down she hoped it would be her limitations which they came up against first. It had been too long since she’d had a genuine opportunity to learn more about herself, and now it seemed she had a better opportunity to do that than ever before.

  It actually took her about five minutes to remember that her babies were awaiting her, and that realization put something of a damper on her short-lived excitement.

  Chapter XV: Sage Counsel & New Information

  “Enter,” McKnight beckoned when the chime at her office door rang.

  The door swished open, revealing a surprise: Nazoraios, the venerable Tracto-an, moved into the room with his unassuming posture in stark contrast to his impressive physique—impressive for any Tracto-an, let alone one between two and three times the age of most warriors from his planet.

  “Might I have an audience?” he asked respectfully after coming to a stop some ten feet from her desk.

  “I’m busy at the moment but I have to admit,” she gestured to the chair opposite her own, “I’m intrigued. I don’t know that we’ve ever spoken privately before.”

  “We have not,” he assured her as he accepted her offer and sat in the chair. In spite of their lack of social history, McKnight had reviewed the soft-spoken Tracto-an’s file at some length—and even that extensive perusal had revealed precious little about him beyond basic vital statistics and sketchy-bordering-on-contradictory verbal history provided by both Nazoraios himself and by his countrymen.

  “What’s on your mind?” she asked into the growing silence.

  “Sedition,” he replied far-too-easily, causing her hackles to rise and her hand to instinctively move toward the concealed holdout blaster secured beneath the desk. He held up a halting hand and chuckled, “Not personally, I assure you, or would do so were I able—which I clearly am not,” he said with a disarming smile. “No, I am here to report a growing rebellious sentiment among certain veins of the Starborn community and, somewhat surprisingly, among the younger Tracto-ans. After some investigation I think I have surmised the source of this sentiment.”

  “Let’s hear it,” McKnight said flatly, keeping her hand close to the holdout blaster.

  “Raphael Tremblay appears to be positioning himself for a break with your authority,” Nazoraios said casually, glancing around the office’s sparse appointments.

  “Are these would-be rebels armed?” she asked, her worst fears regarding Tremblay seemingly confirmed by the old man’s blunt report.

  “No,�
�� Nazoraios shook his head firmly. “And, as far as I can tell, they have no wish to provoke an armed engagement with anyone else on this moon. It seems,” he leaned forward, his grey eyes boring intently into hers, “though I cannot confirm this last piece, that they are under strict instructions from their ultimate superior to avoid an armed conflict.”

  That bit caught her off-guard. She had long suspected Tremblay of hatching some duplicitous scheme—she had even taken significant precautionary measures to that effect, including the ultra-secretive refit of the Rainbow—but Nazoraios’ suggestion that Tremblay didn’t want a fight was puzzling in the extreme.

  The hint of a smirk played at the tight, lined edges of Nazoraios’ mouth as he leaned back in his chair. “You are capable indeed, Commander. You took note only of the final item in my report; the rest was already anticipated…you would have made a fine Hold Mistress,” he said with a measured nod.

  “I’m not great at accepting compliments,” she said witheringly.

  “And I,” his eyes flared dangerously, “was not offering one.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” McKnight smirked, “you’re the rebel without a cause—a member of a now-defunct secret organization which lived beneath the surface of Tracto-an society. Some might have called you ‘men’s rights activists’ in another time. It must grate on you, having so thoroughly lost that little insurrection to the forces of modernity.”

  “The past is the past,” he waved a hand dismissively, “one must only seek to inform the future by referencing it—to dwell in the past is to be claimed by it.”

  “Why come to me with this?” she asked, more than a little surprised—and intrigued—that he failed to take the bait.

  “Simple,” he shrugged. “I was hoping you accept favors better than compliments.”

  McKnight’s eyes narrowed. “What favor would you be offering?”