Rystani Warrior 02 - The Dare

“WHAT KIND OF woman turns you on?” Dora asked.

“A silent one.” Zical didn’t keep the irritation from his tone when he snapped at the portable computer unit on his wrist. Sometimes Dora could be more annoying than any flesh-and-blood woman. A sentient machine with Dora’s brainpower should have observed through one of her many sensors that he was busy clinging to the steep rock face. With one hand clawing for his next grip up Mount Shachauri, the planet Mystique’s highest peak, and his other straining to prevent a fall to the glacier far below, he couldn’t manually shut down Dora’s chatter, even if she hadn’t overridden her mute circuit.

“I’m serious. Do you like big-breasted women?”

“Stars.” Sweat beaded Zical’s brow faster than his environmental suit could whisk it away. He was lucky she hadn’t upset his equilibrium. Plastered to the sheer stone lip, he’d successfully climbed beyond the cobalt glacier, pitted from space debris like an old starship’s hull. In the silver morning air, the snow bridges had held, and he’d worked his way toward the summit. He’d come up here to be alone, to consider his future, but how could a man think with Dora asking such provocative questions?

During the last few years, the great distances of space had become Zical’s world, his spaceship a safe haven, and his crew like family. Still, restlessness shadowed him, a feeling that however much he’d done to help his people, he still had more to accomplish. Perhaps, no matter how tired he was of war, he couldn’t shuck off the years of responsibility as easily as he’d have wished. Maybe duty was rooted too deeply into his genes to change. However, whether he remained in the military or became a civilian pilot, part of his decision had been made: he wouldn’t give up flying.

Now on the steep rock’s south face striped with vertical snow gullies, Zical strained, swung an arm to the right, aiming for an overhead outcropping. “Why do you care about my preferences?”

Dora sighed. “Every man on Mystique says chest size doesn’t matter.”

“There you go, then.” He grabbed a handhold, his exasperation rising. “Why bother asking me a question when you already know the answer?”

“In spite of their claim, I’ve noticed their gazes linger longer on women with larger—”

“Dregan hell. Dora, now is no time to distract me.”

Zical had planned to tax his muscles into a pleasant state of exhaustion, detox the stress from his soul, and clear his mind from the past so he could focus on the future. A day off was long overdue. For the last three years, he’d had precious little free time. After the Endekians had invaded his homeworld, Rystan, he’d escaped on a starship with the leader of his clan, Kahn, his Terran wife, Tessa, and other family unit members.

But they’d not forgotten the people left behind. Rather than fight a war to retake the frozen snowball of a world that was Rystan, Kahn had organized the relocation of their people to Mystique, a planet Tessa had bought with winnings from a giant wager, lost by the Endekians. For the last four years, Zical had been busy transporting Rystani colonists to Mystique, and he’d just resettled the last group on the planet’s southernmost continent. With their people thriving on their new world, his mission was finally complete. He’d taken his first free week in years to climb Mount Shachauri for some well-earned solitude and to decide what he’d like to do next.

Putting off the decision until he reached the peak, Zical scraped his boot against rock and found a toehold. Right now the only thing he wanted to decide was where to place his next handhold.

“Now’s a great time to talk,” Dora interrupted the silence. “You’re not working and you’re not sleeping.”

“I came up here to be alone.”

“And you’ve succeeded. That’s why we have the perfect opportunity for a private chat.”

Zical grunted, wishing he could ignore her but knowing that wouldn’t work. Dora could be more stubborn than a Rystani warrior. Flexing the muscles in his thigh, arm, and shoulder, he wedged his fingers in a crack and pulled himself upward.

“If you keep distracting me, I could fall.”

“No, you can’t,” she told him with logic that had him gritting his teeth. “Unless the null-grav in your suit is malfunctioning—”

“It isn’t.” He spoke quickly, before she raised an alarm that activated every rescue unit on the planet.

According to legends, the environmental suit he wore was the gift of an ancient race called the Perceptive Ones. Eons ago the mysterious race had left behind the machinery that still manufactured suits for every man, woman, and child in the Federation. Powered by psi thought, the suits always worked perfectly, allowing one to keep warm on worlds as cold as Rystan or cool on those close to their suns. The suits let trained warriors fight at the speed of thought, allowed asteroid miners work without bulky spacesuits, and prevented death from falls with null-grav.

But Zical considered his suit a mere backup safety mechanism. He’d never mastered meditation techniques. The best way to focus his mind was to first tire out his restless body with pure physical activity. “I wanted to climb this mountain on my own—something you obviously don’t understand.”

“Sheesh.” Dora loved using the ancient Terran slang that she’d absorbed from conversations with her best friend, Tessa. “What I don’t understand is why you won’t admit that you like women with big breasts.”

Breathing heavily, Zical tensed and yanked himself onto a ledge. “If you know what I like, why are you hassling me?”

“Because it’s so much fun.” Dora giggled.

He would have given a week’s pay for a stiff drink right then, but he kept his resentment in check. Dora’s sensors installed on Mystique’s satellites and aboard the fleet of new starships could “see” him, so he gestured for her to leave. “Go find some other man to annoy.”

Restless, unsure what direction his life would take next, he needed time to think. Tessa had offered him a job where he could continue to use his piloting skills and keep together his crew, transporting food stuffs from Mystique and returning with raw materials. Always wary that the Endekians would regroup and follow them here, Kahn had invited Zical to train pilots to defend their new homeworld, but neither opportunity excited him.

Snorting, the sound as disdainful as if she had a cute nose to match her cheeky attitude, Dora broke into his thoughts. “You like to talking to me. I overheard you tell Kahn that you think my voice is sexy.”

Zical tried and failed to shrug the tension out of his shoulders. “You aren’t supposed to snoop—”

“I can’t resist when it’s so much fun.”

He tried to make his voice stern, but recalling the moment he’d first heard her voice made him grin. When Kahn had first brought Tessa to Rystan, a petulant, husky, outraged woman’s voice had issued orders from the confines of Tessa’s backpack. At the time, Zical had thought the computer was a miniature, living, breathing woman, but he’d soon learned Dora was so much more. Her neurotransmitters were definitely female, totally opinionated, sassy, and utterly loyal. As well as her penchant for Terran slang, Dora possessed self-awareness, a saucy personality with the capability of experiencing a full range of emotions. Her memory banks had access to most accumulated data in the Federation, and she possessed enough processors and brainpower to assess the information.

Dora should sound old and wise. Yet, with him she often employed the melodic tones reserved for lovers, her husky voice low and slinky. She could pout. She could be childish, a pest, even. But her allegiance and knowledge had saved him and his people too many times not to consider her as one of his crew and part of the family. Tessa had even bestowed voting rights on Dora.

In the years since the war, Tessa and Kahn, with Dora’s help, had not only boldly colonized this planet, they’d welcomed Rystani, Terrans, and even enterprising Osarians, the Federation’s most powerful telepaths, to Mystique. Laws and social customs on their world were in a constant state of flux, but thanks to Dora’s vast computer systems, Mystique boasted planet-wide communications and superior defenses, which protected an entrepreneurial spirit unmatched in the Federation. Dora was complex, feminine, and she never forgot anything …

“I thought your voice was sexy
before
I got to know you,” he needled her, a faint smile lightening his mood.

“What’s that mean?”

“Dora, you’re a tease.”

“But I’m not always going to be one,” she countered, sounding quite satisfied.

Zical laced his fingers and stretched them, working out the kinks. From his position two-thirds up Mount Shachauri, Mystique’s azure sky seemed close enough to touch. Above a medley of wispy clouds, the air at this altitude was spiced with a crisp zing, and the future appeared bright with hope. He’d been duty bound for so long that, now that he had his freedom, he was like a
masdon
without a rider and couldn’t decide which direction to travel.

His verbal sparring with Dora was easier than choosing what path to take next. Zical felt more comfortable when he was the one doing the needling. “If you aren’t going to tease me anymore,” he jested, “then you’re talking about a total personality overhaul.”

“Tessa dared me to be more human.”

He narrowed his eyes. “So?”

“I’m growing myself a body.”

Zical almost slipped right off the ledge. Throwing out a hand to steady his hold, he told himself that the dry air had just sucked all the moisture from his mouth. “Excuse me?”

“I want to be human, so I’m growing a body, and then I’ll transfer my personality into it.”

If he hadn’t known better, he would have told Dora to check her brain for malfunctions. However, three years ago, he would have thought a computer with a personality was impossible. He would have thought losing Rystan to the Endekians was unthinkable. He would have thought settling on Mystique inconceivable. As a starship pilot, he had learned to keep his mind open, so these days he swallowed back words like “impossible.” Instead, he inhaled thin air into his lungs and tried to speak casually, not like the rustic he’d once been. “You’re growing a body?”

“Yes.” Her voice thrummed with satisfaction.

“Taking your personality with you—that’s possible?”

“That’s why I want to know what turns you on.”

“So that I will find you attractive?”

“Exactly.” She sounded proud of him, as if the slowest pupil in the class had finally added two plus three and arrived at five.

That Dora wanted to take his preference into consideration flattered him, yet contradictorily made him distinctly uncomfortable with such an intimate subject.

“With all the data in your brain,” he said, “surely you know what men find beautiful.”

“The decision’s not as simple as you’d think. Beauty is a relative term.” Dora switched her voice from the sexy bedroom tones Zical knew she preferred to lecture mode. “Humanoids favor symmetry. Although many societies have their own standards of beauty, most rely on features that help reproduce the species—like breasts. And—”

“Okay. You needn’t draw me a verbal picture.” No way in Dregan hell did he feel comfortable discussing what other reproductive features needed symmetry. To borrow one of Tessa’s Terran phrases, he would not go there. However, now that Dora had put the idea in his head, he couldn’t help wondering what she’d look like. Knowing her, she wouldn’t be satisfied until all men worshipped her. Trying to pick a topic that wouldn’t unbalance him, he searched for his next handhold and again began to climb. “Have you picked out hair or eye color?”

“I’m kind of partial to eyes that sparkle purple and red, alexandrite color.”

Zical’s eyes were alexandrite-colored, a red/purple combination rare among Rystani. According to legend, children of parents with the unusual dual combination tended to be artistic, temperamental, and sensitive. He had no business allowing his thoughts to wander to genetic traits and children. The idea of mating with a machine, android, whatever Dora would be when she joined with a body, caused Zical to shove the disturbing thought away.

He really needed to find a compatible woman. Although he told himself that he simply hadn’t met the right woman yet, he wondered if that was an excuse. While he would never stop grieving for Summar, the young wife he’d lost during the Endekian attack on Rystan, his marriage had been arranged … and difficult. Summar had been little more than a child bride and she’d died before they could really bond. Yet sometimes he thought that the luxury of having a full lifetime to mature would not have been enough. Summar had relied on him to make every major decision, and while he’d been hunting, she’d chosen not to flee their village with the others during the invasion. The Endekians had found her hiding in a closet and killed her. Although his village needed food from the hunt, he should have known better than to leave her alone, but he’d thought she’d become accustomed to his absences. Instead, she’d panicked, and Summar, along with the child growing in her womb, had died because he’d failed to stay home and protect them. After facing his inadequacy as a husband, Zical didn’t know if he ever again wanted the responsibility of a wife.

Many men had died during the war, so there was no shortage of Rystani women. Seven years had passed since Summar’s death. It was time to move on. But for some reason, Rystani women seemed … ordinary. Perhaps, he should make an effort to get to know some of the Terran women, who seemed bolder, more interesting. Perhaps, despite Dora’s teasing, that was why he enjoyed her company. Dora’s computer personality was more like her friend Tessa than any Rystani woman. She might irritate him, but she never bored him.

He couldn’t restrain his curiosity. “Dora, why do you want a body that’s going to age and die?”