Alien AI's Marine (Warriors of the Lathar #14) - Mina Carter Page 0,3
his heels to head up the corridor to the main section where the lady in question would be on duty. Then he paused, swinging round. “By the way, I labeled all the raw ingredients in the galley.”
“Oh, cheers, bud. That will make it easier finding the coffee in the morning!”
He gave Seren a thumbs up, clocking the eagerness in the warrior’s step as he headed off up the corridor. Jay kept his smile to himself, only allowing it to break out as he walked in the opposite direction. But his expression fell flat as he made his way down to the lab on sector four.
Even now, more than a week since they’d found this place, it gave him the creeps. They’d cleaned out the bio-tubes, their contents flushed to space. At least, he hoped they had been. The remains had been… well, he hadn’t sure what they’d been. Some mad scientists’ version of evolution certainly. 3-D printed bodies, all different variants of the Lathar. Even a smaller version that was supposedly human. Or what would eventually have become human.
They hadn’t been alive but they’d still given him the creeps. The thought of them packed away in a storage chest somewhere was even worse. What if they were alive and got out? Would they be pissed at being locked away? He was too proud to admit to the others he’d been having nightmares about that.
He shivered as he walked past the empty tubes and into the main area. His gaze cut to the seating area and the large metallic figure that still occupied one of the couches.
It was a Latharian bot. Worker model HC-seven-four-nine, B class to be exact. But that wasn’t all it was. It was, had been Keris, the alien AI that had saved his life.
He had no idea how long he’d been a “guest” of the Lathar. His ship had been patrolling the front lines of Terran space, on high alert after the attacks on Sentinel Five.
Filled to the brim with Marines, they’d been all gung-ho, arrogant in their belief that the Sentinel Five marines had gotten sloppy. Life in one place must have made them soft. They were different. Frontier marines, they were as tough as they came. There was no way any aliens would be able to take them on and win.
Pride came before a fall, and fuck had they fallen fast.
They hadn’t even seen the attack coming until it was happening all around them. Resistance was… impossible. The Lathar had hit them so hard and fast, and the battle had been over practically before it had begun. All he could remember was chaos and gunfire. Then the blackness of a D’Corr holding cell. And pain.
He closed his eyes, body rigid.
They’d been tortured. Killed.
His unit was gone.
He was the only one left. And he’d prayed for death. Begged for it. When the self-destruct countdown had begun, he’d known it was over. Even though he didn’t speak Latharian, he’d realised what the alarm was. So, in pain and alone, he’d prepared himself to meet his maker.
Then Keris had come crashing through the metal wall of the cell like a bulldozer, her faceplate red as it swung toward him. He’d thought it was one more torment in the many the Lathar had inflicted on him until she’d scooped him up and ran. He’d passed out only to wake later in an escape pod.
She’d saved his life and had been by his side ever since. She saved him, saved an entire colony from a flesh-eating octopus. But she wasn’t in the metal body anymore. She’d taken a gamble and left the safety of metal and circuitry for the chance of becoming flesh and blood.
Like a magnet, his eyes cut to the large machine in the middle of the room. A 3-D printer… but for bodies. Actual physical bodies. Like the ones that had been in the tubes when they’d arrived.
The twin blades, like airport gates, still rotated slowly around the central tube. Lights on the sides ran lazily from bottom to top in sequence. But where the glass had initially been clear to allow him to see the forming body within, the tube was dark now and blocked his view.
Keris.
He stood in front of the tubes, trying to pierce the glass with his gaze. Keris was in there. Somewhere. Her mind had been separated from the machine and should be in the body shielded by the glass.