Chapter 13
Wyl
Waking up after I passed out in the galley is disorienting, to say the least. I expect to wake in a pool of my own blood, maybe a bit stiff and sore from lying on the floor for who knows how long—if I wake at all.
Instead, I come to in the crew’s quarters, naked under a pile of blankets, with copious bandages around my midsection and an intravenous drip of some faintly glowing substance.
Something about it seems familiar, like I should recognize the stuff.
As I slowly process my immediate surroundings, I realize with horror that the fluids in the IV are Aura’s fluids.
Shit, will that kill me?
I shoot up in bed, but before I can rip out the IV, Aura’s booming voice stops me cold.
“Wyl Nosurn! You will leave that in place until you are healed.”
Growing up, I never had a mother figure, but I had plenty of authority figures, and Aura’s command hits like a freight vessel in the gut. I take my hand off the IV and tuck my fingers under my hip to keep from fiddling with the tubing.
“That is better,” she says, this time calmer.
When I look towards the direction her voice is coming from, I see her sitting at the dining table.
Her thigh is bandaged like my abdomen, and I wonder if that’s where the juice in the IV came from.
“The intravenous tubing is transfusing my circulatory fluid to replace the blood you lost. It is perfectly safe and human compatible, and it contains antibacterial nanites to prevent infection.”
“It won’t poison me or irradiate me?”
“No.”
Well, that’s a relief. “So, I’m guessing you found me after I passed out. Thanks for patching me up. I really appreciate it.”
She crosses her arms over her chest and gives me what I assume is the android equivalent of an irate glare. Honestly, the expression is more intimidating than if a human were to do the same. “Is that all?”
All? I thanked her for saving my life. What more does she want?
“Um … Thank you very much?”
The glare morphs into a scowl. “You are not going to apologize? Typical human male.”
Is this line of obtuse questioning a universal female trait, or did her engineer program her for this to approximate human behavior? When organic women ask vague, accusatory questions, that’s one thing, but I would’ve though Aura might be different. She’s always been more direct in the past …
It’s going to be a long trip to Klymani Prime if this keeps up.
“Listen, Aura, I just woke up. I’m woozy, I’m lightheaded, I’m starving … passed out before I could eat anything, you know. If you want me to apologize for, what, making a mess in the galley? Just say it.”
“You think this is about a mess?”
From the sound of her tone, I’m about to be in for the lecture of my life.
“Wyl Nosurn—” Full name. Already off to a great start.
“—you forbade me from staying with you in the docking bay to protect you. You assured me that you were ‘okay’ when you had, in fact, just been shot. You allowed yourself to lose consciousness from blood loss instead of informing me of your injury. I could have repaired it before transfusion was required.”
She finishes with a quivering voice and excess lubricant streaming from her eyes. Tears. I could almost swear she’s scared.
I never would’ve thought that Aura might be upset about my injury.
My plan was to keep stuffing it—with actual bandages eventually, but I had to improvise at first—until the bleeding stopped, then maybe ask her to stitch the wounds closed.
The thought of her being afraid for my life never even crossed my mind.
Then again, the thought of dying never crossed my mind, either.
“Aura, am I still dying? Like, am I out of the woods, or should I be drafting my last will and testament?”
“That is the conclusion you have drawn? You do not think that you owe me an apology?”
“What do you want me to say? ‘Sorry I got shot’? Because I’m not sorry about that.
Me taking that blast prevented you from getting hurt, so I have no sorrows or regrets where that’s concerned.
The GA could come along and shoot me ten more times, and as long as none of those shots hit you, I wouldn’t care. ”
My voice rises as I speak until the last words come out in an echoing shout. Aura flinches as though my words physically hurt. She stands slowly then limps towards the door.
Limps.
Her leg … She wasn’t hurt when we left the station, so that has to be a self-inflicted wound. She cut herself open to give me lifesaving fluids.
Aura has pleasure receptors, yeah, but I didn’t remember until just now that she also has pain receptors. It couldn’t have felt good to slice into her own leg. What else did she sacrifice to save me?
“Aura—”
She stops at the door, but she doesn’t turn back to face me.
“You will not die. Not now. Had I not seen your abnormal vitals while locating your position on the ship, you would have.” She wipes her cheeks, then straightens her shoulders.
“You are welcome, Wyl. I would say that it was a pleasure saving your life, but that would be a false statement. Finding you near death was in no way pleasurable, and knowing that it could have been prevented made it much worse.”
With that she exits the galley, leaving me feeling like a total asshole.
I gotta give Aura’s creator credit for realism.
Two solar days have passed since we fled the station at Declan VI, and she’s turned the silent treatment into an art form worthy of any organic woman.
Not even so much as a grunt of affirmation when I ask a question.
She even avoids talking to me while unhooking and removing the IV or changing my bandages.
Just hand gestures. That’s it. No instructions, no words of reassurance.
She doesn’t spend any time with me beyond wound care; she’s always on the bridge.
Twice a day she limps to the captain’s quarters—I moved here since there’s technically nobody else to call “Captain” on the ship if we come across any GA vessels—to change my bandages. Still limping, and she won’t tell me how to help her fix it.
My stupid machismo really fucked things up. Why didn’t I tell her about the injury, anyway? Can’t even claim it was to spare her any worry, really, because I honestly thought I could power through it.
Even my efforts at giving her that apology she wanted fall on deaf ears. Guess that old Earth saying of “too little, too late” applies here. As far as Aura’s concerned, I seem to be persona non grata. I wouldn’t be surprised if she launched me out of the airlock for looking at her the wrong way.
This is torture. I have to figure something out to win her back.
Unfortunately, there’s not much opportunity for romantic gestures during an interstellar trip.
I can’t exactly go outside and pick some flowers to show my affection—if that’s even something Aura would find endearing.
My options are limited to what I can find onboard Jupiter’s Joy, which is …
not a lot. There’s nothing really gift-worthy here, and it’s not like cooking her a meal in the galley would do much.
No jewelry onboard. Chocolates and candy would be just as useless as a fancy dinner. And there certainly isn’t anywhere on ship that I can buy her new clothes.
While I pace in my new quarters, I come across a tiny data storage unit, outdated but functional, under the bed.
Once I find a compatible data port, I scroll through the files to see what’s on it.
Aside from a few useless personal logs, audio only, from a man named Pacu, there’s not much on it … until I come across a digital goldmine.
Hours of recordings. Videos. Files. Plans … Specs … Programming algorithms … Even historical data.
Aura needs to see this … but how do I convince her to look at it?