The Star Gate (Space Cowboys Book 1) by Dean C. Moore

Author:Dean C. Moore [Moore, Dean C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mark Freeman Enterprises
Published: 2018-06-29T22:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-NINE

ABOARD THE NAUTILUS

Cassandra drop-kicked one Theta Team serviceman and woman after another. She bounced off corridor walls when she wasn’t outright running along them to get the springboard momentum she needed. She drove both her feet into the chests, heads, and backs of her quarry after coming out of a somersault or a cartwheel or a flying arabesque—whatever rotating motion she needed to add speed and unpredictability to the delivery of her blows.

The Theta Team members walking the ship’s corridors did not even take her on. “What’s with her?” one of them said after Cassandra dealt her what should have been a fatal blow to the side of the neck. She hissed at Cassandra as her neck and shoulder muscles flared, giving her entire head and shoulders a cobra-like look, in the same way the actual snake went on the defensive.

“I think one of the children’s action-figure dolls may not have been stowed away properly,” suggested another one walking beside her, neither of them bothering to slow to fathom the mystery of the crazy woman further. Her partner’s skin comprised of nodules that could shoot up from the surface on stalks, and the nodules widen like blooming flowers, which then attracted the hummingbirds from the Nautilus’s central courtyard jungle. The exact nature of the symbiotic relationship between the Theta Team operative and the hummingbirds was not one Cassandra could be bothered to puzzle out, even as she observed the hummingbirds flying to the Theta Team operative’s latest blooms.

Cassandra landed on both feet again after back-flipping repeatedly from the duo that had just disrespected her with those comments to put some distance between her rising wrath and the two of them. Still panting, Cassandra found herself standing directly in front of the nun. “Have you finished embarrassing yourself yet?” the nun asked.

“You! You’re the librarian!” Cassandra exclaimed as it dawned on her what a woman wearing a nun’s habit might actually be doing aboard the Nautilus. “You’re supposed to be the sliver of the Nautilus’s supersentience that knows what each person on this ship can and can’t do. And unlike the Nautilus you will always respond when summoned.”

“That is correct,” the nun said.

“What is going on here?”

“You are no longer the most advanced lifeform on this craft. Your nanites are now several generations behind the ones infecting Theta Team. I’m afraid Theta Team’s assessment is correct: you are little more than a child’s action figure doll anymore, one they must be careful not to break.”

Cassandra flushed red, which her built-in skin camouflage nanites rushed to mask. In their over-determination to conceal her embarrassment, they had made her invisible. But no one walking the halls to their destinations collided with her; they stepped around her. “They can still see me? You can still see me?” Cassandra said taking her eyes off the ones navigating around her stationary figure to put them back on the nun.

“Of course. If you wish to spar, I’m afraid you will have to spar with me. I can shapeshift into any of the Theta Team crew whose humanoid limits you’d care to explore.

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