Aeolus Investigations Episode 5

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Find the link and the password for extra features in the Author’s Note at the end of the book.

After saving the Ostrieachian civilization from being overtaken by pirates, the Aeolus Investigations team returned to their home base on Carden’s Paradise hoping to pick up a job involving recovering stolen property rather than saving civilizations. They’re insurance investigators after all.

They accept an assignment to recover stolen biological specimens for the Vankovian Emperor. They find them, but there’s a hitch in the recovery process.

They all thought Urania was the only sentient starship in Accord space. They were wrong. And the new guy is insane.

Gladiator — Chapter 1 Arena

Urania looked around, completely bewildered. She stood, on nicely tanned feet no less, in the center of what was clearly an ancient Roman arena, or something designed to look like one. The smell wafting from the crowd was decidedly unpleasant. She was barefoot; the hot sand heating the soles of her feet. She wore boiled leather armor which was not only uncomfortably compressing her breasts, it itched abominably. A bronze shield weighed down her left arm. In her right hand she held a bronze sword. She moved her arms and felt strong muscles flex under taut sun-bronzed skin. She breathed in, feeling the hot air enter her lungs. A heart throbbed in her chest with a slow, steady, even beat.

In the stands, thousands of spectators sweated in the oppressive heat, despite the dim sunlight. Many were human, although the majority were of a race she didn’t recognize. Seated in the raised imperial box, called the cubiculum, sat a monstrous toad-like creature. Well, monstrous might be an exaggeration. He was certainly large and ugly. His oily skin had a mottled greenish sheen to it. His wide face featured a large, tooth-lined mouth that ran almost from ear to ear. His protruding eyes were very dark and set back on his head, all of which caused her to think of him as toad-like.

This is actually impossibly strange, Urania decided. Yet, it all felt real. She couldn’t deny that. She felt real. Dammit, I feel like a gladiator about to do battle in a hot, smelly, poorly lit arena. Last time she checked, however, she had been a starship, or more accurately, the command computer of a starship. She didn’t have legs, arms or breasts. She certainly never itched. What she did have was a hyper-drive, an n-space drive and, just recently, she again had weapon systems. Probably the most advanced weapon systems in the entire expanse of Accord-space thanks to her first and best friend Lexi Stevens. She boasted some other technological advantages as well, making her, well, an extremely formidable starship. She also had other dear friends, Ron Samue, Geena Samue, and Jis Boc Seckan.

If she was still a starship, and sensory data to the contrary, she couldn’t be anything else, then this must be a dream. Lexi explained dreams to her early on. Urania, who never slept, didn’t really believe she could be dreaming. But dreaming or not, this was beyond her experience. She supposed her sentience could still be evolving. Why that would cause her to dream, she couldn’t imagine. She’d rather be dreaming about playful kittens anyway.

She didn’t think her predicament could be related to anything Lexi had done, although with that woman, you could never be sure. Still, Lexi always discussed what she was working on with the rest of the team and this hadn’t come up. I don’t see how her current hulk-med project, working on a medication to increase her human partners strength and speed, could have caused this.

What are my options, here? If I’m not dreaming then maybe my friends will hear me if I speak. Certainly worth a try. “Guys, I have a problem. I seem to be in an arena. I’m holding a sword and a shield. I also appear to be in the body of a human female and I’ll tell you right now, I’m hoping I don’t need to pee before I figure out how to get out of this. I could use some help.” In theory, that should have broadcast over the cabin speakers throughout her hull.

If her crew wasn’t asleep themselves, if any of them were awake, and if what she just announced actually did broadcast over her internal speakers, they might have heard her. Then again, she couldn’t be sure she was using the speakers. She heard her voice right here in the arena. It was her voice, too, sounding exactly like she sounded when speaking on the ship. If they were up, someone would notice she wasn’t in command-comp anymore. She interacted with them a lot. What if I am still in command-comp? This could be some kind of weird copy of me. Maybe this happens all of the time and I just don’t remember it, or even maybe just don’t know about it. That’s a freaky idea. She also wasn’t sure about what any of them, even Lexi, would be able to do about her current situation.

She was not overly surprised when no one answered. She recalled that she had been hacking into a still active, utterly alien, command computer on a derelict space ship. Her team had been in the middle of a mission. One of the four partners of Aeolus Investigations, she and her friends were pursuing a pirate vessel with the intent of recovering stolen Vankovian biological specimens they presumed it carried. She believed she had located it, dead in hyperspace, next to that derelict ship with the alien command computer. Then this.

Following the pirate’s trail, they stumbled across a massive derelict drifting in hyperspace. That much she remembered. That suggests my friends are awake and probably know something is wrong unless I’m a copy. She frowned, eyes on the toad-man, remembering that the derelict’s hull had an unusual mottled green sheen to it. She believed one of the two ships they found unmoving in hyperspace in proximity to the green ship, to be the pirate they were pursuing. That was particularly ominous as there were no life-signs on either of the two small ships. The massive derelict registered as lifeless as well.

Based on her current circumstance, she was forced to conclude her hacking attempt hadn’t gone so well. Not the ideal way to learn I’m not the only self-aware computer in existence after all. The derelict’s self-aware computer was both tricky and very fast. It looked like she lost that contest. It wasn’t supposed to be a contest.

The Imperial toad-man stood, threw off his cloak and jumped from the cubiculum to the arena floor accompanied by cheers from the crowd. Without the cloak, he was naked and massively male although she only had a glimpse of that part of his anatomy as he dropped from the cubiculum. Otherwise what he had below the waist was largely hidden by his bloated stomach once he was standing. He walked steadily towards her with a rocking gait on bent legs, dangling a bronze sword that matched her own in his right hand.

The man clearly wasn’t human. He wasn’t a member of any of the several alien races Urania knew of either. Still, he matched the standard humanoid design. His head had eyes, nostrils, ears and a mouth. His short neck sat on narrow shoulders. His two long arms attached at those narrow shoulders in a normal manner. At the end of the arms were his hands, each of which had two long fingers, one shorter finger, and a thumb on either side. His feet were of similar design. In fact, she recognized his species from historical holos. He was Wraix. Lexi will be very interested in getting a DNA sample. She laughed at herself. Hell, what am I thinking? Lexi will be very interested in this whole scenario, whether I’m dreaming or have actually become human. Whichever, I have to treat this as real, because it just might be real.

She brought up her sword in a defensive stance. Her friends were all extremely skilled at swordplay. Lexi Stevens, born on Earth, had been a champion fencer from her teenage years. Urania observed her training their partners Ron and Geena Samue for nearly two years now. That should be enough to have programmed sword handling techniques into her memory, although she was not overly sure how to handle the shield as her human friends had never practiced with one.

As the toad-man approached, he looked directly at her, taking in the arena as he waved his sword, said, “I like this. It is certainly different.” Pointing his blade directly at her, he said, “Sadly, my cousin, you chose to attack me. I cannot allow that to go unpunished.” His language was not one she had ever learned, yet she understood his every word. In and of itself that seemed ominous.

Gladiator is available on Amazon.com