Page 1 of The Omega's Unexpected Bounty
Chapter One
CAAN
“Time till orbit?” I asked. Outside my spaceship’s cockpit, white pulsating ‘clouds’ from the warp bubble shifted against the endless black broken by occasional white star streaks. A Volardi ship would have been faster but trackable.
“At least several hours,” said a tinny voice behind me with my New Texas accent. “Shall I push the engines, Caan?”
“No, he’s waited twenty years. Another few hours won’t matter.”I hope.
I smiled as a miniature, bare-chested version of myself no taller than my hand, jumped up and sat on top of a glowing green monitor. He swept his brown hair to the right side as I do and had the same dark stubble.
The mind was his – if some philosophers were correct. There was a time where I uploaded my mind to it every day. One day it felt like killing him. Not sure how alive you could say a simulacrum – sim for short – like Tiny was, but the guilty feelings stopped. Figured it was an interesting experiment to see what would happen and have something or someonewho could think on its own. Never gave him a real name but ‘Tiny’ stuck. Calling him Caan-Two didn’t seem like ‘him.’
He swung his blue denim covered legs while his back was to the streaking warp field. I gave him the same type of body I had although I didn’t know how to describe it beyondmine. I wasn’t tiny like a Femeni or Omega male. My unique background lets me fit in on New Texas. Nobody would ever mistake me for a Volardi Soturi. I didn’t have the traditional purple hair stripe or eyes, and I wasn’t huge like them. Muscled enough to take in bounties and to pass for a Dara or Beta as my father’s people called them.
Thank the universe I wasn’t Omega sized. That would have made things hard.Maybe that’s why I liked my little friend. We were both off-sized, Volardi created and we both wanted nothing to do with them.
I wasn’t Volardi, but they were big on simulacrums, and they liked theirs life-sized. My people – Earthlings I suppose – were big on taking Volardi ideas and changing them. A few others in my business used sims for decoys or filled them up with weaponry for a job. I went in the other direction: kept the weaponry for myself and let my little friend be him. You’d be surprised how useful another you can be if you don’t lock down their creativity and let them grow, so to speak.
His New Texas-accented voice drew out and sounded whinier than mine; a side effect of his miniature size. “I’mbored.”
“Then shut yourself off.”
“No. It’s too strange. Everything stops and suddenly the ship is on fire, or I’m in your hand while we’re being chased. I don’t know how you do it when you sleep.”
I shrugged. Tiny was me, in a way, but I didn’t know how to explain sleep to him. He had my memories and thoughts – although we diverted emotionally over the years. I suspected it was like trying to explain hunger to someone who never starved but studied it for years.
“If,” he said, “we weren’t hauling the other ship, we would have been there by now.”
“I need to make it look good.”
“Wasteful. You’re intentionally crashing a spaceship.”
“Because I need to convince them.
“Them or him?”
“Both.”
He let out a dismissive murmur. “We could just go down there and get him. We have enough firepower to overwhelm a single mining colony.”
I shook my head quickly. “That’s not the point of this little–”
“Rescue operation? Psychological evaluation?”
“Old business,” I said. “No… unfinished business, closure.”
“You realize you’re interfering with Volardi punishment?”
“Fuck the Volardi.”
He was tiny, but I could see the thin-lipped expression on his face. “Actually, it would be the other way around with you. They would love to get their–”
“I get it.” My voice rose. “I don’t need a reminder. I knowexactlywhat they would do.”
“Are you sure? Because if I were you, I wouldn’t go down there. We could go and enjoy the galaxy together. There are enough suppressants for your condition.”
My face twisted into a tight smile. “You make it sound like I’m dying.”
