AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ships don’t have feelings, human. But they do take orders. You’ve programmed your vessel to fire upon me when I am exposed.”
“I haven’t, but I suppose I may as well have. The outcome is much the same.”
His eyes slide from me to some altered reality where I am definitely an evil villain. “You could have accomplices up there, attempting to destroy me with weapons from space.”
“If I do, they have terrible aim.”
“That is more likely than your ship having terrible aim.”
“Maybe you’re just very hard to hit, with all your alacrity and strength.”
He bends down and fixes me with an angry golden glare. “Do not try to flatter me into a state of stupidity.”
“I am not,” I tell him honestly. “The ship is trying to hit you from over twenty-two thousand miles away. At that distance, your movement can easily evade bolts if you are able to move at a significantly angular motion, which takes great instinct and strength.”
He retreats a little more, looking suitably pleased. “That is true,” he admits.
“Strikes at great distances only work if you have a static target to aim at,” I continue. “If you were a weapons depot, it might be a different matter, but frankly, I think she’s desperate. She knows there is next to no chance of hitting you, but she’s trying anyway.”
“That’s not how spaceships work.”
“It’s not how your spaceships work,” I correct him. “My ship likes me.”
“Then order her to land.”
“Why? So you can take her? She wouldn’t do it, anyway. It is against her programming. I have taught her to always protect herself first.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Usually I am on her, so it is in both our best interests.”
“So this is a comedy of unintended consequences, you find yourself ravaged as a would-be murderess, when in truth it is your badly programmed ship that will now be making the wilderness much more interesting.”
“Yes,” I say. “Exactly.”
“What an unfortunate series of events,” he muses.
“Indeed.”
I am fucking sore, inside and out. I am also tired, and somehow, hungry again.
“We should eat,” he says. “And you should clean up. Look at what a mess you are.”
He gives me a sexy half-grin that softens the judgement of his comment.
“So,” I say as we eat. Soup for me, sentient flesh for him. “What… How…”
“You’re trying to ask me my reasons for all the atrocities? What if I told you it was a series of impossible decisions and misunderstandings?”
“Was it?”
“No. Listen, what’s your name?”
“Lyssa.”
“Listen, Lyssa. There are those who deserve to die, and I kill them. I kill them whether everybody else agrees with me or not. Sometimes I kill them en masse. It saves time.”
When he says it that way, it almost sounds reasonable.
