Eye Of Balor Magazine

by KRR

Copyright @2010, 2026 Eye Of Balor Magazine

Xaphu’s Fire: A Void Pirates Story

Satu’s Rings

-by KRR

The future is …medieval.

A small chunk of black ice crashed into the hull. There was a short screeching sound, and then silence. Xaphu watched the huge chunks of frozen water roll end over end, knowing full well that any one of the spinning icebergs could crush the hull of his ship. The field of giant tumbling ice seemed to stretch on forever, as far as the eye could see, but in fact stretched out only one hundred fourteen thousand kilometers. Beyond the sea of rock-ice was an endless expanse of yellow and green swirling gases, the giant planet of Satu. From the data panel, a transparent hologram gave a breakdown of the gas giant’s chemical properties. Satu’s upper atmosphere was almost entirely hydrogen, the most desired element in the Void, after He3, making the giant planet a way station for fuel in the deep center of the Cradle, that portion of space explored by humanity. The Rings of Satu themselves were a priceless commodity. A frozen storehouse of water and oxygen, an oasis within the empty void of space.

Xaphu checked his ship’s speed. One thousand kilometers per. He was entering the outer ring too fast to safely maneuver. He tapped the poly panel on the control board. His ship spit out waste gas from its forward thrusters in a bright flare, like a dragon belching up its lunch. The jets of gas suppressed velocity. The ship suddenly slowed, like it had fallen into a giant pillow. Xaphu slid his armor-clad finger down the face of the poly panel. The hologram projection pinpointed all nearby power-emitting signatures. Mining facilities dotted the icefield as blips of green light within the panel’s projection. There were many types of mines within the Rings of Satu, but most were ice mines, refining ice into the precious gas, or into pure drinking water. In space, fresh drinking water was worth its weight in platinum. Oxygen was worth more. Without the mines, the fuel-siphoning cities far below within the clouds of Satu would starve for both water and air, just as people had long ago on the nearby dead Earth.

Xaphu tapped the poly panel again, and another blast of waste gas spit out to slow his corvette-class ship to a near dead-float. He leaned back in his cushioned pilot seat, the black leather of his cape squeaking against the red leather upholstery of the chair. The helm-bubble of his ship was designed for one occupant. It was a spherical compartment—mostly transparent, a big plexi-ball—save for a solid metal spine running from the hatch above the pilot seat to the stern of the spacecraft. From the helm-bubble, Xaphu could see in all directions around his spacecraft, even straight down, as the vessel was a split-hull design with rear living quarters and forward twin pontoon power-generators. Like all vessels its size, his ship was zero-G. The lower hatch to the living quarters was situated just slightly behind the pilot seat. Modest in size, the living space consisted of two cabins, a kitchen, a medical closet, and a cargo bay. There were only two crew aboard: himself and Spado.

Xaphu cleared his throat, then said, “Do you have it?”

“Yes,” Spadoka, the brain of his ship, replied. Her voice was indifferent and distant, digitally generated by cold circuitry.

Once upon a time Spadoka had been a human being, but that time had passed. Now, she was what was commonly referred to as a pirated brain. In her former life, her human life, she had been a Void navigator, and a psychic of some ability. Her intuitive psychic attributes had given her an edge in school and had helped her develop her skills of System astronautics. From the time she was a little girl being a spacecraft navigator was her dream. Now she was the brain of a spacecraft. She had commented to Xaphu on this irony more than once.

No longer sensitive flesh and chalky bone, she was a lump of tissue neurons encased in a metal, ceramic, and silicon housing, but she remained a navigator and psychic. How this evolution of her body happened to her was much the same as it happened to many others. Spado had strayed down the wrong path, and had been abducted by the worst sort. Her brain had been removed from her skull. Pickled was the term. It was now housed in the central information system of the spacecraft, with synthetic cerebrospinal fluid continuously pulsing an electrical current, connecting every cell of the cognitive organ to some part of the engineering.

Xaphu had not been the criminal that did this to her. He had inherited the space corvette, and Spado, when having dispatched the vessel’s former owner. This ship and Spado were a bonus of the job, another sort of crime. She and the ship had proved great assets in his activities as an assassin. And, truth be told, he had grown fond of Spadoka. Although, at times, she was a little more vague in answer to his questions than he would prefer.

“Where is the damn thing?” he said, irritation in his voice.

“I have the coordinates,” she replied, apathetic to Xaphu’s mood. The location of the mine blinked within the hologram in front of his face.

“Would you like me to pilot us in?” Spado offered.

“I think that might be best for us both,” Xaphu said. Navigating by stick through a ring-field was something he dreaded. Mining pilots, taking shipments back down into the clouds of Satu, did it all the time. They died all the time, too.

“No problem, Boss. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Spado fired the rear thrusters. The craft launched forward again, into the field. The vast sea of black ice began to spin in a clockwise fashion as Spado spiraled the spacecraft in a corkscrew maneuver. Xaphu closed his eyes. He felt nothing, the zero-G removing any pull on his body, but the readout from his helmet visor made his head ache.

“You’re going to smash us,” he protested. “Damn show-off.”

“You think I care if we crash?” Spado asked him.

Thousands of ice shards whizzed by the helm-bubble.

“I’m too young to die.,” the bounty hunter said.

“So was I,” Spado snapped back.

“You’re not dead,” he said.

“Just stuck in limbo,” she answered.

All around them the icebergs whirled.

“Approaching now. Look up,” she said.

Xaphu looked up and to his left and saw the massive gray steel sphere of the prison mine rolling in a slow, ponderous tumble. The most common mining facility in the rings was this very design: a huge free-floating orb armored with thick metal plating. These giant orbs rode the lazy current of ice in orbit around Satu, extending long mechanical arms to seize passing icebergs, drag them inside, and process the frozen treasure into oxygen and water. The tech-data for this particular mine flashed across his scanning screen. Like his own spacecraft and most of the other facilities drifting in the ice-field, the prison was a zero-G environment. Its hull was dark, deeply scarred, and unmistakably ancient. Xaphu scanned the readout for a commission date, but none was listed.

“How old is this hulk?” he whispered, almost to himself.

“Space architecture is Exodus period,” Spado said.

“Exodus? You’re telling me this thing is five hundred years old?” his voice betrayed his disbelief.

“Or older,” she answered. “Breaking for soft landing.”

Xaphu watched his data panel for any indication of alert, but the mine was silent.

“They don’t appear to be on to us,” he said.

“Detecting no alarm. They do not see us. Of course, I have the deflectors operating.”

“Good thinking.”

“I’m all brain, Honey,” she reminded him. “Touchdown in T-minus eight hundred.”

“Copy,” Xaphu said.

He tapped the data screen, and a hologram of the mine’s Warden projected from the glass panel. The face was gaunt, the eyes deep set with dark rings around them.

Stulius Toed had been hired by the Kronos Mining Federation. This turned out to be a mistake, as it wasn’t long before they discovered they had employed a monster. Reports from shipment ferries returning to the gas stations described Toed as a sadist who liked to torture disobedient prisoners in bizarre and unseemly ways. There were also rumors of cannibalism.

“Doesn’t look like a nice guy,” Xaphu said.

“Won’t lose any sleep on punching this one’s ticket, then?” Spado asked.

“I never do,” he said. “Who cares, anyway?”

“No one’s going to cry over this one. Just be careful, he’s not alone. His security are Amazi. Very tough lot. I am estimating no more than a dozen. Well armed, though, with the usual toys,” Spado said.

“No more than a dozen,” Xaphu said, and grinned. “Amazi bodyguards. My favorite.”

“Not afraid of a bunch of girls, are you?” Spado teased.

“Well, I…”

Exhaust jets fired beneath the spacecraft with a hiss.

“Right. Landing in T-minus two hundred,” she updated.

“I’ve got to do something about your voice chip,” Xaphu said. “You are one cold-sounding hunk of gray-matter.”

“And I used to have such a lovely singing voice.”

“I’m sure you did.” Xaphu unbuckled his harness. He floated up out of his pilot’s chair, turned and pushed off the back of the chair with his right foot. Floating into the corridor reached up and grabbed hold of the outer pressure hatch.

“Almost there. Once we bump, you can pop the top anytime,” Spado said. “Ten, nine, eight.”

3, 2, 1 … and then came the bump, so soft he could barely feel it.

The hatches at both ends of the corridor, forward and after of him, closed and sealed tight.

Xaphu twisted the hatch lever. The corridor out-gassed into the Void.

“Air lock is zero pressure. We have touched down, Spado informed.

There was a subtle vibration as the spacecraft latched onto the mine. He pushed up on the exterior hatch.

“No alarm has sounded. We are incognito,” Spado said.

“Keep the engine turning,” Xaphu ordered.

“Sure thing, Skipper.”

Xaphu slipped out into space. He floated up and spun around over the helm-bubble of his ship, then activated the magnetic soles of his boots. His black cape billowed around him, the leather flapping in the carbon dioxide waste jets of the mine as the magnets pulled him down. The soles of his boots touched to the skin of his spacecraft, the magnetic hold keeping him from being blown into the ice-field by the mine’s jets. He touched a control and decreased the pull of the boots to allow himself to walk with ease.

The cold of open Void engulfed Xaphu and slowly began to permeate through his bio-armor. He was safe, but discomfort was not avoidable. Space was unkind. His bio-armor was part of his bodily systems, albeit not a natural part. The exoskeleton portions of the suit, fabricated from titanium composite, were mounted to his legs and arms via metal rods that ran through flesh and bone. The augmentations gave him tremendous strength and speed. Face more than was natural for his Hopper heritage of growing up in .4 standard gravity. His spine had been completely replaced with one of titanium and fibrotic. Many of his internal organs had also been replaced with much more efficient gear. Being a cyborg was useful, although it did lend to distrusting glances from some.

“Best route in?” he said as he walked down the spine of his spacecraft.

The speaker in his helmet chirped back, “To your six. Walk past my tail exhaust, and you’ll see it. There is a maintenance pressure hatch entering into the upper utility platform. I detect no life signs there,” Spado said.

“Right,” he replied, as he walked past the aft canon. He grabbed hold of the ladder rail and slid down. “Passing by your tail exhaust now. Don’t gas me.”

“Smart ass.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you see the airlock?” she asked.

“Yeah, I got it,” Xaphu said and drew his meter-long titanium-niobium alloy blade from its sheath.

~ ~ ~

The prisoner’s eyes screamed a silent agony. His appendages were spread wide, his hands and feet removed. Steel cables strung through the distal ends of his radius and tibia and fastened him to a giant iron ring. The amputations had been made by plasma scalpel and had charred the flesh black. His ruined body was a horror. Patches of skin had been removed. His face had been completely peeled away, the bare red bone covered with a transparent protective medical bag. Saline fluid filled the bag, and an air tube fed down his throat kept the slave alive.

The spiked iron halo of torture floated at the center of the mine, held in place by two heavy chains. The slave hung there as an example—a macabre warning to every worker that laziness would be punished. If a prisoner refused to work, Stulius Toed could always find another use for them, turning their mutilated bodies into a lesson that encouraged the rest to labor harder. Toed was a man who believed in leadership by example. He achieved it by making examples of others… bloody examples.

Toed floated alongside the grotesque display. His wrists and ankles were ringed with micro thruster bracelets and anklets, enabling him agility in the zero-G environment. Everyone in the mine wore the micro thrusters, prisoners and security alike. He was dressed in a see-through jump suit, his genitals covered only with a black rubber diaper. His scarred grayish flesh was crisscrossed with obscene tattoos in black and red ink—depictions of perverse sex acts, sadism, and of violent murder. His scaly feet were bare, his toenails painted red, as were his fingernails. He wore bright indigo eyeliner over bulging green eyes. He was a vain man and loved makeup. Unfortunately, his lips were completely eaten away, the result of a skin disease left too long unchecked. This left his face in a permanent nightmarish smile. He had outlined the rotted flesh around his mouth in red lipstick—his exposed teeth stained black.

The vaguely humanoid shape of an android floated next to Toed, moving back and forth before the tortured prisoner in the iron halo. The automaton injected the suffering prisoner with a protein mixture. The nutrients would keep the victim alive. The android was an expert in such things, designed and built for just this.

“The subject will not expire for another full cycle,” the android informed the Warden.

The machine was sentient, having an organically grown brain. Such androids were extremely rare, and extremely expensive. Grown brains, unlike pirated brains, contained no memories of past lives and could be conditioned to be completely obedient. Toed had bought his android new, and conditioned it to be an expert in torture. The android had operated as such for nearly a decade and knew only two things, how to cause pain and how to keep the human body alive. It was a master of both sciences.

“Very good,” Toed said. “I want him to learn his lesson well …and help to instruct the others.” He laughed at the faceless prisoner suspended before him in the halo of torment.

The dying man comprehended nothing but the blinding waves of pain that washed over his senses. The laughing sadist who had done this to him was lost in the fog of pain.

~ ~ ~

The interior of the mine was warm and humid. All water mines were. The readout from Xaphu’s visor told him the air outside was fifty degrees Celsius. Much more comfortable than open space had been. He switched off the contained life-support of his suit, letting in air from the mine, and immediately regretted doing so. The smell of feces and rotting flesh filled his nostrils. He needed to find his target quickly, kill him, and exit this cesspit.

Through his visor, the entire interior of the filthy mine was illuminated in varied shades of red and green. Body parts floated here and there, dangling chains like tails. Mine workers hid in crevasses and behind machinery. They were consumed by fear. Xaphu could see them, peeking out in wonder as he moved past them. Men and women with dirty faces. Most were too lean, and many had fresh scars or dark bruises.

He pushed off the inner hull and floated downward. The darkness below began to take form, the architecture outlined on the inside of his visor. As he descended, pushing his way past girders and machinery, not yet using his suit’s jets, he found what he was looking for near the center of the mine. Stulius Toed. The madman was seemingly occupied in an act of sadism, floating before a tortured prisoner, in the process of being skinned alive.

Dancing shadows in the dark betrayed that the Warden was not alone. Toed’s bodyguard of Amazi warriors were keeping watch from discrete corners. The Amazi were a special race, long secluded from the rest of humanity. These fierce warriors contracted out from their home world Bellatrix 1, in orbit around the blue-white giant they called the Amazon Star.

Amazi performed the services of bodyguards, and did so with a dedication of religious devotion. As far as anyone knew, the entire race was female. How they procreated was something accomplished in med labs. The short, muscular women had a rich golden skin. Their hair was a milky blonde, or platinum, and their eyes were a deep violet. They weren’t Stompers, but they were close, having come from a home world of 1.2 standard gravity. Technically they were Bricks, standard humans, but they were heavy Bricks. Not one of them was more than a meter and a half from head to toe. They were a strong race, despite their short stature. The thighs and shoulders of the Amazi were powerful and thick with smooth golden muscles, and their white canines were elongated and capable of tearing flesh. The little warriors were highly prized by slavers, who sought to capture them and sell them as pit fighters.

As Xaphu slipped silently closer, they manifested on his visor display. Some of the warriors wore metal plated armor over their sex. Some wore cups of armor over their breasts. Others went altogether bare with only micro thruster anklets adorning their heels, grasping weapons in their hands. Most of the Amazi carried electrical prods in one hand and curved ceremonial knives with a hooked point in the other. Some of the Amazi held the ends of an electro-net in their hands. These were bolo girls. If caught in their snare, Xaphu would be fried by several thousand watts of electricity. The bolo girls would have to be neutralized first.

The company had pulled the standard security detail when stories started to come in of things getting weird on the station. Toed had brought the Amazi in because he knew the company would be coming for his head. The fierce bodyguards would not be enough to save the demented Warden. The company wanted Stulius Toed put into retirement. Xaphu was an expert at such things. He was born to it. He gripped tight the hilt of his sword and swooped down toward the sadistic madman.

Toed was the first to see the armor-clad assassin coming, his green eyes bulging, expertly adept at picking up on any hint of danger.

“Oh, no!” Toed cried out. “Mute assassins from the shadows!”

Xaphu tucked his armored legs to his chest and spun through Toed’s entourage of Amazi like a cannonball. His blade slashed out as he passed. The pitiless metal struck one of the bolo girls, the tip of the blade passing through her throat. Toed and the remaining Amazi were engulfed in a red cloud of blood.

“How many are there! Stop them!” The Warden spun and darted away in panic propelled by his tiny ankle jets.

Flying through the mine at high speed, Xaphu put a gauntleted hand forward, catching hold of a large steel girder weaving along the hull of the mine. He spun around and looked back. The Amazi and the Warden were still within the blood cloud. They could not see him through it, but he could see them. He kicked and sprung off the hull, shooting high into the mine and above his cluster of targets.

Below him the Amazi emerged, their bare golden bodies now slicked red in the blood of their fallen sister. One of the warriors had replaced the dispatched bolo girl. The electro-net was still an issue. Xaphu grabbed hold of a cable harness as he sailed past it. He hugged tight to the harness and hid in the shadows. The Amazi twisted their heads in all directions, desperate to seek him out. He smiled. They had not spotted him yet.

Scanning the mine’s architecture for an advantage, Xaphu spotted an exterior waste disposal hatch far beneath the team of bolo girls. He decided upon his strategy and launched off the cable harness, plummeting down. From the dark he fell on them, grabbing one from behind. He continued to fall, down through the mine, dragging the bolo girl with him. The muscular Amazi wriggled in his grip. She was chained to her sister by the electro-net, and so he had tackled both bolo girls with his assault. Xaphu violently pushed the blood-slick warrior into her companion. The two Amazi grappled one another, attempting to regain their balance and stop their fall. Xaphu reached out and activated the net. Bright blue electrical currents fired out around the two Amazi. Caught in their own snare, they continued to fall through the mine. The smell of burning flesh was strong. Xaphu soared in front of them. He reached the hatch first and opened it. The two Amazi landed inside, their bodies convulsing within from the electrical currents of their net. Xaphu sealed the hatch and ejected them into space.

From above him, he could hear the sound of more Amazi coming for the attack. He looked up and saw them, six in number, descending through the darkness. He kicked off the waste hatch and soared upward, and past the bodyguards. They swung at him with their electro-rods and sickle blades, but too slowly to catch the assassin as he rocketed by.

He was getting distracted by the pretty girls. Who the company wanted dead was the Warden. If he wasn’t careful, the creepy jail master might slip the noose. Xaphu had to kill Stulius Toed before he could escape. He could see Toed pushing through the vast dark on little anklet jets. He was, in fact, making a run for it. The sadist had a direct course. He was heading either for a safe room or for an escape pod. Xaphu had to stop him now.

This, however, was made impossible by two electro-prods forced against Xaphu’s back. The pulse from the rods blasted through his bio-armor. The bio-armor, woven through his body, caused him to feel the full force of the pulse. He collided with the steel hull of the mine, and the Amazi fell on him. He hit the control for his suit jets, sending his body into a wild spin, and threw four of the small women off of him. The Amazi warriors sailed off into the darkness. A fifth came at him, her hands armed with metal-hooked cat claws. She slapped at Xaphu’s visor. He dodged, the metal hooks clicking on his faceplate. The Amazi warrior was a captain, so marked by the tattoos on her face. Her golden body was naked, except for her razor fingernails. She slapped at him again and he twisted away. If she slashed open any of the more vulnerable areas of his suit, that could present a real problem. He caught the warrior by the back of her neck and swung his blade up in an arc, hacking off one of the warrior’s flailing arms and then the next. He flung her off, her armless body cursing him as she spiraled away into the blackness, blood shooting from the ends of her severed appendages.

Xaphu emerged from the red cloud of blood, the fluid beading on his visor. He wiped the Amazi’s blood away. Four more of the warrior bodyguards came at him. They were relentless and would stop at nothing. Neither would he. He continued to butcher.

~ ~ ~

Stulius Toed thrust his way through the mess deck. Human carcasses floated chained to the bulkhead. A tinge of remorse filled his dark soul at the thought of having to leave all his glorious bounty behind. He had grown so accustomed to eating flesh, he wasn’t sure that anything else could sustain him. Grabbing hold of a zip-slip container, he filled it to capacity with fresh meat—just enough to keep him until he found another harvest.

Exiting the kitchen he fired his ankle thrusters and propelled himself toward the hangar. His escape pod waited there. The craft was simple, having only the control compartment and a large engine. But it would allow him to escape, if he reached it in time. Just one more thing to do, first. As Toed neared the hangar door he changed direction and jetted over to a sealed hatch marked Oxygen Storage.

~ ~ ~

Xaphu pulled his blade from the body of another dead Amazi. The air around him was thick with blood, but his visor saw through it and gave a three-dimensional readout of his surroundings. A sensor flared before his eyes. A power surge had ignited within the mine. The surge was powerful and could only be a spacecraft’s engine coming online. Stulius Toed was preparing to make his exit. Xaphu would have to overrun him in his own craft. Spado would be able to track the fleeing mine Warden. He had to get back to her in quick order.

The Amazi were all dead and the mine was filled with terrified workers. They had watched the battle while hiding in the alcoves. The company would send a new management team the moment that Xaphu left the mine. No doubt they hovered somewhere close, just outside the ice-field. The new managers would filter the blood from the air, bag the carnage, and put the mine back into proper working order. But Xaphu wasn’t sure he’d get paid unless he succeeded in killing Stulius Toed.

As he sailed upward, he spotted the torture android. The plexi-helmet the android wore over its gray spongy lab-grown organ was transparent, clearly displaying the brain.

“You’re not company issue, are you?” Xaphu asked.

“I am the personal property of Maestro Toed,” the android answered.

“Maestro?”

“His Greatness’s preferred title,” the android said.

“Oh. Well, now you’re the personal property of me,” Xaphu informed the android. “Torture androids make good med-androids.”

“I am an excellent medical practitioner,” the android confirmed. “Won’t the Maestro be returning?”

“Afraid not,” Xaphu said.

“I see,” the machine replied.

In a rare act of pity, Xaphu unceremoniously cut the throat of the tortured man suspended in the iron halo.

“You’re free, brother,” he told the dead man, then turned to the android. “Follow me.”

“Of course,” the android said, and followed.

~ ~ ~

For the sake of speed, Xaphu entered his spacecraft through the lower cargo hatch.

“You have him on scanner?” Xaphu asked, sealing the hatch behind him. “Spado?”

“I have him on scanner, Boss,” Spado replied.

“Let’s get on him.”

“We have a slight problem,” Spado informed her captain.

“What problem?” Xaphu asked and pushed off the bulkhead and toward the hatch to the living quarters above him.

“He’s in a SHARC, and those things are all engine. He’ll be out of range …well, he’s outside range now. I couldn’t catch up with him even with both my engines burning full core.”

A SHARC, or Supercharged Hyper Assault Raiding Craft, was nothing more than a helm-bubble, two LASERs, and a high-powered engine. Some models carried a fission pulse catapult, which created a nuclear shockwave and could fling the vehicle deep into Void. As Xaphu climbed into his pilot seat, this was confirmed to be the case with Stulius Toed’s SHARC, as a bright flash far beyond the field of spinning ice caught his eye.

“He’s fired off a nuke and is riding the wave,” Spado informed him. “He just skipped town. No idea where he’s going, but he’s moving like a bat out of hell.”

“Okay. Well, at least he’s off the mine. Maybe I still get paid,” Xaphu said. “Engines ready?”

“Of course,” Spado said. The vessel began to rumble as the power began to build in the reactors.

“Then let’s get the f–” A jarring shockwave cut him short. Before he could speak again, a second shockwave pulsed through the spacecraft, hitting so hard that it jolted them from the outer skin of the mine.

“We are no longer parked,” Spado said.

“What the hell was that?” Xaphu asked.

“Not one-hundred percent on that, Boss.”

“I don’t like this. Hit it,” he said.

The main engines fired and they sailed away from the mine at high speed. A blinding flash of light erupted from above. Another shockwave rattled the spacecraft. Xaphu looked up to see a giant fireball blaze for the fraction of an instant, then nothing.

“What the–” Xaphu scanned his controls for an answer.

“It appears the oxygen tanks have ignited aboard the mine,” Spado informed him.

“Damage?”

“Complete. The mine is no more,” she said.

The hologram readout in front of him confirmed that there was nothing but debris where the mine had previously been.

“How many people were on that thing?”

“Six-hundred,” Spado said. “He must have had it rigged to blow.”

“All those people killed out of spite.” Xaphu shook his head in disgust.

“I think he was trying to kill us,” she corrected him. “So, what about payday?”

“Ha, not likely,” he growled. “I’ll never get another job after this. Probably put a bounty on my head.”

“Ironic.”

“Might as well vector out a course for home,” he said.

“Will do.” After a moment of pause, Spado said, “Question; is that a torture droid sitting in the cargo bay?” If there had been any emotion in her voice, it would have betrayed skepticism, or disapproval.

“I’ve brought you a friend,” Xaphu said.

“Boss, that thing’s gray matter was grown in a plexi-dish, whereas I was once a little girl, with a mother and father.” She was not amused. “I was more human than you ever were, my dear cyborg master. And I, like you, have a soul.”

“And our new friend? It doesn’t have a soul?” Xaphu asked.

“I don’t know, Boss. Good question.”

~ ~ ~

Below, in the cargo hold of the vessel, the torture android stood motionless across from a large exoskeleton assault-mech.

It hoped its new master found it to be useful. It was eager to please, eager to show its value. The torture android had taken a certain pleasure in its work. Torture was its life, its love. Its sole desire. But it wasn’t sure what an assassin would need with a torture android. Being exclusively a medical android did not sound all too appealing. The android concluded that it would have to be satisfied with whatever duties it was tasked to achieve. It was not the place of an android to argue. Even if its new master was, like itself, substantially synthetic.

A pulsing spark flitted in the depths of gray-matter. The deep-space-comm buried in the torture android’s brain was receiving a message. It acknowledged the signal.

“Yes, Maestro? How may I serve you?”