It was almost ti to get up. Neither of us wanted to. The tribulations of my mory recall were quickly forgotten in a sea of comfort and bliss, and I didn’t want to leave that yet. While the last night had been passionate and exciting, the morning had quickly just beco a cozy, lazy few hours in bed. We barely spoke after my outburst, just enjoying each others’ presence more than physically handling one another.
Which is not to say that yet more sex wasn’t an elent of our comfort for each other, but that morning was more about simply existing together than of actively doing anything at all.
And as nice as it was for a bit, I can’t stand doing nothing for that long if I’m not sleeping or in torpor. I was suddenly curious about sothing more than the present. “You know...” I finally interrupted the silence, turning to lean into Ray’s chest with my head. “The whole... th-thing with the crew being all sec...ret with their past? I’ve managed to g-get almost everyone to talk about their his...tory anyway. You and Aisling are the o-only ones who haven’t told at least soth...ing about where they ca f-from.”
Ray gave a quiet chuckle. “Bit of a silly rule, isn’t it?” I felt her claws run gently down my back. I think she liked the way it made shiver when I wasn’t expecting it. “Captain’s always insisted on it, even back when it was just the two of us. She’s running from sothing, I know that much. But it’s important to her, and it’s never co back to bite us, so she can keep whatever secret background she wants. I don’t mind.”
I nodded. I figured Aisling would be the hardest person to get anything out of in that regard. But I wasn’t thinking about Aisling at the mont. “What about y-you?” I asked cautiously, hoping she wasn’t hiding so sordid past herself.
She stopped running her claws down my back and let out a heavy sigh, “Well, I wouldn’t say I care much about hiding my early life, but it can be a heavy subject. People like us don’t end up in situations like this because we led an easy life. I’m sure you understand that by now.”
I nodded and held her as tight as I could against . “Yeah. I underst...and.”
We only sat in silence for another minute before she spoke quietly, “You know... I’m sure you could have guessed it, but I was born an experint, too.”
We were similar in that regard. What a horrifying thing to have in common. I nodded to her, “D-Doc told . After the first ti I s-saw you in your room. You were rat...ioning your dication w-while Theseus was dr-drifting.”
“Ahh...” She nodded back. “I must have been a sight... Glad you haven’t had to deal with much when I’m undicated. It’s easy to get irritated when you’re falling apart,” She sighed.
“I’ll adm-mit, I thought you were s-scary when I first saw you,” I said sheepishly, reasserting my grip on her. “But the first t-ti we talked, in Shel...by’s? I already f-felt good about you. You just put out th-this... comfy feeling. Like I was al...ready famil...iar with you. You weren’t scary at all a-after that.”
“Really?” She sounded amused. “That far back?”
I nodded. “Maybe Joel was r-right, and we should’ve just done it back then,” I giggled.
She laughed in kind. “You were drunk off your ass, I wasn’t going to take advantage.” She lovingly stroked my back again.
“No, I know you w-wouldn’t.” She wasn’t that kind of person. I wouldn’t love her like this if she was. Maybe what I had with Aisling was just infatuation, but this felt more real, and I wasn’t just saying that because Ray didn’t reject .
There was another lull as we just sat in comfort with each other again, until Ray spoke up, “I was part of the third generation of Mammons. I think that makes lucky. The first died off quickly, mostly incompatible with life. The second were so unstable that most of them didn’t make it to consciousness. It was ours where they could actually start experinting with us, and we still need stabilizers to keep us from... well, complete nervous system failure.”
I nodded along, glancing over to her shelf at the padded tal container I knew held the vials of sickly green fluid she needed just to live. I was glad we’d managed to steal such a healthy supply from Venus before we ca out here. I had no idea there was such a history of failure behind the Mammons, though. It made sense. There were apparently thousands of clones that had died or gone far more mad than the seven of us Arthausen Units that made it. Corporations carelessly leaving trails of bodies in their wake in the na of ‘progress’ was hardly uncommon.
“That’s why I have my implant. I was Almaty’s test case for increasing our longevity. It distributes stabilizer far more efficiently than the organic bits. I suppose I’m lucky there again, in that it worked perfectly.”
“Up unt-til Skygraves EMPed it...” I mumbled. I still felt a small pang of guilt for what I’d put her through after that incident, even if all had been forgiven long ago by now.
She pulled her hand up and rubbed my head for a mont. “Doc and Mouse fixed it,” she reminded . There was no reason for to dwell on it. I learned my lesson, and the consequences were long past now. I took in a deep breath and let it go in the comfort of her touch. “It wasn’t the first ti it needed adjustnts. See, when Almaty collapsed, I was... young. Very young. Four, maybe five years old. It was tuned to work on a child. Eventually, I needed a technician to... adapt it to my growing needs.”
I tried to picture what a Mammon would look like as a small child, but my imagination failed . It was hard to think of Ray as anything but the impressive creature wrapped around . Whether she was stroking my head for my comfort or her own now, I wasn’t sure, but I listened closely.
“I don’t rember all the details of it, but when Almaty went down, they tried to keep holding us. They ran out of funds and resources, but the personnel were just stranded there. So wandered off, maybe beca warriors or started their own commune if they were good people, I’m not sure. But plenty stayed and tried to keep order as it was. Kept us locked in under so misguided idea that they might survive if they kept being loyal to the company that no longer existed.”
People too afraid to leave the status quo. I guess I understood that on so level. Back in the simulation, I knew that the society I was part of was wrong, but I was too scared to leave it behind. I didn’t even understand how soone could have. It seed so silly looking back on it. Deciding to leave it behind hadn’t exactly been easy, but it was certainly one of the best decisions I’d ever made. Still, I knew what it was like to live in that fear.
“Well, you can’t go around successfully breeding super-soldiers and then expect to be able to hold them when there’s no one backing the operation anymore. My people revolted, and we easily broke free and went out into Earth. Young as I was, so of the adults adopted , took care of as best they could. But it’s not easy living off the land on Earth without knowing what you’re doing. It was hard. We went hungry a lot, and we didn’t know how to treat the wounded. We needed help.”
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I felt Ray tense up a bit at those words. I held her tight because I knew what ca next had to be tragedy.
“We stumbled onto a tribal camp. They saw us and thought we were monsters. They attacked us. Drove us off. We didn’t want to fight them, but they...” Her jaw clenched tight. “They wouldn’t listen. We got away, but most of the adults were wounded. Dying. I... never had a mother, but my momma, the woman who cared for most, who I had grown most attached to... she died that day. We fell apart after that. There were too few of us willing to keep together as a group, and no one had the ans to care for a helpless child.” She took in a deep breath and sighed. “I was alone.”
“Shit...” Even if I was mistreated through my childhood, I was at least supervised through it. I had spent long periods emotionally alone, uncared for, in pain and unloved except for when I was allowed to be with Lily, but my well-being was at least taken care of. I didn’t starve, and they did what they could to keep out of harm’s way. Ray had actually been alone, and in the wilds on Earth for that matter.
She had gone still by this point, her voice dropping as I’m sure she relived so sliver of what had happened to her. “I had a few weeks of stabilizer stashed in my pockets, if I only took it when it started hurting. I didn’t exactly have much of a will to live. I didn’t know how to get food, prepare it, care for myself, anything. I went about a week, and all I’d managed to do was find so water that I’m amazed didn’t make sick. I mostly just sat around and waited for the end to co. And then... I got lucky again.” Her voice ward a little. “Humans found . Stumbled across at the riverside, I guess. From a different group than the ones that had chased us off, thankfully. Turns out, they’d already t another Mammon. Soone who had been wandering alone, and while they had initially been scared of him too, one scary person and a platoon of them were a bit different. He had the chance to explain himself, and inford the tribe what had happened. So when they saw a lost child who looked like him... they knew I was really just that, a lost child.”
I smiled a little. At least she hadn’t been lost for too long, all things considered. I know I definitely couldn’t have lasted a week out in the wilds of Earth by myself now, never mind as the broken thing I was when I was a child. She was right, she had been extrely lucky.
“They took in. Fed . They even started developing stabilizer for . Turned out it was extrely easy to make, at least with materials you’d find on Earth. A lot of us stole copies of the formula on the way out of the lab to make sure we’d be able to produce more. It’s maybe even more important than food to us, after all. That tribe got it from the man who passed through before. I wish I could have t him.”
“So you were bas...ically raised by humans?” I asked eagerly.
She nodded. “Yeah. They were scary at first, since I rembered what humans did to my momma. But eventually, I realized not every human is the sa.” She held tight again, and I felt a bit of comfort that she thought of when she said that. “I grew up. They raised well enough. Kept safe. Fed. Never really felt like I belonged there, though. Sotis it felt like they only tolerated rather than actually cared. The other kids were afraid of , so I never really made friends early on. The adults definitely thought I was weird.”
No wonder she had such a complex about her appearance. She’d always been alienated because of it. “Maybe w-weird’s not so bad.” I rubbed my hand over her belly to comfort her, and she let out a satisfied rumble of a hum.
“Maybe not,” she nodded. “By the ti I was a teenager, they were certainly glad to have my natural strength on hand. They didn’t give unfair labor to do or anything, and I was glad to help out with what I could. Tribals have a good sense of community with their own, you know? But I still longed for sothing more. I started paying attention to the Warriors. They lived out there in the wilds. In the nightmare I escaped as a kid. And they thrived there. It was... inspiring. I realized it was a calling I couldn’t ignore. I started learning survival skills. Cooking, preparing food, nding clothes, hunting, creating shelter, fighting... whatever I could learn that I thought could be useful to out in the wilds, I started throwing myself behind. I beca pretty well-known in the village after that, people started to realize what I was doing, that I had a drive to beco a Warrior, and I got encouragent from them. They could see it was what I was ant to do.”
Or maybe they just wanted her gone... I wasn’t going to say that to her, though. I just hoped she was right. She was getting back to her usual brighter self now, after all.
“And then, I beca one.” She lowered her hand and put it over my own on her stomach, where she guided it to one of the auburn tattoos emblazoned on her midriff. A collection of points and lines that made a beautiful pattern across her torso.
“Aisling t-told once... Warriors get these to t-track their accomplishnts right?” I asked.
She nodded and pointed my hand to one of the lines at the center of the pattern. “That right there was the first. To show the gratitude of my adopted tribe. That I had been a boon to them, and could be trusted wherever I wandered. And then I set off. It was a little scary at first, but I took to it like a fish to water. Foraging and hunting for my als, building temporary shelter wherever I needed to rest, tending to my own wounds. It was... a satisfying life. A peaceful one, despite the everyday concerns of survival. And whenever I would co to another tribe, I found that word of my kind had already spread far and wide, so I didn’t have to concern myself with misunderstandings like in my childhood. Sotis they were surprised, but I ca and was celebrated like any other Warrior. I listened to their needs, and I ca to their aid whenever I could. I even t other Mammons on occasion.” She gently pulled my hand across the various pieces to the artwork spread over her form. “Each is a story of soone I helped. A tribe in need. Dangerous beasts that had to be put down, groups of bandits that threatened the town’s well-being, desperate supply runs through dangerous territory... I was always happy to lend my expertise at dealing with the most difficult elents of the wilds, and they were always happy to help top up on supplies, rest when I was injured, and provide backup when I was in over my head. More than once, they helped when I was in dire need as well. I know your limited exposure to tribals has been... standoffish, but among their own, they are always generous and kind.”
I hadn’t exactly t with any face to face, but our reception when we made that delivery what felt like so long ago now was... less than pleasant. If they were really like that to each other, though, perhaps they had good reason to be wary of those who ca from beyond Earth. People exposed and imrsed in the cruelty of society in the colonies. The tribes felt almost like an ideal society if you were one of them.
“So... what then?” I asked, still admiring just how many lives she must have touched positively if each of those marks represented a significant feat in aid of a tribe. She really was amazing. “You ended up on Th-Theseus, sohow?”
She chuckled. “Actually, I was there when Aisling bought Theseus. We t before this ship was our ho.” She stayed silent for a few monts. “But perhaps that’s not my story to tell.”
“Aww, you’re g-gonna make ask Ais...ling?” I whined. There was no way I was going to get that story out of her.
Ray chuckled, letting go of my hand to reach up and ruffle my hair. “Maybe. Besides, it’s about ti we get up, hmm? I should have started breakfast a half hour ago, and you’re going to help with that, right?”
I supposed we had been lingering in bed longer than we should have, but I wanted a little more comfort before we got up. Compared to the others, Ray’s past was inspiring. She had been thrown out and abused from the very beginning, but she had taken her pain and beco a force for good and kindness for her whole adult life. Still, the past was the past. I held tight to her by her stomach, and nuzzled against her side. “How about o-one more ti, first?” I ventured, hoping to end our ti in bed together stepping back firmly into the present.
“You know, I didn’t realize how needy you were.” She chuckled and held onto , sending into a brief dizzy spin as she turned her whole body, ending with on my back and her staring down at with an almost predatory smile on her face. “Once more...”
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