Cyborg Claude
Episode 7
In the previous episode, Claude takes a circuitous route to the yacht in case he is watched including buying a new suit that Min might like. Salindra is left with even more questions after the debriefing about the Goeken agents Claude had encountered on the space station.
Cyborg Claude Main Page and Table of Contents
Conrad walked into the billiards bar. Angela sat at the bar with her head resting on her crossed arms. He muttered under his breath and placed a hand on her shoulder.
She sat bolt upright and spun on the stool with her fist balled up. The punch stopped a fraction of an inch from his nose. She let out a breath, blowing it up so her bangs fluttered. Her hand lowered. She hiccuped loudly.
“I hope you got him to bed.”
“No, he vomited on me. Let’s go figure something else out.”
“Sure.” She hopped off the stool and teetered.
Conrad caught her. He frowned while he half carried her out of the bar. He glanced up and down the concourse. The guards had a keen interest in him.
“What room did he come out of?”
“The one you thought they would be in two doors from ours.” She hiccuped again, but at least she walked more on her own the further they went.
“Good. We can go for the next plan.”
“You can. How did that guy walk away?” She wobbled on her high heels and fell hard against him. “These aren’t helping.” She kicked off her shoes and would have face planted while picking them up without his firm grip on her arm.
“I think our next adventure will be late enough for you to have recovered.” He glanced down at her dress and cleared his throat to look elsewhere when he found her eying him. “I need to talk to someone first.”
Conrad cursed his luck. The guards would watch him for the rest of the trip. He pushed the button for the elevator. He almost had the mystery man onto it. His eyes went wide when Angela planted a hard kiss on his lips. She glanced over his shoulder. The guards must have moved toward them. He lifted her in his arms and stepped into the elevator with her.
Once they were in the suite, she pushed him away and stumbled her way into her room. He flopped on the couch with a scrivpad, which still had no response to his search request about the man. He tossed it on the coffee table and lay fully back with an arm across his face.
He growled in frustration. Something about the man felt familiar. Why couldn’t he put his finger on it? Why couldn’t they find information about him? The woman showed up as some information analyst for some cosmetics company on Droeken. Nothing screamed field agent about her.
Angela stepped out of her room. “So what’s your big idea for later?”
He laid it out, which led to a louder than he liked disagreement. His ire boiled hot by the time she decided she was sober enough to take a bath. He wouldn’t have a job if he didn’t get the stolen information back. No, he would, but not one he liked.
“Claude!”
Min’s voice cut through him. He jolted against the wall. He took in her worried expression before glancing around the now empty parlor. His hand wrapped around the pack of cigarettes in his pocket shakily. A smoke would be good. No, that wouldn’t help. His mind spiraled around Conrad, knowing the man had almost killed him a second time. He had ideas of how to distract himself, but all of them proved bad.
“Stefen needs more time for a thorough check.” Min took his arm and gently coaxed him toward a chair. “You should be more careful. We still haven’t figured everything out.”
He let her lead him. “I just love being a guinea pig.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them together.
Min grabbed one with a frown. It shook while she examined it. She leaned across the table to hit a button on the intercom.
His eyes followed her hand as if everything went in slow motion. He gulped and pulled his gaze away from Min’s petite form. She definitely wanted him around or she wouldn’t have allowed biotech usage to save him.
“Stefen, come to the parlor room now.” Min’s voice hardened into her commander tone.
Stefen appeared in the room in record time despite the medical bay lying one deck down and on the opposite side of the large yacht. He immediately ran a scan on Claude without saying a word.
“Wow, no reprimands this time?” Claude chuckled.
“No, I used up my store of those. Whatever you got shot with is still causing problems with the biomechanics. Eating a good meal helped.” Stefen sighed. “I don’t like this at all. Everything is running in overdrive.” He tapped the screen on the unit a few times and clucked his tongue at whatever it told him.
“Got hit with too much in too short of a time, obviously.” Claude held up a hand and watched it shake. He flexed it a few times. “Not as bad as the sugar rush shakes I had in the bathroom after the stupid stunt with Angela. At least I figured her out.”
“The tranquilizer would have knocked anyone else out.” Stefen frowned. “Your system is clean per the scan. I am guessing you will be hungry within an hour, despite the full meal you just had before boarding the yacht.”
“You were smoking as well.” Min sighed. “What are we going to do with you? You are always going to the extreme. Somehow that style works for you, but about gives me a heart attack every time.”
“Sorry. I just have too much energy to burn off.” Claude snorted, but how long could he run from the truth? “I crave a cigarette.” Let alone other things.
“Is that all you crave?” Stefen looked up from his medi-unit with a serious look on his face.
Claude gulped. He clapped his hands over his face and sank deeper into the chair.
“No need to be embarrassed. We can fix the one craving easily.”
Claude peeked through his fingers at Min. The Zen Free States could be as liberal as a spaceliner, but at least they were subtle about it most of the time. Though there could be more than one thing she had on her mind.
“Come along.” She grabbed both hands from his face and tugged on him with a good deal of strength for her petiteness.
He rose and followed, wondering what he got himself into now. Then he remembered it had not been his choice to live with biomechanics. He grimaced and flinched at the memory of laser fire and screams.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be relaxed soon enough.”
Min led him into a dimly lit room with soft music and the sound of water. The door closed behind the trio. She stopped him by the massage table.
“Strip.”
Claude did so while examining the room. It had just enough space for a massage table, a couple of stools, a cabinet built into one wall, the fountain in a corner, a dividing screen hiding another corner, and room for one person to move all the way around the table. Three of them in the room made it claustrophobic.
He let out a slow breath. He had no issues with nakedness around either of them because of his many physicals, though this time he would rather run for a cold shower instead of whatever Min had planned. It did not help that he caught Min looking his body over. He flinched when she stepped closer with her hand reaching. Her fingers traced the fresh wound. He ground his teeth.
“This could have killed you.” Min examined the entrance and exit holes. “At least the biomechanics worked well. Any internal issues from this left, Stefen?”
“None, ma’am. Only a few nanobots working there. It’ll look like a fresh scar in a day or two.”
“That’s good. Except for this and his shivering, he looks fit as a bull.” Min smiled at Claude. “Lay on the table face down.” She kicked off her shoes and waited.
Claude climbed on the table awkwardly because of his body shaking more under all the scrutiny. Thankfully, she had him lying face down. He grunted when she jumped onto his back. It turned into a groan of pleasure when something popped. This he could handle, and he let himself relax.
She hadn’t said a word about his suit, but her appreciative looks had said it all. They had worked so close together, but never got entangled in a relationship. Or had they?
Salindra drummed the pointer absently on the edge of the table. She had wound up disconnected on a personal level after four years in the field. The agency ranked her as the best information officer, but that was about the Goekens and their not so galactic council.
Maybe she had spent far too much time in the field on her own. Claude came as the biggest mystery and yet it seemed as if he had been around for years. If he really had years here, how come she never met or heard of him before their recent work in the field? He proved far too distracting once he started talking to her. She had locked herself in her room to save herself from any embarrassing fumbles.
“Salindra.” Hawkins gave her a playful poke in the side.
She yelped and came around with the pointer in her hand as if to stab him with it. His large hand closed over hers and stopped it.
“You need a vacation or at least something to help you relax around your allies again. Not that this is anywhere near the first time you tried to hit me.” Hawkins laughed and let go of her hand. “Mind telling me what is on your mind?”
She lowered the pointer. “Okay, I’ll humor you to some extent.” She sighed. “I feel out of whack. I know more about our adversary than I do about the team I work with against them.”
“You aren’t telling me the real reason for this. I feel like your father most of the time.” He chuckled quietly. “I’m going to just go on a hunch here.” His face sobered, but held a fatherly concern that stopped the rebuke on the tip of her tongue. “You wonder about Claude.”
She fidgeted with the pointer and lowered her gaze. He knew her so well, even after four years of not talking face to face.
He nodded and turned back to the blueprint on the tabletop. His pointer touched an intersection of parts so it zoomed in on that area. He typed some notes into a scrivpad.
Salindra resumed drumming her pointer against the table’s edge. Now that he had guessed it right, he would make her ask for information. His way of dealing with her infuriated her to no end, yet it always came out better. How could that be? Maybe his statement about feeling like a father had something to do with it.
“All right. I’ll bite. What do you know about him?”
Hawkins typed a few more words. His gaze remained on the glowing tabletop where a note icon now marked the junction. “He’s got seniority on most everyone in this agency. I believe he is one of the original members from when it was formed twenty years ago. He used to be a team leader, but something went sour.
“Last month, I got reassigned to the agency to help with this project.” He waved a hand at the diagram on the table. “I’ve been in transition mode. I only saw Claude once, and that happened at a briefing three months ago about this. He was chosen because he has the least known links to anything. He is the agency’s mystery man.”
“Great. I’ve lost my mind with my last stint of four years on Goeken.” She crossed her arms on the table and let her head fall on them. “What is it about tall, dark, and handsome mystery men that get women, anyway?”
“See, I knew I would get you talking.” He nudged her and chuckled. “I told you that someday a man would suck you in, but would you believe me? No.” He drawled out the answer to his own question. “So, are you going to do something about it?”
“He’s a fellow agent.”
“So?”
“But…”
Hawkins slapped the table, causing the map to shut off and make her jump at the sound. “Nothing says you can’t fraternize with a fellow agent. This isn’t the military. So, are you going to mope around wondering about him instead of paying attention to work, or are you going to get it out of your system?” His stern look made her wilt inside. “I can’t work with you if your mind is wandering willy-nilly across the universe over some cute guy.”
The way he put it made her wilt more. Now he seemed like her dad and she was the silly little teenager. She tossed down her pointer and rose from her stool.
“You win again. I’ll go see if I can talk to him now.” She almost ran out the door to keep him from saying another word.
“Good.” He got in the last word, anyway.
She walked down the hall, wondering where he would be. The parlor door stood open to an empty room. She stepped back when a door on her left slid open and Stefen stepped out, nearly running into her with Min on his heels.
Quiet music and water caused her to look into the room. She gulped. Claude’s naked form lay face down on a massage table. A mixed snore and moan reached her before the door closed. What had they done to get him in that state of relaxation? She shivered at some of the kinky ideas running through her head.
“You all right, Salindra?”
She shook herself mentally when Min’s voice penetrated her thoughts. “I’m fine.” She gave Min a curt bow and stepped around Stefen, heading nowhere in particular.
Moments later, she plopped back down on the stool she had vacated and checked out the diagram on the glowing table. She unwrapped the candy bar she had grabbed to cover why she had left the room and took a large bite of it.
Hawkins arched a brow at her and the candy bar. “Obviously, something deterred you and you are not happy about it at all.”
“Am I that transparent to you?”
“Yes.” He grinned and then turned back to the diagram. “This thing is giving me a headache trying to figure it out. Did you look at this one yet?”
“No, but I would have if left alone for another eight hours.”
“Locked in a room, trying to ignore the handsome guy getting overly bored in the other room.”
She punched him hard in the arm. A second punch followed when he laughed robustly.
“Ow!” He gave her a mock hurt look.
“Why do I put up with you?”
“Because you have to. More so now than before, seeing that I am a full timer for a season.”
She took another bite of her candy bar. “Zoom that out if you can.” She watched the diagram shrink until she waved a hand for him to stop. “Turn it around a hundred and eighty degrees.” The image flipped around, revealing something boxy with what could be an arm on it from this point of view. “No writing on it anywhere besides your notes?”
“No, and there is an obvious lack of design in a couple of places. One is here at the very end of this.” He pointed at the arm. “The other is in the central area of this box thing.” He moved the pointer to the other spot. “Why did you have me turn it this way?”
“Well, this looks like an arm to me. This could be an elbow joint and this looks like a wrist joint.” She circled each spot. “If we turn it, I bet we see a shoulder like joint. This doesn’t have a 3D blueprint version, does it?”
Hawkins scowled at his scrivpad and typed in a few things. “No, it doesn’t. If we set the computer to rendering one, it will take,” he paused with a low whistle, “sixty hours. I didn’t think it looked that intricate despite it confusing me to no end in short order.”
“Have it run that in the background. I think it will help us figure this thing out.”
“Thinking of using the holodeck to design it for a touch and feel simulation?”
“Yes. We have plenty of things to scan through while we wait.”
Salindra drummed her fingers on the table edge. “What are you guys thinking?” Her eyes ran over the image, not sure which way the thing went either, though it looked right side up now. She finished the candy bar while she mulled over what the thing could be.
“At least you are thinking of work again.”
Her thoughts derailed with a crash. The image of Claude nearly naked in the safe house came to mind, followed by the view of him in the massage room. She growled and threw the empty candy wrapper at Hawkin’s head. He laughed and put up his hands up in defense.
“You are incorrigible like everyone of your close crew. Droekens!” She snorted and kicked his stool out from under him. “Lay there and laugh it up, old buddy.”
“Oh, that was a low blow.”
“Then we are even.” She smiled at him and stood. “Maybe I should go eat something healthy or they will send Stefen after me.” She stopped at the door. “Ready to eat?”
Hawkins climbed to his feet and glanced at his watch. “Actually, they should call for dinner in just a few seconds.”
“I don’t know what time anything happens. I run by my biological clock.” She shrugged.
The dinner call came over the intercom.
“Shall we?” Hawkins stopped beside her and offered his arm with a grin.
“Certainly, sir.” She hooked her hand in the crook of his arm and let him lead her to the dining room.
At least I have one person I’m familiar with at the agency.
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