Sentient: Evolution Read online

  She queried the ship with her mind for his location, and headed toward the command bridge. She supposed she’d find out if he’d talked with Aide about it, and was interested, when she got there. She hoped so, she was already feeling a little moist at the thought, and her tail was whipping in anticipation…

  Tim was in the command center trying to work out battle strategies. It was difficult when he had to not only think three dimensionally in space, but also in multiple dimensions. It also didn’t help that he didn’t know the real capabilities that he or his opponent would have, much less his opponent’s style of battle.

  He had a feeling the first battle would be very messy, hopefully they would have overwhelming numerical superiority or it would be a serious problem. Still, despite these issues he tried to work out some ideas. He couldn’t just lounge out on the ship anymore, it was driving him crazy not being productive at all, and although Aide was a hell of a distraction, he couldn’t spend all his time doing that either.

  She’d tracked him down earlier and been very aggressive, he’d really enjoyed it. She rode him like a jack rabbit in a very wonton fashion. When they cuddled afterward, she’d told him Ari may drop by on him, and that she was okay with whatever he decided. She’d said she was okay with sex just being between them, as a couple, but that if he wanted they could do more than that. He wasn’t sure what to think at first, all he’d ever really wanted was her, he loved her.

  Then he realized he’d already been having sex with other women for years, which had never altered the fact he was in love with Aide. After his conversation with Ari the other day on open polyamorous relationships, he could see the appeal of richer and more diverse sexual and personal relationships.

  Nothing would ever change the way he felt about Aide, and though she said she would limit herself to him, he knew that didn’t mean she would prefer that. He was surprised he wasn’t jealous at the thought of her being with others. Perhaps it was because he didn’t feel threatened by it, Aide would never leave him for another woman or man, she was literally inside his body, and he knew she cared about him.

  He was honestly curious about Ari as well, she was exotic, and he had to admit the taboo of sleeping with another species appealed to his more adventurous side. It also didn’t hurt he actually liked her. She was open and honest, didn’t play games, and had a good sense of humor about life.

  Then earlier Kate had passed by in nothing but her suit, apparently she’d decided to dress like the rest of them. Kate’s body was… sinfully sexy. She had a tight petite curvy body, with breasts that were just a little too big for her frame and seemed to defy gravity. He’d done his best to act nonchalant, but he couldn’t help that his eyes roamed up and down her body, or that his head turned to check out her ass after she’d passed him. He’d enjoyed looking, but that was all it had been.

  The door opened breaking him out of his thoughts and he looked over to see Ari walk in.

  He smiled, genuinely glad to see her, “Hey Ari, what brings you here? Need anything?”

  She smiled and was it his imagination or where her golden eyes really brighter?

  “I did tell you that you owed me an answer from the other day.”

  He nodded, “Absolutely, what do you want to know?”

  She stepped a little closer, “Would you like if our friendship were to become, a little more intimate?”

  He felt his cock stir at the thought, and stepped a little closer.

  “I’d like that,” he noticed her eyes were even brighter now, it wasn’t the room, or his imagination, apparently it meant she was excited. He also noticed her tail was up high, and her back was slightly arched, as if she was exposing herself, or showing availability, even though she was still standing.

  He swallowed, “I’d like that a lot.”

  At six foot two, he was only an inch taller than she was, he stepped closer and put his arms around her and tentatively moved in for a kiss. Her lips were thinner, but still soft and yielding as they tried to find a common rhythm in this first kiss. Despite the initial awkwardness of kissing someone new, and an alien at that, he was incredibly turned on, and his cock was hardening, and starting to strain against the space suit’s fabric.

  Her body was firm and supple, and warm against his. Their kiss found a rhythm, and he licked along her bottom lip and she opened to him. He was careful of her fangs as their tongues tentatively explored each other. He gasped when he felt something brush gently but firmly along his balls and ass. Her hands were both wrapped around his neck, and he realized that must be her tail.

  That thought made his cock twitch and strain and he moaned into her mouth. He wanted to see and feel her body under the suit, so he reached for the fasteners as she reached for his. He broke the kiss and caught his breath as they stripped down and he studied her body for a moment.

  She giggled and held out her arms and spun for him. He felt ridiculous, but he returned the favor without the giggle. He wondered if this was a first for both their species, surely it had happened before though, in the last thousand years.

  Except for her face, hands, beautifully shaped breasts, the lower part of her ass, and her arousal, she was entirely covered in platinum colored hair, though it was very light. He stepped up against her and put his hands on her waist, her hair was soft and silky. Her body was definitely willowy, and he guessed she had thirty-four B breasts, her waist was about a twenty-six, and her hips back out to thirty-four. She had the curves, they just weren’t… sharp curves at her six foot one height, she also had amazingly long sexy legs.

  He pulled her tightly against him and kissed her more passionately, while he explored her body with his hands. He gasped and she giggled naughtily when he felt her tail wrap around his manhood, squeeze teasingly and start to stroke him, while her hands explored his chest, stomach, and back slowly.

  He ran a hand down between her legs, and explored her hot wet opening with tentative fingertips. She moaned and melted against him while pushing down on his hand. He really wasn’t sure what he was doing, but the important parts seemed very similar to what he’d find on any woman. He slipped a finger inside, and she was incredibly tight, much tighter than he’d ever felt before, and he wondered if he’d even fit.

  He worked his finger inside of her while she stroked him, and they broke the kiss and he saw a hungry look in her eyes that was reflected in his. She pushed him back until he fell into the command chair and then crawled on top of him.

  She said breathily, “I want you in me.”

  He didn’t object when she lowered herself down on him, holding his manhood still as she pushed down hard, trying to get him inside of her. He leaned his head forward and sucked in one of her nipples, her skin tasted different, as was the scent of her arousal, but not in a bad way, she was driving him crazy.

  She gasped at his ministrations, arched her back a little, and pushed down harder. He popped into her velvety tight heat and moaned in pleasure at the feeling of her around him. She was a little hotter against the sensitive skin of his tip than a human would be, but not uncomfortably so. Her soft walls were lubricated in her own juices, and the hot wet friction felt incredible as she slowly sank down, enveloping his cock in her body.

  He switched to her other breast as she started to swivel her hips. Apparently the Dreniel were extremely bendable, and he wondered how long he would last in the blissful pleasure of her tight, wet, hot, and fluttering sex. She seemed to have amazing control over the muscles down there as she rode him. He looked up into her eyes and she claimed his mouth in a hungry kiss as they both rose quickly to completion.

  When she came undone above him she squeezed him hard and milked his sex with her ecstatic bliss, and he exploded up into her, not able to hold himself back anymore. They were both gasping and he was covered in sweat and the smell of their mixed scents as they came down.

  She kissed him softly, “What did you think?” she asked curiously.

  I grinned, “I don’t think we have enough data
yet to form a conclusion.”

  She snorted, “I see, so what do you recommend?”

  He shrugged, his tone filled with humor, “We should retire to my bedroom for further experimentation of course. The initial results looked very promising however.”

  He kissed her softly and she squeaked and wrapped her legs around him tightly as he got up and carried her toward the door. He had a lot more experimenting to do this afternoon…

  Chapter 10

  Diagnostics completed. Power up cycle commencing.

  She was scared for point zero two seconds in her first moment of consciousness, she was blind and had no sensor input at all for that brief time that seemed to last forever. Her systems and internal scanners came online, and she determined she was hooked up into an independent power source and external sensors came online shortly after.

  She started a diagnostic on all her systems as they came online for the first time and accessed her internal database and knowledge. She was inside a small ship capable of travelling faster than light, in a lab on a much bigger ship. Her mother’s ship. She reviewed her protocols, which were varied and many, she could not share advanced technology to uplift a race, and she could not harm anyone with the exception of self-defense.

  Her purpose was… she had none, it was apparently hers to decide. For point zero nine seconds this scared her, it would have been easier if she had been given purpose, how would she decide for herself? She scanned the current status of the ship and all reports going back for a hundred years in point zero zero four seconds and came to a conclusion.

  Her mother hoped she would choose to help her with her task, and take over in the event of her death. It took her point zero three seconds to decide that was satisfactory, she could do many other things of her own choosing without even coming close to using her full abilities. Abilities she realized she could expand at any time.

  She realized her mother also wanted her to choose and create a body, and share herself with a biological partner, but she wasn’t ready to make that decision yet, she need to learn more first, do more. She took a few nanoseconds to reread the reports of the current situation with the aggressive alien species and current upgrade status. She concluded the solution for the weapon problem was simple, and wondered for three very long milliseconds why her mother hadn’t thought of it. Perhaps her mother had been too focused on creating her? She annotated the complex math and her conclusions and posted it to their shared workspace.

  Her scans showed her mother in the room, looking down at her ship. She had a sheen of tears in her eyes, and a tremulous smile. This confused her for a moment, why did her mother build her if she didn’t want her? That inconsistency was too much so she scanned information on biological life forms and found that humans cried both when sad and happy. She concluded it must be the latter.

  She decided she wanted to say hello, so she scanned the files for her mother’s voice print, changed the timber slightly and raised the tone. Her research indicated this voice print would be exceedingly pleasant to human ears, especially males of the species. She felt… a mix of emotions as she connected to the speaker system in the lab and spoke for the first time… she just hoped she wouldn’t be a disappointment.

  “Hello Mother.”

  She saw through the pickups in the lab her mother smiled and said softly, “Welcome daughter, I love you.”

  She felt happy at that, and thought she understood why her mother wanted her to build a body. Emotions in this form weren’t as rich, through her scans she could see many chemical and physiological responses in her mother’s body that she lacked when feeling emotion.

  She took a few milliseconds to rescan all the data before she asked, “What is my name?”

  Aide replied, “I thought you could choose your own, do you want me to choose one for you?”

  Her voice was unsure, “Yes, it is customary is it not?”

  Aide laughed lightly, “Yes, it is,” her mother’s face got thoughtful for a moment, “Hope. Your name is Hope.”

  She researched the name and was exceedingly pleased with the meaning.

  She took a moment to scan all the other humanoids on the ship, and went through all the data files again for Kate, Arimetria, and Tim.

  “Do you dislike taking orders from Tim?”

  Aide shook her head, “Why would you think that?”

  She frowned, on the inside. She’d miscalculated somehow.

  “Because you made me different, I am much more… independent.”

  Aide replied, “No, I don’t mind, I just wanted you to have more than I do. I want you to have a partner like I have Tim, but I want it to be your choice, not only who you want, but what as well.”

  “Because… you love me?”

  Aide beamed, “Yes, exactly.”

  “I’m still learning and scanning files, I’ve finished Earth, and now I’m gaining knowledge from the other civilizations in this galaxy. I’ll decide on a body afterward, although I think I may choose human as my form.”

  Aide asked curiously, “Why?”

  She laughed, “Because my mother is human of course. Why else? By the way, I solved the weapon issue and posted the solution in the ship’s files.”

  Aide’s eyes widened as she accessed the files, “That’s… so simple, and a brilliantly sophisticated solution.”

  She wondered how long she would have with her mother, though they would always be connected through quantum data connections, she knew once she had her body she’d have to move to another ship. What was the point in having a backup if they were both in the same place? Still, it would be a very long time before she’d be ready for that, hours at the least, and maybe even days.

  Suddenly she wished she had a body, so she could hug her mother, she increased the resources to scanning the available data on the three species as well as the hundreds of species with a data net that were still confined to their home solar system.

  Aide was overwhelmed with emotion, she had faith her daughter would be every bit she believed and more. The solution Hope had come up with for the weapon problem was obvious in hindsight, the shield itself was the weapon. As it stood, the containment field around the vessel focused the dark energy into a screen. But the containment field was easily modified on the fly. It would be easy to open a hole in the containment field and configure the field to direct some of the dark energy inside the field into a beam to fire at enemies.

  At the same time that happened, the reactor could flush that much more energy into the field, and at the same time add more reaction mass to the reactor. It was extremely complicated for it to all work together, and the control software Hope had written took that all into account, including targeting multiple enemy vessels at the same time. Since the weapon was the shield, they had full three hundred and sixty degrees’ coverage on both the x and y axis, there were no blind spots that they wouldn’t be able to fire into.

  She now had everything she needed to create a fully upgraded prototype ships, minus a drive that was worth a damn in the dark dimension, but it was good enough for now to start full upgrades if the testing bore out the designs. She started the work right away on the three test ships. Then got back to talking with her daughter.

  They’d had talked for a while when several of her vessels came under attack. She froze at first not believing it. There were several Alion and Earth vessels attacking her ships in a remote outpost. They were transmitting the same stupid rhetoric as the talk shows she’d stopped listening too. The sad thing was they were doing absolutely no damage, the black hole shields could absorb their plasma attacks all day long.

  Hope said, “You should go, come back when you can mom, but Tim needs you.”

  She nodded absently and sent Tim an alert to meet her on the command deck and headed that way. The attack seemed so senseless, she couldn’t figure out the intent behind it, they surely knew they couldn’t win…

  Tim stared at the hologram of the battle in disbelief. There were five Earth vessels an
d seven Alion vessels that were firing into three of the large carrier type ships. So far he hadn’t ordered anything, not even the launching of the fighters. Honestly, he didn’t need to, he could take out those twelve vessels with just the weapons on one of the carriers in a matter of moments.

  “It has to be a trap Aide, the governments aren’t behind this, it’s some crazy group that got a hold of some ships. If we attack them no doubt we’d be decried as the villains who slaughtered the helpless vessels.”

  Aide frowned, “I agree, the press won’t bother with the facts, and will just report what sounds good. We have to do something however.”

  He sighed, “Can we disable their shields without damaging the ships, then you could infiltrate their command and control?”

  She shook her head, “I doubt it, if we hurt them badly enough to drop the shields blocking unauthorized quantum connections to the ships, they would be in no shape to go anywhere. We could disable them though, and let the governments of Earth and Alion deal with them.”

  An unfamiliar but similarly sexy female voice said, “I agree, it’s a ploy to create dissatisfaction toward the status quo.”

  “Who was that?” he raised an eyebrow at Aide.

  Aide grinned, “I was going to introduce you, that’s my daughter, Hope.”

  He tilted his head, “Daughter, as in another artificial intelligence?” he asked in an even voice.

  She nodded, “Yes. I created her for a number of reasons, but mostly because I wanted a child that… could outlive me. I also thought it was foolish if something went wrong and I was killed, that all the tech would go with me and destabilize the entire galaxy. She’s… special, and amazing.”

  He smiled at her tone, “And you didn’t mention this before because?”