Dyllys

Parris ran onto the bridge with Faran and Dyllys close behind. Esper was already there and had the ship ready for flight. After she had given Parris the message she had ran faster than any human could back to the ship. Dyllys could have performed the same, but she wanted to make sure that Parris and Faran made it back alright. When they reached the bridge, the two of them were still breathing heavily from their flight back.

“Get us as far away from Rinascita as you can Esper and let’s hope that Hector gives chase,” Parris ordered. Esper’s hands flew deftly over the screen before her and Dyllys could feel a slight jolt as the Salvatore disconnected from Rinascita.

Parris ran to a seat on the far wall of the room and pulled up a screen. Dyllys surmised it was the radar. She could see the RFID information displayed for the Interdire. It was heading in a direct line to Rinascita which was unidentified on the screen. The Salvatore was veering steadily away from both the Interdire and Rinascita; it too was unmarked on the screen. Dyllys watched as the Interdire inched ever closer to Rinascita. Rinascita was still as yet not moving.

“What are they waiting for?” Faran asked.

“It’s a big cobble of ships they have there, it takes time to get it moving. I’m more concerned with the fact that the Interdire is not following us,” Parris replied.

“You don’t think they will attack Rinascita do you?” Dyllys quested.

“It depends on if they think that it means anything to us.”

The three of them stared at the screen intently watching the movements of each vessel on the screen. Faran was holding his breath until he finally saw the Rinascita moving away from both the Interdire and the Salvatore, then he let it out with a sigh.

“Take the bait,” Parris whispered to the screen.

Dyllys gripped the back of his seat tightly and they heard the metal protest. Faran looked at her and she shrugged, “Sorry, don’t know my own strength.”

They both looked back at the screen and watched with relief as the Interdire stopped pursuit of Rinascita and instead took up chase of the Salvatore.

“They can’t catch us, can they?” Dyllys suddenly asked.

“Well, seeing as I thought that I had completely disabled their engine when I attacked them – I don’t know,” Parris finished.

“You don’t know?” Faran asked.

“Esper, you may want to go faster,” Parris said abruptly. Dyllys watched the Interdire start to gain on the Salvatore.

“I’m going as fast as she will go,” Esper replied, “I don’t understand why they are gaining on us, unless –”

“– they’ve magnetized their haul,” Parris finished. Parris hit the terminal he was looking at and spun his chair around to look at Esper, “No use burning out our engines.”

Dyllys felt the slow deceleration as Esper shut down the main and auxiliary engines.

“So what do we do,” Faran asked.

Parris was lost in thought for a moment and then suddenly he grinned and turned to Dyllys, “I have a plan, as long as you are willing.”

“What sort of plan?”

“Does it matter?”

“Well I guess not.”

“So what are we doing?” Faran asked.

“At the moment? Nothing. We’re going to let them detain us.”

“That sounds like a really dumb plan,” Esper suddenly said.

“Are you saying you have no idea what I’m thinking Esper?”

“I never have.”

“That hurts, you know,” Parris replied, “At the very least you trust me don’t you?”

“Well this can’t be more foolish then that time on Einzer.”

“Einzer?” Faran asked.

“Ignore her, she just hates that she doesn’t understand how my plans always work.”

“Well I guess all we have left to do is wait,” Dyllys said and she sat down in one of the unoccupied chairs.

When Hector walked onto the bridge of the Salvatore he sneered. “I thought you would put up more of a fight.”

Parris turned his seat to look at Hector, “And give you the satisfaction of marking up my ship, I don’t think so. I know when I’m beat.”

“I should shoot you right here and now for the trouble you have caused, but father insists on speaking with you. It’s been over ten years now, hasn’t it,” Hector said, he pulled Parris from his chair and had his guards lock Parris’s hands behind his back.

“Too bad it couldn’t have been longer.”

Dyllys was staring at Parris. So he was a Davenport. Everything suddenly made sense to her. She stood up as a pair of guards edged towards her. Hector stopped them. “Careful with her, she’s stronger than any android you’ve ever encountered, and we can’t afford to damage her.” Hector walked away from Parris and came up to Dyllys. “I have something special for you.” He uncoupled from his belt a pair of bulky handcuffs, he flipped a switch on it, and the inside turned a strange hazy blue. When he slid them onto Dyllys’s wrist she went limp. A pair of guards took her and put her on a dolly that stood just outside the doorway hovering in the air. Esper was placed in the same fashion at her back. When Faran, too, was detained with his hands behind his back, they left the Salvatore and were taken to the detention centre aboard the Interdire.

“Are you okay?” she whispered to Esper, inaudible to the human ear.

“Just can’t move,” Esper replied.

“I didn’t think this would work on me.”

“You are still a machine, as am I, even if you think as a human.”

Esper was right. It was strange for her, being trapped in this form yet thinking as a different one. It wouldn’t be long now, she could feel it. She felt another length of her hair crumble to dust. Esper must have felt it too.

“Your life is ending,” she said flatly with no inflection, but Dyllys could tell that she was confused. Androids didn’t die.

“Yes, I am.”

“Will you make it through until Parris completes his plan? You seemed integral.” It hurt to think that Esper’s only concern was that Dyllys survive until she was no longer needed. Esper was an android after all, and didn’t care for a life lost. It wasn’t so long ago that Dyllys had felt the same, or, rather, not felt. Dyllys wished right then that she could fulfill Parris’s wish for Esper. She couldn’t imagine loving someone and having them be unable to return that love. She could see it though when she closed her eyes and remembered Faran’s face. She could see his torment when he tried so hard to make her feel again. She was a fool to think she had the right to run away from that kind of pain, when she had made him suffer that every day for fifty years.

Dyllys watched as they passed by the room that she and Faran had been in previously. They hadn’t had time to try and repair the damage. She smiled to remember Faran’s surprise when she had ripped the door open. She saw Parris take a glance at it.

“Had a problem with a prisoner?” Parris asked.

“Yes, he did,” Dyllys replied, “Me.”

“Remind me never to make you angry,” said Parris. Dyllys couldn’t help but smile at that.Parris received the butt of a gun to his head from Hector for his audacity.

Hector put them in a room that was different from the one that she and Faran had occupied. This one had a series of cells within one room divided by electrified steel bars. Esper and Dyllys were put together. Faran was put in one alone, as was Parris. Dyllys and Esper were in the center, she was facing Parris’s cell while Esper faced Faran’s. Hector didn’t stay to gloat. He left without a word, to Dyllys’s relief. She wanted to talk to Parris, as apparently did Faran.

“You are that bastard’s brother?” Faran said the moment they were left alone.

Parris didn’t deign a response. Instead, he looked at Dyllys.

“Did I ever tell you how I got my name?” Parris asked.

Dyllys went to shake her head and remembered she couldn’t move, so instead she spoke. “No.”

“On Ancient Earth there was a culture known as the Greeks. They had many tales, but my mother loved the story of Troy. I would understand if you didn’t know of it, it’s extremely old.”

“I know of it.”

“As do I,” Faran replied, “your mother named you after the Prince of Troy, Paris, then?”

Parris nodded, “I guess you need to understand a bit about my family to understand my mother’s choice in this. To her my name was very symbolic. It wasn’t long after my mother gave birth to Hector that she realized what kind of man my father was. She didn’t realize that her parents had given her over to the essential head of the Ordalis order until she saw the atrocities he wreaked in the name of science. She was bitter over it but powerless to do anything to stop him. The best she could do was get herself killed. So, instead she had another son. As Hector was already ‘corrupted’ by my father, she needed a son that she could augment.

“She named me Parris because she remembered that in Greek mythology just before Hecuba gave birth to Paris she had a dream of giving birth to a flaming torch. That dream was interpreted by the seer Aesacus as foretelling the downfall of Troy. He said that Paris would be the downfall of his homeland. That was exactly what my mother hoped that I would be to Davenport Electronics.

“I was a bitter disappointment to my mother. She watched me follow in Hector’s footstep for twenty years. My father thought I was his most promising prize, a genius in the engineering of androids, and I was. It was around the time that I was creating Esper that I realized the truth behind DE. She was going to be the new AS series android--that is why she has a model number--but it was around the time that I was completing her that I found the flaw in my father’s formula. That was the year that my great grandmother decided I should know about you. All the pieces fell into place and I became what my mother had always wanted. Unfortunately, I never got to show my mother that she had hope, because she had gone insane years previous and had killed herself.

“My grandmother gave me the idea that I should find you, so I left Ordalis Central with Esper on the Salvatore. I didn’t know how to find you, so instead of looking for you, I did things I thought would lead to information about you.

“I guess in the end we have Faran to thank for me finding you. He was the one that led Davenport Electronics right to you,” Parris finished.

Dyllys looked at Parris with clarity, “You want me to be your Trojan horse.”

“My father wants to see me, convince me to come back, and he needs you to make his androids complete. Because Salazar was the best, he made perfection in you, Dyllys, and my father and his father before him could not emulate that same perfection. So we are going back to the heart, to Ordalis Central.”

“Good plan, but how do you suppose we get out of here?” Faran asked.

“We don’t want to get out yet.” Parris replied. “Besides my brother is an imbecile. Seeing as I have never been caught by him before I don’t think he realizes yet that I know the password to operate everything aboard this ship of his, including the code to our handcuffs.”

“So, we’re still waiting then,” Faran surmised.

“I say we sleep while we have the chance,” Parris added and then with a quick maneuver he brought his hand in front of him and he lay down on the hard cold ground of the cell and closed his eyes. Faran followed suit and soon Dyllys and Esper could hear their steady breathing, the breath of sleep.