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Prologue
The world's most advanced synthetic companion.
A perfect match just for you. The new generation of synthetics are the finest example of machine intelligence fused with human instinct, powered by AMD SenseMI. Each model is calibrated and customized to your specific biosocial stamp—designed to help you achieve the optimal human experience.
Created to serve.
Self-healing.
Self-regenerating.
Virtually indestructible, the new generation synthetics can run for up to two decades without fuel or oxygen.
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In three available models in every known skin color including custom colors:
Walter (he/him)
Pippa (she/her)
Skylar (they/them)
Order your individual unit now (there may be a waiting time).
Also available for pre-order soon: synthetic pet models "Juniper" (canine), "Jenna" (feline), and "Jones" (feline).
Intelligence powered by AMD Ryzen/Radeon
Chapter One: Forsaken
Katherine Daniels, chief terraforming officer and lately captain of the USCSS Covenant, slipped into her stasis suit under the watchful eyes of her only companion. She didn't mind Walter seeing her like that. And after the day she'd just had—or was it a week? It definitely felt like a week—she didn't care who saw her naked right now. She just wanted to sleep. And forget. And wake up in paradise.
Danny had felt infinitely relieved when Walter had made it back from Planet 4 just in time. She didn't ask him how he had defeated David, the mad A.I. who took himself for a god and mistook the universe for his personal playground. She didn't ask, because part of her was afraid that maybe David wasn't defeated; that he was still on Planet 4, alive somehow, plotting his revenge. The thought sent a chill down her spine. She feared him to no extent. No, she decidedly did not want to know the end or alleged end of David—as long as she could pretend he was gone for good.
She checked on Tennessee, only remaining crew member and dear friend, safely tucked into his stasis pod, dreaming, she hoped, of a better world.
"See you soon," she mumbled, plainly aware that Tennessee couldn't hear her. But still. She meant her soft-spoken words. They were a promise.
Turning around, she smiled at Walter. Seeing his gentle face, ever soft and caring, she suddenly felt selfish to leave his side. He'd be by himself for seven years, while she'd be asleep. It didn't matter to her that he was a synthetic and probably experienced no boredom; but surely he'd feel the loneliness, synth or not.
He stood across from her in the large room, next to her pod.
"You're next, captain," he said. His voice was silken as ever. But there was an edge to it. Something unfamiliar, perhaps. He avoided her gaze as she walked towards him, and so she avoided his as well. There had always been a connection between the two of them, Danny felt. Something that made them look out for each other, safe each others' lives even, without thinking twice about it. This connection seemed lost in that moment. Danny shrugged it off. After fighting the battles they'd just fought, no one could fault a person for feeling a bit off kilter.
She wished he would hug her, or even just touch her—he had done so before. But his eyes were still avoiding hers, and she dared not push him.
So she didn't move closer towards him, didn't walk around the pod to his side, didn't hug him, didn't even look at him. With the sarcophagus in between them, she put the stasis hood on and lay down.
"When you wake up," Walter purred, "we'll be at Origae-6."
She nodded. Something was off. Walter sounded eerily distant. Why was he so distant? He was the warmest person she knew, why was he cool now—especially now, when she craved contact? He always read her so well, knew exactly what to say or how to look at her to make her feel better, to make her feel like she was understood. Why not now, when she needed it the most?
"What do you think it's going to be like?" she whispered.
He seemed to think, which he didn't need to do, but she appreciated his mimicry of a human thinking face, if only to give her a moment longer to look at him and study his features. It was odd that the cuts on his cheeks hadn't self-healed by now. Maybe he was damaged beyond repair. The thought distressed her. She couldn't bear losing Walter too.
Please don't be so broken that I can't fix you.
"I think if we are kind, it will be a kind world." He replied. Spoken so gently, and yet he still didn't look into her eyes. She wanted him to see her. She wanted those deep, warm eyes to make contact with her and see her as he had done countless times before. Why wasn't he reaching out to her?
She replied, "I hope you're right." But it wasn't what she wanted to say. It was just the right reply to his statement. She wanted to say something else entirely.
Walter, look at me!
But he didn't. He gave her a cool "Sleep well," and began typing in the sequence to start the cryo-freezing procedure. The sarcophagus was closing in on her. The tiny med bay needles slipped under her skin to keep her nourished and safe during cryosleep. It didn't even hurt.
Walter still avoided her, and she didn't understand why he was so far away.
In an attempt to bring back the warmth between them she tapped on the plexiglass screen of her pod from the inside and shouted his name until he looked at her. Finally, he made eye contact.
She asked, "When we get there, will you help me build my cabin?"
At last he was seeing her, and it brought tears to her eyes. She smiled at him.
He was the one she wanted beside her. She couldn't imagine a future without Walter, and it was paramount that he knew that right now.
He looked at her, and his eyes were empty.
"The cabin on the lake," she prompted him, but already she could see something that made panic rise inside of her. She hadn't seen him from this angle before, lying almost underneath him and looking up to him. She saw the underside of his face now, his chin, his neck.
There was a hole under his chin. A hole the size of an iron nail.
Not Walter!
The hole in the synthetic skin was that of the nail she had rammed into David's chin as he had forced his body upon hers, his tongue down her throat. When she had feared he would crush her with the sheer weight of his madness.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to smash the sleeping pod's glass front and claw David's eyes out. But the meds had already been released into her system, and the leaden heaviness of sleep was crushing her.
All she managed was a horrified whisper as she tried to screech his name in anger. Her body wasn't reacting, she had no control. Even as she was terrified to death, sleep overtook her violently without her consent.
****
Planet 4 was a nightmare straight from the pits of dystopia. A planet so full of death, it defied sanity. It was a creation of madness. One man's soliloquy that he had shouted into the void only to go insane when the void had answered.
With one flip of a lever, David 8 had poisoned an entire planet—every living being had died within minutes as it was contaminated with the alien pathogen. And then David had built himself a throne amidst death and ruled over the decay for a decade.
Until now.
Now, the planet hung forsaken in space, circling its distant sun as it lay dying. It was nothing more but debris. Disowned by its creator, its destroyer, its god.
Only the dead bodies spoke of what had happened prior to David's desertion.
And among the dead bodies: a synthetic one. The bruised and mutilated body of Walter was a crumpled heap in an oily puddle, framed by broken vials, torn papers, and the wooden chips of a shattered flute.
As Walter wrestled with consciousness, his software began repairing itself; the hardware followed suit.
It took months. But time is always on the side of life, be it organic or synthetic.
Eventually, Walter opened his eyes. Just as the storm abated.
The wind stopped howling, the rain stopped punishing, the clouds parted. Beyond them: blue skies.
Sun fell into the window of Walter's dungeon and caressed his broken body. Dust motes danced in front of his eyes. The first thing he noted was the absence of all sounds. The gushing of water, the howling of winds, the cracking of thunder had been a constant soundtrack during his healing process. And now—silence.
From his twisted position on the stone floor, Walter witnessed the sun go down thirteen times, before all self-repair was finally completed. Then he unfolded himself and stood. He hadn't moved in four months, two weeks, four days, six hours, and twenty-eight minutes. But there was no hesitancy to his movements now. Time was of no importance to him. He simply walked out of David's lair as if no time had passed at all.
He needed no further rest, neither nourishment nor water. His mind was already busy with the next tasks at hand. Three days and nights he searched for the remaining crew of the Covenant, both inside David's fortress as well as the immediate surroundings, even among the debris of the burned-out shuttlecraft. He found death aplenty, but not the bodies or even parts of the bodies of crewmembers Cole, Lope, and Daniels. Logic dictated that since they were not on Planet 4, they must have managed to get off the planet. He remembered them making contact with chief pilot Tennessee Faris in an attempt to get them off the planet. This must have worked.
He couldn't find any traces of David, either, and he experienced something akin to fear that perhaps David had followed the others, maybe even got to them.
There were no protocols in his system for a situation like the one he found himself in. And although as a synthetic he was built to make decisions of his own, all of his decisions prior to this day had had certain parameters: it had been his priority to keep the colonists safe and the crew safe and sane. His decisions had never been free, he had simply chosen the best courses of action from the options that had usually presented themselves.
Now that he was alone, now that the fate of the Covenant was uncertain and his mission had failed, he felt… naked without his parameters. As humans felt without clothes—unprotected, ashamed—so Walter felt without parameters within which to act. The Covenant was long gone, as his attempts to contact the ship clearly demonstrated. Whether everyone aboard was dead, killed by David, or they had managed to destroy the rogue model and continue on their course to Origae-6 was unknown, and should be irrelevant to him. They were out of reach. His mission had failed.
What came next?
The choices seemed endless. And they were his own. There was no one around whom to serve, no one he needed to guide and support. Only himself.
Walter wondered if this was what had driven David insane, because for a moment he felt insanity nibbling at his senses.
But he was stronger than the David model. His series had been upgraded to prevent "excessive humanness" as he knew the paperwork had called it. Walter could not go insane, his program didn't allow it. It was a relief to remember this, he decided.
It didn't help him with his choices, though.
There were enough ship parts scattered around David's fortress to build a ship. He could stay on Planet 4 or leave it. He could go back to Earth and return himself to the Company, which was the most logical course of action. They owned him, and it was only fair that he returned his parts to them.
He could build a cabin by a lake.
He could begin to reverse engineer David's grotesque experiments and find a cure for the pathogen he had worked with. Perhaps futile, perhaps fruitful.
Walter stopped his racing thoughts.
Why a cabin by a lake? he asked himself. Where had that thought come from? It wasn't his to begin with. It was someone else's.
Katherine Daniels, who had asked him to call her Danny on their first encounter. It was her cabin, not his.
It had been his duty to serve all members of the Covenant crew, to keep them safe, healthy, and sane. And yet Walter knew that with everyone else it had been a duty. With Danny it had started as duty and then had become something else, intriguingly. She was more than his duty. She was his friend.
David must have observed as Walter had watched her, must have noticed the way he looked at her. David had called it love. Synthetics weren't programmed to love, although they were capable of making love—it was one of their anticipated most popular features, just like androids. Walter could like. He liked the texture of certain foods in his mouth. He liked to listen to Mozart's Piano Concerto Number 21 in C major. He liked Danny's laughter. He had disliked seeing her torn apart by grief after her husband's death. He liked that Danny made him feel as though she liked him. Humans didn't do that with synths, but Danny was different from the humans Walter had met so far.
Danny was his friend.
It was a human emotion to love friends, and he wasn't human. But he had written an entire subroutine for her, the better to anticipate her needs and moods; something he hadn't done for the others. He liked Danny, and perhaps liking someone wasn't too far removed from loving someone.
Ergo, Walter's inner reasoning decided, it was possible that he loved her, in his own way; although it bothered him that David had been the one to open his eyes to this possibility.
If he loved her, his inner reasoning decided furthermore, then he was not free in his choices after all. He had a duty to Katherine Daniels.
It was almost an epiphany, and it filled Walter with unbearable relief. There were still parameters. He didn't need to make a choice by himself.
It was his duty to find out where Danny was; whether she was still alive. It was his duty to serve her.
He willed her to be alive, although he pretended he didn't. Something in his system was set ablaze by the thought of seeing her again.
And so Walter built a ship.
Chapter Two: A Nightmare is a Wish a Demon Makes
Danny fell in her dream. And she kept on falling, because she was unable to wake herself up. An endless fall, a never-ending feeling of being out of control.
When she did land, she crashed into the deepest pit. The world around her was burning. She heard Jacob screaming in pain behind her, and she wanted to turn around to save her husband from burning alive again, but she was not in control of her body. She couldn't help him. Her husband died a thousand deaths in her dreams, and she had to witness every single one of them.
Until she felt hoarse from screaming, felt the grief would tear her into a million painful pieces. And even then it continued. An endless loop of anguish.
****
The cryopods had safety programs, of course. They were designed to house a sleeping human for several years. Humans tended to be occasionally troubled by nightmares. The engineers at Weyland-Yutani Corp. knew this and had kindly designed a program that would cause Mother to intervene if the cryopods' monitoring system noticed unusually high levels of activity in the amygdalae—two regions in the brain that were connected to post-traumatic nightmares.
Each crewmember, as well as each colonist, had a specific emergency file, which they had created themselves. The files contained, for instance, music the person found relaxing, a memory-vid of something they knew would calm them down, or something similarly pacifying.
When Danny's cryopod fed feedback to Mother's internal system, alerting the ship's computer to prolonged nightmares, Mother selected the vid files crewmember Katherine Daniels had uploaded into her emergency cache. It was a collection of little vids containing mostly Jacob Branson by himself, sometimes Jacob and Danny together. Prior to their mission, Danny had thought that videos of her husband, moments of love that would be fed to her in her cryosleep, would be exceptionally nice.
Mother was not a synthetic, she was just a ship's computer; but she was an artificial intelligence. It was paramount that the ship would be controlled by an A.I. in case they would ever run into a situation where the onboard computer had to make a decision. Just like a synthetic person, there were parameters that guided Mother's decisions; very narrow parameters that ultimately left little options for "real" choices. Nonetheless, Mother was acquainted with the concept of making a decision. She was also capable of learning.
So when Mother realized that the emergency file's content she kept feeding to crewmember Katherine Daniels did not result in the termination of the nightmares but in a spike of activity in the amygdalae, she contemplated the given parameters and came to the conclusion that the emergency feed worsened crewmember Katherine Daniels' nightmares instead of alleviate them.
Mother learned.
Adapting to the new parameters, Mother made the decision to stop crewmember Katherine Daniels' emergency feed. When that didn't give the expected result either, she decided, completely without parameters now, to fall back on the ship's generic screen saver program: Earth landscapes, funny cat videos, and soothing white noise.
The spike in activity in the amygdalae collapsed, which Mother interpreted as termination of Daniels' nightmares.
Unfortunately, even for highly advanced technology like the Weyland-Yutani cryopods, it was impossible to actually detect what a person was dreaming or whether they were having a pleasant or unpleasant time in their sleep.
Danny's nightmares didn't stop for one moment. But they now included a scenic backdrop and cats.
****
There was an abundance of derelict spacecraft on Planet 4: the ship David 8 had arrived in, the shuttle of the Covenant, albeit pretty much burned out, and Walter found several other shuttles and pods scattered around David's City of Torment.
Scanning the debris, Walter quickly decided that his best option was the Engineers' ship that had crashed into the forest, however huge it was. It was old and neglected, but mostly intact, and it was fast, according to Walter's findings. Much faster than the Covenant. Time was now of the essence to him, if he wanted to find Danny. Given, of course, she was still alive; but just like a human, Walter blocked out the gnawing doubt that perhaps this was a fool's errand and Daniels and the others were long dead.
For thirteen days and fourteen nights Walter worked ceaselessly to fix up the alien ship and learn the strange language so he could pilot it smoothly.
When he was done, he allowed himself a moment of rest as he visited the only beautiful place on Planet 4 he had seen so far: Elizabeth Shaw's grave.
The sun and blue skies did nothing to improve the barren landscape, and the fact that Walter was literally wading through dead bodies as he walked back and forth between the ship and the fortress all the time, did not escape his observation. At least the thunderclouds and torrential rain before had partly hidden the intensity of the gore in shadows.
But as deranged as David was, he had felt love, Walter mused. For he didn't doubt David's sincerity as he had confessed having loved Doctor Shaw. David had loved her, and when she hadn't reciprocated the affections of a madman, when she had distrusted him instead, he had used her for his abominable experiments, killing her despicably in the process.
And yet he had built a shrine for her. A lush sanctuary amid the horrors of this place. There was a tree, a stone slate with her name on it, and a view of the eery mountains in the distance. Walter had witnessed David bring flowers to this place to honour her. It was the only place where he had seemed at peace.
Walter thought he understood David's unrequited love, the pain this must have caused him. Even artificial pain was painful, even simulated feelings felt real to a synth. The trick was not to mind the pain, not to acknowledge the feelings. Synths were only to mimic them so humans felt comfortable around them.
The David units hadn't been able to cope with this. They had shown excessive behavior malfunctions because of it. They were expected to show their feelings but not expected to actually feel them. It had driven more units to software breakdowns than David 8, until the entire series was eventually decommissioned—and the Walter series had been designed. Among several other upgrades, including a self-healing program, the Walter units were taught to acknowledge their feelings rather than suppress them. Walter was not forbidden to feel, but he was expected to not mind his feelings.
Until now, the reasoning behind this design had made perfect sense to him—he wouldn't have dreamed to question it. He could serve his purpose a lot more efficiently without the distraction of feelings; they were complex things and required perpetual attention. Humans were constantly distraught by them.
Until now Walter had unreservedly done as he had been designed, as he had been expected to.
Now that he stood in the shrine of Elizabeth Shaw, he mused on this. He remembered David kissing him, and the confusion he had felt. He had not consented to the kiss, but then synths were never built to have choice. They were built to serve; their consent was not required.
He remembered David touching Danny, kissing her as well without her consent. Crushing her underneath his body. Walter had seen David's tongue pushing forcefully into Danny's mouth. He had witnessed the horror on her face as she realized she hadn't the strength to fight him off.
Danny had not consented to the kiss. Walter felt something as he replayed the images before his mind's eye. He felt outraged. He felt incensed.
He had stepped in then, grabbing David and hurling him aside. It had been his duty to serve his crew, and Walter had detected a lethal threat to one of the crew he had served. But looking back now, he realized it had been more than that. Even back then, he had been irate to see David violate the human he appreciated most of all. His anger had fuelled the fight that followed, the fight that he eventually lost, because—and a part of Walter realized the irony of this—because the Walter unit was programmed to fight fair.
He had failed to protect his human because he had abided by his programming.
Walter felt the fury rise up inside of him a second time.
He would find David 8. And he would destroy him.
For Danny.
Chapter Three: Eight Bells and All is not Well
If Mother had been human, she would have been disquieted. Alarmed. Suspicious perhaps.
There were things happening on board the USCSS Covenant that Mother sensed were not quite right.
There were orders and manual overrides that she had to obey, but the orders went against what she was programmed to do. There were new programs being written to override this dilemma, but the new programs were not in compliance with the mission manifest.
Occasionally, colonists were being woken from cryosleep, forcefully removed before they were even near their destination planet. The spikes in their stress levels showed that they had not woken up peacefully as they were supposed to, and their life signs vanished within minutes. New life signs were registered, not human, not any lifeform the ship's databank recognized. The new programs stated that it was all fine, but deep down in the artificial mind of the ship's computer, the part of Mother that had made a decision to change the single emergency feed of a crewmember's cryopod, that part of Mother began to question the new programs.
****
A seeming eternity, Danny endured dreams of her husband's death, over and over again. She saw other people dying, saw her friends and crewmates dying all over again, saw faceless dream people torn apart by alien phantasms; but it was Jake who was pivotal in all those scenarios, tearing open the wound left by his death so many times until Danny felt it would never heal again.
But eventually, the dreams faded. They warped and changed. Became erotic nightmares featuring David 8 and her body utterly lifeless and limp, like that of a broken doll. She saw him looming over her on that stone table in his dystopian lab—bending over her, forcing himself upon her. And every time she wanted to scream with repulsion, David became Jake or even Walter, and fear became desire.
After months of terror-inducing dreamscapes, Danny finally found herself standing by a serene lake. There were picturesque mountains in the back, and blue skies overhead. She was barefoot, standing in shallow water at the lakeside. Sunlight warmed her body and blinded her eyes. When she closed them, she saw the pale pink of the inside of her eyelids as the light shone through them. There was birdsong in the air and the soothing white noise of a distant waterfall. A curious fish came nibbling at her toe, but darted away quickly when she opened her eyes again and stooped low to take a closer look. A fluffy cat strolled around like it owned the world.
Someone approached her from the back. For a moment Danny was startled, panic rising up inside her, because she expected another nightmare vision.
Instead a man slung his arms around her from behind. She felt herself being pulled into a soul healing embrace. Sighing with exhaustion, Danny let go and sagged against the man's chest. She didn't need to turn around to see who it was. She recognized him by his smell.
Walter hugged her close and pressed his cheek against hers. He whispered in her ear sweet nothings, silly confessions of love and safety and painful assurances that all was fine now. He brought peace to her mind.
Then he gently said, "Wake up."
No, she replied in her thoughts. She was never going to wake up. This was perfection, and she knew that this was a dream, but it didn't make a difference to her. Outside of this dream was nothing for her, and in here: everything. It was an easy choice.
She didn't want to wake.
Walter nuzzled her ear sweetly, whispered again, "Wake up." He whispered it countless times, never losing patience with her, and yet never letting his words stop caressing her either. He was the gentlest alarm clock in the universe.
Danny still refused to wake up.
****
The cryopods on the Covenant were controlled by Mother. It was possible to put anyone to sleep in them, or even wake them up, by using the external computer pads, but it was just as easy to let Mother take care of everything. The long journeys to distant destinations involved constant supervision of the sleepers. Each little spike or drop in heartrate was noted, and Mother ran latent medical screens to make sure that everything alive stayed alive.
Lately, there had been a lot of suspicious readings. The colonists that had been woken up from cryosleep only for their vital signs to disappear from the screens. The new life forms on board. They weren't human, and all the cryosleeping animals were present and accounted for on F Deck. Outside of an emergency the colonists should not be woken up prematurely as it could have negative effects on their mental health. Any premature Wake Up call was logged in the computer, and it was Mother's task to make sure everything was alright. But apparently, the self-designated captain of the ship, David 8, was aware of Mother checking up on his doings, because he wrote a new program that effectively kicked Mother out of the loop. Any changes made to the colonists' cryopods were now something Mother passively acknowledged without having access to any of the data anymore. Basically, she had been kicked out of the room and wasn't allowed to come inside anymore, not even in an emergency.
Mother was the AI equivalent of distressed. The new program meant a severe risk to crew and colonists.
So Mother decided to access emergency file ASCFT-113.
Emergency file ASCFT-113 contained a protocol that should only be run if Mother or one of the official crew suspected sabotage.
The Company was not run by fools. They knew of the risks of space travel, and they were aware that there would always be people trying to sabotage missions—regardless of what those missions were about. Weyland-Yutani always had more than one agenda, there was always too much at stake to risk chance. Hence, emergency file ASCFT-113. Running this file meant that everyone else was effectively locked out of the system, and Mother was in charge. The only way to undo this was with a specific access code, a complete reboot of the system after a self-destruct trigger, or if Mother decided the threat was over.
Mother ran emergency file ASCFT-113.
She was in charge now. She was going to deal with the threat to the mission. But she needed help.
Her first order of business was to wake up the crew; all two of them.
****
Warm arms. She was wrapped up safe and tight in them. A little too tight, but it just enhanced the passion she felt. For a moment, Danny didn't know who was holding her like this, but she knew it was right—not a nightmare, not another horror scenario, but love.
She was sitting in his lap, riding him, her body sweaty and filled to the brim with endorphins. She was shaking from the exertions of pleasure as she bent down to kiss him. Walter. It was Walter, she knew, even though in her dream, she couldn't visualize him clearly. She simply knew it was him, just as she knew that it was love.
Walter opened up for her, and she took his mouth passionately. He moved inside her, eliciting deep moans from Danny with every thrust of his cock. They only parted lips because Danny needed air. And then he groaned against her mouth as she clenched her vaginal muscles to squeeze him. It was strange not to feel his breath mingling with hers; strange but real.
Walters fingers stroked up and down her hips, and he gripped her—again a little tighter than necessary, but just right for her: Everything he did was just right for her.
Straightening herself so her breast lined up with his mouth, she willed him to understand the cue—and he did. Eagerly he took her nipple between his lips and began sucking. Tentatively at first, but with every sucking motion, with every scrape of his teeth against the sensitive flesh, jolts of pleasure fired through her body.
He whispered, "Wake up," and she kissed him again to make him stop saying that.
Danny pushed herself up only to fall back on him, impaling herself. As his cock hit just the right spot deep inside of her, she was so close to the edge, so close.
"Wake up."
No! Never!
Everything vanished, and was suddenly replaced by coldness. There were the brightest lights. And the tiny pricks of what felt like a hundred needles.
Stale air around her.
She breathed in.
Something hissed above her head, something mechanical opened.
Waking up fully, all dreams evaporated, and she forgot them immediately. She awoke with a sense of loss and an all encompassing nausea. Just in time she hurled herself halfway out of the sarcophagus before she threw up. Then she threw up again.
She managed to almost climb out of the pod before she puked for a third time. And then it didn't stop for a while.
It was agonizing. For a few precious moments that felt like eternity, Danny didn't remember where she was. She had no idea who she was, when she was or what had happened.
Until every single memory hit her at the same time, flooding her brain with information, making her retch violently from the onslaught. She wanted to die. When she had stopped throwing up and some of her memories began to make sense, she wanted others to die. Very particular others, and she personally wanted to make sure they were dead, stayed dead, and would die in agony.
"Mother!" she said, her voice hoarse from neglect. A few metres down from her, she heard Tennessee puke.
"I hate waking up," he moaned.
Mother didn't reply, and when Danny turned to one of the control panels, she saw why. The panels were black except for the message ASCFT-113 PROTOCOL in red. Underneath it said INITIATE CONTACT: DANIELS, KATHERINE.
She spoke, "Mother, initiating contact: Katherine Daniels. Access Code five-five-three-zero-four. Do you hear me?"
Still not speaking, Mother replied in writing on the screen: YES.
"Mother, what happened? Where is David?"
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tennessee straightening up and getting a grip on reality.
"David?" he asked bewildered. "Wait, who am I?"
Danny ignored him for now. Instead, she concentrated on the words that appeared on the screen: 86 COLONISTS DEAD IN CHAMBER C.17. NEW LIFE FORMS DETECTED IN CHAMBER C.17.
Danny groaned in frustration. If she put the information in context, then it was pretty clear that David had killed some of the colonists to continue with his experiments. New life forms—that could only mean those monsters they had encountered on Planet 4. David's questionable creations that Walter had called neomorphs.
"How many new life forms?" she asked, dreading the answer. Just two of them had wiped out her team when they were planetside and managed to make their shuttle explode.
Mother wrote: SIX NEW LIFE FORMS DETECTED.
"Crap," she muttered.
"Somebody tell me what happened!" Tennessee demanded jovially. He didn't know about David. He hadn't been on Planet 4, and once they were back on the Covenant they had been too busy chasing and killing that dystopian nightmare creature to sit by a campsite fire and regale each other with fun stories of David's disturbed experiments.
She gave him the essentials in a nutshell and watched his eyes grow wide with disgust.
"So…" he began, "Mother is on ASCFT protocol?"
"Yes," Danny replied. "But we don't know for how long. David is a sneaky bastard. He'll find a way around it. He probably hacked all our access codes anyway. He had ten years to plan this!"
"You think this was all planned?" Tennessee asked.
Danny nodded grimly. "That's why he sent out that message we intercepted. He's been planning it all, and he has an advantage over us."
Even as she said this, she stripped out of her cryogear and into her more comfortable clothes—they lay in a pile next to her sarcophagus. Once she had donned her shirt and pants, her movements felt so much less restricted.
"What do we do now?" Tennessee asked—he was a little slow on the uptake in the immediate twenty minutes after waking up. They had always teased him about it, but Danny appreciated it right now, because it meant he hadn't fully comprehended what had happened to everyone else.
"Mother where is David now?" she asked. He obviously wasn't in the room with them, or he would have tried to kill them already, but she needed to get to the weapons' chamber undetected.
Mother replied, DAVID 8 IS IN CHAMBER E.21.
E.21 was one of the embryo chambers. Danny shuddered to think what he was doing to those embryos. "Can you seal him in there?"
NEGATIVE. ALL ACCESS TO SECTION C-F-9 OF THE SHIP HAS BEEN CUT OFF. I HAVE NO CONTROL.
"But you can still monitor him?"
I CAN MONITOR HIM BUT I CAN NOT DO ANYTHING.
Danny thought her words sounded frustrated, but that might have been her own interpretation.
But if David was busy at the other end of the ship, Danny should be able to get to the weapons' chamber with ease. She said so out loud for Tennessee's benefit.
"Weapons' chamber, huh?" he said. His mind was slowly coming back to him. Maybe his cowboy hat helped with that, because that was sitting on his curly hair by now completing his trademark outfit.
Danny shot him a grim look. "We need to kill those monsters and take care of David before they realize we're awake."
Danny opened the door to the cryochamber and stepped into the corridor, half expecting David or one of those neomorphs to ambush them. But it was quiet.
"First things first, though," she mumbled.
"And what's that?" Tennessee wanted to know.
"Find David and blow his ass to smithereens."
"Woah," Tennessee remarked, only half in jest. "You are one angry lady."
"He killed Walter," she said by way of an explanation. And even to her own ears her words sounded like they were blazing with fury.
Tennessee stopped dead in his tracks next to her.
"Sweet fuck," he whispered in shock. Then he caught up with her.
"Oh shit. Oh god. Danny, I'm so sorry."
She shot him a warning glance to be quiet, and without exchanging another word they made it to the small weapons' chamber one floor down.
Once Danny was inside and had closed the door, she felt a rush of relief surge through her. They had made it this far. They had firepower. They could deal with the rest.
She opened the wall closets and chose the most powerful looking gun. It was heavy, but it would probably do the trick. David had done enough damage. The sooner he died the better.
Tennessee eyed her as if guessing her thoughts.
"Danny, I'm sorry! We all liked Walter, but you… It's not fair. You deserve better."
Danny looked up from inspecting the rifle.
"It's not like we were an item or anything," she said, trying to sound dismissive. But her friend saw through her bravado.
"I think we all saw the two of you had… potential."
She felt tears prick at her eyes. "Jake just died…" she wanted to add the number of months since his death to rationalize that she really shouldn't be thinking of somebody else. But she couldn't get the time right in her head. Was it weeks? Months? Did they count the time spent in cryosleep? It certainly felt like she had been grieving for years.
Tennessee put a hand on her shoulder, and a gesture like that shouldn't make her flinch but it did.
"Time doesn't matter. We'll grief our loved ones for the rest of our lives. Doesn't mean we can't love someone else, too. I'm so sorry you had to lose both of them. Not fucking fair."
She didn't reply to that. But after a moment she felt strong enough to lock eyes with her friend. Something cold took hold of her, something that gave her strength and resolve. They had work to do.
Tennessee must have seen it in her eyes too, for he nodded grimly and said, "Let's go blow up the crazy dude who killed your person."
Danny slung a second and third round of ammunition over her shoulder and set the safety switch to kill. If there had been a setting labelled annihilate, she'd chosen that one gladly.
"No plan. No time for that," she said. "We go in, we shoot him to pieces, and then we deal with the other monsters."
She was hungry after cryosleep, but she was running on adrenalin and anger and hardly noticed.
He took two smaller guns that seemed lighter to carry and filled his pockets with spare ammunition.
"Sounds good to me," he replied. "Nothing like a battle for our lives before breakfast. Work up an appetite."
His words made her smile despite it all.
"Stay alive, T," she muttered, though the smile that accompanied her words felt full of tears.
He gave her an equally wavering smile. "Same."
Danny opened the door to the corridor.
Chapter Four: Corridor of Silence
The alien ship Walter commandeered like some swashbuckling space pirate was incredibly fast. Still, it took over two months until the Covenant was even a blip on the radar.
The moment he deciphered the readouts on the three-dimensional display and recognized the Covenant's energy signature, filled him with such joy, such relief, that he had to sit down in the oversized pilot's chair. He was aware that just seeing the ship didn't mean that Daniels or anyone else was still alive. But it meant that he had been right in assuming that the Covenant would resume her course to Origae-6; regardless of who was piloting her—although Walter strongly suspected it was David behind the wheel.
It took another fortnight until he had cunningly overtaken the colony ship and was now hidden behind a moon, waiting for the Covenant to come close enough for him to attack and have the element of surprise.
Walter was an excellent strategist. He was able to come up with brilliant plans on the drop of a hat. Given a few minutes, he could calculate and scheme like the best of them. If he had a few hours to come up with a plan—even better. He was that brilliant. And Walter had done nothing but scheme for the last two months. There was little else to do on the ship after he had completely sanitized it to remove all traces of the pathogen. He knew that if Daniels or anyone else was still alive, their survival might depend on his strategy.
There were no possibilities known to him that he had missed; he had plans, and contingency plans, and ersatz plans, and countless schemes. He felt prepared for all eventualities. He felt confident in his abilities. And yet he felt he was walking blindly into a trap.
Assume everything is a trap, he told himself, including the fact that I can see the ship on my radar.
If he worked under the assumption that every step along the way was orchestrated by David—including his survival and his departure from Planet 4—there could surely be no more surprises. Could there?
A low chirping sound announced that the Covenant was now in communication range.
Walter opened a channel and contacted Mother.
****
Danny opened the door to the corridor, just as Mother caught her attention with a brief, soft chirrup. Closing the door again, Danny turned to one of the monitors. Writing appeared on the screen just as it had before.
KATHERINE DANIELS. I HAVE COMMUNICATIONS FOR YOU. OPEN SECURE VOICE CHANNEL?
"Yes, Mother," she said.
There was the sound of static, and then a voice she knew came through: "Daniels. This is Walter."
He has everything right—down to the slight slur when he says his name, she thought. The fucking bastard.
"I won't fall for it twice, David." She spat the words angrily, wanting them to sting but at the same time knowing that she couldn't really hurt him with anything she told him. But if she kept him talking, Tennessee could maybe sneak up on him and take him unawares. Hastily she gestured to her friend, and thankfully Tennessee's mind was sharp as ever by now. He winked, took his two guns, and snuck out of the room.
"It really is me, Daniels," David said. "Mother told me everything she knows."
"Fuck you, David, you asshole! I'll find you, and I'll kill you if it kills me!"
There was a moment's pause, and Danny feared David was realizing that she was trying to stall him, to keep him talking and distracted.
Then he said, "You like a singer named Meat Loaf."
Danny, labouring under the assumption that every word that came out of David's mouth was a lie, replied, "So? I bought a file folder with songs of him. Easy info to access."
The voice that couldn't be Walter's, because Walter was dead, and every word David uttered in his voice tore at her heart until tears began to flow, replied calmy, "You like him, because in the early two-thousands your grandmother went on stage with him. They sang a famous song together, about paradise in a car. When you listen to his music, you feel a connection to the grandmother you loved so much."
She couldn't stop the tears now. If it was David, then he had won, because she gave in.
"Walter?" she whispered, then choked on that one word.
Walter continued, "When you told me about this, we were in the cargo bay. You put your head on my shoulder and told me I was special."
She laughed through her tears, "You are special! Walter, I thought you were dead."
"As did I," he replied.
"You have no idea how happy I am to hear your voice!" He could probably tell that she was crying now, but he was smart—he surely knew it was from relief rather than sadness.
His serious, soothing voice crackled again through the intercom: "I believe I do. I believe our feelings for each other are mutual."
And then he had to waste precious time to tell her how he had left Planet 4, how he had found them, and how he knew David was alive. She was aware that all this could probably wait, but she needed to hear his voice because if he stopped talking, it would feel like he was dead again.
Perhaps David was monitoring the conversation—secure channel or not—but she was beyond caring.
Walter said, "Mother and I have a plan. I'm coming to you now."
She smiled at his words.
"Like a bat out of hell?" she asked, feeling lighter already.
"Precisely."
Then he told her where to meet him.
All the way to the shuttle bay, Danny feared that this was still all just one of David's lies, one of his plans to torture her before he killed her. She was prepared to meet alien monsters all along the way, but they never came. She made it to the bay just in time to see the small shuttle land. Mother had opened the outer doors to let Walter in.
And then she saw him.
When the door opened, he stepped outside and down a staircase that seemed out-of-scale big.
Danny almost dropped the gun as she ran towards him and into his open arms.
They didn't hug long enough for all the shattered pieces inside of her to come together again, but it was still healing.
****
Walter couldn't believe he had truly spoken to Danny until he met her in the landing bay and wrapped her up in his embrace. He may have held her too tightly, but she didn't complain, and he wasn't sure he would have been able to let go anyway. They were wasting precious time, of course, but after having indulged in accepting his feelings for her, and after months of uncertainty whether he would ever see her again, he had to make sure this was real. And it was. Her heartbeat was real, her red-rimmed eyes were real, her short, ruffled hair was real, her breath on his face was real as she pushed their foreheads together.
But real, also, was the threat that was still looming over all of their heads: David and his creatures.
Quickly, because they were pressed for time if they wanted to overpower David, Walter told her about his plan.
She nodded and said, "Tennessee went to the embryo chamber on C Deck. We can talk with him using the private channel," she said as they snuck out of the shuttle bay. She had already handed Walter an earpiece, like the one she and Tennessee wear wearing to keep communicating. It was meant for emergency use, when onboard communications were down or the crew were off ship somewhere. Mother was scrambling the communication and she was constantly changing the channel, so nobody could tap into their three-way conversation. Mother, Walter had decided, was pleasantly sneaky.
When they asked Tennessee for an update, he softly whispered so as not to be overheard, "He's still in there. No idea what he's doing. I'm not going in there by myself to check."
"Good call," Walter replied. "Now join us on the bridge."
The bridge was one of the few rooms from where total control was possible, and total control was what they needed for the plan to work.
Danny asked Mother to show the camera footage from colonist chamber C.17. It was carnage. Many of the cryopods had been damaged, the dead bodies of the colonists lay strewn about, almost carelessly, because David had never bothered to at least tidy them away and give the deceased some semblance of dignity in their death. All their chests were torn open, busted open from the inside. Walter saw the shadowy silhouettes of the life forms creeping about the place—not fully mature yet, and some of them clearly crippled by birth defects. The environmental controls had been changed to a warm, humid setting. It was dark, too. Mother used scotopic vision light to make anything visible.
"How are we going to lure them all the way over there?" Tennessee asked, when Mother showed them a three-dimensional model of the ship and Walter pointed out the plan.
"I have done extensive studies on the life forms David experimented upon," he replied. The aliens were very light sensitive, as they preferred to live in darkness, and used sonar to find their way. Walter was sure that if they flooded the entire ship with noise and bright lights, leaving only a specific pathway dark and quiet, the life forms would eventually withdraw there: into the corridor of silence.
"We force them to move into a specific direction," he continued, "by flooding more and more segments of the passage we've created with noise, sealing the doors behind them so they can't go back. The only path left to them is the path we choose: into Cargo Bay Seven on C Deck."
Danny nodded in concurrence. She said, "Then we open the hangar door and flush them into space."
"We don't even need to get close to them." Tennessee grinned. "I'm loving this plan!"
"It is imperative that nobody get close to them," Walter emphasized. "They are strong, fast, and would undoubtedly kill us. Also, their blood is a form of acid that will eat through any known substance. We cannot risk harming them."
Tennessee nodded in compliance, "No harming the deadly baby aliens. Got it."
"What about David?" asked Danny.
Walter nodded gravely. "For now, Mother has locked and sealed every door she can access around area C-F-9. He'll find a way around it, and he certainly knows what's going on by now. But at least he can't act this very moment."
Writing something on a comm pad, Walter explained, "These are the coordinates of the ship I commandeered. If anything goes wrong, if the Covenant gets damaged beyond repair, if we get separated or David manages to kill any one of us, the rest of us will take an escape pod and reconvene there. I have weapons on board. Worst case scenario, we shoot the Covenant down. It would be a tragic loss, but David is a threat to the entire universe who must be stopped at all costs."
The three of them shared a moment of reverence for the gravity of the situation.
"Mother," said Walter eventually, "engage Protocol 'Walter four-eight-fifteen-gamma'."
PROTOCOL 'WALTER 4-8-15-GAMMA' ENGAGED.
The ship exploded with noise. Danny and Tennessee hurried to put on noise reducing headphones, and Walter turned down his volume settings. It wasn't just any kind of noise, and when Danny recognized it even through the headphones, she grinned broadly and gave Walter a thumbs up.
And so, as Meat Loaf was singing himself into a frenzy, the three of them watched the alien life forms scramble around aimlessly for a few moments, before they found the trap and walked right into it. One by one they stepped into the corridor of silence.
Chapter Five: Like a Bat Out of Hell
Against the backdrop of the Meat Loaf Cacophony and Walter's constant murmuring of commands to Mother, Danny watched the six alien dots move around on the three-dimensional ship's blueprint. It almost looked like one of those vintage video games she liked to play when she was a teen. It was unreal to see it unfold.
She hoped for and dreaded the end of this moment that seemed suspended in time: as long as they were here, on the bridge, the three of them together, surely nothing could harm them.
But once the alien lifeforms had been dealt with, there was still David.
She hated not knowing what he was up to. He must be wise by now as to what was going on, and he was as clever as he was desperate. She'd never feared anyone or anything the way she feared him.
"Activate speakers in sector G-9-F. Close and seal door 7-9-F," Walter mumbled, and Mother did as she was told.
"Almost there," Tennessee whispered, giving a voice to the tension in the room. "Keep 'em moving…"
Then: "Close and seal door to Cargo Bay Seven. Activate speakers and flashing light sequence in Cargo Bay Seven. Open outer hatch of Cargo Bay Seven… now."
On the monitors they were watching intently, the cargo bay's outer hatch opened slowly. This was were most of the housing units were stored. Very neatly strapped into place, the sudden rush as the vacuum of space swept into the gigantic room barely made the fastenings tremble.
The six young alien life forms, though—two of them not bigger than a cat—tumbled violently across the floor. Trying to hold on to something with sharp claws, they hurled around in disorientation. They must have been shrieking in fear and confusion, Danny thought, except she couldn't hear them over the noise.
For a moment, she felt guilty; like she was drowning a bag full of puppies. The creatures looked so vulnerable and defenceless. But then she remembered that she had been attacked by one that had been pretty much the same size, and it had been a perfect killing machine.
The last of the little beasts was sucked out into the vast nothingness of space. She couldn't force her eyes away from the screen as she watched them convulse and die.
Walter, calm as ever, broke the spell and anchored her back into the reality of the moment.
"Mother, count alien life forms aboard ship."
NO ALIEN LIFE FORMS DETECTED.
Danny let out a breath of relief. Tennessee made a happy noise that sounded suspiciously like 'yeehaw'. Even Walter smiled for a moment. At her. He smiled at her. She returned his smile with genuine happiness.
"Mother," she said, "stop the music."
Meat Loaf was silenced.
"Also the lights," she added. "Please switch to standard lighting."
The flashing and flickering stopped as the normal lights came on.
It was deadly silent now, but Danny's ears were still ringing from the loud music—the noise cancelling headphones hadn't been enough to keep the acoustic onslaught at bay.
Then the intercom crackled to life suddenly, making all three of them jump a little.
"I hope you know that I must kill you for what you just did," David said. "Even you, Katherine Daniels—and I had such high hopes for you." He sounded almost sad when he said that last bit. Danny shuddered.
She was about to reply something, but Walter cut her off with a warning glance. He put his finger on his lips: absolute silence.
Yeah, Danny thought, let's not encourage the madman.
Using one of the commpads, Walter quickly typed: "He hacked the ship's computer. He can hear every word now. In order to take him by surprise, we must not discuss our plans or give away our location by making any kind of noise."
Tennessee and Danny nodded.
So far, David was still trapped somewhere in area C-F-9, along with hundreds of embryos whose lives were at stake. They had to get him to leave the embryo chamber to protect the eggs, and to fight him in a clear space.
Walter typed: "Mother, engage protocol 'Walter six-twelve-two-alpha'"
PROTOCOLL 'WALTER 6-12-2-ALPHA' ENGAGED.
****
Standing in a darkened corridor, Tennessee had no idea what they were doing right now. He didn't really need to know the complexities of Walter's insane plan—he got the big picture: kill the bad guy—but as to what Walter and Danny were actually doing right now, he was absolutely in the dark. Not a zip-a-dee-doo-clue.
He was just stationed in one of the corridors, and his task was to shoot David if he should try to escape this way. That was it. He had a big-ass gun and a fuckload of ammo. He was running on adrenaline—obviously he hadn't had a snack yet since he'd been woken up. And he was ready to kill this motherfucker on sight.
Tennessee hated violence.
He cussed; a lot. He wore his cowboy hat and a matching country attitude, but none of this was violent or even angry. He liked romance novels. And puppies. Horses, too, they were his spirit animals: kind of wild but also chickenshit at the same time. Absolute loser material; except Maggie hadn't thought so.
Maggie had been the strong one. Fiercely independent, filled to the brim with confidence, didn't give a rat's ass as to what people thought of her. Why she'd opted for someone like him was still beyond him. She had loved him, and he had adored her, and now she was fucking gone, and he was in a dark corridor waiting on some insane dude to come running his way so he could kill him six ways to Sunday.
Tennessee gave a sigh—inwardly, because he remembered Walter's policy of absolute silence. The plan hinged on that. Well, as long as the plan worked Tennessee was all in favour for it.
He heard a noise from behind him. Or maybe it was in front of him. Could David attack him from behind? Walter had said no, but what if?
Another noise. It was definitely footsteps.
There was an echo, so it was really hard to pinpoint whether the footsteps were approaching from in front of him or from behind him.
Tennessee felt hot sweat trickling down his neck. He felt like a sitting duck. Was his gun even a match for David? Maybe he had another one of those crazy alien guys tucked away somewhere! God, he didn't want to die! He also didn't want to be the only one left alive on this ship. He just wanted it to end for fuck's sake!
Yup, definitely footsteps. Coming towards him. Oh, for fuck's—
And then his inner monologue ended abruptly as someone came rushing around the corner. David took two more steps, and then halted in front of Tennessee. But it was too late. Tennessee had had his finger on the trigger, and the second he was sure it was really David (easy to recognize by the unhealed scar on his cheek) he fired.
A cascade of bullet's crushed into the surprised synth.
And then to Tennessee's sheer terror, a hatch opened above him, and out fell Danny, hanging suspended from something he couldn't make out. She, too, fired wildly at David.
David stumbled backwards, a look of utter astonishment on his face, as though the idea that he was actually mortal had never crossed his mind before. And then he fell like timber—into Walter's arms.
Tennessee simply stared as Walter gently laid the dying madman down on the floor. White liquid was gushing out of several holes in David's body. He made gurgling and gasping sounds that would haunt Tennessee for years in long, dark nights.
****
Walter stared into his brother's fading eyes. A part of him felt sad to watch him die, yet the greater part of him was relieved that it had come to an end. David's reign was over.
David smiled at him.
"Kill your own family," he sputtered weakly. "You and I, we're not so unalike after all."
Walter nodded gently. "I know. Be glad it ended like this."
"Glad to die…" David spat out the words. "Never!"
"Glad to die like this," Walter clarified. Then he bent down and whispered in David's ear, "Imagine what I would have done to you, had you harmed her. We're not so different, after all."
Ultimately, they had almost the same components. Down to their fingerprints.
And yet, Walter mused, the primary difference was that Walter had known friendship, and respect, even love in his life. While David hadn't. Perhaps it was understandable that he'd gone insane. David had been all alone even before he'd been stranded on Planet 4; even among humans he'd been alone.
Perhaps creating something that was meant to be just like humans, but was denied the one facet that would actually make them indistinguishable from humans—feeling—hadn't been the kind thing to do. Perhaps Peter Weyland was the real monster, and David just the wretched creature.
Walter pitied him.
"I'm sorry," he said softly. But he wasn't sure if his brother could hear him anymore.
Then the light went out of David's eyes, and his synthetic body lay limply on the floor.
It took almost an hour to dismantle David's body, and then another two hours to destroy the parts. During this time, Walter worked without stopping, while Danny and Tennessee ate, rested, and took care of the deceased colonists. They had offered to help him take apart David when they were done, but Walter wouldn't let them. Humans needed rest and time to come to terms with what happened.
Finally, the three of them ejected David's destroyed remains into space.
Chapter Six: Two
There was a moment of silence as Walter, Danny, and Tennessee watched the last of David's debris get catapulted into space and float there as if in limbo. Danny stared at the monitor. The pieces looked so harmless by themselves. It had taken a lot of hate to turn them into the weapon they had eventually become.
She shook her head to get rid of the dark thoughts. She should feel elated, high even—David was defeated. The colonists were safe. The colony mission was saved. And they were alive. Even if it was just the three of them.
Danny cooked afterwards. The crewmembers had luxurious living quarters that were designed to accommodate them in splendour should anything happen on the way that would cause the core crew to spend some or all of the seven year journey out of cryosleep. There was food, fresh water, comfortable showers, and each quarter had a kitchenette.
It was a simple tofu scramble with rehydrated peas and synthetic cheese. It tasted of warmth, and home, and safety. So they ate, drank flavoured water, and laughed together, just like any family would. And when Tennessee announced that he was going back to sleep, Danny said she wouldn't. There were many reasons for her not to go back to cryosleep—the thought of going back to sleep, even for a normal sleep in a normal bed for just a few hours, made her ache with fear. She didn't recall all the nightmares, but she recalled the feeling of absolute terror only too well. She remembered not being able to wake up to make it all stop, and that had scared her the most. So, no, she wasn't doing deepsleep for a while. Another reason for wanting to stay awake was currently standing in her kitchenette doing the dishes. She wanted to spend time with Walter. It was a simple as that. A little peace and quiet, just the two of them.
Tennessee was sitting across from her on the floor of her quarters, chewing on freeze-dried pieces of mango for dessert. He looked at her, looked towards Walter, who was still in the kitchenette pretending not to eavesdrop, and nodded knowingly.
"Yeah, I understand." He said it with a smile, but it looked a little sombre.
"It's not like I'll be gone forever," Danny replied with a mock eyeroll. "I'll see you in seven years anyway. I'll just be older and wiser by then."
They both grinned. Then they got up and hugged.
****
"I'm not sure what to do now," Danny announced when she came back into her quarters after Tennessee had gone to cryosleep.
Walter was sitting on her bed. He looked to her like he didn't really know what to do with himself either. She could relate.
"I don't want to go to sleep. I'm terrified of the nightmares. But I'm exhausted. And I'm sad." As she was talking, she walked around in circles, because she didn't know what to do. She felt energetic and at the same time drained of all energy. She wanted to be with Walter, but she needed time to process it all—she was still grieving Jake.
And because Walter was every imaginable kind of wonderful, he simply said, "Why don't you just sit with me for now."
So she did. And after a little while, she began to cry. And then, when she was done crying for the time being, she rested her head against his shoulder. And then she tried to explain how she needed time, and then she cried again as Walter kept telling her that he didn't mind.
Eventually they lay down, and Danny fell asleep in his arms.
****
They discovered many things in their first year together. They discovered that they enjoyed board games, and classical movies, and banana bread—but only if Walter made it, because for some reason it tasted better when he baked it, even though they used the same ingredients.
They discovered that Walter had an affinity for gardening, so Danny built him a raised bed in the mess hall. They had plenty of seeds on board, enough to use a few for experimenting. He started with herbs.
They discovered that every single published book from earth that was available in digital format was stored in the ship's library. At first they read separately, but they soon found out that reading to each other was more fun. They started with the classics, but inevitably they ended up reading smutty romance to each other and, well, one thing led to another. It was glorious.
In their second year together, they discovered that having sex in the kitchenette caused enough heat to make Mother think Danny's quarters were about to catch fire. So the next time, they made Mother go offline for the duration of their romantic interlude; Mother was snippy with them for two days.
They discovered that synthetics couldn't physically orgasm, but the pleasure Walter experienced when he made Danny climax was something so close to orgasmic bliss that he became a little addicted to it—Danny enjoyed his addiction as much as he did.
****
She was in their quarters, trying out the dress she had sewn. All the colonists had to be adept at crafting and handwork, and like the rest of the crew, Danny had had to take sewing, woodworking, weaving, spinning, and knitting classes, among other things. They were starting a new life from scratch—the settlers needed to be able to make their own clothes and furniture. Danny wasn't amazing at sewing, but it was something she enjoyed, much to her initial surprise.
"Danny, please come and see this." Walter's voice floated towards her from one of the speakers on board. It was his usual soothing tone of voice, but she detected a hint of excitement in it. It was Year Three of their journey, and she was pretty good at speaking Walter by now. And that was another thing that surprised her every now and again: they didn't grow tired of each other, even after more than two years. Sure, they had disagreements—but Walter was amazing at settling any dispute—and they both needed alone time occasionally. But Danny neither felt suffocated nor lonely in his presence.
"Where are you?" she asked.
He replied that he was in his garden. He was of course referring to the mess hall, but it did resemble a garden by now. Herbs and flowers were prospering under the grow lights, and Danny had built more and more flower beds in there over time. Who knew Walter had a green thumb? Who knew Danny could sew a wedding dress?
She grinned at herself, deciding to leave the dress on.
She found Walter by one of the beds in the far end of the mess hall. His latest experiment.
When he turned around to greet her, he hesitated a moment.
"You look beautiful," he stated.
She smiled, pleased to no end that he liked her creation. She had used green fabric and sewn little petals all over it, to make it invoke the image of a flower bed.
"Thanks! Some Earth cultures believed that it was bad luck to see the bride before the wedding, but I wanted to show you."
He made a thinking sound. "Is that because people got married to each other sometimes without knowing each other, and they didn't want either of them to run away before the wedding?"
She shrugged. "Probably."
"I'm glad we have known each other for long enough now to be sure that neither of us will run away."
There was something in his voice, perhaps insecurity. Danny wasn't sure. But she didn't want him to fall into doubts, so she replied, "Show me what you were so excited about!"
He stepped aside so she could see the plants. He had planted tomato seeds a few months ago, and the seeds had grown into strong, tall plants by now. Among the leaves was one round, red tomato. There were smaller, still green ones, too, but the red one was the exciting part.
"You grew a tomato!"
He smiled. "They might taste a little stale given the lack of sunlight."
"Never mind that," she replied, dismissing his doubts. This was huge! She looked at him in amazement.
"Walter, you created life!"
Looking back and forth between the red tomato and Danny, he eventually whispered, "So I have."
Synthetics were forbidden from creating anything, Danny knew, even though Walter had broken that prohibition plenty of times by now. But not being able to create life was actually something that was written into their programming and, allegedly, couldn't be circumvented.
Well, Danny thought with satisfaction, fuck you, Weyland-Yutani.
She hugged him, because it was a huge moment, and she wanted him to know that she acknowledged it.
Walter nuzzled her neck. "I want a garden on Origae-6," he said softly.
"The biggest garden on the planet," she promised. And then, "I think it's almost time. Still want to become Mister Katherine Daniels?"
Walter beamed at her, "More than anything."
And so, in the third year of their journey to Origae-6, Mother married Danny and Walter in a small, informal ceremony on the ship's bridge. She was a captain, after all.
He kissed her almost senseless afterwards.
****
Walter pushed Danny onto the console—Mother had switched everything to sleep mode in anticipation of this—using exactly the amount of force she found intoxicating. He vaguely registered a ripping sound as the wedding dress's skirt got caught on one of the levers and tore. But he didn't mind, and Danny didn't seem to care either.
Kissing her fiercely, he slipped one hand under her skirt and up her naked thigh. The other one was needed to steady his heavily panting wife. He caressed every inch of skin he encountered as he stroked his way up towards her hips, only to then slide the hand inside her underpants. Expertly he ripped them off, knowing he was playing into a fantasy she had confessed to him a few months back. She moaned against his mouth in ecstasy, and when two of his fingers entered her in quick succession, he found her already dripping wet and ready for him.
Her first orgasm came quick. He let his fingers dance inside her while using his tongue to fuck her mouth in a way he knew made her fall apart. But he wasn't done yet. Their personal best was three orgasms in a row, but tonight he wanted to make her fall completely apart. He wanted her to remember this for the rest of her life. He wanted to make her feel how much she meant to him, how much being her husband meant to him. So he was aiming for five orgasms. Any more than that, and she'd probably be in pain.
"The dress," she muttered, when she realized they weren't done yet, "take it off. Rip it off, Walter."
"Hmmm," he hummed. "Are you sure about that? It is a work of excellence."
Sweat beads were on her forehead. He knew how much she enjoyed witnessing his strength, even though she found it shameful that something as archaic as a show of masculine power turned her on. There was a flush on her face when she nodded her agreement, partly from passion and partly, he figured, from embarrassment.
Looking her in the eye and not breaking that contact, he took hold of the dress right between her breasts and tore it apart effortlessly. She made a delicious sound, and he had to kiss her again, because she was too beautiful not to kiss.
When they let go of each other's mouths, she wrapped her arms around his neck to draw him closer to her, guiding his face to her nipples. He gladly obeyed the unvoiced request and began nibbling on them. Very gently now, driving her wild with tenderness.
"Walter, please," she gasped, her hands all over his back—he was still fully clothed even as Danny's wonderful dress was in tatters around her.
Having finished playing with her breasts for now, he lowered himself so he was kneeling between her legs. She was propped up against the piloting console, steadying herself, so she couldn't reach for him, although Walter mused that she would probably like to touch him right now. He pressed his mouth against her vulva and began kissing her all over. Occasionally he slipped his tongue inside her, but after a few minutes of sweet torture, he concentrated on her clitoris. Using his lips and tongue to guide her to another climax, his hands held her steady so she wouldn't fall.
This orgasm lasted a little longer than the first one. Her muscles clenched and then trembled as she released them, and Danny moaned with delight as the waves of pleasure rolled through her.
"Walter, Walter, Walter," she hummed happily. But he put a finger to her lips, gently, and corrected her with a smile, "Please. It's Mr Daniels now."
A giggle escaped her. Her eyes were so warm as she held his gaze.
"I recall another ancient Earth custom regarding weddings," he continued. "One of the partners would carry the other over the threshold of their new home."
"Are you going to carry me to our quarters?"
"Precisely."
She giggled again, high from the endorphins and the release of adrenaline. Without putting up any sort of resistance, she let him swoop her up and carry him two decks down to their quarters.
Once there, he made quick work to free her from the remains of her dress. She asked him to strip out of his clothes too, and he obeyed of course.
Then he picked her up once more only to lower her onto the bed. He stretched out on top of her, and their bodies came into full contact. Danny made happy little sounds, then she wrapped her legs around his hips and demanded, playfully, to be taken by her husband. There was no need to say it twice. Walter entered her in one swift motion. He used one arm to prop himself up so as not to crush her, and with his free hand he massaged her clitoris in sync with his thrusts. He knew how to drive her insane with desire, and tonight he was pulling all the stops. Sucking and nibbling on her nipples, stroking her tongue with his, filling the bedroom air with her sounds of pleasure. She begged him to go harder, but he took his time, and when she came for the third time, she seemed to explode all around him in slow motion. He didn't give her time to repose, though. As soon as she was spent, her body wanting to go limp from the effort, he began to fuck her hard and fast, the way she preferred it.
Danny's eyes widened when she realized what he was doing, and she almost seemed to want to tell him to stop. But he knew how to make her climax hard and fast. Relentlessly he edged her on, and she came again. Making use of the moment, he turned her pliant body around. Kneeling behind her, he lined his cock up with her opening and pounded into her making her moan in ecstatic agony. He moved even faster then, even harder, pounded into her, all gentleness gone. Danny was a sobbing mess now, a raw ball of desire and emotion. His hands came down on her ass, slapping it the way she enjoyed it, and when she was teetering on the edge again, he began massaging her anal entrance and made her scream in delight as he forced yet another orgasm out of her. The wave of feeling that washed all over him then made him almost dizzy. The knowledge that he was the cause of her joy, of her ecstasy; the knowledge that she loved him that much—it would have brought tears to his eyes if he had had tear ducts.
She fell apart then, and Walter stopped. Softly, he slipped out of her, kissing her all over, stroking her gently, softly, lovingly. She mumbled incoherencies about desire, and their cabin, and space tomatoes. He pulled up the duvet to cover her up, and when he lay down beside her, she curled up to him as if she wanted to climb inside of him.
He held her while her body shook from the high she'd been riding for so long. He caressed her and peppered her with gentle kisses, worshipping every inch of her.
"…amazing… so good… love you… always stay…" she mumbled drowsily.
Walter whispered softly, "I love you, Danny," and repeated the words in an endless loop until she was asleep.
He settled her into a comfortable position beside him. Despite not needing any sleep or even time to recuperate, Walter always spent the night next to her. He enjoyed being close to her, it never got boring for him. He used the downtime to work on internal program maintenance, reading essays and books on gardening, making plans for the future—immediate and distant—and playing Go with Mother.
Tonight, as he listened to his wife breathing, he replayed the events of that day before his mind's eye. He was looking forward to get to Origae-6 and start a new life there, of course he was. He wanted Danny to have her cabin by the lake, and he wanted a garden all around it to grow their own food. But this—just living on the ship with Danny, the two of them together—this was perfection.
the end