Tool

Nita glanced at Nailer. “He’s supposed to have a patron. We take them on their oaths. My family imports them from Nippon, after training. But not without a patron.”

Tool’s eyes swung to focus on her fully. Yellow dog eyes, predatory, examining a creature he could destroy in a moment if he chose. “I have no patron.”

“That’s impossible,” Nita said.

“Why’s that?” Nailer asked.

“We are known to be fantastically loyal,” Tool said. “Lucky Girl is disappointed to discover that not all of us enjoy slavery.”

“It can’t happen,” Nita insisted. “You’re trained—”

Tool’s huge shoulders rippled in a shrug. “They made a mistake with me.” He smiled slightly, nodded to himself, enjoying a private joke. “I was smarter than they prefer.”

“Oh?” Nita challenged.

Again the yellow eyes evaluated her. “Smart enough to know that I can choose who I serve and who I betray, which is more than can be said of the rest of my… people.”

> Chapter 17 page 211 Shipbreakers

“No.” Sayle shook his head impatiently. “Not like that. Most half-men, when they’re trapped, forced to fight for nothing other than survival, they don’t last. They pine for their masters, and they die. It’s a fail-safe. So they can’t be turned. So they can’t go rogue against their wealthy masters. So they can’t raise a flag for themselves.

“The worst nightmare of any general would be an army of augments gone rogue. They are faster, stronger, and smarter than the average human being. If they were independent as well?” He shook his head. “It would be disastrous. And so when they are cut off from their own, or lose their masters, they die.”

Ocho puzzled on that for a little while. “But that one didn’t die.”

“That’s right, soldier. That one didn’t die. It bided its time. It survived for months, and then it escaped, and it tore a hole in us and ours. It’s all alone, but it’s still alive and running.”

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“You’re quite a puzzle. It took a long time for us to discover what you were, and how you survived so long. Questions we had to ask.” The Colonel nodded at Tool’s neck, where a code was stamped. “We had to go all the way back to your country of origin, and then trace forward. Quite a lot of effort.”

“You know nothing about me.”

Stern wasn’t deterred. “I’ve only seen an augment throw off its conditioning once. It was one of those beasts that the peacekeepers used. A common breed, not like you. It lost its entire platoon, then turned coward and ran from battle. It harried us for a little while, but even that one only survived another year. Suicidal, it seemed. It lost all its tactical sense. It couldn’t die on its own, but it wanted to die, I think.

“It could have escaped us entirely, if it chose, but instead it lingered here, returning again and again to the site of its last battle. We gunned it down in the end. When your kind becomes masterless, you have a difficult time surviving. And yet here you are, years past your expiration date.”

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