Hunter, Lover, Cyborg, Slave: Short Story Singles

By Joe Vasicek

A woman needs a man like an authorized cyborg bounty hunter needs an AI familiar.

Meet Gini, a petite raven-haired femme who weighs all of 105 pounds galactic in a dripping wet shirt—before her carbon-fiber bone implants, of course. As one of the few authorized cyborgs still alive after the war, she's a bounty hunter now, taking down hardened criminals with the help of her most trusted friend, a class 4 artificial intelligence named Henry.

But when the job on Alamut-VII goes bad, it forces her to confront her own mortality—and by extension, the loneliness and artificiality of her life. After all, if reality is what remains after everything artificial has been stripped away, who is the hunter and who is the slave when all of the safeguards and firewalls have been broken?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joe Vasicek
• Release date: Jan 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224184439

Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek fell in love with science fiction and fantasy when he read The Neverending Story as a child. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Genesis Earth, Gunslinger to the Stars, The Sword Keeper, and the Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic at Brigham Young University and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus Mountains. He lives in Utah with his wife, daughter, and two apple trees.

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Hunter, Lover, Cyborg, Slave

Joe Vasicek

Copyright © 2024 Joseph Vasicek.

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, organizations, or events is purely coincidental.

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Hunter, Lover, Cyborg, Slave

The jungle moon glowed with life. Gini found the sight even more entrancing than the red and orange cloud decks of the Jovian primary, crowned by monstrous auroras on both poles. Unlike the lifeless gas giant, there was something dark and primal about the bioluminescence of Alamut-VII that called to her. 

Gini, her AI familiar asked from the holographic projector on the armrest of her cockpit chair. Are you all right?

I’m fine, Henry. Just admiring the view.

The eight-inch tall holographic image turned as if he were looking out the window with her. It was an illusion, of course—Henry lived in the databanks of her pocket computer, if lived was the right word for it, and could no more see through his holographic eyes than she could see through her painted fingernails. But she appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

The avatar he projected was of a trim, muscular, thirty-something bald man, dressed in a double-breasted synth-leather jacket and a white collared shirt with the top two buttons undone. It was odd, considering her profession, that her familiar looked more like a young entrepreneur than someone who’d come out of the military or law enforcement. But most bounty hunters weren’t petite Asiatic raven-haired femmes who weighed all of 105 pounds galactic in a dripping wet shirt—before her carbon-fiber bone implants, of course. Henry was just one of Gini’s many surprises.

Spectacular, he mused. Though considering the havoc the native life wreaks on the local datasphere, I’d prefer to admire it from a distance.

Relax, Henry. We’re not going planetside unless we absolutely have to.

Until we absolutely have to, you mean.

She sighed and rolled her eyes, but he wasn’t necessarily wrong. Alamut-VII was the kind of place where the dregs of society came to disappear, and considering that the only permanent settlement with a population greater than ten thousand was the main orbital, it was only a matter of time before the hunt took them planetside. Unless they got lucky first.

While Henry handled their approach to the docking node, Gini brought up the file on the guy they were going to bag. His scarred and partially reconstructed face stared back at her from his mugshot on the ship’s main display. Like Henry, he was bald, the top of his head just barely kissing the 6’2" line, which put him almost a head and a half taller than her. Seduction would be difficult if it came to that, though