Savage Stars

by Randolph Lalonde

  "The tracker?"

  Boro's hand beckoned urgently. "Aye, quick now."

  Aldo dropped it into his palm and watched as Boro hurriedly rewired it in. The communications panel started showing all the normal signals again. "It's not just a tracker, there's a repeater inside that the antenna needs. Without a repeater to replace it, the signals aren't strong enough to get to the computer. I could try to wire a little computer up, but unless you've got software that's compatible with the antenna and can do everything we need a communications system to do, that would be pointless."

  "Oh, so when we land…"

  "We may as well send a flare up telling that whoreson where to find us," Boro said, popping the access panel back into place and returning to the pilot's seat. "How much money do you have? I'm broke."

  "You didn't have anything saved when you were captured?" Aldo said, noticing that they were about to come out of their wormhole.

  "Listen, I fix ships, I make brand new parts from raw materials that are so good that they'd rather pay my price than order replacements from the manufacturer. Problem is; I'm shit with money. I have money, see something I like, then I have that pretty thing in my hand with no jingle left in my pocket. Half the time what I buy isn't for myself either, so I typically don't have much to show for it."

  "How can you live with no money?" Aldo asked, truly mystified. He opened his first credit account when he was five years old. By the time he entered the Mercenary Service Academy at twelve, he already had thousands thanks to relatives sending him gifts of cash for birthdays and graduations. By the time he was finished training at sixteen he knew how to live within his means and he never ran out of money. He wasn't wealthy, but he always had work and the question of where his next meal would come from was never fearfully pondered. "I mean, you just decide some of your money isn't for spending and set it aside."

  "I guess I'm more interested in using what I have the day I have it instead of betting on a future that might not happen. Tried saving up for a ship once, but emergencies always came along." They emerged from the wormhole, Boro signalled Navnet, and had a course a moment later.

  "The British Alliance would like to welcome you to Aux Panicia station. Please see the social, commerce and trade boards for your needs before contacting the Station Help Department."

  Boro tapped his credentials into a floppy display page he found in the back and exclaimed; "What?"

  "What? Did they beat us here? What's going on?"

  "Well, they didn't," Boro said. "It's going to take them a few hours to turn around and get here if they care about us at all." He closed the window he was looking at and started scrolling through ship listings. "Seems my old captain was skimming off the top, ripping his crew off, and that glorious girl Aspen transferred a share of those ill-gotten coins to the crewmembers, dead and alive. She probably thought my next of kin would eventually get it after I didn't access my account for a while."

  "So, you do have money," Aldo said. "You know, I could help you manage it, I'm quite good. I've doubled my savings using a diverse investment strategy."

  Boro fixed him with a withering look. "Might as well propose marriage, lad, you'd have a better chance at becoming my husband than getting your hands on my account."

  Aldo couldn't help but chuckle at the notion of the pair of them in tuxedos in front of an altar or a court room. "No problem, I understand. Just try not to let it all slip through your fingers at once."

  "Working ship, only eighteen years old," Boro said to himself as he looked at a refurbished courier ship. It's grey and blue hull was shaped to look quick, and it seemed like it was one third thruster at least. "It's on station, he's offering a full load of supplies, fuel and its flight ready, certified by the British Transport Authority. This is what we need."

  "It's one point four million credits," Aldo said, making sure that the autopilot was engaged since Boro seemed fully invested in buying a new ship instead of flying the one they had. "Maybe I could go in on it with you? I could contribute about two hundred fifty thousand credits."

  "Sorry, that really would be a marriage. Being a stakeholder in a beauty like this is definitely not something you should take lightly. This one's mine. Besides, it's a wee ship. Room for six passengers and a captain."

  "Don't you want to see it first?" Aldo asked as he saw the buy button scroll into view.

  "It's been certified. The worst thing we'll find in there is a strange smell. Besides, we need to ditch this stolen shuttle the moment we land. Mark it for scrap and pay the station to get it drifted. You can pay the fee for that if you want. It's only two thousand credits."

  "Drifting a ship into the sun is two thousand?"

  "Oh, no, that's not even legal. They drift them for pickers to catch on the edge of the system."

  "This is Aux Panicia Control, my name is Elsie, welcome to the system. I see you're looking for an interior landing spot?"

  "Hello Elsie," Boro said in an extra kind tone. "I'd actually like any port or landing pad that's available. We're escaping captivity, you see. I have a slave mark from House Danti. I'm sending you my ident. My companion is the fellow who freed me, a guard who is on the run from the same house. He's sending you his ident now too."

  "Thank you, Boro," Elsie said. "We're looking that up now."

  Boro muted their end and smiled at Aldo. "Now, we might be screwed. From what I've heard, the British bureaucracy is so thick, we could be here for hours."

  "Boro?" Elsie asked.

  "Yes, my dear," he replied, unmuting himself.

  "I see your slave mark here, and there's already a bounty on the unregulated Stellarnet for you and the fellow who freed you. Since it looks like you will have to keep moving, I can grant you asylum in British Alliance space as long as you agree to abide by all our laws."

  "I agree," Boro said. "So, we can land at the pad you've highlighted right away, I can buy this Rapid Courier ship I've got my eye on, and we can be gone a minute later?"

  "Yes, unless you'd like to apply for protective custody, which will take a few hours, then you won't be able to move freely, but our people will take care of you for a limited time. Normally it's a few months until you've been relocated and hidden. Oh, and I see the ship you are buying comes with the ticket you need to get to work right away as a freelance courier, congratulations. Would you like me to link you up to the jobs database so you can start right away?"

  Boro's thin film display lit up green and Aspen's image appeared. Her name had changed to Spin, and she wasn't smiling in the image, but it was definitely her. He boggled at it as the words; IN RANGE appeared under her ident. It meant that she was so close that she would receive any message he sent within an hour. "Oh, I've got something I need to take care of first, thank you though."

  "All right, you may proceed to Bay Nineteen where you will be landing on Pad Three."

  "Best to you and yours," he said, closing the communication. The round outer ring of the station loomed large as Boro took the controls for a moment, bringing the ship's relative speed up as high as port control would allow. When they were within two kilometres of the broad landing bay, the station took control of their ship. Boro slipped out of his seat, and as Aldo started to do the same the man shook his head, drawing the weapon he'd stolen from the corpse on the deck. "Oh, no, Aldo. I thank you for freeing me, but you're staying right here. If you're running some plan where you follow me to Aspen then report to Kort, then you should thank me. I'd space you and let you drift off with a slow leak in your suit before I let you near her. If you really are only interested in saving me, and Kort's got new hate for you because of it, then my heart goes out to you. If anyone knows what it's like to help someone out and get fucked in return, it's me."

  "Now, wait!" Aldo struggled to find anything to say that would convince him that he wasn't still loyal to Kort.

  "Oh, no," Boro said, waving the gun. "I'll leave you everything here except this gun, this lovely armoured suit I'm wearing, and you can use th
at money you saved up to buy a little ship to skip away in."

  "Boro! I'm dead if you leave me here," Aldo plead. "You can put a control collar on me, chip my heart, put me in shackles if you want. Just don't leave me here alone. I've got a little money, sure, enough so I'm never a burden to you, but house Danti could have that cut off any second so I have to turn that into platinum as soon as I can. That's where Kort will be watching for me; the exchanges. From where I come from, you're a slave. Now I'm here and my freedom's gone because I couldn't stand watching Kort torture you anymore. If anyone here finds out I had a part in handling slaves, and they will, I won't last a day on this station."

  Boro let his head droop and sighed. "This is not a smart move," he muttered.

  "C'mon, you're a good person, I know it. You won't leave me here alone."

  "Fine!" Boro said. "But I'm going to watch all your transmissions."

  "No problem."

  "Lock you in your cabin at night."

  "I would do the same."

  "You're going to be deep-scanned whenever I feel like it to make sure you're not carrying any devices."

  "I'll be cancerous by the twentieth scan!"

  "Okay, no…"

  "Fine! Fine! Just let me take the prevention meds."

  "All right, then," Boro said. "Oh, and you're my crewman. You do what I tell you and don't complain."

  "That's fair," Aldo said, relieved. Being under Boro's microscope was better than being in Kort's chair.

  Six

  The dimly lit science, tactical and scanning section of His Majesty's flagship was filled with the sound of an object bashing against their armoured hull. "Lengthwise impact, enemy battlecruiser six-thirty has collided with the dorsal section of our ship and is ejecting its antimatter pods. Construction bots are catching them and carrying them clear."

  Damage control and interior operations teams shouted back and forth in their section several metres away. Even Gavin could see the damage on his instruments. The enemy ship was dead, but it had performed its function: to open a crack in the hull of the Queen's Pride, His Majesty's flagship. The sidearm at his hip activated, a sign that ship security detected a number of intruders greater than they could reasonably expect to repel without the crew's help. It was his worst nightmare; watching robots tear Skylar then himself apart. "Robots are aboard," Gavin muttered to himself, breaking into a sweat.

  Skylar touched his hand. "We know how to kill them, we practiced. It's going to be all right. We're almost at the main hub."

  He tried to concentrate on the status of the enemy ships moving to surround the nine vessels left in the massive Royal Fleet. There were still hundreds of drones, they'd destroyed well over ten thousand as a fleet but it cost them over a hundred ships including the Fair Child Juggernaut, their largest combat vessel. It was swarmed by everything the machines had to throw at it after its main weapon - a hyper-kinetic railgun launching an antimatter pod - destroyed the five largest defence platforms in the system. They managed to destroy two more installations before the swarm of robots disabled their engines. They intentionally breached their antimatter containment and took thousands of fighting drones as well as thirty-three enemy ships with them in a white flash. It was a quick, glorious end, Gavin should have been proud. The commanders were constructs like him and Skylar but trained from childhood for war. Their sacrifice was nothing but heroic, it gave the remainder of the fleet the opening that they took advantage of to get to the main hub, where he and Skylar determined the attack drones were made by the hundred and new ships were designed. With the help of their intelligence team, they hacked in for three seconds. It was long enough to see that there was a command key inside, one made for only a human to use. The base still had an operating system that recognized a human's authority. They only needed to get their ships close enough so they could cover their raider teams while they took a shuttle across. A new fight would begin.

  "Attention, crew: we are changing our tactics," Prince Connor announced. He appeared in a small window on everyone's console, bravely observing and directing the action from his white and gold command seat. "We pursue this course but will employ tactic set Three Dash One."

  To Gavin's relief, it was one of the backup tactics that meant that he and Skylar continued sitting in the safe data collection and analysis section of the bridge. Their jobs changed a little. His holographic display showed a detailed tactical map that highlighted all enemy ships that were in range of their main weapons as well as their backup electromagnetic pulse system. Gavin looked at Skylar's console, which changed to focus on the looming star base. They launched drones, the Queen's Pride, the three heavy carriers and five battlecruisers that accompanied it fired their main weapons at it, destroying most of the drones and eating away at the station's shields. It was the Genesis Monolith, probably named by some egotistical designer or corporate leader.

  Her secondary task was to help determine when it was safe for combat shuttles to make the crossing to the station. Safe was a relative term, though. It was the difference between being immediately annihilated and having a one in three chance of making it, where the soldiers would have to fight for their lives as soon as they touched down or docked at an airlock.

  "First shuttles, launch on my mark," Skylar said. "Mark."

  Fourteen shuttles launched from the front of their reduced fleet at great speed, three were blasted into tiny particles of shrapnel right away.

  An alert came up on Gavin's screen, telling him that the main electromagnetic pulse power reserve was past eighty five percent charge. "Powering all lifeboats and non-critical systems down. Warning to all crew: secondary control systems will no longer be on standby. They are now powered down and disconnected." They were preparations he had to make so the ship could use its hull to conduct a massive electromagnetic pulse. Many of their systems would require repair afterwards, but the ones he powered down would be fine after any size pulse because they were isolated, shielded. Once the pulse went off, they could turn the secondary control systems back on and the Queen's Pride would still be viable. If the worst were to happen, and they had to abandon ship, the lifeboats would still work as well. He hoped that the electromagnetic pulse systems' capacitors were being charged for some other purpose, to create a spare reserve perhaps, because he dreaded the idea of being left in the dark even if it would only be for a minute. There were too many robots outside, and some were inside the ship.

  He opened a new holographic window and checked on the status of their internal security. All thirty-five teams were active and repelling boarding drones. He checked the footage of four soldiers. Three were firing at a group of robots, there had to be at least nine or ten from what he could see. They were winning, the narrow-bodied drones were bottlenecked so their long, spider-like appendages couldn't help them, and only three or four could fire at once. They were several frames forward from the breach; a bad sign. The drones were making progress towards the ship's command centre.

  Gavin squirmed in his seat and covered his mouth as he watched one of the soldiers get caught by two long, rope-like silver appendages and get drawn into the group of robots. They didn't shoot him, that would have been a waste of energy. Instead, cutters went to work on his armour for only a few seconds, then sharp grippers slipped into the chinks they made. The soldier's screams filled Gavin's ears. He shook his head; "No, no, no, no, no," he muttered as he watched the bots effortlessly pull his legs and arms out of their sockets with loud pops, then yank as though they were playing tug-of-war until they separated from his body. They left his head attached, blasted him with cauterizing flames and injected him with quick efficiency. "They're keeping them alive," Gavin said, starting to rock in his seat. "Why are they keeping them alive?"

  Sky cupped his chin in her hand, deactivated his interior display. "They are doing their duty," she said sternly. "Stay with us, Gavin. We need you."

  "Proximity warning, abandon the main command section im…" Prince Connor said.

  Gavin a
nd Skylar looked at the small display of His Majesty in his command seat in time to witness large arms ripping the plating above him open with a jerk. The scream of the metal tearing was so loud that it was distorted in their ears. The bot that broke through burst open along the bottom, releasing an uncountable number of small robots with pincers, clamps, welders and cutters that swarmed the Prince. They clasped to his arms, his legs, his torso, driving manipulators into and through him, pinning him to his gilded command seat. Several more split away, attacking the main bridge crew who were trying to maintain control of the ship while firing at their attackers. Gavin immediately felt selfish for being relieved that the Prince was one full deck above them, but that didn't compare to the fear that threatened to overtake him.

  A round robot descended onto the Prince's head, clamping to his skull above the ears before sealing to his scalp. The Prince screamed inhumanly, kicking even as the other robots were making a sport of cutting him open, tearing everything but his body apart. It was savage, not calculated. The top of the round robot opened. The Prince's scalp and the top of his skull were discarded before it closed again. "It's stealing the Prince's brain," Toby said in horror.

  Gavin chuckled and clamped his hand to his mouth. 'His Majesty's brain,' it sounded hilarious for some reason. "His Royal grey matter," he muttered, a giggle bubbling up. The Prince stopped screaming, his body went limp, and all the robots on him split up, rushing to finish the rest of the bridge crew off with more efficiency. When the round one drifted back up to the larger machine that brought it there, Gavin saw that the Prince's head was indeed empty.

  An alarm went off inside their section, the lights turned red. Gavin's displays changed, giving him control over the electromagnetic pulse weapon aboard. "Gavin!" Skylar shouted, trying to bring him back to his senses. Their Prince was gone, the ship was failing, the robots were coming and they were going to die. What was the point?