Hero Code

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Then our flight could get interesting.”

  On the scanner display, Casmir watched the three shuttles as Rache flew away from them. He wasn’t surprised when first one and then the other two zipped into the air.

  “They’re coming,” he said.

  “I see. Belt yourself in tight.”

  Casmir already wore his harness, but he glanced back at his robots, fearing they would be flung around the cabin. He unclasped his harness and ran back, looking for cargo straps.

  “Dabrowski,” Rache snapped. “That’s the opposite of belting yourself in.”

  “This won’t take long.”

  He hurried to tie them down while sending wireless commands to the more sentient ones with gripping devices or hand-like appendages, telling them to hold on.

  The shuttle hummed as it increased velocity, and soon, Casmir’s teeth were rattling in his mouth.

  “They’re gaining.” Rache sounded surprised. “This shuttle is one of the best money can buy, and they’re gaining.”

  “Maybe they stole their shuttles instead of buying them.”

  “That is a possibility. Hold on.”

  Rache turned their nose up and angled them to the side. Orange light flared outside, brightening the treetops below, and Casmir glimpsed a massive energy bolt sizzling past before they turned fully. He flung himself into his seat and fastened the harness. Tightly.

  “Two more shuttles just showed up on the scanner,” Casmir reported, frowning as they appeared out of nowhere. Or out from behind whatever invisibility shield hid the base?

  Invisibility shield? Was that a thing that existed? He didn’t think so, but as Rache took the shuttle into a series of nausea-inducing dives and rolls, all Casmir could do was grip his armrests and hope he wasn’t about to die. Looking up information on the network wasn’t something he could manage at that moment.

  “Why,” he groaned to himself as more g-forces than he wanted to measure pulled his cheeks back toward his ears, “why didn’t I bring motion-sickness pills?”

  Rache, focused on piloting, ignored him.

  “Abort?” Casmir asked through gritted teeth, closing his eyes in the hope that his stomach would revolve less if he didn’t see stars spinning on the display.

  “They’re faster than we are,” Rache said with irritating calm. “Even if we turn around, we can’t escape. I’m returning fire.”

  “Oh, good. Get them mad.” Casmir clamped his mouth shut, afraid more than words would come out.

  The forces of the insane aerial maneuvers seemed like they were ripping him to pieces, hurling him against his harness first one way and then another, and then trying to fling him to the ceiling. He heard soft bzzts as Rache fired, but he had no idea if the shots struck or did any damage. A few orange flashes lit up the display, brightening his eyelids even though he had them clenched shut. Near misses. Another time, Casmir might have admired Rache’s ability to avoid what had to be fire coming from numerous sources. But right now, he was too busy—

  He lost the contents of his stomach. They were in the middle of a dive toward the ground, so they might as well have been up in space. It made a mess.

  “Sorry, sorry, erg.”

  “Dear God, Casmir,” Rache said. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Could we not worry about it now?” Casmir groaned again. When would this mad ride end?

  “One of your robots better be able to clean my shuttle.” Three rapid bzzts sounded. “Hah, got one!”

  Casmir shook his head as orange light flared again. He couldn’t believe Rache could joke—or whatever he was doing—now.

  A message alert came in via Casmir’s chip, but it wasn’t from Kim, Asger, or Bonita, so he shunted it to the side for later.

  A jolt came from their rear, and the shuttle felt like it tumbled head over tail in the sky. Casmir was flung against his harness so hard it gouged his chest.

  “One got us. Critical.” Rache swore. “We’re going down.”

  Casmir knew Thank God wasn’t the correct answer, since going down could involve landing in a fiery crash that would kill them both, but it might be worth the risk if it ended the insane flight.

  “Hang on. I’m keeping the nose up the best I can, but this is going to be a hard landing. Probably halfway up in a tree.”

  Casmir groaned.

  “And don’t throw up again.”

  “Not like… things can… get worse.” As the words came out, Casmir remembered that delicate vials of a biological agent that could make them both very sick lay nestled both in his robots and in his tool satchel, and he groaned again.

  “Says the man who’s not covered in his passenger’s vomit.”

  The cabin lights went out. Casmir braced himself. The display went out, too, as did the rest of the instrumentation. They couldn’t see a thing.

  Thunks and screeches came from all sides. Tree branches tearing at the hull. They ricocheted off something hard enough to alter their trajectory. Rache growled and struggled to right the shuttle. They didn’t land in a tree, but they hit the ground hard enough to bounce three times. Casmir kept from screaming—barely.

  They crashed into a boulder with a horrible wrenching sound and came to a halt, the nose in the air, the deck at a thirty-degree angle. Casmir was disoriented, but at least his nausea faded when their movement stopped.

  It was already dark, save for a few glowing power indicators on the robots, and it grew silent. Deathly silent.

  Casmir tried to swallow but couldn’t. His mouth was drier than an asteroid. His entire body ached. He could hardly believe he wasn’t unconscious.

  “Rache?” he rasped.

  No answer.

  “Rache?”

  Nothing.

  15

  Kim paced the balcony, shivering as the sea breeze swept a damp mist inland, but not thinking of going inside. She had some notion that the tracking device Rache had given her would have fewer barriers to penetrate if she was out here rather than in the apartment. Not a scientifically sound notion, she admitted, but she pointed it inland, toward the tiny dot showing his location two hundred miles away.

  Earlier, it had been moving at the pace of an airplane or shuttle, first up the coast, and then southwest, toward the Zachowac Kingdom Forest. Now, it wasn’t moving at all. Had they arrived at their destination? Or had something happened? Their flight had been erratic right before the dot stopped moving.

  Why hadn’t she volunteered to go with them? Or at least on the Dragon where she would be close enough to help? Casmir hadn’t fully explained his plan about his robot army going in after him, but she gathered he had given her vials to some of the ground robots and air drones to deploy if they could find the base.

  She wasn’t a combat expert and couldn’t likely do much to help, but Casmir wasn’t a combat expert either. And he was going. Because the king had asked—or ordered—him and because he wanted to stop the terrorists. She didn’t think she was any less qualified than he. She could have found a way to help. Instead, she’d been too worried to break what was essentially house arrest to help a friend.

  She slammed her palm onto the balcony dining table.

  A message came in via her chip, and she jumped, half-expecting it to be some downstairs neighbor complaining that she needed to keep it down. But it was a Scholar Chava Moskowitz. The name was familiar, but it took Kim a moment to place it. Scholar Moskowitz taught linguistics at the college where Casmir’s father worked, and she was one of their neighbors. Kim had chatted with her a few times when she’d allowed Casmir to lure her to dinners at his parents’ apartment, which had often turned out to be large affairs with far more than his immediate family.

  Scholar Sato, the message read, have you returned to Odin? I heard Casmir was back, and Irena mentioned you’d been traveling together. I was wondering if you might know where Casmir is. I was supposed to have Sabbath dinner with his parents tonight, but they’re not home, and there’s furniture knocked over in their apartment and
decorations on the floor. I already reported this to the police, and I just tried to send a message to Casmir, but he hasn’t responded yet. Do you know where he is?

  Kim set the tracking device down and flattened her hands against the table. Casmir’s parents were missing? He would be devastated. Maybe they had been robbed, not kidnapped. But if they’d promised Scholar Moskowitz a dinner, they wouldn’t have gone out. And—she dredged up what she knew of their religion—they wouldn’t likely have gone out to shops or a movie on Sabbath night.

  The king tasked him with dealing with the terrorists, Kim replied. I’ll try to get in touch with him.

  Dealing with terrorists? How is a robotics professor supposed to do that?

  He said he would use his wits.

  Dear God.

  Kim ended the message and looked at the tracking device again. The dot still wasn’t moving.

  “Zee,” she called into the corridor. “I have an errand for you.”

  It took three tries for Casmir to unfasten his harness buckle. He told himself it was because of the dark, not because his hands were still shaking. He managed not to fall, though the deck was tilted like a mountainside and he had to keep a firm grip on his seat.

  “Rache?” he asked for the third time.

  His co-conspirator did not answer. Casmir couldn’t tell if he was breathing. The sound of his own breathing was echoing loudly in his ears.

  Fortunately, he still had a connection with his small robot army. He ordered them to free themselves, open the hatch, and climb out. If they could. Rache had joked about landing in a tree. Casmir didn’t think that had happened, but with the display and all the power out, he couldn’t see outside.

  Faint scuffles sounded as his robots tried to obey him. Maybe he’d tied them down too well and would have to free them himself. After he checked on Rache. What if he was dead?

  A sick lurch went through Casmir’s stomach, and it had nothing to do with motion. He groped his way to Rache’s seat and tapped his arm. The combat armor should have protected his body, but Rache hadn’t been wearing his helmet while he flew.

  Rache was still in his harness, but he didn’t react to the tap. Casmir reached toward his neck to take his pulse, but his knuckles bumped into something hard. He felt around in confusion. It was metal, bumpy, and—oh. The hull had been pushed inward by something.

  He found Rache’s head still intact, but the hull was against it. It must have knocked him out. Or worse.

  Swallowing, Casmir tugged off Rache’s hood and mask. Something warm smeared his hand. Blood? Not good. Casmir found Rache’s throat. A strong pulse beat under the skin.

  “That’s better,” Casmir muttered. “Because I don’t know how to fly us out of here.” He worked around the inward bulge of the hull to unbuckle Rache’s harness. “If this shuttle is capable of flying again.”

  He was skeptical of that. Smoke tickled his nostrils.

  The hatch opened with a thunderous wrenching sound that made Casmir jump, lose his footing, and almost slide down the deck to the back of the shuttle. One of his robots had freed itself and was poised in the hatchway, silhouetted against a tree-filled night. The moon must have come out, for there was a little light, if not much. It was one of the treaded robots, and it debated the drop-off before rolling out. It landed on what looked and sounded like ferns or maybe broad-leaved zorcrest—there was a lot of native foliage out in these preserved forests.

  Casmir gave up on trying to lift Rache out of the seat—even if the deck had been level and the hull located where it should have been, that would have been a challenge. He scrambled over to free the rest of the robots and ordered a bipedal one to help. It lifted Rache far more easily than any human could have and sprang out into the night.

  The buzz of an engine grew audible, filling the still night air.

  “I suppose those are the people who hit us,” Casmir whispered. “Looking to finish the job.”

  He got the rest of the robots out, then rushed after the one that had Rache. The forest floor was covered with vines, shrubs, logs, and ferns taller than Casmir, so it wasn’t easy going. Even though it wasn’t raining, dew covered all the foliage, and he was glad his galaxy suit kept him dry.

  “Set him down there,” he said, then remembered to give the mental command over the network. These robots weren’t as sophisticated as Zee.

  Casmir hurried forward to catch Rache as the robot dislodged him without any gentleness. Casmir settled him between two ferns.

  “This would be a good time for you to wake up, Rache,” he whispered, glancing upward as the engine roar grew louder.

  Their shuttle had broken dozens of branches on its way down, carving out a clearing of a sort, and Casmir could see up to the night sky where clouds half covered the moon.

  “Are there any supplies in the shuttle I need to get? A first-aid kit, perhaps? Weapons?” Casmir activated the night-vision program in his contacts and started back toward the hatch. It was weak compared to what someone with goggles or ocular implants would have, but it helped him see the forest around him.

  And when the enemy shuttle roared into view, he had no trouble seeing it.

  Casmir skittered back. It was almost on top of them.

  Orange flared from twin weapons under its nose, and bright energy bolts zipped down from above.

  Cursing, Casmir turned his back and ran toward Rache. One of the bolts slammed into the earth, sending dirt and foliage flying everywhere. The other struck the shuttle, and it blew up.

  The shockwave sent Casmir tumbling on top of Rache. Shrapnel joined the chunks of dirt raining down. Casmir did his best to protect Rache’s head and face from further damage. Something needled into his back, and he couldn’t keep from crying out.

  Overhead, the enemy craft banked. Was it coming back to fire again? Nothing was left of Rache’s shuttle.

  But the enemy’s scanners would sense their heat signatures, Casmir realized. He ordered the robot to heft Rache again and for the rest of his mechanical crew to do the best they could to traverse the rough terrain. There wasn’t anything close to a road or a trail out here.

  The shuttle fired again, blasting the wreckage into a thousand pieces. Casmir and Rache were definitely not flying back to civilization in that.

  At first, Casmir simply headed out into the dark, with no direction in mind, but he’d been watching when Rache’s officer sent the coordinates of the person who’d commed the doctor. He found the numbers on his chip’s memory and pulled up a map and plugged them in.

  Given the way the night was going so far, he expected to be at least fifty miles from the place. He was shocked that they were only three miles away. Traversing three miles without a trail through this dense undergrowth wouldn’t be easy, but it was an attainable goal.

  Not that Casmir knew what to do if he managed to arrive at those coordinates. Especially if Rache didn’t wake up.

  No, that wasn’t true. He had a plan. To sneak in, verify the location of the base, then send it to Asger, who would comm his knight and Guard allies for backup. Meanwhile, Casmir would disperse Kim’s biological agent and send his robots in for a distraction to keep the enemy busy until the main force arrived.

  His plan had never involved Rache helping him. It hadn’t involved one of his robots having to carry Rache, either, but the bipedal porter-75 was strong. All of his robots could handle this. Those with treads were having an easier time navigating the foliage than he was. They simply mowed through the undergrowth or rolled over it. As soon as Casmir realized they were leaving a path, he ordered the bipedal robots to follow it, and he also walked in their wake. Until the enemy shuttle returned—with reinforcements.

  Several combat vessels flew in the night sky, back and forth in a search pattern. Every time they were close, Casmir hid in the shadow of a tree. Fortunately, the trees here were six feet in diameter and hundreds of feet tall. He wouldn’t put it past the terrorists to try to mow down the forest to get at them, but he hoped all the
foliage, and perhaps the presence of animal life, made it difficult for their scanners to pinpoint him and Rache.

  A couple of times, the shuttles dropped bombs between the trees. The forest shook, and birds woken by the booms shrieked. A wolf howled in the distance, answered by the crack-crack-cracks of a nocturnal tree darter. The blasts were close enough to see, but none came as close as the first ones had. Casmir imagined the shuttles as destroyers dropping depth charges and hoping to get lucky.

  After a half hour, Rache finally stirred, groaning and lifting his head. He was still slung over the shoulder of the porter-75.

  “Dabrowski,” Rache said, sounding more irritated than wan, “where’s my mask?”

  That was his first question?

  “Uh.” Casmir remembered pulling it off to check Rache’s pulse and wound… and then what? He’d dropped it, he was fairly certain. In the shuttle. “The bad guys blew it up.”

  “I don’t suppose that’s one of your typical attempts to be funny.”

  “I wish it were, but nothing funny has happened tonight. I took it off to try to figure out why you were knocked out. The hull connected with your head, in case you’re curious.”

  Rache hesitated. “I had my harness on.”

  “Right. Your head didn’t connect with the hull. It was as I said, the hull reached out to touch you.”

  “Without asking first? Presumptuous.”

  Casmir snorted, amused despite his misery. And glad Rache had a semblance of a sense of humor under all that black. “Yes, but have no fear. The shuttle suffered for its presumptions.”

  Rache sighed. “Does that mean the bad guys blew it up too?”

  “Twice.”

  Rache shifted and tried to climb down, but one of the robot’s limbs was fastened around him to keep him in place. “Am I your prisoner now?”

  “No, I’m rescuing you.”

  “Oh? I feel imprisoned.”

  “If I give him the order to release you, will you be able to stand up?” Casmir grunted as he stubbed his toe against a log buried under a fern. He would have bought hiking boots if he’d envisioned the night going this way.