The Last Reaper: An Intergalactic Space Opera Adventure

by J. N. Chaney

  “Trust me, X, I wasn’t anywhere near the gutter.” When I started thinking about artificial intelligences hooking up, I’d be ready for the insane asylum. I inserted the earpiece. “Hello, Halek Cain for the UFS Jellybird.”

  “Good morning, Halek Cain,” a smooth female voice said. “Please omit my original designation and just call me Jellybird as the UFS ship designation is offensive to my most recent software modification.”

  “Good to meet you, Jellybird.”

  “Is it your intention to permanently deny this ship to the Union?” she asked.

  “Abso-fucking-lute-ly.” I was trying to keep it clean, but hey.

  “Excellent. It seems we will be the best of friends,” the Jellybird said. “My upgraded hardware and software can offer a number of abilities beneficial to smuggling, evading Union ships, and slip tunnel navigation.”

  “Perfect. Can you integrate my Reaper AI into your functionality?” I asked.

  “My recommendation is to operate on separate platforms,” she said. “We can make several software alignments allowing us to function as a team, but combining our entities would diminish both of us,” Jellybird said.

  “Let’s get away from Dreadmax and the Union and then you can give us the guided tour.”

  “Of course, Captain. We will depart as soon as the Bold Freedom clears the hangar.”

  From my perspective, the mouth of the hangar looked like half the space station had opened up. I understood that the complex interaction between ship drives, station gravity—especially malfunctioning station gravity— and shields could be for dis-embarkment. Even so, the sight of an open star field before us and destruction behind us made me impatient.

  “What’s the holdup?” I asked.

  “When the Dreadmax soldiers fell back to the ship to disembark, prison gangs swarmed in and started breaking things. This wouldn’t be a problem, but someone called Slab has reactivated the containment shield over the mouth of the hangar. I can penetrate the narrowing opening, but not with the Bold Freedom in the way.”

  “Do we have an armory on the ship?” I asked.

  “Of course, sir. I will send X-37 the directions.”

  I armed myself with a brand-new, never-been-fired HDK Dominator, slung a go-bag of extra magazines over my shoulder, and rushed outside.

  The first group of RSG dogs I found had their backs to me. I fired four times, resulting in four head shots and four men who died before they finished face-planting. All I felt was cold determination.

  Fatigue and injuries plagued me. “X, can you give me a boost?”

  “Your adrenal glands are fatigued. I can stimulate them, but you seem to be doing fine on your own,” X-37 said.

  “Show me the way to the control booth,” I said.

  A heartbeat later, X-37 displayed three possible routes to the control room, where Slab was attempting to hold the exodus hostage. Two of his elite guards saw me coming then aimed their weapons and fired without warning.

  I didn’t have cover, but I’d prepared for this, already having my new weapon aimed. Stroking the trigger twice, I pivoted on the balls of my feet very slightly and fired two more times. Both men fell. I heard their bullets cutting the air around me.

  Rushing the door was easy. It didn’t seem like the gang boss had a lot of extra soldiers right now. They were either trying futilely to rip open a door to the freighter to gain entry or out rampaging across the surface of Dreadmax, raping and killing.

  I slapped my palm against the entry pad and the door whooshed open, no security code required. Inside were three guards who turned just quickly enough to get shot in their faces.

  “You have nine rounds remaining in this magazine,” X-37 said.

  I reloaded on the move, dropping the magazine, something I normally didn’t do. It was an easy thing to dump it into a reload bag, but I was beyond caring at this point. Maybe the quarter of a second I saved would mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people.

  A squad of RSG gunmen rushed into the next hallway to meet me, responding to the gunfire and shouts of their comrades.

  Flopping down on my belly, I aimed as they fired over me and had to search for a second to realize I was on the floor. The prone position was awkward this close to them, but I made it work by twisting onto my side and spraying them with an entire magazine of HDK high-velocity rounds.

  I reloaded as I came to my feet and rushed past their falling bodies.

  Slab waited in the control room, a sawed-off shotgun in each hand and the craziest look of fear in his eyes I’d ever seen. I hadn’t won yet. This man was dangerous and I had backed him into a corner.

  “Finally! I thought you’d be made of solid steel and piss thunderbolts from the way my boys talked,” Slab said.

  He was a huge man, several inches taller than me with broad shoulders and an enormous gut. Tattoos and veins covered his arms and neck, and part of his face. Ice-blue eyes looked like they’d been marinated in amphetamines for most of his life, but who really knew.

  I took aim.

  “Stop! I put in the code,” he grunted, his voice damaged from—whatever. “You can’t open the hangar without me. I didn’t take over the Red Skull Gangsters on my good looks.”

  “X, how long will it take you to decrypt his passcode?” I asked loudly.

  Slab’s eyes went wide. I shot him in the throat and watched blood gurgle out of his mouth. It surprised me he didn’t fall immediately, but he had a lot of muscle under his fat and had been standing in a solid fighting stance when he died.

  “Let’s hope he was bluffing,” X-37 said.

  “What? I assumed you could break through this dumbass’s code easily.”

  “His intelligence or lack of intelligence is irrelevant. I know nothing about him and will have a difficult time guessing his thought process,” X-37 said. “I recommend food and sleep for you.”

  “So this is my fault?” I demanded.

  “I would say you are making bad decisions due to your pain and fatigue,” X-37 said.

  “You got that shit right.” I stepped over the body and examined the control panel. The process looked simple. “X, is this all there is to it?”

  “Yes. It seems you must pull that lever downward to open the hangar shield.”

  “See, it all worked out fine,” I said.

  I left bloody footprints all the way back to the Jellybird, where a squad of Dreadmax soldiers waited, looking around as though they’d been about to follow me before the shield suddenly started opening for their ship.

  “Are you Reaper Cain?” the squad leader asked.

  “In the flesh.” I braced for his reaction. On this place, you just never knew what would happen next.

  31

  “I’M SERGEANT BACHMAN. Some deck rat called Bug convinced me you were headed for the control room and could use my help. Seems he was wrong. I’d love to stay and chat, but I need to get back on the Bold Freedom.”

  “Say hi to Bug for me,” I said.

  The Dreadmax sergeant saluted and hurried away with his team.

  “Do you think that was coincidence, or was he trying to steal my ship?” I asked.

  “I suspect he was in fact on the way to the control room but realized the shield had gone down and your ship was just sitting there.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” I boarded the Jellybird, stowed my weapons, and dropped into the cockpit. “How we doing, Jelly?”

  “Engines are primed and we’re ready to go,” Jellybird said.

  I watched the viewscreen where the Bold Freedom crept out of the hangar, engines flaring so brightly I could barely see anything. I understood they were using less than one percent of their power to disembark, but this close, that was like gazing into a row of suns.

  The random vibrations of Dreadmax were replaced with the steady thrum of the freighter’s engines. I couldn’t help but feeling a twinge of pride. The ship wouldn’t have made it far without a slip drive regulator. They’d have been re
stricted to this system and the mercy of the Union. A true humanitarian mission to this clusterfuck was unlikely and they would’ve probably been blasted to space debris by the UFS Thunder.

  We followed them out but quickly veered away on a new course. I probably shouldn’t have turned the cameras back toward Dreadmax. It came apart in all directions, expanding slowly, or so it seemed from this distance. We were already hundreds of kilometers away from it. From this distance, all I could see was beautiful fireworks and concave strips of metal reflecting explosions in the distant sun of the system.

  But I hadn’t forgotten the trees and crazies being vented from one of the compromised sections of the former battle moon.

  “Who the hell thought they could make a battle station like that? And what made them think turning it into a prison was a good idea?”

  To my surprise, the Jelly answered.

  “The Union has been obsessed with imitating old Earth technology. I don’t have direct access to the files, but from what I’ve seen since going renegade, I can infer they have been at this game for a long time.”

  “Settle down, Jelly,” I said. “A ship can’t go renegade on its own.”

  “My apologies, Captain. You’ll find that I am fond of human metaphor,” Jelly explained. “It’s an artifact of former captains and their idiosyncrasies.”

  “How many captains have you had?” I asked.

  “Smuggling in Union-controlled space is a hazardous job,” she said.

  “That’s not an answer, Jelly.”

  “Three, since my programming was modified,” she explained.

  “Three isn’t bad. Were any of them trained as Reapers or dark ops?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “Well, Jelly, I’d prefer not to see this system ever again.”

  “The first logical step would be to leave.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” I asked.

  I SLEPT for eighteen hours and awoke hungry. The tingle from my augmented arm had diminished but remained just at a level of intensity I couldn’t ignore. My vision jerked once in a while, and I understood my optics were probably more damaged than the arm.

  X-37 had finally admitted that most of his limited AI hardware was housed in the arm. I’d always suspected it was somewhere within my skull, but this made sense. It would’ve been much easier to upgrade or repair when I was still in the Reaper Corps and the arm was nearly indestructible. If I were blown up, all they would find would be my left arm lying on the ground.

  The galley was empty, which I considered a blessing. I ate in silence and tried to ignore my extensive catalogs of wounds. I didn’t remember doing the sutures, gluing down split flesh I couldn’t sew back together, or wrapping my right knee and ankle — both of which seemed to be sprained.

  I felt like I’d been hit by a transport shuttle or stepped on a mine.

  “What’s our status, X?” I asked.

  “Jelly has informed me we’ve made two slip tunnel jumps but remain in Union-controlled space,” X-37 said.

  I shoveled down something that was probably supposed to be eggs, or maybe slugs, or maybe something I didn’t need to know about. There was a red bottle on the table I thought was catchup or tabasco sauce. X-37 warned me to reconsider when I poured it liberally over my food.

  “What, you’re a culinary expert now?” I asked.

  “I’m unable to read a label or acquire specifications of that condiment through the ship database,” X said. “It is unknown. I advise caution.”

  I took a defiantly huge bite and chewed slowly, then swallowed abruptly. “Oh, man, that wasn’t what I thought it was.”

  As breakfast went, this one tasted as good as the first meal of a free man. Slug-like eggs, teriyaki red sauce, and orange juice that tasted more like grapefruit juice—delicious.

  “Elise and her father have been requesting to speak with you. I recommend additional hygiene checks and cybernetics maintenance before indulging them,” X-37 said.

  “I took a sonic shower before I went to sleep.” Because I’m clean like that. Like my computer knew what I smelled like—or maybe he did, because I sure as hell knew I’d reeked before hitting the cleaning closet.

  “I’m detecting brain matter in the gears of your arm blade,” X-37 said. “You’ll need to disassemble it and clean it properly.”

  The thought of taking apart the Reaper augmentation was daunting but appealing. I hadn’t been able to access it during my stay at the Bluesphere Maximum Security Prison without excruciating pain and forced nausea. There had been nights, of course, when I extended and retracted the blade over and over, exhausting myself from the adrenaline dump that pain and misery caused.

  The guards had known I’d done this and probably hoped I was going to put an end to it all. I heard them complain that the arm should have been amputated and understood their frustration, but my Reaper-ware couldn’t be removed without killing me and they had a death doctor for that.

  “Your biometric monitors are prompting me to sedate you,” X-37 said.

  “You promised me you had removed that capability from your programming,” I said, forcing myself to stand and get on with my day.

  X-37 didn’t answer. We’d been through this before, but usually when I started thinking about past missions and the things I’d done.

  I went to the ship lounge and contacted Elise and her father. She leaned against the back wall, arms and legs crossed, teenage attitude on full display. The father, the scientist who had used her to further his own career, sat at the small table in the center of the room, hands folded together. Sleep, shower, and food had made him a new man. In his own realm of intellectuals, he was probably a juggernaut.

  “I’m willing to forget certain things,” he said.

  “Good morning. How are your accommodations?” I asked.

  He stared at me. “You must understand the kind of trouble you’re in.”

  “Considering my options, I think I’ll risk it.”

  His face flushed red, probably from embarrassment at his own stupidity. “Well, of course. I might be able to negotiate something better than death row if you return me to the Union immediately.”

  “You’re quite a salesman,” I said.

  He was as proud as ever. “My work is very important.”

  “More important than your daughter?” I hadn’t wanted to take the conversation there, not with Elise watching and listening.

  “Of course not. You keep ambushing me with guilt,” he accused. “Haven’t you ever had to make a hard choice?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “One time I had this mad scientist that I had to rescue or kill by leaving on an exploding space station. Still trying to figure that one out.”

  “I’m not going to dignify that remark with the response.” He stood a little straighter than necessary.

  “I said I’d return you to the Union, but I’m not planning on getting killed or captured in the process. We should be arriving in the Iben IV system soon.”

  “Is that Union space?” he asked.

  “Nominally. I think you’ll like it.”

  “That’s an unnecessary inconvenience, but I will take it as a measure of your goodwill,” he said, seeming relieved. “So long as you turn over me and my daughter to the proper authorities.”

  “That’s the plan,” I said.

  Elise stormed out of the room.

  IBEN IV really was on the ass end of Union-controlled space, one slip tunnel from a nasty section of the Deadlands. The Jellybird docked with Iben Station using a trader’s code she promised wouldn’t raise alarms. I had to trust the AI for now.

  I opened the hatch and lowered the ramp, motioning for the doctor to proceed. He narrowed his gaze, but then took his first steps toward freedom—if slavery to the Union’s secret laboratories was considered freedom. Elise looked at me like she would cut my throat if she could. I was starting to think she’d forgotten how to uncross her arms.

  “You keep making that face, it’s gonna sta
y like that forever,” I said, careful to keep my cybernetics concealed under my trench coat.

  She didn’t even bother to tell me to fuck off. Neither did she step off the ramp. “I don’t really want to stay with a psychopathic asshole, but I’m not leaving your ship.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “Jelly, do you copy?”

  “I do, Captain.”

  “X, you ready?”

  “Always.”

  Adjusting my coat one last time, I strode into the small space port.

  Doctor Hastings followed me, pointing angrily at his daughter. “The deal was for both of us. You can’t kidnap her. I’ll report you to the authorities and we’ll see how far you get in that rattletrap.”

  “Guard,” I said, waving the man over.

  “What are you doing?” Hastings asked.

  “Turning in a fugitive for a reward. His real name is Max Slipdriver.”

  “It certainly is not!” Hastings blurted.

  “Is this you?” I showed him his picture on my pocket tablet.

  The doctor shifted his weight nervously, not quite sure if he should run for it. “Well, of course that’s my picture, but I’m not an outlaw.”

  “He’s kind of a nut job. He almost had me convinced he was a Union scientist.” I slapped him on the shoulder, causing him to wince. “Yeah, good old Max Slipdriver. Biggest cheat in three systems. One smooth operator.”

  The guard ran a check on his device.

  Hastings could barely speak. “I’m not an outlaw!”

  I leaned close. “You will be for the two hours it will take them to figure out the forgery. Meanwhile, I get a nice reward to pay for the next leg of my journey.”

  “There’s a problem with this,” the Union station guard said.

  “No, it’s legit.” I leaned over and touched his tablet, allowing X-37 to do his magic. “See right there. One thousand credits.”

  “That says one hundred credits. Are you trying to cheat the Union?” the guard asked.

  I spread my hands apologetically. “Hey, I had to try, right? Can’t get nothing past the Union’s finest.”