Relic Hunted (Crax War Chronicles #2)

by Terry W. Ervin II

  “Are you going to be okay?” Med Tech Devatha asked me.

  Pursing my lips, I nodded. After a few shallow breaths I asked, “Can you access McAllister’s sensors down here?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, squinting with a half grin. “I’ll query first.”

  There wasn’t much to see. A distant planet in near orbit to an orange dwarf star, slightly smaller than Earth’s sun. The focus shifted to the planet, and then to an object in its orbit. With manipulation the object appeared in more detail. A large metallic cylinder capped by an octagonal disk on both ends. The fuzziness disappeared further as the computer refined what had been captured of the image.

  No ships docked or stationed nearby. Med Tech Devatha released a small sigh. He’d been concerned. Me? I hadn’t. McAllister had failings, but in cracking CGIG’s secret codes and piecing together disparate information and data, I knew she’d be right. On second thought, I recalled how nothing was assured with respect to interstellar travel and maintaining perfect schedules. But, if anything, delays were to be expected over early arrivals.

  Minutes passed. No attempted radio contact from the mining colony as we flew like a bullet at over 190,000 miles per hour toward our target. No activity picked up by our passive sensors. No message rockets dispatched, and active sensors trying to reach and identify us.

  We’d monitor and report, sending low energy, narrow-beam signals to the re-transmitter while remaining in zero gravity and under minimum power, until we reached the colony in a little over twenty days.

  McAllister floated toward me in the common room. A buckled strap held me in the chair while I read a journal article discussing possible upgrades to standard security robots, hardening them against EMPs, and improvements to their armored covers and ability to resist impact damage. I sided against the move. Too labor intensive and succeeding in only a half measure. If they wanted an improved sec-bot to backup security teams and military troops on colonies, design and build it from the ground up. The additional weight and components would be too much of a drain on the current models’ batteries. Plus, there was no room to increase number or size of the battery cells. The added internal support struts proposed wouldn’t be as effective as projected.

  McAllister placed a hand on the back of my chair, stopping her progress.

  I pointed to the article on the table screen. “Have you read anything about this?”

  McAllister frowned. “No, this would’ve been along Anatol’s interest.”

  I refrained from pursing my lips. Bringing her deceased boyfriend—maybe fiancé—to mind wasn’t my intention. We’d avoided each other as best we could since my revival from cold sleep. Thirty-six hours was a good run, and our meeting wasn’t necessarily the way to keep things calm. It could go either way. McAllister’s volatile personality and my stubbornness…

  She leaned closer and scanned the screen, tapped to expand several of the diagrams. After skimming another few screens of information, she asked, “What do you think, Keesay?”

  I leaned back and shared my thoughts. About half way through her left eyebrow rose. “If a Relic like you can figure it out, Keesay, any competent engineer should be able to come to the same conclusion in half the time.”

  “Thanks,” I said, only offering up a sliver of sarcasm. “My guess is the licensing and patent holders angling to expand…no, extend the life of the product line.”

  She said, “Some manage to accumulate substantial wealth through military procurement.”

  “Others pay the price for faulty decisions,” I said. “Substandard equipment.”

  “A vital question is, Keesay, does humanity have the time and resources to develop a new system, establish a new production line and logistical supply for repair and replacement parts? For that standard model, that supply line, familiarity with the systems. Repair and maintenance. It’s already established.”

  “So, you think that’s what’s going to happen? Upgrade and make due with what’s available?”

  She gripped the table, pulling herself around to the opposite seat. “Even you must be able to read past the hype and propaganda published. We’re losing. Getting pressed by the enemy. What you’re pointing out is a symptom of a bigger problem.”

  I tried to keep anger from my voice. “So, you think the bastards at Capital Galactic, throwing in with the Crax. They’re the smart guys?”

  She rolled her eyes before tapping the screen, and logging into her account. “Say they’re right and the Crax win, what use will they be to them after that?” She pulled up a chess program. “They’re like you playing this game.”

  I began unbuckling myself from the chair even as she buckled in. “Who says I’m playing, McAllister?”

  She ignored my statement, and activated the holographic imaging program, making the board 3D. “You can be white.”

  I pushed away, heading toward the pilot’s station. Maybe something of interest would be on the optical scanners.

  “You never change, Keesay. Never thinking more than three moves ahead.”

  I stopped in the doorway and turned. “My feeble planning skills on the Kalavar enabled me to come out on top, McAllister. Remember?”

  She grinned wickedly. “Selective memory, Relic. Recall what I’d set into motion with respect to your accounts? Lucky for you, the war interrupted the game, or it would’ve been checkmate.”

  I remembered. My accounts would’ve been drained. Zeroed out without a trace, and probably limited recourse. But, if she thought it would’ve ended there…

  McAllister held up a hand and tipped her head, looking away. “Keesay, I’m sorry.” The words were strained, and they surprised me. “I didn’t seek you out for this.”

  After a deep breath, she lowered her hand and said, “You’ve been avoiding me since your recovery. Not easy on a shuttle in zero gravity. I left something on your bunk.”

  I didn’t know what to say. What would she have left?

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “And you owe me at least one game. You’ll see.”

  I sat in the tiny med lab, staring at the genetically modified patch of exoskeleton on the Bahklack’s dominant pincher claw. The alien resembled more than anything else a four-foot-tall fiddler crab. The modified section shifted colors, much like a squid might. It was the way the thrall communicated with its masters, or so it named the Umbelgarri.

  Having been under Umbelgarri care while they rebuilt my neural pathways after the Cranaltar IV ravaged them, the advanced aliens inserted the ability for me to comprehend such communications. My eyes were capable, but my hearing was unable to detect the low-frequency sounds that accompanied the colors, sounds which added emotion and emphasis. In producing sound, the thrall was far more limited than the advanced alien race that created the crab-like thralls to serve them.

  I spoke into the med lab’s computer, which translated my words into colors displayed by the monitor and sound by the speakers. “Yes, Thrall Blue Gray Blue Blue Nineteen. I know how to work with the shuttle’s computer systems. Not as well as the others on the crew, but well enough to get by.”

  I waited a second and observed its reply, even as the computer’s optical scanner received and translated. “Why do you persist in remaining ignorant of higher interface manipulation of electronic powered systems that support this miniscule between-star transport vessel?”

  I refrained from replying in a similar mode of wording. The point of the exercise was to get the thrall more accustomed and fluent interacting with humans. “It’s not necessary to perform my assigned duties.”

  “Such ignorance sustained inhibits more effective function within the human organizational collective.”

  I shrugged. “I improve myself in other ways.”

  “Repetitive physical labor while tethered and restrained to maintain physical strength and endurance.” The alien bowed its eye stalks down thirty degrees. A sign of agreement or approval. “Reliance on archaic devices is less efficient and less effective in con
fronting the enemies of the Masters, even when engaged…” It spread its claw tips. “From afar.” Its eyestalks spread slightly, indicating disapproval.

  “My training is elsewhere,” I said. “I am a Security Specialist. Programming software and maintaining hardware is for others, like Engineer McAllister or Pilot Detter.”

  “You remove pieces of common polymer cube by cutting and scraping with primitive metal tools instead of reducing ignorance.”

  The Bahklack thrall had observed me in the common room wearing my protective glove, using gouges and knives to work one of the wood-simulating polymer blocks. Zero gravity made it tricky. I’d rigged a small vacuum to suck in the shavings and carved bits so they wouldn’t float away.

  The carving tools came from McAllister, a gift to me. She’d use the shuttle’s fabrication equipment to make them while I was in cold sleep. Why? I had no idea.

  O’Vorley wandered into the room, a half grin on his face, probably having heard some of the conversation through the computer’s monotone voice as he approached.

  “Don’t you have art?” I asked. “The Bahklacks and the Umbelgarri?”

  “The Masters do. They create it. I and fellow thralls do not comprehend it. Are you not aligned closer to thralls, having more masters than those you are master over? Yet you create reduced polymer blocks as art.”

  O’Vorley’s eyes shifted between me and the thrall as we spoke, a straight expression maintained across his face.

  “They’re carved busts,” I said. “Artistic representations of individual humans. It is a way for me to relax. I enjoy doing it. I give the creations away. Gifts to make others happy.”

  After a pause, the thrall continued. “You are comparable to thralls on the hierarchy. You extensively serve more masters than those that serve you. You create the reduced polymer blocks for those that you serve?”

  My eyes met O’Vorley’s. He hadn’t entered more than a few feet into the room. With a slight push off the floor he floated back and gripped the doorframe and held on, content to remain there.

  “I carve something that I think others will enjoy. Don’t you ever receive gifts?”

  “Negative. I am granted use of more efficient software and more capable computers to house and run the software. I am enabled to better serve the Masters. I serve them now by serving you. I remove ignorance by engaging in communication with assorted humans. It is my purpose.”

  And that’s what vexed me. The Bahklacks were created to serve. That’s all they knew, and genetically engineered to desire. No interest in possessions or personal aspirations. Its equipment harness and computers—everything directly related to its function, its purpose. Artificial intelligence in organic form, which was pretty smart on the Umbelgarri’s part. Every space-faring race, including humanity, discovered the peril of creating artificial intelligence computers, and allowing a measure of autonomy. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have become a space-faring race.

  How could I explain to the Bahklack that too much reliance on technology dehumanized us? Creates barriers, making humans more comfortable interacting with a computer than a fellow human.

  After all, the Bahklack was the Umbelgarri solution to the rogue AI problem. The Phibs created a race with a single purpose: To serve them.

  The Crax conquered races. Those they couldn’t subjugate, they exterminated. Were the two advanced alien races, the Umbelgarri and the Crax, really different?

  It wasn’t something I intended to ask the Phib’s thrall. Maybe I’d discuss it with Kent, sometime, out of the Umbelgarri thrall’s earshot. They didn’t have ears but could hear, at least sounds not too far up the audio frequency spectrum.

  O’Vorley opened the door to our shared quarters and floated over me on the way to his bunk while I continued my push-up routine.

  “Got you an energy bar,” he said. “Salted peanuts and banana.”

  “Synthetic,” I said, knowing it’d been processed from algae grown using onboard lasers and genetically modified bacteria.

  He laughed. “Simulated, Kra. We don’t get the dining delights they spoiled you with on the Kalavar.”

  I’d shared what I could about my time there while we served as conscripts on Tallavaster. More recently I shared with him about the battle against the Crax on Io, even as Kent told me about his experiences, some of it working for the Umbelgarri. He and McAllister had actually been in close proximity to several.

  I finished my last push-up, unhooked the elastic strap stretched across my shoulders, stood, and brushed off my hands on my coveralls. “The dining delights were once a week,” I said, taking the bar. “It’s only been six days.”

  O’Vorley laughed again. “Maybe for you cold sleepers.”

  “You rotated hybersleep. Which, for my credits, beats cold sleep any light year travelled.”

  “Look at you,” he said, after taking a bite of his bar and shoving the mouthful into his cheek with his tongue. He pointed to the old-style watch on my wrist. “Shouldn’t you say something archaic like mile or league or something? Not light year.”

  “I’m adaptable.”

  “For a Relic? I’ll give you that, Kra.” He took one of my carvings from the shelf, floating behind the containment netting. “I recognize McAllister and Gudkov.” He tossed it to me. “He was an intra-colony kickboxing champion. Three platinum rings.”

  “Not my favorite man,” I said. “He didn’t care for me either.” I chewed a bite of my bar and swallowed. “Died well. Brave. Took on a Gar-Crax warrior hand-to-hand. Stood between it and McAllister.”

  “She told me,” O’Vorley said. “Together you and her killed it. She wears one of Gudkov’s platinum rings on a chain around her neck. She did say, ‘Keesay took it from his bloody hand for me.’”

  I remembered. McAllister was in shock from witnessing her love’s death. I pulled the ring from his hand and shoved it into hers. Got her moving again, toward survival.

  We both finished our energy bar in silence, lost in our own thoughts for half a moment. I was about to ask what maintenance tasks were scheduled for today when the door slid open, without a chime or even a knock.

  “Who?” O’Vorley asked, even as McAllister launched past him, toward me. “You bastard!” she shouted.

  I pushed aside, out of her path.

  She slammed into the bunks, and spun to face me. A stun baton extended in her hand, murder in her mismatched eyes.

  I didn’t have my own stun baton so I pulled my bayonet before she could launch at me again. “McAllister, stop!” Using deadly force wasn’t my intent, but the intense glow across her stun baton’s tip said it was at max charge. One successful strike would take me down, painfully. A second and third would do me in.

  She wasn’t going to get that chance.

  O’Vorley intercepted McAllister as she pushed off with her legs, toward me. Both slammed back into the beds. Grappling with her, he shouted into his mic, “All call emergency, my quarters now!”

  Kent took a knee to the gut, knocking the wind out of him. But that gave me a chance to discard my bayonet and get McAllister in an arm lock.

  All three of us spun, bouncing off the wall, angling toward the ceiling.

  “You, bastard,” she seethed at me. “You have no right.”

  Her stun baton discharged against the ceiling, sparking and shorting out the lights. Before they fully faded, the red-tinted emergency lighting kicked in.”

  My combat experience in zero gravity was nil, but that didn’t matter as we tumbled, McAllister trying to push off with her legs and launch me into a wall. My bayonet was floating in a corner, near the floor, safely out of reach. With a further twist, I managed to force McAllister to release the baton.

  O’Vorley shifted his grip, earning a glancing kick to his thigh. “Relax, McAllister,” he urged through gritted teeth. Between us, we had her immobilized. Our security self-defense and takedown training was more suited to zero gravity than McAllister’s kickboxing.

  I couldn’t fig
ure why she was here. “Just like you,” I accused. “Overriding the security systems. Doing whatever you please.”

  McAllister’s response was something caught between a snarl and a scream.

  Kent snapped, “Shut up, Keesay.”

  Pilot Detter arrived in the doorway. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Straining to maintain my grip, I growled, “With McAllister you have to ask?”

  “If all you have are smart ass questions, Keesay, do like O’Vorley said and shut up.”

  Med Tech Devatha ducked under the pilot and moved toward us, eyes shifting between me and the red-faced McAllister. He snatched McAllister’s stun baton floating nearby. Having lost contact with a wielder, it deactivated. Pressing the button to retract, it didn’t respond.

  Figures. She’d security programmed it for her individual use.

  “Engineer,” Med Tech Devatha said, “Specialist Bleys is going to release you. Specialist O’Vorley will retain his hold until after Specialist Bleys has departed.” The tech’s eyes met mine. “For the med lab.”

  She grunted what I took for agreement, so I let go, reached under my pillow strapped down to the head of the bunk, and retrieved my duty revolver and its holster.

  McAllister’s burning glare followed me but she didn’t make a sound. When I started to go for my bayonet, Pilot Detter said, “Leave it, Keesay.”

  An hour later in the common room, McAllister sat across the table from me. Pilot Detter sat to my right and Med Tech Devatha to my left. O’Vorley was forward in the pilot’s station, monitoring the shuttle’s sensors.

  The pilot placed my carving of the three busts on the table. Without gravity, the synthetic wood representations of Gudkov, McAllister, and the man I only knew as Steffon, the young man I’d killed, hovered slowly in my direction. The heads rotated to face me as if in accusation.

  I focused on the clean-shaven face of Steffon. I’d managed to carve it without his twisted, menacing hate burned into my memory. Deep set eyes, broad chin and wavy hair slicked back. McAllister had risked her life and career to avenge him. Drugged up on Thrust, she tried to kill me. When that bid failed, she shifted to destroying my career while covering up her attempted crime.