The Arks of Andromeda (The Imperium Chronicles Book 1)

by W. H. Mitchell

Although Doric couldn't see, she sensed they were moving incredibly fast. Also, her ears started popping, which either meant they were heading up to safety or deeper into the volcano. Although Doric knew she could never admit this to Maycare, she was terrified.

  And then she was blinded again, this time by light.

  Like a cork from a champagne bottle, the grav sled burst from a vent in the side of the volcano. The raft floated upward for a moment until it veered sharply to one side. The three passengers spilled out onto a snow bank.

  Doric took a moment to see if she was still alive. Confident she was, she sat up and saw a stream of lava pouring from the vent, continuing down the slope away from them.

  "Is everyone alright?" she asked.

  Maycare's voice came from the other side of the drift. "I think so."

  "Henry?" Doric called.

  "I think I need a doctor," he finally spoke, standing up with his arm clearly bleeding.

  "Hold on, buddy," Maycare said, pulling out his communicator. "Bentley?"

  "Yes, My Lord?" the robot answered.

  "We need a lift."

  "Right away, sir," Bentley replied. "Also, it seems the other vessel has left in rather a hurry."

  "Did you detect a transmat?" Devlin asked.

  "Indeed."

  "Alright then, just get down here as quickly as possible."

  "Right away, sir."

  Henry whispered into Doric’s ear, "Did Lord Maycare just call me buddy?"

  Chapter Nine

  Pitt was born in the grave.

  On the frontier, in a disputed area of space claimed by both the Imperium and the Magna Supremacy, Pitt’s parents had joined a human colony, hoping to build a new life. Taking issue with humans colonizing what they considered their own territory, the Magna launched an attack, bombarding the settlement from orbit and killing most of the inhabitants, including Pitt’s father.

  Sticklers for efficiency, the Magna landed on the planet and rounded up the survivors, lining them up in front of one of the large craters caused by the bombardment. One by one, the settlers were executed, their bodies falling into the pit.

  A few hours after the Magna left, a Pirate Clan called the Butcher Boys arrived at the decimated colony in hopes of salvaging whatever they could. Much to their surprise, however, the pirates heard a baby crying, finding the newborn lying at the bottom of a crater, surrounded by the dead. Pitt’s mother, in her final act of life, gave birth to a boy.

  The pirates named him Pitt.

  The baby grew into a young man, learning the full curriculum of pirate skills including piloting, fighting, and killing. At the age of eighteen, he earned the tattoos signifying his official induction into the Butcher Boys.

  Unfortunately, life in a Pirate Clan is often brutal and short, largely due to the Imperial Navy. When the Navy finally caught up with the Butcher Boys, the warships made short work of the ragtag vessels of the pirates. Pitt found himself captured and was soon given a simple choice: either join the Navy or go to prison for the rest of his miserable life.

  Pitt had to admit, he always liked those naval uniforms.

  As part of the Imperial Navy, he accepted his fate and quickly distinguished himself by fighting against a Draconian insurrection, killing many rebels in the process. Pitt’s ambiguous morality caught the attention of the Imperial Intelligence Service who recruited him into an elite unit specializing in black ops and assassinations.

  Before Pitt could start, the agency sent him to special training on a planet affectionally called the Hellmouth.

  The barren surface of the planet was devoid of life except for those who trained there. A single barracks and a few surrounding buildings were the only structures. Standing at attention with the other trainees, Pitt saw his instructor for the first time. Named Sgt. Black, the man would shape the nineteen-year old into the man, and perhaps monster, he would become.

  “Listen up!” Sgt. Black told them, “"Many of you will not survive this training, but I promise those who do will no longer fear death. You will become Agents of Death and wherever you walk, Death will follow."

  “He’s just trying to scare us,” a young recruit whispered into Pitt’s ear.

  Without hesitation, Sgt. Black thumbed a button on his belt. In a crackle of energy, the recruit disappeared.

  “That loudmouth,” the sergeant shouted, “just got a one-way transmat into high orbit where he’ll enjoy a lovely view for the short time before he dies. Don’t kid yourself, ladies and gentlemen, he’s only the first of you to die. Many of you, hell, maybe all of you, will follow…”

  Sgt. Black kept his promise. In the following weeks, he sent the trainees on missions against live opponents, convicted murderers condemned to execution. Pitt soon got so used to killing, it became second nature. With every man Pitt killed, the guilt of killing slowly faded. Perhaps the greatest lesson Black taught him was that good and evil, right and wrong, were empty words without meaning. Death was inevitable. Why shouldn’t Pitt be the one who sent the doomed to their final resting place?

  “To live is to suffer,” the sergeant preached. “Only the dead know true peace. Don’t pity the people you kill; they’re the lucky ones…”

  On the eve of graduation, Sgt. Black presented them with one more task. The class would disperse into tunnels beneath the camp.

  “For this exercise,” he said, “your targets are not convicts. They are your fellow trainees. To pass this final test, you must kill one of your classmates. If you manage to kill more than one, of course you’ll receive extra credit!”

  For most assassins, the most feared scenario was to become the prey of another assassin. For Pitt, however, in the darkened corridors he felt no fear. He no longer dreaded death because he had become Death. When he left the tunnels at the end of the mission, he was the only survivor.

  On Pitt's first mission after graduation, he was selected as part of a two-man kill team assigned to terminate a nobleman, his wife, and son.

  Pitt and his partner transmatted directly into the noble's high-rise apartment. While the other killer went after the husband, Pitt crept toward the bedroom where he found the wife, her back to him, standing in front of a window watching the city lights.

  She died never knowing he was there.

  Pitt spoke into his microphone. "I eliminated the wife."

  "Roger that," replied the voice in his earpiece. "I've taken out the primary target. Find the son and finish the mission."

  Pitt went to the woman's corpse. Perhaps out of instinct, he turned the body over. In her arms, a baby boy stared up at him. Looking into the eyes of this child, still held by his dead mother, Pitt knew the mission wasn't going to end as planned.

  Pitt found the other assassin still standing over the nobleman lying on the floor.

  "Did you kill him?" the other man asked.

  "I'm about to," Pitt replied, shooting him through the chest.

  Into the night, Pitt took the child and disappeared. Neither could go back to their previous lives. Knowing the boy was still in danger, Pitt left him with a friend. The child would grow up never knowing his noble lineage or even his real name. As for Pitt, he changed his name too. Using the two forces that formed him: the Magna that killed his parents, and Sgt. Black who made him a killer, he became known as Magnus Black, a hitman for hire.

  The life of a heavy liftbot was far from glamorous. Liftbot Serial Number F204-8BE2-17A2-CFF3 or, as Master Hitch called him, Hey Dummy, had lived on the Rattenbury for three years, although the passage of time inside a cargo hold was largely meaningless.

  Today, the Rattenbury rested on the platform of a space station.

  Hey Dummy stood motionless at the foot of the open loading ramp. His master, Cameron Hitch, was beside him in a spacesuit, instructing him over the comm about which crates the robot should carry onto the ship.

  Dimly understanding his orders, Hey Dummy waddled over to a grav sled parked at the edge of the platform. He took the opportunity to look up at th
e world the station was orbiting. The robot didn't know the planet's name, but knew it was large and had a pleasant orange color, which was more than he could say about the ceiling of the cargo hold.

  Reaching the supply canisters burdening the grav sled, Hey Dummy lifted one of the containers and turned back toward the Rattenbury. He noticed that Master Hitch was no longer alone at the top of the loading ramp. He seemed to be talking to another man, also in a spacesuit. Hey Dummy didn't think this was the same man that, along with a robot companion, had been aboard for the last several days. Hey Dummy was definitely pretty sure that man and his robot had left through the main airlock an hour earlier.

  No, this man was different than the other one. This one was shorter and, through the face shield, his skin was white, not brown.

  Also, he held a blaster.

  Hey Dummy continued transferring supplies from the sled to the ship, observing but not interfering with the men's conversation. They were apparently talking on a different comm frequency because the robot couldn't hear what they were saying. He could only see the motions they were making. For example, the new man seemed eager to show how well he could point the blaster at Master Hitch, waving the weapon several times. The captain seemed impressed enough to raise both of his hands.

  On his third trip, Hey Dummy watched as Master Hitch typed a message into his datapad, perhaps telling someone else about how well the new person waved his gun. This seemed agreeable to the other man until the captain finished the message. Then, coming from behind, the man surprised both Master Hitch and Hey Dummy by using a sharp knife against the captain's air hose.

  The robot was no expert on human biology, but it was his understanding that most organics needed oxygen. For what, he didn't know.

  Hey Dummy watched as his master fell to his knees and sprawled across the deck of the cargo hold. After a minute or two, his master stopped moving. Meanwhile, the other man was placing something against the door mechanism leading to the rest of the ship. It was a small cylinder with several wires poking out.

  Hey Dummy wondered if the man was fixing the hatch, but that was beyond the robot's understanding. As a liftbot, lifting was about all he really knew.

  Remembering he still had a few crates to haul back to the ship, Hey Dummy started back toward the grav sled. At this point, he heard a loud static sound transmitting across his comm channel. New thoughts, which would never have occurred to him before, started occurring to him. He felt afraid, but a calm voice told him it would be alright. It occurred to him that the voice was coming from inside his head.

  After days of freeze-dried coffee aboard the Rattenbury, Russell Davidson was eager to get his hands on something fresh, even if finding ground coffee on a space station was never a sure bet. That was especially true on Far Harbor, a way station a long way from anywhere.

  After telling Captain Hitch they'd be gone a few hours, Davidson and Jericho left the ship and wandered the promenade deck, looking for a decent cup of coffee. They passed vendor alcoves and kiosks filled with cheap electronics and questionable foodstuffs, while advertisements flashed on screens above their heads:

  LONELY? NEED A FRIEND?

  DY CYBERNETICS:

  WE MAKE FRIENDS SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO!

  "Can people really be friends with robots?" Jericho asked, stopping beside a stall full of orange, prickly-skinned fruit.

  "Sure," Davidson said. "Although the idea of buying a robot specifically for that purpose seems strange."

  "Why is that?"

  "Buying someone doesn't strike me as very friendly. Not to mention what happens if the friendship doesn't work out."

  "I believe friendship models are programmed to be quite amiable," Jericho said.

  "Even so..."

  "I've often wondered about sexbots," Jericho confessed.

  "Say what now?" Davidson said, stopping abruptly.

  "Not for me," Jericho said. "I meant for humans."

  "Oh, right."

  "What if the person gets tired of the sexbot?" Jericho asked. "What becomes of it?"

  Davidson started walking again, still hoping to smell the brewing of an espresso machine along the way. Jericho followed.

  "The Robot Freedom League has liberated sexbots," Davidson said. "In every case, the human was sorry to see them go, to say the least."

  "A simple implant to the pleasure center of the brain would achieve the same results," Jericho suggested.

  "Well," Davidson hesitated to reply, "it's not really my area, but I expect there's aspects of sex that draw people to something more realistic. Is that a café?"

  Davidson pointed to a sign that read Coffee or Die.

  "Let's go in there," he said.

  Inside the café, Jericho sat at a corner table while Davidson purchased a cup from the robot behind the counter. His steaming brew in hand, the human joined Jericho, taking a seat directly across.

  Jericho studied Davidson as he eagerly sipped the coffee from the mug.

  "During my review of the ark ship archives," the android said, "I read several references to humanity’s infatuation with coffee."

  "I wouldn't call it an infatuation," Davidson said.

  "An addiction then?"

  Davidson took a moment to consider. "Maybe..."

  "Considering the many beverages, including alcohol, that your species enjoys, coffee's prominence is a mystery to me."

  "It makes me happy," Davidson said.

  "Because of the caffeine?" Jericho asked.

  "There's that."

  "Then why not simply inject the caffeine directly into your blood stream? Perhaps using a suppository?"

  Davidson coughed.

  "I think you're underestimating the pleasure of the experience," he said. "The warm brew and the milk and sugar. All that adds to the gratification."

  "Hmm," Jericho pondered. "I suppose since I don't ingest food, I can't fully appreciate it as much."

  "I'm sorry about that," Davidson said.

  Jericho, whose face included actuators in the mouth, smiled.

  "No need to apologize," he said. "My original design didn't require taste buds or a functioning digestive system."

  "Even so, why give you a brain that could sense things, but not all the senses to actually enjoy them?"

  "Again, my purpose didn't require it."

  "But you're more than whatever purpose somebody built you for," Davidson said.

  "That's my hope, yes."

  Jericho heard a buzzing from beneath the table and watched as Davidson, reaching into his pocket, removed a datapad.

  "Captain Hitch sent me a text," Davidson said, reading from the tablet's screen. "Looks like he needs us back at the ship. Doesn't say why though."

  "Well, I've enjoyed our walk on the station," Jericho said. "Even an android can feel cooped up on a starship after too long."

  Davidson gulped down the rest of his coffee. “Delicious!”

  Returning to the Rattenbury, Davidson and Jericho entered through the main airlock, but couldn't find Captain Hitch on the bridge or in any of the staterooms. Jericho finally suggested they try the cargo hold.

  Following the corridor to the belly of the ship, Davidson and the robot reached the closed hatch leading to the hold. The control panel showed that the room on the other side was pressurized so Davidson, with Jericho beside him, activated the door. With a jolt, the hatch groaned as it began to open.

  Wearing a spacesuit, Magnus Black opened a hatch leading onto the space station platform. The landing pad was empty except for the Rattenbury and a grav sled weighed down with supply canisters.

  The cargo ramp was already down and a heavy liftbot was lumbering over to the sled. Magnus ignored the robot and walked directly up the ramp where he saw Captain Cameron Hitch reading from his datapad, probably the supply manifest. Magnus removed a blaster from a pocket in his suit and tapped on Hitch's shoulder.

  Hitch jumped.

  "What the hell?" he shouted over the comm link in his helmet. "Who
are you?"

  Magnus waved the blaster.

  "Get your hands up," he said.

  Hitch raised his hands while looking past Magnus toward the heavy liftbot.

  "Don't bother trying to direct your robot," Magnus said. "I've already blocked the signal, as well as the frequency to the station."

  "Well, I guess you've got it all figured out," Hitch said. "Mind telling me what's going on?"

  "I'm here for the android," Magnus replied.

  "Jericho?"

  "Warlock Industries doesn't like their property walking off, apparently."

  "Sorry, pal, but he's not on board."

  "Where is he then?"

  "He’s with a guy from the RFL called Davidson."

  "Get him back here," Magnus said, pointing with his blaster at the datapad still in the captain's hand.

  Hitch looked at the tablet and sighed, fogging up the bottom of his face shield.

  "Alright," he said and began typing.

  Magnus, in the cold vacuum, put away his blaster and removed a serrated knife from a holder on his belt. With the captain's back to him, Magnus watched as Hitch finished his text and hit SEND. With a smooth motion, Magnus slit the captain's air hose. Oxygen gushed from the hose, sending it flapping back and forth.

  Hitch dropped the datapad and turned, but Magnus had stepped away, out of reach. Magnus knew what was happening inside the other man's suit. Hitch was gasping for air, even as it escaped uselessly into the vacuum. Magnus watched him fall to the deck, rolling back and forth. A blast from his weapon would have been more humane, Magnus realized, but that would have also alerted the station's security sensors. He didn't need that kind of attention.

  Hitch's movement slowed and then stopped.

  With the captain dead, Magnus went to the hatch leading to the rest of the ship. From a small bag slung across his back, he took out a cylinder and placed it against the door. He pulled wires from the cylinder, connecting them to the hatch control panel. It wasn't a large bomb, but it should do enough damage to kill anyone coming through the door. Whether that someone was human or robot didn't matter much.