Finally, after what seemed like far too long for Underow’s tastes, Fran took the last sip of her coffee, gathered up her stacks of papers with a rustled noise into a briefcase, and took her leave. Her eyes darted around the room as she exited the diner. She’d never met Underow, and she looked past him as he sipped his coffee casually, seemingly paying no attention to her.
He waited a moment, swiped his credit reader over the sensor on the napkin dispenser to pay for his meal, as it was, and pocketed the device as he stood up.
“Come again,” said the waitress in a voice that implied she'd rather he didn’t.
“Not if I can help it,” he muttered.
He touched the door, was just about to curl his hands around its handle, when he saw his target sprawled on the ground, around a large black man, a teenaged girl with pink hair, and a boy of about 12. Her papers were scattered everywhere.
Underow pounded his fist on the door, and sunk his head against his balled hand which rested against the door. He looked to the side, and saw there was a second door. He could slip out of the side and find a nice hiding place to observe.
It would be some time before he would find another opening to take out his target.
***
“Joey, watch where you’re going!” Isellia said, pulling the boy to his feet. Joey rubbed his head, now sore from bumping into the short woman who lay before them, rubbing her lower back.
“Oh my, that was quite a tumble,” the woman with large spectacles said, brushing herself off as she worked her way to her feet. “I was in such a hurry, oh that was my fault I was going too fast and was in such a hurry and my mind is on other—“
“Hey, are you alright?” Porter interrupted.
“Huh? Oh yes, I think I’m fine, just a little bruising maybe though sometimes that can get a little serious, and come to think of it there was that illness the doctors found last year when I went in for my exam, which I usually do once per year because I read on the buzz that you’re always supposed to ...”
Porter sighed, raising his eyebrows. He looked at Joey, then Isellia, while Fran continued on with her story. “How about you, Joey — you alright?”
Joey nodded.
“... so anyway. I — um, what was the question again?”
“Here, let me help you with those —” Porter said, reaching down toward Fran’s papers.
“No no, I have it. Special documents, can’t let anyone see, if I do I could get in trouble, but then, I might already be, you see, I’m supposed to be on vacation, but I’m working anyway because there’s a problem I really need to solve. But I can’t find a cargo ship that’s going the same way I want, everything is going away from the Inner Circle, and if I book something going into the circle my bosses will know I’m working and not on vacation—“
“Wait, so let me just stop you there,” Porter said. “You need a ship to take you into the Inner Circle without too many questions or documentation. Do I understand you right?”
Fran looked up at Porter, considering the implied proposition. “Yes?”
Porter smiled. “I think we can help you out.”
***
Underow watched from the side of the building. He did not look pleased at this newest development. Not at pleased at all.
He was irritated, but he knew what he needed to do.
***
“Tellll meeee, Wimpreeeeeyyy,” the man with no face hissed, leaning back in his chair.
Wimprey cowered in front of the man's desk, his shoulders slumped and his knees buckling. He tried in vain to hide the shake of his knees under his uniform’s grey slacks, which gave away his nervousness as they moved as if blown by an unseen wind. “Tell me exactly how they esssscaped.”
Wimprey tried his best not to look into the cold, empty face of the man behind the desk. It wasn’t his office. It wasn’t anyone’s — but these types of things always seemed to be conducted in offices, and every Company C facility always had a smattering of spare offices for just this sort of purpose.
“Well, sir, uh, you see ...” Wimprey began, pausing to compose himself.
“Sssspare me!” the man hissed, slamming his fist on the table. “As if you’ll ssssssay anything of consequence anyway.” The man seemed to lean into Wimprey, and despite Wimprey’s best efforts, he took a look, and was caught. He found himself pulled toward the dark abyss of the man’s lack of face, an inescapable event horizon he’d crossed.
“It doesn’t matter. They’ve taken a Company C transport, and our cruisers are closing in as we speak. So you can sssssave your whining and pleading and excuses. They’ll be captured in a matter of moments, I imagine.”
“A-alive sir?” Wimprey managed, gulping audibly after he spoke.
“Why yessssss, Wimprey. Alive. The CEO is very interested in them.”
Wimprey looked down, as if he wanted to speak, but instead stared at his feet.
“What’sssss the matter, Wimprey? Do you have something to sssssay?”
Wimprey ventured a look up. “Well, sir, it’s just...”
“Yesssssss, go on, Wimprey.”
“Well, they’re very dangerous, sir. It might be best to simply eliminate them if, you know, there’s the chance.”
“Your lack of faith is disturbing, Wimprey. And I thought you had more conviction. I thought perhapsssss you might be able to lead the interrogation.”
Wimprey perked up. “Me, sir?” He straightened up, the prospect of opportunity outweighing his fear. “Why I’d be honored, sir. I’ll have everything out of them —“
“I said ‘lead’ not conduct.” Wimprey stopped in his tracks. “You’ll have access to our top interrogatorssssss. Now, go back to your office-ssssss. We’ll alert you when you’re needed.”
“Yes sir! You won’t be disappointed!”
The man with no face stood up, and Wimprey felt the feeling go out of his stomach as the man with no face bore down on him. “Ssssssee that I’m not.”
***
Rex leaned against the back of Celia's chair on the small transport ship. She stared into a monitor, a red warning light flashing on the outline of the screen. Trouble neared.
“They’re closing in?”
Celia nodded. “Oh, they’ll overtake the ship in about 30 seconds. Another few minutes to board. I imagine they’ll reach the bridge in a few minutes.”
“Guess that’s that.”
“I guess so.”
In a few moments, the clunk of the docking clamps — the invasive kind, claws that pierce a ship’s hull and lock into it, making escape impossible without ripping the vessel apart — reverberated throughout the ship’s interior. A space tunnel drilled into the hull and a door was cut. The invasion team was inside even quicker than Celia had predicted.
Soon the two watched as they blasted open the door to the bridge, guns at the ready. They surrounded the bridge.
“Hit it?” Celia asked.
Rex nodded.
Celia and Rex watched the scene from the safety of the console inside the Company C facility. They watched the surprised look on the soldier’s faces; they watched as the ship’s interior began to rumble; they watched the panicked soldiers scramble their way to the bridge. They watched the entire ship rip apart in a fiery explosion that died as quickly as it begun amongst the starlit darkness.
“Think they had time to report back?”
“Doubt it.”
“Well, then, we’re officially dead. Isn’t that exciting?”
Rex grinned. “That make us necrophiliacs?” He began to stroke Celia’s long, dark hair.
“Oh, why label it?” she purred, kissing his hand and reaching around his waist.
Chapter 46
Fran and the rest of the group followed Porter through the streets from the diner. The others backed off a bit, while Fran continued a largely one-sided conversation, which had been nearly non-stop since they’d met. Porter tried several times to interject something into the conversation but soon gave up, dropping an
y pretense of pretending to acknowledge anything she said.
Instead, Porter walked straight forward, lips pursed tightly, counting the steps until they reached the front of the repair shop where the ship was parked. Despite being called a repair shop, the moniker was really more of a colloquialism, a reference to the type of place people once bought land machines on Old Earth. Porter didn’t know what they might have once looked like, but he imagined they didn’t need nearly the room a business dedicated to repairing space-worthy ships did.
Porter saw MaBrown waiting for them on a bench in front of the shop. Porter hastened his step — the prospect of a conversation he might actually contribute to looked appealing.
“Hey boss,” MaBrown waved, standing up.
“MaBrown,” Porter said, making a point of cutting Fran off mid-sentence. To his relief, she stopped. “How are the repairs going? Any word?”
“Yeah, but...” MaBrown puffed up his cheeks as he blew air out of them. “You’re not gonna like it.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been —” Porter stopped mid-sentence when he grabbed the shop’s e-pad from MaBrown, nearly dropping it on the cement sidewalk.
“That wasn’t even the premium option,” MaBrown said. “Shoulda seen the things they wanted to do. Sure woulda purred like a kitten, though!”
Porter sat on the bench. “We’re back to square one ...” He rubbed his temples. When Isellia grabbed the pad, her eyes went wide, and she handed it to Joey. Joey made a show of looking surprised at the number — he had no concept of amounts that high, nor did he know much about the ship’s finances. It seemed like a high number, but most numbers did to him.
Fran grabbed the pad, looking at the numbers through her enormous frames. “I can help with this.”
The others only had time to look at each other in disbelief as she made her way inside, pad in hand. Porter felt obligated to stop her out of politeness, but the numbers danced in front of his eyes and he could only stand up and follow.
***
Fran swiped her credit reader across the pad to pay for the ship’s repairs. The other stood around her, still somewhat shocked this relative stranger was paying for these expensive repairs to their ship.
Fran pocketed her credit reader and handed the pad to Porter, who still looked a little dumbfounded. The tingles of guilt washed over his face as he accepted the pad; he now felt bad at being annoyed by her incessant talking. It was off-putting, but she was willing to pay for repairs to a ship she’d never seen before, owned by people she’d only just met.
“You need to sign off on the repairs of course, since it’s your ship and all. It would be inappropriate of me to sign off on it, since I don’t own it or make any claim to it of course. I did once own a ship, back about 10 years ago, and it was quite the ship, actually, but so many repairs! You just couldn’t keep up ...”
Porter signed the pad, handed it to Binn, Fran still recounting her memories.
“Ahright, Mr. Pohtah,” said the shop’s owner, Binn. He had grey hair that shot out the sides of an Old Earth-style ball cap, a grey bushy eyebrows that stuck out underneath its brim; his scruffy chin jutted out as if it were pointing at them. “Everytin’ looks fine on ‘er. Ms. Fran, Pohtah, I tank you foh yah business. You folks have a fahn day now.”
“Thanks Binn. I know you guys do a good job.”
“That’s what we're known fah,” Binn said with a smile and a tip of his hat. “Dem other guys jahst rip ya off. Old Binn'll always treat yah right.”
“Well, we appreciate it. Is the old man still on the ship?”
“What old man?”
Porter looked confused. “He was on the ship when we left.”
“Didn’t see no old man. You sure der was?”
Now where did Kenpur disappear to? Porter wondered.
***
Nix ran through the dirty, noisy streets of the port city of Radiola on a planet just inside the Inner Circle. Black, polycarbonate cars, with a few colorful varieties mixed in, crowded the busy streets, a perpetual din its residents had become accustomed to. Men in black suits, women in dark business clothes, a few street people in rags, and a handful of odd characters walked the streets, a massive stream of humanity that seemed without end. In this city, you were either a Company C employee, worked for a company that provided support services for Company C (which essentially meant you worked for Company C) or you were one of the others, and thus didn't much matter to those in the former two categories.
Nix normally slipped in amongst them without worry, kept the pace of the stream, flowed and ebbed with its undulations. No one spoke to him or even seemed to notice him. No one noticed or spoke to anyone. It was considered uncouth to do so. Nix had grown up on these streets, and he was one of those street people himself. He was 13, had black, spiky hair and nearly always wore a sneer on his face.
That sneer was gone today, as he bobbed and weaved between people, shoving aside those he needed to, garnering angry glares from the people whose bubble he invaded. The glares turned to surprise and then indifference as he disappeared into the mass of people.
The river of humanity wound its way past the alley he needed, and he slipped past a dark-suited businessman, stepping on his toes as he made his way out of the people stream.
“Ow, you little urchin!” the man yelled, turning to where he thought the boy would be. Nix was already gone — as was, the man would later discover, his expensive watch.
Nix navigated the mix of labyrinths, tunnels and random obstacles. He jumped up to grab a pipe and climbed through a platform filled with refuse. Where the city streets were clear of debris, nearly all of the alleys looked like this. This is where the others lived. Company executives resided in expensive, gated apartment districts with gardens, parks and clean air. Everyone else lived here, where the manager class dumped its refuse and cut corners on city services. The street sweepers didn't enter the alleys.
Nix would later learn the injustice of it. For now, knowledge of the back alleys amounted to survival, and Nix had plenty.
In a matter of minutes, he found the door he was looking for, inset into a brick building tucked away in an older section of the city. The modern skyscrapers made no use of such buildings, which were built during a nostalgic period when anachronistic building materials were all the rage. The building far outlasted the fad.
Nix ducked inside through the window, avoiding the front door. He landed in a small front room, with a concrete floors and brick walls. An old couch sat in one corner with a lamp next to it, duct taping holding it together.
No sooner was he inside that Dirk grabbed his arm and started dragging him back to the door.
“Wha— Hey, where is everyone? Those guys, they’re here.”
“We be knowing,” Dirk said, taking Nix almost back the way he’d come. “The bombs, they be set. They’ve gone to take care of the things.”
Dirk dragged Nix back through the labyrinth. He was a head taller than Nix, skinny, with a tank top and clean, bald head.
“They walked right into it?” Nix looked in disbelief.
“Indeedie. We need to be hurrying.”
Nix said nothing, but nodded as they hurried to the repair shop.
***
The explosion shattered the glass front of the repair shop, sending shards of glass into the street, chunks of broken building materials hurled across the pavement and ricocheted off nearby walls. The steel frame of the building twisted into a gnarled monster; dust coated the street.
All went black for Porter, Isellia, Joey, Fran and MaBrown.
They’d all been thrown by the explosion, knocked several feet into the air, thrown to the street surface. Isellia careened over a bench, landing on the artificially soft astroturf surface. The force flung Fran into a bush on the same grassy surface. MaBrown tumbled head over foot, tumbling against Porter, which softened his fall as he came to a stop several feet beyond. Porter took the worst of it. The explosion wasn’t able to lift him as high, and the
bench that Isellia careened over stopped Porter flat.
They all lie silently amidst the dust and smoke that hung in the air near the site of the explosion. They all rested in a light coating of white-grey ash, but only for a moment. Then they were taken.
***
Underow surveyed the scene after the smoke cleared with a pleased look. But the slight grin faded from his pasty face as he looked around with an increasingly frantic pace.
A team of Company soldiers stood ready to move on his first order. He looked back at them only a moment before moving toward the rubble that had been the repair shop.
“Where? ...” he asked himself, looking under a pile of steel, eyes darting around each corner expecting to find his victims.
“No ...” he muttered, finding a piece of Joey’s shirt — the same one the boy had picked up on Sasuga.
“It can’t be,” he said, kicking a piece of the repair shop’s counter. “Curses!”
Underow’s fury continued while the soldiers watched, awaiting further orders. How had they been taken? How would he find them now?
It would be a long time before Underow resumed his desk work.
***
Isellia opened her eyes, slowly blinking. Dust caked her eyelids, which opened with some reluctance, peeling apart like a zip-lock bag.
She sluggishly looked at her surroundings. She was in a dark room, seated on a blanket. She tried to wipe her eyes off, but realized her hands wouldn’t move — they were tied behind her, behind the pole on which she rested. She looked around the room, and in the dim light coming from a distant window, she realized Joey, Fran and MaBrown were in similar states. They were still unconscious.
Porter was missing.
“Ungh!” she grunted, pulling at the cords that bound her hands. Her bindings were soft, a material that felt like a scarf. They held tight, but were light enough not to hurt her wrists.
Robot Awareness: The Inner Circle Page 5
