Bonds of Steel (Law and Crucible Saga Book 3)

by Visan, Ioana

  Bonds of Steel

  Law and Crucible Saga 3

  IOANA VISAN

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Bonds of Steel

  Law and Crucible Saga #3

  Copyright © 2015 Ioana Visan

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by Gil Geolingo

  https://www.fiverr.com/glass84

  Typography by TheBookLady

  https://www.fiverr.com/thebooklady

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

  First eBook Edition: December 2015

  On a routine trip across the asteroid field, the robot, Del, and unregistered AI, Vee, meet trouble. With Captain Law and his crew having been put into stasis, their only chance of survival will mean placing themselves at the mercy of what few resources they have. Without a human to assist them, Del and Vee will be vulnerable and so too will the ship and all the lives on board.

  Despite their best efforts to avoid unwanted visitors, another ship is en route. Their arrival does not guarantee the safety of those on board, and may ultimately lead to their demise.

  With his position on the ship on the line, can Del stave off an attack or are their deaths inevitable?

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Books by Ioana Visan

  1

  With one hand pressed against his right side, Law paused at the entrance next to the medbay and let Thea and her wheelchair pass first. Del followed them, moving slowly, faced with a big dilemma. Inside, Merrick was finishing checking the last stasis capsule. Two of them were occupied by Mia and Eradiez from the beginning of their journey, but the rest were empty.

  “It’s the best solution,” Vee repeated.

  “It’s your insistence that puts me off,” Law said.

  “Oh! If I didn’t know you, Captain, I’d feel offended.” Vee’s voice boomed between the bare walls then lowered to a reasonable level. ”We’re heading straight to the asteroid field, and my sensors detected high levels of radiation in the area. Given the state of our ship, the stasis capsules provide extra protection that shouldn’t be ignored.”

  “I’m not reassured,” Law said but advanced towards the tables where the capsules waited.

  “It reassures me,” Vee said. “My programming doesn’t allow me to put my crew in danger. The course through of the asteroid field was calculated, and you have approved it. I’ll get you out of stasis as soon as we leave the field. The stasis will delay your recovery, but otherwise it won’t affect you. Tell him, Del!”

  Because her reasoning was not incorrect, Del settled for a nod. The details the others obviously didn’t know challenged his programming, but he didn’t want to clash with the artificial intelligence running the ship. People were not in danger despite Vee’s unusual request, and he had to take care of his own chances of survival. Not everyone accepted the services of a runaway robot.

  “Everything’s fine,” Merrick told Law. “The engines work at 70% capacity, we have no failures requiring immediate attention, and the capsules passed all the tests.”

  “Well, it seems there’s no escape.” Law sighed and gestured at Del to see to his work.

  Del activated his heating system to bring the covers on his chest and arms to a temperature close to that of the human body and lifted Thea from her chair. Flying in zero g would have been much easier for her, but not as beneficial to Law’s health, who hadn’t fully recovered after the ore retrieval, three solar systems away. Or had that been a theft?

  Determined not to question the captain’s orders and even more determined to keep his place on the ship, Del carefully placed Thea in the capsule. The stasis wasn’t going to help with her problem, as it put on hold her muscle regeneration, but it also temporarily stopped her nervous system degeneration. His personal assistant qualification guaranteed no harm would come to his patient.

  Thea glanced through the transparent wall, uncertain, while Del closed the capsule and started the process. The gas clouded her frightened expression. Of course, Thea had experience with radiations and an unpleasant one. There was nothing to do about that. Instead, he made sure everything was in order and moved the chair out of the way then he turned to see if someone else could use his services.

  Merrick had already climbed into the capsule and was reaching to the control panel. “I’m almost done with the chair, but I didn’t have time to test the anti-gravity field. Will you do it while Thea doesn’t need it? The risk of accidents is lower for you.”

  “If Vee does not mind not switching to zero g, I can do it,” Del said.

  “No problem for me,” Vee said in a joyful, suspect tone.

  “Okay, test it in the hold ... and try not to destroy anything. Vee doesn’t like clutter.”

  The absence of a comment from Vee’s part was even more suspicious. She’d turned out to be extremely chatty when not ordered to shut up—rather unusual for an AI. Everyone took it as a result of lack of socialization, but Del wondered if there were other causes. It was hard to know with AIs, especially unregistered ones who had different rules.

  With practiced movements, Merrick quickly pressed a series of buttons and lay inside the capsule before it closed.

  Del waited near Thea’s capsule. Law moved slowly, careful not to overexert himself, and Del dared not interfere. The captain wasn’t too shy to ask for help when he needed it. It didn’t seem to be the case. With difficulty, he managed to climb into the capsule.

  “Don’t let Vee go too crazy.” Law winked before resting his head on the support and closing his eyes.

  “Captain!” Vee protested, but the capsule had closed and Law probably hadn’t heard her.

  Del checked each occupied capsule and, satisfied, nodded to himself—a habit learned from humans. From that point forward, they were in his care. How had they survived so long without someone watching over them while in stasis? Del, who was made of several circuits and mechanical parts, knew better than anybody how easy they could break. And Vee had a limited action range, being unable to take them out of the capsules and resuscitate them if needed. Del flexed his fingers thoughtfully. He needed to make himself useful even when his programming didn’t force him to react.

  “Do you have anything for me to do before I get to work?” He gestured toward the chair.

  “There’s an air filter that should be changed in the medbay,” Vee said. “It collected a lot of Law’s blood from when we temporarily switched to zero g right after leaving Etheros. Merrick said he’d change it, but he never got around to doing it and I didn’t insist since we had no patients stationed there.”

  “I can change it after I study a guide,” said Del. “Technical maintenance is not included in my knowledge base.”

  “The nearest console is in the mess hall. A wi-fi port would be good. It would facilitate your access to my data bases.”

  Del pushed the chair toward the exit. “My model does not have such a port. It was not considered necessary in my field of activity. On the contrary, there were voices in the Etheros government which claimed it would provide too much freedom for robots intended for social interactions. They even established a law to ban them without special permission.�
�

  “We’re not on Etheros,” Vee said. “You can install one. Or if you can’t, Merrick certainly can. He can fix anything. We’ll be able to exchange information directly without wasting time to express it orally.”

  “I fear my processing speed is nothing compared to yours. It would still be frustrating for you.”

  And it would have allowed her to control him like any mindless machine. After the recent escape from dismantling, Del didn’t care for being under someone’s command again. He listened to Captain Law because it was his ship, but that was all.

  “I am capable of receiving information visually, orally, and via a data cable,” Del said while pushing the door to the mess hall, to make room for the chair. “A cable would not be practical on these corridors, and there are not enough ports to connect on the ship. I am fine the way it is.”

  The blinking console disagreed with him a few seconds later. It opened at his request, but when he called the air filters maintenance guide, it denied his access.

  “Vee, do you think you could give me crew privileges?” Del asked. “At least until we cross the asteroid field ... If I have other duties to fulfill as well, we will lose time with getting permissions. Since you watch everything I do, it is not as if I can sabotage the ship.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Vee said in a condescending tone. “Your programming doesn’t allow you to endanger people. Okay, I’ll switch you to temporary employee status. Sorry, but I don’t want Law to throw a fit if he hears he should give you a part of the profit. Ha!”

  “I do not think that would be a problem,” Del said, navigating through the menu on the console. “Our creators have made sure robots do not have the same rights as humans.” He paused, intrigued by the idea. “Why, do you get anything?”

  “The ship receives equal shares with every member of the crew after all costs have been paid for the trip ... and I’m in charge of the ship.”

  A slight exaggeration, but Del didn’t comment. Vee needed an excuse to soothe her vanity. They hadn’t given her that nickname for nothing, as Vee was short for Vanity. After dealing with people for several decades, he found her only a little more difficult than them.

  His optical sensors finished scanning the instructions, and he stored them in his memory. Later, he’d have to do some cleaning; too much data had accumulated and he hadn’t had the heart to delete it after going rogue. Perhaps Vee would allow him to save an archive in her memory if he asked her.

  “I need tools to remove the air filter,” Del said, maneuvering the chair again towards the exit. “I will get them from Merrick’s workshop in the hold.”

  “Uh-huh,” Vee said.

  Taking advantage of her silence, Vee was most certainly busy with other things, Del stopped by the stairs. Even after the changes made by Merrick, the chair remained light enough for him to lift it, so he folded it and carried it down the stairs. It would have been much easier to handle it if he sat in it, especially with the anti-gravity field working, but Del had been conditioned not to use his patients’ belongings, especially medical technology, and it was difficult for him to break the habit. When catching a moment of rest, he really needed to reassess his priorities. For now, he had a vague feeling Vee intended to keep him busy for quite a while, and he still hadn’t asked her the most important thing.

  He found all the tools he needed in the hold, including the console used by Merrick. After a brief hesitation, he checked the ship’s trajectory. As far as he could tell, The Squirrel kept the original course. So Vee wasn’t trying to steal the ship. Then what?

  He kept his thoughts to himself until he reached the medbay and identified the faulty filter. He was standing on a table with both hands shoved into the ventilation hole when he asked, “Why did you insist on putting everyone in stasis? The danger is not so great...”

  One second, two, three passed until Vee said, “Ah, you know...”

  Del removed the old filter and connected the new one. The LEDs blinked on the edge, signaling it functioned within normal parameters.

  “I put them in stasis because I too need time to settle down,” Vee confessed. “You can’t imagine how nervous I was during the contract with Etheros. I’m terribly afraid for them ... all the time! It’s awful. We’ve already lost two crew members, and if I let them walk around on their own, who knows what trouble they’ll get into. If it were up to me, I’d keep them only in stasis ... so there is less chance something will happen to them. Also, the asteroid field was the perfect excuse. Why? What did you think?”

  “I did not know. But I thought you must have a good reason.”

  More serious than this, but he felt relieved it wasn’t serious, just one of Vee’s whims.

  “Thank you for not saying anything,” Vee said. “If they caught me, I wouldn’t get away with it a second time.”

  “No problem.”

  Now he had something on her. He was starting to think like humans. Should he worry? Was it a sign his circuits were deteriorating?

  “Anyway, you can use a break, too,” Vee said. “I see the way Thea bosses you around. Bring me this, give me that...”

  He’d also noticed the increased number of requests for help. Normally, he would have warned the patient it wasn’t good for her to depend so much on someone and refused to do the simpler tasks, but his precarious situation didn’t allow him to be picky. It was better for him to become indispensable so they wouldn’t abandon him on some planet. Another reasoning unworthy of him.

  “I do not mind.”

  At least, he wasn’t lying.

  2

  He should have gone offline during the two hours needed to charge his batteries, to allow his circuits to cool down before one of them melted. The dismantling order hadn’t come at random. Good thing Vee had no access to his system to know the extent of his damage. After the last two weeks of being constantly on alert in case Thea needed him during the sleep cycle, now he couldn’t disconnect because he was supposed to supervise Vee. Asleep in their stasis capsules, the humans remained his responsibility. And Vee ... he feared someone had to answer for her, too. Del didn’t feel prepared to deal with an artificial intelligence whose mental state was unstable at best.

  Motionless bedside Thea’s bed, pretending to be offline, Del calculated his options. He didn’t question why he’d come to charge in an empty cabin. Habit dictated his actions, and less thinking allowed him to pay attention to other more important things. Unfortunately, he didn’t have Vee’s distributive attention.

  “Um, Del?”

  Did she read his mind? Or were her sensors so sensitive they’d sensed the power fluctuations of his brain?

  “Yes?”

  “My sensors have detected the power signature of a reactor ahead of us in the asteroid field,” Vee said.

  “A spaceship?”

  “That’s the only explanation. The field isn’t inhabited. But...”

  Del’s processor speed increased alarmingly, triggering a warning in his overheated brain.

  “A routine scan of the area didn’t return the coordinates where the ship should be,” Vee said. “Also, the communication channels are silent.”

  A ship that didn’t want to reveal its identity and presence in this part of space. An unusual situation in theory, but not necessarily so rare in practice. More interesting he found Vee’s ability to detect a ship in stealth mode. Yet why did Vee tell him all this? It couldn’t be out of boredom. He didn’t get bored.

  “Does our course cross theirs?” he asked.

  “It didn’t until a few minutes ago. They just changed course to intercept us. I think my pings put them on alert.”

  Del disconnected from the power supply. With his batteries charged up to 60%, he could survive a couple of days if needed. Unfortunately, that was exactly what he expected to happen. The Squirrel was a fast ship, and it wasn’t equipped with high-caliber weapons or a powerful shield. He’d made so many efforts to escape dismantling and violated countless laws only to bec
ome part of an asteroid field. It wasn’t fair at all.

  “What are you doing?” Vee asked when Del left Thea’s cabin.

  “I am going to the medbay to assist Captain Law. We wake him up, right?”

  Not that Law had some supernatural powers to protect them from an attack.

  “No way!” Vee said. “I’ll never be able to put them all into stasis if they come to the conclusion I can’t be left unsupervised.”

  But she couldn’t, proof that she was indirectly trying to consult with him.

  “Uh, they sent a message,” Vee said. “I’ll display it on the console.”

  Del took a left turn in the corridor and entered the mess hall, which was closer. The screen already blinked threateningly.

  To the class F spaceship at the periphery of the asteroid field. This is Captain Rodoff from Uliake, a class D spaceship. Identify yourself. We’re coming your way.

  “He’s lying,” Vee said.

  “They’re not coming?” Del wondered.

  “Please, no bad jokes. That’s at least a class C ship, if not C.5. And their encryption method, even a child could decode. They really want us to read the message.”

  Del had come to the same conclusion.

  “Can we avoid them?” he asked. “Hide or run away?”

  “There is no big enough asteroid around and even if there were, their advanced stealth system suggests they also have the necessary technology to locate us wherever we hide. As for running away ... I’m calculating a course that would get us as far away from them. The Squirrel is smaller and reacts more quickly to direction change, but I would save it as a last resort. I don’t know how they’d react if they saw us run. They are too far away to check their arsenal, but I doubt we can survive if they fire at us.”

  Two seconds of silence.

  “No, all probabilistic calculations show we have more advantage if we play their game,” Vee said.