“Relaying cargo for Centurium,” Robin replied.
If a sentinel could blink, Robin was sure it would have done so. “Type of cargo?”
Robin closed his eyes, his half-hope dying. He felt that the longer the exchange went on, the smaller their chance of success. If only the sentinel would believe the image of the crowd in the cargo hold, his former family and neighbors who were now pretending to be slaves.
He pressed more buttons, and at once another hologram appeared between them. “Captured nonmagical beings,” Robin said.
The sentinel eyed the image of the villagers in the cargo hold, each head demurely bowed, each bound by a laser shackle on one wrist.
As each second ticked by, Robin’s anxiety grew. Would the sentinel buy it? Would it see through it? Had he led these people to their deaths?
“You’re clear to land in section 184,” the sentinel finally said, and the hologram vanished.
Sitting back in his chair, Robin released the pent-up breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
“So far, so good,” he muttered. He increased speed and looked over at the other knights. They stared at him. “What?” he asked.
Their helmets revealed nothing of the expressions on their faces as they turned to look at each other.
“You do realize that you sounded like a twentieth-century antique robot, right?” Willa finally asked.
“At least it worked!” Robin replied.
When they landed, Robin and the other knights gathered with the villagers in the hold. As the “slaves” lined up, Robin barked, “Okay, people, remember. Keep your eyes down, don’t say a word, and, above all, keep together!”
The villagers were connected in pairs by laser manacles. Pretending to be sentinels, the knights took guard positions on the sides, front, and back.
Robin turned to face the cargo hatch, and as he pressed the release, the ramp dropped.
“Move it!” the knights commanded as they escorted the chained villagers off the ship onto the landing platform.
Quietly, the group moved through the crowds of people. Robin eyed everyone around him as they moved forward. Among the crowd, he saw elves in their dark beauty, with some of the same markings that Velissa had had. He noticed Anubises, centaurs, trolls, goblins, ogres, and minotaurs.
Alongside them were other races from the stars, like the four-armed green-and-black-skinned Valeaking race. He saw the wide and strong-jawed dog-like and eyeless canberus, who observed the world in sound through the embedded ears at the base of their neck. There were droves of the ant-like, four-legged, two-armed, winged Dromeanias.
But most of the crowd were humans, some in wizard or witch robes, with staves or without; others wore plain clothes, with precious jewels decorating their fingers or necks.
There were also hundreds upon hundreds of sentinels. All led bound slaves from the auctions to the owners or to the ship that would take them to their new destinations.
As he eyed them, Robin noticed something odd: though many of the same races were now being escorted in bondage, a great many of the magical races and others were doubly bound by collars, small squares glowing yellow through integrates of the metal band.
As Robin thought about the possible purpose for the collars, a thin lined square isolated one of the collars on the display in front of him. The image of it was drawn to the side, where it rotated. Then words appeared right above it.
Clerical Collar
Used to disable a wielder’s magic.
“Well, that answers…” Robin started to say aloud. Then he paused.
He noticed that the free centaurs had ram-like horns curling from their heads. Spiky horns emerged from the minotaurs’ chins. Golden lines ran along the chained Anubises’ bodies and connected at the base of their jaws, which were solid gold.
So not all magical beings stand with the Black Dragon, he thought. He enslaves even his own people.
The crowds parted to let them through.
“Keep moving!” Robin snapped, taking advantage of the circumstances to give Dulgard a quick shove. Then he froze.
Robin suddenly felt as if an electric current was flowing through his body. Under his armor, his toothed necklace started to grow warm.
Immediately, he looked left and right. His eyes fell on a group of slaves on the other side of the platform. Frowning, he paused to watch them.
Suddenly, a lighted box on the display in his helmet focused on the group of slaves and zoomed in. The box encircled the head of a girl with long black hair in the midst of the crowd, and her head occupied Robin’s vision.
She looked about the same age as his friends. From what he could see, hers was a savage beauty, her eyebrows, cheekbones, and jaw line sharply angled.
Slowly, as if sensing his gaze, she turned and seemed to look right at him. Robin gasped. She had the same hazel eyes as his, and, like his, their color seemed to shift in the light.
Suddenly, she jolted in pain as one of the sentinels near her cracked her with a laser whip. As her hair shifted, he noticed she had the same three-pointed ears as he did. Zooming out, he watched. She directed her gaze right at him.
“Robin?”
He heard a voice over the private commlink, and he turned as Willa approached.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He turned to look back at the girl. “I have to stay,” he said, turning to Willa.
“What? Why?” she demanded.
Hardly daring to breathe, he turned and nodded toward the slaves. “See that girl who looks about your age? Long black hair?”
She looked. “Yeah. Why?”
“I think… I think she’s my sister.”
Chapter 4
Captured
Willa stared at him.
“Robin, are you nuts?” she demanded. “Of all of us, you know the odds that of all the planets in the known galaxies we’d land—”
“I know!” he hissed, glaring at her. “And yet we have, and she’s over there, being dragged away from me.” Robin nodded in that direction. “I can’t let her go…not when I’m this close.”
For a second, Willa was silent, looking toward the other group, where the girl was being led away.
“What if it was Erik?” Robin asked, resorting to Tuck’s real name. When she eyed him, he said, “What would you do?”
Willa paused for a moment. “And just how are we supposed to know where you are?” she finally asked.
Robin was still; the question had stumped him. On the screen visor before him, the armor readout flashed at the corner of his hip. Reaching one hand toward his hip, he pulled free a little crescent moon-shaped object.
“What is that?” Willa asked. Robin held it up and examined it.
“A little something that will help you keep track of my movements.” He handed it to her. “Attach it to your armor bracelet. You can track my location to within a few millimeters.”
After a second’s hesitation, she took it.
“Tell my mother what’s happening. And that I’ll be back soon,” he said.
“You’d better be, or she’ll kill me.”
With this reminder of his mother, Robin took a moment to find her face in the crowd. As he locked eyes with her questioning gaze, he raised one hand in front of his chest, fingers erect. Then he curled his middle and ring fingers down. A ancient symbol that meant: I love you.
At once her eyes went wide with fear.
As he watched, Willa approached his mother. She put her hand on Chikako’s shoulder and urged her forward before she could move toward Robin.
Trying not to think about the worried look in his mother’s eye, he murmured, “Okay, I need a weapon, or weapons, that will stick with me after the armor deactivates.”
As before, his armor readout began to flash in the hip area. “What the heck?” he murmured. He glanced down, trying not to move his head as he looked at the rods settled there.
“Ah, how are those going to help me?” he said. “They creat
e energy melee weapons. They’re not blasters.”
Just as suddenly as before, an image of the rod was drawn from the readout. This time it became a mirror image in every detail. Lines linked to several sections, giving detail functions. A name flashed above.
Force Plasma Saber
“Okay, I was wrong.” He studied the readout. “Not only can these things create plasma energy melee weapons, but they’re also a plasma blaster on each side, and they extend into fighting sticks with useful features. Plus they can combine to form a staff.” A smile expanded across his face. “Aside from that bow, I think I just found my new favorite toys.”
As he ran a finger over the sabers, his focus returned to his sister. He eyed the group of slaves and their escort. “Now it’s time to mingle,” he said.
Robin moved closer to take a position beside the girl. He tensed up when a sentinel turned its head to look at him, but then it turned away, thinking he was one of their own. So far so good.
A large cargo freighter came into view, and Robin assumed they were reaching their destination. He paused and glanced over at the girl. She watched him too.
Out of the corner of his eye, Robin saw the movement of a laser whip. Immediately, he shifted and took the hit himself.
He caught the girl looking at him again, and he winked. He hoped she saw it. When he saw her frown deepen, he knew she had.
Staying next to her, he walked up the ramp with the group. Pausing at the top, he turned to look for the others. Unsuccessful, he decided to view this as a blessing.
Inside the ship, he watched as the girl was led into the hold. The doors sealed behind them, and he started to back down a side hall on his own. Then he saw something that made him pause.
“Oh, great, that’s all I need,” he muttered as he spotted a canberus wearing a sash that dangled around its eyeless head. A bull-horned centaur stood next to it.
But then again, what I’m planning is crazy enough. He sank into the shadows. I just hope I can take one of those slavers down before it’s done. Then he moved into the shadows.
Acting quickly, he felt the plasma sabers drop into his hands, and he felt and heard the armor retract.
“Okay,” Robin whispered to himself. He held the weapons on either side of his head and moved his back against the corner.
“Let’s do this!” He whipped around and fired.
At once, two sentinels, covered in holes, fell under the surprise barrage. The centaur grabbed a sentinel as a shield, and the canberus dove for cover.
“Nonmagical scum!” the centaur barked before tossing the sparking robot aside. Then he spotted Robin. “How did he get loose?”
Darting down the hall, Robin heard the thunder of hooves as the centaur tore after him.
“Obviously, you never played that old human card game, poker!” the centaur snarled before Robin rounded another corner. “Four legs always beats a pair!”
Peeking around the corner, Robin saw the centaur race his way as he formed the staff mode. Taking his staff in both hands and carefully timing it he swung out.
The blow collided against his forelegs with a crunch knock him off his hooves by Robin’s staff. The blow sent the centaur tumbling to the deck. Behind him, Robin spun the staff, formed from two plasma sabers, knocking the centaur over the head.
“True,” Robin gloated as the centaur fell, knocked out cold. “But you can get up a lot faster with just a pair of legs!”
Detaching the two parts of the staff, he tore off in another direction.
He stopped halfway down a hallway at the sound of approaching metal feet. He ducked through a hatch to his right into another corridor. He closed and locked the hatch just as a line of sentinels tromped by.
“I guess they don’t make them too smart,” he said aloud. Then the lights in the corridor went out.
After a couple of seconds, his eyes adjusted to the near blackness eliminating it, and he quietly moved forward to a spot where the halls intersected. At a sound, he froze. Looking right, he held his breath as the canberus advanced toward him on all fours. Stopping mere feet from Robin, it turned its head left and right, trying to hear him, giving a small growl of frustration.
“You’re a bold one,” it finally barked. “I will admit that. I mean, what was your plan?”
It took another step forward.
“Sneak aboard, kill us all, and fly away with the ship?” It chuckled. “You nonmagical beings are all the same. Always overestimating your abilities, thinking you can win. But these ships require an access codes to take off. And even if you can break the code, the ship can be tracked. There’s no escape.”
As the canberus drew closer and closer, Robin held his breath, not making a sound. Silently he stepped back to avoid the canberus bumping into him.
“The question is,” the canberus continued, “can you see in the dark?”
It turned its head in Robin’s direction. Robin held one of the plasma sabers close to his head, the end facing the canberus.
For a couple seconds, the canberus seemed to look at Robin. Then slowly it turned away and continued down the hall. Robin released the smallest of breaths.
At once, the canberus whipped around to face him with a roar. Robin fired.
The canberus stumbled back, orange blood seeping from the wound in its shoulder.
“Actually, I can see in the dark,” Robin said, taking proper aim at the canberus’s head. “Quite clearly.”
Suddenly the lights came on. Robin stumbled, blinded, his arms covering his eyes.
“Drop your weapons!”
Lowering his shielding arms, Robin saw the centaur and the remaining sentinels surrounding him.
“Do what we say, and you just might be spared,” the centaur said.
After eyeing the forces around him, Robin tossed the plasma sabers down. They clattered on the deck. Then he raised his hands slightly above his head. The centaur gaped as the weapons dissolved among mirrored lights.
“So…” the centaur said, stepping forward to begin circling him. “Just what was your plan? Was it as my companion said: kill us all and steal the ship?” He rested the blade of his spear on Robin’s shoulder, the edge against his neck.
“Something like that,” Robin said, eyeing the edge of the spear head.
The centaur chuckled. “Not a very good plan.”
“Well, maybe you were separated from your herd too young to understand,” Robin said.
Seconds later, Robin barely saw the canberus lash out, catching him in the temple.
He knew no more.
Chapter 5
Processing
An unaccountable amount of time later, Robin woke with a splitting headache. He felt dried blood on the side of his head. It hurt too much to open his eyes just yet.
Spirits above and below, that canberus has got a heck of a right hook.
He lay still a moment longer before he tried to move his arms and legs. Something seemed to be restraining them. His eyes snapped open. He found he was strapped, naked but for tight shorts and his necklace, to a table. His head was framed by curved metal plates.
“Finally awake.” The centaur’s voice carried through a loudspeaker.
Before Robin could reply, he heard a whining sound. Below him, the table shifted, and he found himself looking up at a blinding light.
“723237181890, tell us your age.”
Blinking under the light, Robin humphed at being dehumanized and objectified.
“Couldn’t you come up with something more original than a number? How about a name?”
For a second there was silence. Then Robin gritted his teeth in pain as an electric current shot through him. When it stopped, his body went slack, and he breathed deeply.
“What is your age?”
“Figure it out yourself,” Robin growled. He was shocked again.
When the current stopped, Robin sagged again. The voice remarked, “This will be a less painful process if you just cooperate.”
R
obin chuckled. “Excuse me if I prefer to keep my individuality and humanity.” The current flooded him again.
“Age: 16-20.”
Close enough, Robin thought.
With another whirling sound, a probe dropped into his line of vision. With a barely audible hum, a wide beam of light scanned him from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. A second later, a holographic image of him appeared in the air.
“Physical attributes:
“Muscle tonnage: 10:10.
“Muscular structure: 20:10.
“Skeletal structure: 18:10.
“Sensory attributes: Sight: 20/1.”
“Is that your best guess?” Robin demanded. His holographic skin and muscles were stripped away to reveal his bare muscles and skeleton. He was shocked again.
“Sensory inputs and outputs.” His face was zoomed in on.
“Light sensitivity: beyond excellent.
“Audio sensitivity: beyond excellent.
“Scent sensitivity: beyond excellent.
“Tectorial response: beyond excellent.
“Taste response: beyond excellent.
“Neural attributes…” His neural system was exposed.
“Brain activity: 400 percent.
“Neural reflex action: 500 percent.”
“Does it also say my IQ is like 260?” Robin muttered. He received another shock.
“I’m getting a little tired of that!” he barked. Then he was shocked again.
“Organ functions,” the voice said, and his organs were revealed. Robin heard murmurs when the image showed his eight-chambered heart and extra pair of lungs.
“Heart rate: 15 RBPM.
“Lung capacity: 20 liters.
“Blood pressure: 20/80.
“Immune system: 400 percent.
“Digestive track: beyond excellent.
“Metabolism: beyond excellent.”
After the report was finished, silence rang. Then there came the clacking of the centaur’s hooves. Both he and the canberus came into Robin’s view.
At first, the pair just stared at Robin. Then the canberus began a growling laugh.
Blood Calls Page 2
