The combat droids froze, but Madame Clean-Sweep continued to act unimpressed.
“Now why don’t we all do what we came here to do and avoid the insults and the posturing until something actually goes sideways, which,” he said once again wagging his finger at her, “isn’t going to be coming from my end.”
“Finish the sweep,” she instructed her helpers, and then trilled out a series of high pitched notes.
“Ha!” the borged-out engineer said, turning away to study the combat droids as they continued methodically plugging in and test every core on the cart.
While he was standing there watching Tiberius sidled up to him. “What are you waiting for?” he hissed.
“Eh?” Spalding paused looking over at the boy. “What are you blathering on about now?” he demanded irritably.
“You’ve got them dead to rights; we need to blast them now before they find out the truth,” the younger man said in a very low voice, but not one low enough to escape the sharp look of Madame Clean.
“Watch your plotting, fleshpods,” she warned.
“Now, why would I want to do a fool thing like that?” the Commander demanded, ignoring the droid completely.
“If you won’t, then I’ll have to,” Tiberius said right before Madame Clean trilled something and the combat droids stiffened.
“Very well,” said Madame Clean striding over, “I’m prepared to take custody of the prisoners. The cores all check out as Droids, and I see no signs of outside tampering with their primary circuitry.”
Ignoring the look of surprise and puzzlement on the boy’s face, Spalding turned to the Droid with a grim expression.
“Alright, Clean,” Spalding said proffering a data slate, “sign here.”
“When you are ready, our ship will escort you to the Prison Transport where you can inspect our prisoners,” Madame Clean-Sweep said with a severe expression on her pseudo-plastic face.
Spalding nodded and watched closely as the droids exited the room, escorting the grav-cart back onto their shuttle with all the precision of a lancer team in hostile territory.
Tiberius’s mouth opened and closed. “What…” the younger Spalding gaped, clearly at a loss for words. “What was that?” the boy demanded looking confused and confounded.
“That was the first half of a prisoner exchange,” he replied gruffly, “or have your brains been slow-cooked by your ideology until you’re too busy watching it run out your ears to use it for thinking?”
“How in the world did you trick them into thinking…,” the Phoenix’s temporary Chief Engineer trailed off with disbelief, “I don’t understand it.”
“Look, boy, I only ever told you the honest truth about who I am, what I did, and what I do,” the older Engineer said with a sigh. “I’m an ornery old Royalist who fixes things, loves a ship more than he probably ought to, and doesn’t know how to quit. I also have been known to take down rogue grav-carts that were about to go droid, back in the day—as you can plainly see from all the cores we just transferred. I’m not anything more than I claim, but I’m not really anything less either, so sorry if finding out I really am the Captain after all these years is mildly upsetting.”
“But…” the young Engineer said clearly struggling to make sense of two conflicting world views, “you—”
“Look, I can’t help it if you don’t want to believe the evidence of your own eyes. Maybe you have too much of your mother in you, but we’ve got a job to do right now and I aim to do it; get ready to saddle up and go get them,” he growled interrupting the pointless muttering.
“Leave mom out of this,” Tiberius said sharply before falling into a tense and upset silence. The old engineer could practically see the storm clouds circling the boy’s head.
Well that’s just too bad, he decided. It was time the lad wised up before his inability to properly interface with reality got him hurt, killed or worse.
Whistling a tune under his breath, he decided that right then was probably the perfect time to use the lander he’d been working on, since it still wasn’t working quite right. This way, anything anybody scanned off it would lull them into a false sense of security for the next time they encountered it.
Chapter 9: The Prisoners!
During the whole trip over to the Droid’s prison ship in his father’s rattle trap of a converted shuttle craft, Tiberius waited for the hammer to drop. In some ways, he actually prayed that it would. That would at least make sense in a galaxy gone wrong. His father was a fraud, Murphy blast it, not some pretentious action hero!!!
He didn’t understand how it was possible. His father wasn’t a computer genius, there was no way he could deceive the machines with a bunch of old grav-cart computer cores—that were in no way sentient in and of themselves—and pass them off as the hard won labors of Captain Moonlight, the holo-droid fighter. Yet those droids had believed…they’d scanned each core and, blast the Demon Murphy, they still believed they’d just gotten a cart load of insipient droid cores!
In truth, there weren’t even that many grav-carts on the Phoenix, and almost certainly not even that many in the entire fleet, so why would the droids believe—and how did Spalding Senior get his hands that many cores? It just didn’t make sense!
The way he now saw it, there were three possibilities and he decided to mentally list them in descending order of likelihood to be true.
First: it was all a ruse and before long they were going to be found out and killed by the droids for trying to pass off non-sentient computer cores for sentient droid cores. This still seemed most likely to Tiberius, despite all the evidence so far against it being true.
Second: Spalding Senior and the Montagne were somehow already in cahoots with the droids, and this was all an elaborate smokescreen for a deeper plot of some sort. But even after everything else that had happened, he just didn’t see his father as a patsy for the Machines.
Third: All of it was real, and his father actually was the Droid fighting hero he had hinted at being his entire life, up until Tiberius threw up his hands and walked away. There had simply been too many insufferable tall tales, and outright lies and fabrications which his Father had tried to pawn off as the gospel truth. Tiberius had known better…but now there were real doubts being cast on that ‘knowledge.’ This was the worst and hardest to swallow of them all, because if he hadn’t been lying about this, then where did the truth begin in what he’d thought all his life up till now were nothing more than lies and exaggerations?
In a way, he almost hoped the Droids attacked them because at least that would make sense in a world suddenly gone sideways. What didn’t make sense was making deals with droids, exchanging prisoners with them and his father actually being some kind of two-bit childhood holo-vid hero.
From the Fraternal Order of Space Engineers no less, he thought derisively.
“Something wrong, lad?” Spalding Senior asked and Tiberius realized he must have been growling out loud.
“No, sir,” he said tightly, looking around the bare bones interior of the Lander where all the internal walls had been pulled out until every single wire, conduit and internal power run had been exposed.
Instinctively, he hunched his shoulders in anticipation of an attack by the Droid escort ships or to be executed by a live wire.
“You really ought to do something about the mess in here,” he said sharply, “it’s a safety hazard.”
“Never been inside a test bird before, eh?” Senior said in that infuriating way that only he possessed. He somehow managed to simultaneously question your knowledge and competence, while also warning you he was about to launch into a long winded tale or allegory related to the subject…and there he went, “why, back when I was just a young sprout in my 50’s, I had the opportunity to take a ride inside a Space Beagle 360 and let me tell you—”
“Never heard of it,” Tiberius cut in, not wanting to hear yet another tale of the old man’s glory days.
“As I was about to say,” the ol
d Man said irritably, sounding testy at being interrupted in the middle of a good tale, “the blasted thing was renamed the ‘Space Hawk 2.9’ and completely redesigned before they cut her loose.”
Now, the Space Hawk Strike Fighter was something he’d heard of, although he had trouble believing his old man had anything to do with it. He sighed, since as usual it was remarkably convenient that the fighter had been completely redesigned between when he saw it and when it came out, where the rest of the engineers on Capria could see the specs. Clearly unaware of his son’s internal thoughts, Spalding Senior blithely continued with his prattle, “But before that happened, I got to take a ride inside her and let me tell you—”
“Can’t say as I’m really interested,” Lieutenant Tiberius Spalding cut in, miming a yawn and turning away.
The livid silence beside him was its own reward in and of itself as was the lack of anymore big-fish-that-got-away, yet completely unverifiable, engineering stories.
Just the facts, man, and preferably they should come along with a data stick filled with schematics and credible reference sources, Tiberius thought snidely, unable to help himself with the uncharitable mental tone but also not willing to correct himself in the privacy of his own mind.
However, when they arrived at the Prison Transport—a gigantic, civilian freighter with a high power generation profile—and docked, all such thoughts were knocked firmly out of his head.
**************************************************
“They’ve been frozen in bloody carbonite,” Spalding gasped staring up and down the rows and rows of ‘prisoners’.
“No,” beep-grunted an Engineer/Repair Droid with a tool belt hanging with everything from a plasma torch and space wrench, which he approved of as well as an ever to be cursed multi-tool, as it corrected him, “they have been placed in long term cryogenic suspension. A number of ancient colonizers were up for sale in the Rim following the last post-colonization slump and—”
“It’s inhuman,” exclaimed Tiberius now sounding outraged at something other than him, “and a complete violation of the Laws of Man!”
“Technically, it is permissible under the Confederation War Accords, as well as the Laws of Man as interpreted by their own Supreme Judiciary Body. Any number of long-term prisoners who are a threat to the Imperial Senate, yet contain an irreplaceable knowledge base, have been placed in cryogenic suspension until such a time—”
“Blasted machines!” shouted Tiberius.
“Calm yourself, lad,” Spalding said sharply, and then rounded on the Droid. He didn’t trust the thing’s patter, and his eyes caught once again on the multi-tool and he looked back up at the thing suspiciously, “And as for putting all these lads in cryo; I don’t care about how cheap you got the machinery to do it, what was yer blasted rationale?”
“Inferior organic minds,” the Repair Droid said witheringly, “if I must go back to such basics as should be obvious to even an organic ignoramus,” Spalding bristled, “they were placed in cryogenic suspension in order to prevent prison riots and escape attempts due to being placed in long-term confinement, as well as alleviate cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, both from losing a battle and from being kept prisoner by mechanical life forms.”
“Hah!” Tiberius exclaimed but Spalding wasn’t paying him any attention.
“An ignoramus is it?” he declared angrily.
“If the fitting tightens,” the Repair Droid said drolly.
Spalding spluttered, feeling himself go red in the face. “Like I should trust the assessment of a machine that thinks using a multi-tool is the way to get a repair job done right,” he snarled at the Droid, “let me think it was you who had the bright idea of putting these lad and lasses into cryo!”
“Inferior biological entities without the RAM to understand basic repair jobs shouldn’t feel free to comment on the work of their betters,” the Droid glared, moving toward him.
Spalding reciprocated by going chest to chest with the thing.
“Oh, aye, ‘betters’ is it, Oscar the Trashcan,” he glared right back at the Droid. “Well, let me tell you just what you can do with yer bigotry—”
The Droid beep-booped furiously.
“My designation is Repairs Through Adversity, and I didn’t design this facility, I merely fully-functionally approve of it!” said the Droid.
“Well, my name is Terrence P. Spalding,” the old Engineer said belligerently, “and what you’re doing here, I don’t care if it’s legal or not, it ain’t right!”
“Oh and what you’ve done to our brothers and sisters in Human Space is/was,” Repairs Through Adversity retorted derisively, “I know who you are, Captain Moonlight, so don’t try to project yourself as better than I know you to be!”
Rage surged up and down the old Engineer’s body. “What I did!” raged Commander Spalding. “Oh, you’d best be prepared to retract that, or back up your words with yer bloomin fists, ya idjit!”
“Anytime you want, Bag of Mostly Water,” the Repair Droid retorted, thumping itself on its carapace.
“Uh, sir,” Tiberius said placing a hand on his arm and sounding concerned, “maybe this isn’t—”
Spalding shrugged him off; the lad had yet to learn there were some things you just couldn’t let stand. But someday, if he lived as long as his father, he would.
“For your information,” he growled, thumping the Droid on its chest piece with a finger, “every single droid I captured wasn’t just turned off like a light switch, but put inside a limited network where they could choose to interact with others, or skim the terabytes of information I assembled for it. There was none of this ‘cryo-freeze’ business.”
“Lies,” yelled the Droid, grabbing his finger and applying pressure. “And keep your dirty manipulators off me or suffer the consequences,” it said just before breaking his finger in one servo whining surge of activity.
Fortunately, he had used the multi-tool finger to prod the creature, so it was little loss—at least in the old engineer’s mind. However, that was his finger and no one broke Terrance P. Spalding’s finger and got to keep talking trash and walk away!
“That’s it,” he growled, the fingers of his other hand—the ones that became mini-plasma torches—clicking back as the plasma-fingers fired one by one.
“Weak organic, you wouldn’t dare—” the Droid started, only to be silenced by a power assisted knee to the gut.
It didn’t seem very effective, even driven by all the power in his droid legs, but Spalding was too incensed to care.
“A liar, am I?!” he shouted. “No one calls me a liar and walks, you shoddy, multi-tool-using, poor excuse for an engineer!” he raged, going all out in a flurry of knee’s, elbows and fists of fury.
“Organic bigot!” squealed the Droid, swinging for his head.
The old Engineer took the hit on his synthetic arm and shrugged it off. He was vaguely aware of Tiberius backing away, but he was in it now and had little time for anything but stoving in the Droid’s faceplate.
“I’m going to learn you to do yer research before spouting off, you miserable excuse for a repair-bot,” he shouted, giving the Droid the old one-two before suddenly switching things up and kicking the thing into the wall. He followed up with his plasma fingers poised for doing real damage.
“I have more technical files in my storage space than you’re organic mind could ever hold,” buzzed the Repair Droid, bouncing off the wall and coming up under his swing. The blow he landed in the old engineer’s side felt like it cracked ribs.
“All files and no troubleshooting ability,” he half-gasped, half-sneered and decided that those ribs were definitely busted. But he came back around with a stomp that sent the thing rolling back out of the way for fear of its life, anyway.
The whines of blaster rifles charging up as more and more droids—including more of the off-brand, variable type combat models—surrounded them.
“Come on,” he said, ignoring the audience, planti
ng his feet and making a come here gesture with his damaged hand, “if you think you’ve got the weight to take on a mere biological ‘bag of mostly water’!”
“Desist,” declared the Combat Models, causing the Repair Droid to look over at them for a split second before launching itself at the old engineer.
“I’ll be happy to get rid of this primary duty and return to something that’s meaningful—something which these Prisoners certainly aren’t,” yelled the droid, coming back at him but at the last moment dodging a powerful roundhouse.
“Are you here to dance?” taunted Spalding, while around them the Droids were beeping, buzzing and verbally demanding a ‘cessation of hostilities’.
The Droid came back in and they exchanged blows and for the most part the old Engineer managed to take it on the legs, ineffective tactic by the machine at best, or on the arms, slightly more effective but hardly getting it anywhere fast compared to the dents it was taking and the reduced movement and whiny sound in the servo of its right arm, although the one blow it landed to the gut knocked the air out of the old Engineer.
“I know,” he wheezed backing away his arms raised defensively as the droid followed him, “that’s what you were. You weren’t a real repair droid; you’re recently a repurposed dancing instructor,” he gasped out at it.
The Droid came back at him hard and strong, but that was okay because that was just what the Engineer was waiting for—or, at least, that’s what he told himself right after the Droid jumped up high and came back down with an overhand hammer fist that nearly did him in on the spot.
Staggering around blindly with his head ringing—not just his ears, but his actual, metallic skull was ringing—he disjointedly flailed around and swinging for the rafters. He was in it now, and he figured that if not for all the chrome in his dome he’d be dead with a caved in skull right now.
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