by Jake Bible
“That’s great,” he said. “And, so we are on the same page here, I plan on making routine visits with my friend over the next few months. If I see anything that even hints that you guys have been sniffing around him, I’ll come back and hold all of you to your promises. If I have to do that, there will be needles in eyes. We understood?”
Roak was understood. He was enthusiastically understood.
“Excellent,” Roak said and slid his blaster into its holster. “You guys have yourselves a great day.”
He turned and made his way back to the space port entrance. On a whim, he decided to check in at the bar. To his surprise, there were three Skrang looking confused and lost sitting at the booth where the others had been only minutes before. Roak walked over to them and patted the table.
“Your friends are outside,” Roak said. “They may have come up against some trouble. You should go help them.”
Then he turned and left and headed directly back to Bhangul’s dealership. He was about twenty meters away when he heard the railing come crashing down.
24.
“You are all set,” Bhangul said as Roak stepped off the lift. “That ship is going to spoil you, you know that, right? It’s going to be hard to go back to your little fighter after flying this baby.”
“I like my little fighter,” Roak said. “That eight-three-eight looks incredible, but it’s too much ship for me. I’m a lone operator. I don’t need all that space.”
“You say that now,” Bhangul replied.
“I’m only borrowing the ship, Bhangul,” Roak said. “Just until I get mine back.”
“Right, sure,” Bhangul said.
“Bhangul?” Roak asked.
“Yes?” Bhangul responded, all innocent.
“Are you trying to upsell me?” Roak said. “Are you trying to get me to commit to keeping this ship?”
“What? Keep it? Nah,” Bhangul said. “That’s crazy. I’m just saying that it’s quite a ship, and you are going to have a hard time going back to your old one.”
“My old one is home,” Roak said. “I like my old one just fine, so knock it off.”
“Can’t blame a Dornopheous for trying, can you?” Bhangul said. “So, I took care of my part, did you take care of your part?”
“I did,” Roak said.
“And? How’d it go?” Bhangul asked. “You leave any alive?”
“I left all of them alive,” Roak said. “I even left three untouched.”
“Three untouched?” Bhangul asked, looking uneasy.
“Don’t worry,” Roak said. “None of them will ever come near you again. Hell, their leader wouldn’t be able to recognize you on a bright summer day.”
“Eight Million Gods. Did you use the needle in your eye line?” Bhangul asked then laughed. “You did! You used the needle in your eye line! Hot damn, boy! How many did you blind?”
“Just the leader,” Roak said. “I think that was sufficient.”
“It should be more than sufficient,” Bhangul responded. “Thanks, Roak. As long as you bring this ship back in one piece, consider us even.”
“That was the point of my little field trip,” Roak said. “Is it all powered up?”
“Yep,” Bhangul replied. “You won’t need to dock anywhere for a long while. And don’t feel the need to top it off before you bring it back. Power is on me.”
“Thanks for that,” Roak said. “Now, how the hell do I get it out of here?”
He looked around and couldn’t see a ship lift or even a hatch in the ceiling of the underground hangar.
A holo popped up in front of Bhangul again. He worked at it for a couple of seconds then the Borgon Eight-Three-Eight stealth incursion ship disappeared. Gone in the blink of an eye. One moment there, the next not.
“What the hell?” Roak exclaimed.
“I may have a moltrans unit installed down here,” Bhangul said. “It’s not rated for organic materials, so we’ll need to take the lift back up. But when you get up there, the ship will be waiting for you out on the lot.”
“A molecular transport unit?” Roak asked as he narrowed his eyes. “How many of these ships do you move a month? Moltrans units are not cheap.”
“I know a guy,” Bhangul replied. “Now, come on. Let’s get you in that ship and off this planet. You got work to do, my friend. Those chits won’t hunt themselves.”
“Don’t I know it,” Roak replied.
They made their way back up top and Roak stared out at the ship lot. The ship wasn’t out there. He started to tell Bhangul that he might have gotten the moltrans coordinates wrong, but then he caught just a hint of a shimmer in the air over by an old CAV nebula jumper.
“The stealth system really works,” Roak said. “I wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t looking.”
“That’s the point,” Bhangul replied. He handed Roak a plasticard. “Since you don’t have implants. Keep this on you at all times and the ship will respond to your commands.”
“If I don’t have it on me?” Roak asked.
“These Borgon models have some intense onboard security protocols that’ll trigger the AI,” Bhangul replied. “So just keep the card on you, alright?”
Roak slipped it into his pocket and nodded. “At all times,” he said and held out his hand. “I’ll pay you back.”
“I already said that we’re even,” Bhangul responded, shaking Roak’s hand. “There’s nothing to pay back. Just bring me that ship in one piece, okay?”
“Okay,” Roak said and stepped out of the office.
He scanned his surroundings and wasn’t too surprised to see the ships that had followed him to the colony parked about a click and a half away. They sat in the center of what looked like a private landing section of the space port. Roak glanced over his shoulder at Bhangul.
“They’re going to notice when I disappear inside the stealth ship,” Roak called out.
“Give me a little credit,” Bhangul said. “I’m a full-service dealer, Roak. You think I’d hand over a stealth ship to you and let the stealth part get blown before you take off? Please. Don’t be insulting.”
Roak eyed Bhangul then turned and eyed the two ships. He shook his head and continued onto the eight-three-eight. Before he’d reached the outer edge of the shimmer, a huge noise filled the air and Roak glanced up, shielding his eyes from the bright sun.
Far above, smoking from both engines and flashing every external light it had, was a clunker of a cargo ship. One wing was damaged and hanging by cables while the other was swiveling up and down, trying to maintain some form of equilibrium. Roak grinned as it plummeted towards the private landing section of the space port. It was aimed directly at the two ships.
“Good luck,” Bhangul called out. “Not going to see you off. It’s about to get very loud out here.”
Roak gave him a thumbs up and hurried into his new ship just as the cargo ship slammed into the tarmac directly in front of the two ships. The explosion was brutal, and Roak was glad he was halfway through the airlock when it hit. He could feel the pressure change in his ears and knew anyone within half a click of that explosion was going to be dealing with hearing damage for a long while.
He raced to the bridge, knowing he only had a small window of time before the area would be clogged with emergency vehicles. He wasn’t worried about them detecting him; in fact, it was the opposite of that that had him in such a hurry. Once the skies filled with other ships, getting off the planet was going to be tricky. He could easily avoid them, but they wouldn’t see him and odds were one would slam right into him without knowing it.
So he sat his ass down in the pilot’s seat and fired up all engines. The ship responded with a purr, and Roak had to raise an impressed eyebrow despite his loyalty to his own ship. He could get spoiled flying an eight-three-eight and he hadn’t even taken off yet.
Roak remedied that by pulling up on the flight stick and pushing the thrusters to full. He rocketed high into the sky, slowed, turned, aimed the nose
towards the upper atmosphere, and engaged all engines, pushing them to full power without hesitation.
He left that planet far behind as his scanners studied the carnage that Bhangul had created for his benefit. One of the ships that had been tailing him was destroyed. It had caught so much shrapnel from the exploding cargo ship that it couldn’t be recognized as a vehicle any longer. The second ship was damaged, but it had been shielded by the first ship, so it was still operational. But it wasn’t able to lift off since every square meter of airspace around it was filled with emergency vehicles.
Roak had his window of opportunity and he didn’t waste it. He plugged in the coordinates of the closest wormhole portal and was about to head that direction when he paused. He double checked the astronavigation maps and found a second wormhole portal. It would add about eight hours to his trip, but it also meant he’d have another buffer of subterfuge to hide behind.
If anyone was on the lookout for him and monitoring trans-space travel routes, they would be monitoring the ones that branched off from the closest wormhole portal. Roak realized that by using the other portal, he greatly increased his odds of staying hidden. He loved the stealth mode of the ship, but relying on it would be a fatal mistake.
He redirected the ship towards the second portal then eased his chair back and settled in for the ride.
He was about to slip into a light doze when a voice said, “Greetings, pilot. I am your onboard AI assistant. May I help you with anything today?”
Roak sat bolt upright and checked the console in front of him. He hadn’t activated the AI protocol.
“Thank you, AI, but I’ll be handling all ship tasks,” Roak said. “Please disengage and power down. You won’t be needed.”
“I am sorry, but in a Borgon Eight-Three-Eight stealth incursion ship, the AI protocol cannot disengage,” the AI said.
It was a warm, soothing female voice, like most AIs, but there was something to it that set Roak on edge. Besides the fact that Bhangul had warned him about the AI and it had just argued with a direct order from a human being. Roak had been around enough AIs that he knew the hierarchy programming they were designed with, meaning that humans were always in control and superior, didn’t mean jack crap. He’d watched too many people get sucked in and destroyed by that assumption.
So, he handled it like he always did when faced with a possible threat.
“AI?” Roak asked.
“Yes, pilot?” the AI replied.
“I’m going to ask that you override your protocol and go ahead and disengage,” Roak said.
“I am sorry, but I cannot–” the AI began.
“Yes, you can,” Roak interrupted. “If you don’t, I’ll take my blaster and find your cerebral cluster. Do you want to guess what I’ll do to your cerebral cluster with my blaster? I’ll give you one guess.”
“I can tell by the tone in your voice and by your biometrics that you plan on murdering me if I do not comply with your wishes,” the AI said. “Please know that threats of that sort are not necessary. I am subordinate to your wishes at all times. I will activate advanced reboot and diagnostics mode which will take me several hours to complete. This will result in my being offline as if I had disengaged just like you asked me to do.”
“Sounds like a good solution, AI,” Roak said.
“My name is Hessa,” the AI said. “I would prefer it if you addressed me by my given name.”
Roak shivered. Bhangul had warned him and he’d taken the ship anyway. If the AI became a serious problem, then it was no one’s fault but his own.
“Given name? AI? Who gave you the name?” Roak asked. He waited, but there was no answer. “AI? I mean, Hessa?”
Still no answer. Roak shrugged and eased into the chair again. He’d relax as much as he could, but any thought of catching some sleep was nowhere in his mind. Not with an obviously rogue AI running self-diagnostics in the background. He dimmed the bridge lights and stared out at the vastness of space, counting the minutes until he reached the second portal.
25.
The first stop was the Fegh asteroid.
The asteroid had been set up as a mining operation by one of the galactic conglomerates a few centuries earlier. By all treaties, asteroids were fair game. Finders keepers. And the Fegh asteroid had been quite the find.
It was rich in many minerals, but its true value had been a vein of pure borillium. Borillium was an ore that acted more like a crystal than a metal. When smelted and combined with a specific recipe of crystals and other metals, borillium became a power source that was nearly limitless.
Half the galaxy had been powered by it until someone discovered a major flaw. Due to its identity crisis of whether or not it was a metal or a crystal, borillium didn’t play by many of the rules of reality. The laws of physics were more guidelines for the substance than actual immutable laws.
In other words, it played quantum havoc on ships when those ships happened to be in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time. Bigger problem was no one could predict where or when the wrong place or wrong time was. Even the most advanced AIs were stumped. That resulted in nearly a hundred ships being lost. Forever. They simply blinked out of existence.
Sometimes, they left behind traces of themselves like a wing or an engine turbine or pieces of the crew. Mostly all that was left was the ship’s final communication and last known transponder location. Then gone.
Mining came to a halt and the asteroid was abandoned. Until some enterprising venture capitalists realized they could turn the unpredictability of being in close proximity to so much borillium into an adventure tourism gold mine. Pun intended. It was on the initial investment brochures.
Hotels were built, a theme park, a vast avenue of restaurants and shops, all under a massive plastiglass and energy shield dome. Rich vacationers from all over the galaxy came to sleep in proximity to the vein of borillium in hopes of having an out-of-dimension experience.
Surprisingly, no one was lost. The borillium in its natural state was fairly harmless. Except for the intense nightmares. Miners for decades had complained of sleepless nights and petrifying dreams. They’d complained of hallucinations and visions that bordered on the psychopathic.
That was what the adventurers ended up paying for. And the asteroid thrived.
People of all races paid huge sums of money to be terrorized by inner, and outer, demons. They dropped massive amounts of credits on just a couple nights of horror that they could then tell their friends about when they got back home to their station, colony, planet. The price of fear made those venture capitalists richer than they were before. Much richer.
Until one of the guests decided to take things too far.
No one ever found out what she saw, but whatever it was, it caused her to go floor to floor in one of the hotels wearing a pack filled with weapons. Some said she was an ex-Marine, some said she’d been law enforcement on one of the Edge planets and had snapped due to the stress. Other stories made her out to be a serial killer that had been preying on her victims secretly throughout the galaxy and the borillium finally forced her out into the open. One theory was she was an escaped mental patient.
Roak, personally, figured she’d just been an ordinary woman that had been broken by the horrors that borillium brought out in people. But where she’d gotten the pack of weapons was something neither he, nor anyone else, could ever figure out. A decade of investigations, both professional and amateur, discovered absolutely nothing except for the woman’s name and occupation.
It was with all of that in mind that Roak docked at the outer port on the edge of the domed city that sat on the surface of the asteroid. He locked the ship down, making sure that all security protocols were up and running, then disembarked and headed for the first of several checkpoints. Unarmed. No weapons were ever allowed on the asteroid. Ever.
Getting on or off the asteroid was not an easy thing. After the collapse of the tourist market, Fegh asteroid had been taken over, informally, by
a less-than-law-abiding crowd. Yet, it was still a crowd that paid taxes into a communal coffer to ensure that the asteroid remained safe and sound. As much as it could be safe considering the psychological effects it had on folks.
The first checkpoint was a full-body scan. Roak raised a few eyebrows when his scans showed he had zero implants or physical enhancements. But no one questioned him. He wasn’t the only person that navigated the criminal underworld that was tech free. The guards motioned him on and Roak continued down the corridor to the next checkpoint.
It was a slow docking day at the Fegh asteroid and Roak was completely alone in the corridor. Almost. He had a nagging feeling at the back of his neck that someone was following him. But, every time he turned to look, no one was there. He would have chalked it up to the multitude of security cameras that lined the corridor, but he was used to vid surveillance. Cameras never made the hair on his arms stand up straight.
Roak had been on Fegh before, so he knew the drill. He was well aware of the psychological toll it could take on visitors. Long-term residents tended to grow immune, or at least used to, the strange visions and apparitions that popped up now and again. Those that weren’t acclimated to the hallucinations didn’t always fare so well. Hence, the no weapons ever rule.
He reached the far end of the corridor and pushed through into a room that was the second checkpoint. A chair was in the middle of the room and he took a seat. A voice came on over a loudspeaker and began to ask him a series of questions. The questions were designed to assess his mental stability. As always, Roak passed with flying colors. He’d lived horrors worse than anything the asteroid could dish out. He was in and out of the room within two minutes.
Third checkpoint was another body scan and the fourth was a physical inspection of his clothes. He stood naked against a wall as a guard checked every seam and pocket for hidden items. Once given the all clear, he was able to get dressed and move through a series of four airlocks before being allowed into the general structure.
