Rogue Starship: The Benevolency Universe (Outworld Ranger Book 1)

by David Alastair Hayden

  Without the heavy pack of tools weighing him down, Siv was able to pull the gizmet the rest of the way. Once they reached the surface, Siv kicked, trying to tread water. He stripped the gizmet of his disruptor and light jacket and removed both of their boots. He was sure the gizmet must have inhaled water, but he couldn’t get him to expel it.

  Bishop was barely breathing. Siv needed to get him to shore, but it was all he could do to keep the both of them afloat.

  “Have you picked up any signs of Mitsuki?”

  “Sorry, sir. She’s not showing up on my short range scan, and that’s the best I can manage since Bishop burned out the power pack in your sensor array.”

  Siv watched the minutes tick by on the display in his HUD. Silky had called the Shadowslip Guild for help, but they were in the city, and it would take them at least half an hour to get out this far. The time dragged by so slowly, and with it Siv’s strength waned. He had run himself past endurance tonight and adrenaline could carry him no further. He was spent.

  Eventually his grip on poor Bishop failed, and the gizmet drifted away. He hoped the gizmet would float on his own and leaned back, trying to do the same. At least he could keep his head above the surface for a while longer, but he wasn’t sure how long he could last, especially given how much he was shivering. Hypothermia would set in soon.

  After the first few reports Silky gave on his vital signs, Siv asked him to stop and closed out all the windows in his HUD. He didn’t want to watch his life count down as he faded away.

  “Sir, you need to stay awake.”

  “I’m just so sleepy, Silkster.”

  “Keep moving, sir. If you go to sleep, you’ll die.”

  “No one’s coming to help us. We’re doomed.” He chuckled. “Can you believe I died trying to rob a gizmet researcher?”

  “Every mission presents unpredictable dangers, sir. And you’re not dead yet, you know.”

  Siv half nodded as his eyelids drooped.

  “Sir, stay with me. Sir!”

  “Mmhm. Goodnight, Silkster.”

  Siv woke to a beam of light shining in his face. Shivering violently, he still floated in the cold lake. Something that whirred and hummed hovered above him; it was the source of this light. He activated the shading filter built into his smart lenses and squinted up at the thing, a spherical object half the size of a skimmer bike. An unnecessarily bright searchlight on the bottom kept him from picking out any details.

  “Silky?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What in the hell is that?”

  “A cog of some sort, sir.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I’m analyzing it, sir.”

  Cables shot out from the sides of the big cog, and claw-like pincers on the ends clamped onto Siv’s arms.

  Siv thrashed reflexively.

  “Please relax,” said a mechanical voice emanating from the sphere. The voice clearly meant to be reassuring. It failed miserably. “I am here to save you. All will be well.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Siv grunted.

  The cog rose up into the air, pulling him out of the water with it. Once he was dangling a foot over the lake, two more cables shot out. They latched onto his legs and pulled them even with his arms so that he hung horizontal, as if he were reclining in a very uncomfortable hammock. Then the cog projected a weak force field around him and headed towards the shore.

  “It’s a Resky-4b, sir. A somewhat primitive rescue cog. I’m not familiar with the design, I can’t tell who it is registered to, and it refuses to communicate with me.”

  “Bishop,” Siv said as loud as he could to the cog carrying him. “He’s a gizmet. He was in the water, too. And Mitsuki. She’s a wakyran. She’s out here somewhere.”

  The cog completely ignored him. It glided onto the shore and, following a rough path through a tangled wood, approached a small, concrete bunker.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Siv Gendin

  Siv jerked awake. He couldn’t move his limbs. He opened his eyes. A light blared down into his face. Wherever he was being held was so bright that, even with his filters active, he couldn’t see a thing. Instead he focused on his other senses.

  He picked up the scents of damp…metal…rust…electronics…blood.

  He was lying naked on a cold aluminum table. Metal clamps bound his hands and feet. Leather straps gripped his arms and legs, and one stretched across his throat.

  He knew the rescue cog was hovering above him. He recognized the cog’s distinctive, churning hum, but a soft buzzing sound threaded through it. That second sound seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. Someone nearby moaned in pain. Bishop? Mitsuki? Someone else? He couldn’t tell over the noise the cog was making.

  He was bruised all over. Breathing was painful. But he hadn’t drowned. At least there was that.

  He tried to activate his HUD, but nothing happened.

  “Silky?”

  “I am here, sir.”

  “What’s wrong with the HUD?”

  “I’ve altered my registry signal and switched into low power mode, sir.”

  “You’re trying to…to disguise yourself? Why would— Shit. Reapers again?”

  “Afraid so, sir. It’s the reaper captain. I guess he followed you in his skimmer instead of returning to his ship.”

  “So he managed what the cops couldn’t?”

  “Not surprising, is it?”

  “I guess not. Did he send the cog after us?”

  “No, sir. The cog’s a rescue drone. And this is an old first aid station. According to the maps and data I’ve managed to download on the down-low, we crashed in the remains of what was once a large national park.”

  “That's good news.”

  “You would think so, sir. But he hacked the cog. Easily, I might add. It’s serving him now.”

  Siv groaned. “I’m scheduled to be harvested after all, huh?”

  “Afraid so, sir. Bishop and Mitsuki, too.”

  “They’re alive?”

  “Yes, sir, but Mitsuki’s in a bad way.”

  “Can’t believe I’ve been captured and bound twice in the same night.”

  “Might as well join a Trulian huntsman’s bondage pack, huh, sir?”

  “Got anything other than bad quips, Silkster? Maybe something helpful?”

  “Nothing, sir. Before I shut down my scans, I did confirm that the reaper captain’s still badly injured. If you could break free…”

  Siv laughed silently. That wasn’t going to happen.

  The light moved away so that Siv could open his eyes. The snarling face of the reaper captain glared down at him. A bit of his left cheek was blown off. A lot of his clothing and armor was torn or burned away, and every bit of exposed skin was blistered. A normal man would be in desperate need of medical attention and out of commission. But that was one of the reasons the Benevolence had stocked the military with androids.

  The inside of the concrete bunker was grimy. Slime covered the walls. This place hadn’t been used in decades.

  Siv glanced to his left. Bishop was strapped down to another medical table. On the next table over, Mitsuki lay bound face down. Her wings, flopped out, were hanging off the edges. Both were barely conscious, bleeding, injured in multiple places. Beyond them was a wall of medical equipment and supplies, most of it obviously broken or severely out of date.

  Siv flicked his gaze to the right and noted the rusty steel door that led to the outside. It was closed and, though only a few meters from him, seemed impossibly far away.

  A smile tugged at the corners of the reaper's lips. “I came here looking for the genius gizmet over there. But I found you as well. And you I can’t figure out.”

  “Yeah? Well, everyone says I’m ruddy mysterious.”

  “You’ve got a ScanField 3 Sensor Array with AND Scrambling, a forearm-mounted Zan-Z force shield, a TopOff Antigrav Belt, and a Zan-Z neural disruptor.”

  “I only buy the best.”

  “None
of this can be purchased. It's all military grade equipment. The ScanField 3, in particular, is exceedingly rare these days.”

  “Is it?”

  “And your chippy…”

  Silky groaned. “Here it comes.”

  “Its registry signal is just as dodgy as your face. You're wearing a changeling hood, aren't you.”

  “I’d like to shrug in response, but I can’t. Look, I bought some good equipment off a guy. And my chippy malfunctions—a lot. It’s a 6G.” Siv figured it was better to make it sound like his chippy was a great model, for this age, than to outright lie.

  “The thing is, you are a walking treasure trove of rare technology. All of it functional, except maybe your chippy. It’s like you fell out of a special forces military vessel a hundred years ago and landed in the present.”

  Siv flinched reflexively. No one had ever connected those dots before. In response, the android’s eyes flared and he took half a step back. Damn, he’d blown that.

  “Smooth move, sir. Might as well hand me over and cut yourself open for him.”

  “Who are you? What are you?”

  Siv stammered a bland denial that he was anything special but the reaper captain wasn’t buying it. He grabbed the edge of Siv’s face mask and pulled it free, scowling.

  All three of the reaper's eyebrows arched in surprise. "Siv Gendin!"

  Siv cringed, but made no response. The reaper had uncovered his identity in the census database ridiculously fast. It was more than a little disconcerting.

  “Your father was Gav Gendin.”

  He and Silky had the same immediate response. “Shit!”

  “How…how do you know about my father?”

  The reaper captain smiled. “Your father is a significant figure to us. He’s practically a saint.”

  Siv frowned.“My father…a saint? You’ve got to be kidding. I loved the man, but he certainly wasn’t a saint. He was a really bad father, in fact.”

  “He worked tirelessly to uncover the technology of the Ancients. And rumor has it before he was killed he made a discovery of tremendous importance. No one has any clue what it might have been. But perhaps you do…”

  “He was murdered before he had the chance to tell me anything.”

  “You’re surprisingly young…”

  At this point, he didn’t see a reason to lie. “I was on ice, so to speak, for most of the last century.”

  The reaper captain nodded, then he began to grin like a really nasty child who’d just gotten a pair of force knuckles as a Benevolence Day present. “I know something else about your father, Mr. Gendin.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “He had a 9G-x chippy.”

  “And the jig is up,” Silky said. “We had a nice run, didn’t we, sir?”

  “That we did.”

  The reaper captain twirled the surgical knife in his hand. “I’ve no idea what to do with you, Gendin. I can’t kill you.”

  “Well, that’s good news.”

  “And all your equipment is DNA locked with super encryption, which is a pain to workaround.”

  “My father was a clever man.”

  “So retraining seems the appropriate course.”

  “I’m really well trained already.”

  “This day sucks an old dog’s nuts,” Silky said.

  “Since my father was a saint, maybe you can cut my friends some slack?” Siv suggested.

  The reaper shook his head. “I’m going to harvest the wakyran for organs. She’s not particularly intelligent. The gizmet’s brain will be assimilated. These are blessings. They will contribute to the greater good of all. You should be happy about that.”

  “I should?” Siv scoffed.

  “What we’re doing, restoring the Benevolence, trying to recover the secrets of the Ancients…it’s what your father would have wanted.”

  Siv had no idea what to say to that.

  The reaper lifted the surgical knife again. “Cog, prepare to cauterize wounds and administer sedatives.”

  The cog drifted forward.

  “I—I thought you weren’t going to harvest me.”

  "I'm not." The reaper captain smiled, his eyes glinting. He touched the surgical knife to Siv’s right wrist. Siv gulped. “I’m just going to modify you for easy transport to my hive ship.”

  Siv cringed. He thought suddenly of the dream he’d had while drowning. His father’s ghost had told him something important. But he couldn’t quite recall what it was. “Sorry, Dad. Whatever it was you wanted me to do, doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.”

  “What are you talking about, sir?”

  The door exploded open. A hail of plasma bolts streaked across the room, like brightly burning meteors.

  One of the shots struck the rescue cog, and it exploded. Another shot blew the reaper captain’s head off his neck, spraying oil, blood, and coolant into the air.

  His body slumped to the floor as a group of men in dark gray tactical armor stormed into the concrete bunker.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Siv Gendin

  Unmarked armor…face-concealing helmets…shooting first…

  “Silkster?”

  “It’s them, sir.”

  Siv relaxed as the men spread throughout the bunker, checking everything. Shadowslip Guild enforcers were lethal and thorough. Siv was lucky he warranted such attention. A lesser thief in this situation would’ve been left out to dry…or assassinated by a sniper if the opportunity presented itself.

  “The reaper you decapitated was the only threat,” Siv told them.

  An enforcer stepped over and pressed a button, releasing the metal clamps from Siv’s hands and feet. Then he began undoing the leather straps.

  “I’m Captain Red, sir.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Captain. You got here in the nick of time.”

  Siv groaned as the man helped him sit up.

  “Can you walk, sir?” the man asked.

  The vocal scrambler in his helmet gave his voice a hollow ring. Enforcers never revealed their identities. Their loyalty was ensured, and infiltrating their ranks was supposedly impossible.

  “I can manage.”

  “What about these other two?” the captain asked.

  “They’re with me,” Siv said.

  “We were told to bring only you in, sir.”

  “We have to get them out of here.”

  “But Big Boss—”

  “I’ll take the heat for it, Captain Red.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  The enforcer captain gave orders to free the others.

  “The wakyran needs immediate medical attention,” Siv said.

  “She’ll get it in the van, sir. We need to get you out of here ASAP. The cops have two tactical teams en route to this location.”

  As Siv stood, he heard a faint crackling sound, like music playing from a broken speaker. Limping along, he traced the source to what was left of the reaper’s decapitated head. The reaper was laughing. Siv knelt in front of it. How was that thing still alive?

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You’ve only escaped…for now…” the reaper croaked. “I uploaded…your information to the…hive ship. We know you…exist now. That you may have…information about…your father. And that chippy…of yours…too. My brothers will…find you. And they will—”

  Siv kicked the head, and it rolled into the corner.

  “Captain Red, I suggest you plant a few charges to blow this place up after we’ve left. That should distract the police while we escape.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  “Make sure you place one of the explosives on the reaper’s head.”

  “You’ve got it, sir.”

  “And detonate before the cops arrive. Let’s not hurt any of them.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, sir,” Captain Red replied in a disappointed tone.

  The armored skimmer van shuddered as the bunker exploded behind them. The van was windowless, so Siv couldn’t see the
explosion. He sat beside Bishop, who was just starting to come to his senses. Across from them, an enforcer provided emergency medical treatment to Mitsuki.

  Groaning, Siv tucked his head in his hands and leaned forward over his knees. Then he bent backward with a deep exhalation.

  “Problem, sir?”

  “Just exhausted and frustrated. It’s been a long—”

  Bishop jerked awake, kicking and screaming. “What the hell’s going on? Get away from me!”

  Siv reached out a hand. “It’s okay, Karson. We’re safe now.”

  Panting heavily, almost in a panic, Bishop locked his eyes on Siv and stammered unintelligibly.

  Siv touched Bishop’s arm. “It’s okay. These men won’t hurt you.”

  “Who—who are you?” Bishop stammered.

  “It’s me, Siv Gendin. Remember?”

  Bishop frowned and bit his lip. “Gendin?”

  “Obviously it’s me. Oh, wait.” Siv pulled the mask out of his pocket and gave it to Bishop. “Look at my clothes and gear. Listen to my voice.”

  Bishop examined the mask. “You were wearing a disguise.”

  “A basic one. To throw off any cameras or make it so that someone couldn’t pick me out in a lineup.”

  “That…that makes sense.” Bishop returned the mask. “And these soldiers?”

  “Shadowslip Enforcers. They rescued us from the bunker.”

  “What bunker?”

  “Do you remember crashing into the lake?”

  “Yes, and then I woke up in a room, strapped onto a metal table. I faded in and out, couldn’t stay awake. There was a cog and…I know I was knocked senseless because I’d swear the reaper captain was there.”

  “He was there.”

  Bishop’s eyes widened.

  Siv explained all of it to him, except the parts about his dad and how old he actually was.

  “So the reaper saved our lives?”

  “Or took over the cog after it saved us,” Siv said. “He pumped the water out of your lungs and Mitsuki’s at least.”