“You made the grade, son!” he replied, mimicking some movie I’d never seen. “Work hard enough and all this can be yours. Safety from the coming darkness, eternal life, and a fate in the light.”
He was reciting something he’d heard over and over again, trying to do it with some kind of announcer voice. “Safety,” I said. “From the machines when they turned on people?”
“Aye, matey, you’ve got it right,” Jorin said like some pirate from ancient times, tapping his nose with his finger. “You got the gold star too? Playing nice with all the ‘bots?”
I put my arm around Theo, who was taking every moment of our conversation in quietly. “Of course, man, I’m absolutely cool with droid kind and they’re cool with me.”
“Sunshine and roses,” Jorin said. “Gotta meet my new fam, then.” He turned to leave and I knew that if I didn’t do something, he’d get me into trouble. I pictured him running down there and ratting on us the moment he realized we weren’t behind him.
I rushed up behind him and bashed him hard in the back of the head with the butt of my gun. Instead of dropping to the ground unconscious, he whirled around. “I thought you were one of the good guys!”
I really did expect that the blow would knock him out, but I guess that only works in movies, or I just didn’t hit him right, because I had no idea what to do next. He was annoying, but I didn’t want to shoot him. Besides, that would have been noisy. Before I could figure out my next move, Jorin reached for his gun, and Theo shot him with a quiet dart gun. The tiny dart stuck out of his temple, twitching with the rhythm of his pulse, and Jorin’s eyes closed. He crumpled to the ground.
“I’m sorry, was that the right thing to do? He’ll be all right, someone of his body weight should be asleep for nine to ten hours, then he’ll be fine,” Theo asked worriedly.
“Yeah, definitely, yeah,” I said as quietly as I could while being so relieved that I hugged the android. “Man, you saved our asses, I didn’t see a tranq gun in the armoury.”
“I took it from the Building Three security office,” Theo said. “The package said; ‘Guaranteed non-lethal suppression, every time!’ so I took it as the only weapon I could use.”
“Well thanks, man. Now we have to figure out how to steal one of those smaller hover ships, and quick. He may sleep for ten hours, but his people are going to come looking for him sooner than that.”
“We have another problem, Noah. The newcomers have prisoners; I saw fifteen of them in the hold of the largest hover craft when the inner door opened briefly. There are probably more. We will have to rescue them or they will be eaten.”
“Eaten?” I asked, a little too loudly. I quieted down. “How do you know that?”
“The jerky that’s fallen out of Jorin’s pocket,” Theo pointed, distaste plain on his face. “It is human tissue.”
Part Nineteen
Every time I thought about the people trapped in the hold of that big hover ship, I got a sinking feeling. Not that they were being carved up for food – which made little sense to me – but that if I tried to save them I would get shot to pieces. If I didn’t try to save them, I knew I wouldn’t stop thinking about them.
I quickly crawled to the edge of the balcony and looked down at the thirty-five-metre-long hover yacht. The crew were finally getting somewhere with offloading the heavy machinery. The two man, tractor tread, all environment machine had four heavy arms with different attachments on the ends. “It’s going to break the ramp,” I whispered quietly. I could see the middle of the ramp bending more and more as they worked to get the tractor treads past the hydraulic lifter arms for the base.
More importantly, I could see right into the main hold behind. Those doors were stuck open, there were about twenty people in there, all sitting against the back wall. I also saw a few bulk boxes between them. “Intelli-Craft bulk food?” I asked no one in particular. “Why would they make jerky out of people if they had kilograms of bulk food?”
“Maybe they don’t have forma processors?” Theo offered. “Are you going to save the people in there?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was one guy with a couple guns and a bot that wasn’t made for combat. I wasn’t a good shot unless I was in the cockpit of a Starfighter or in a turret chair. Whatever those people were there for, it probably wasn’t good, whether they were food or whatever else.
I could see how I could get to one of the smaller hover ships, and two more were on their way, angling towards a section of shore even further from the main hover yacht. I crawled away from the balcony edge then back inside, closing the doors quietly. “I’m not some runner-gunner, man.” I told Theo. He immediately started looking disappointed. “What can I do? I start shooting from here, they zero in on me and I’m shredded in seconds. If we steal one of those hover cars, then turn back to fight, they’ll take us out for sure.”
“Heroism isn’t easy, Noah. You are one person, but could that be an advantage? One person could sneak up on them, especially if you take clothes from one of their own.”
“You can’t tell me I can fit into that guy’s stuff,” I said, gesturing towards the scrawny freak on the ground. “There are some twelve year olds that are too big for his gear.”
“You could take his vest, his leg guards, at least look like him at first glance, perhaps from a distance,” Theo shook his head. “You are right, perhaps that’s a bad idea. I’m not a tactical android. Still, there must be something you can do.”
“I’m not a hero,” I told him. “Man, I wish I could run and gun my way down there and rescue all those people, but I’d just end up getting myself and probably you killed. There’s no way.”
“Perhaps under the cover of darkness?”
“Security bots can see in the dark, man, you’ve gotta know that.” He looked disappointed, but nodded after a moment. “No, we’re going to sneak down then get out using one of the auxiliary doors on the first level and steal a craft. If that’s distraction enough for those people to get out, then great. If not, well, there’s nothing I can do.”
“I understand, Master,” he replied.
That dug at me, the sound of him calling me ‘Master.’ “What you lack in combat skills you sure got in social manipulation,” I muttered as I cinched my backpack tighter.
I ruffled through the stuff Jorin had on him, and ended up taking his armour – which stank like he hadn’t taken a shower in weeks – his gun belt, a handful of platinum pips and small denomination slips, and the hand cannon he was carrying. I looked it over as quickly as I could but only a warning label told me anything. It warned that the weapon had a kick, and used small radius explosive shells of certain classes.
His gun belt fit so the weapon was strapped to the thigh, so I put it on over the one I was already wearing, which had a holster high on the opposite side on the hip. “Man I wish you could use explosive weapons.”
“I can use the suppression pods,” Theo offered cheerily.
I reached into my bag and pulled out one of the three pouches we had. “How’s your arm?”
“You did an excellent job of replacing it,” Theo replied as he secured the pouch inside his suit jacket. “It should last a century with proper maintenance, perhaps longer.”
“No, I mean for throwing,” I said. “Think you could chuck those long distances?”
“Oh, I could most likely hit a one-metre-wide target at a hundred fifty metres.”
“Not bad,” I told him. Honestly, I don’t know if I could do that, so it was actually pretty good, but I was still feeling pretty sour, so I was in no mood to admit it. “Let’s go.”
We made it down to the bottom floor, Theo staying close behind, staying so quiet that I had to check over my shoulder a couple times to see if he was still there. The stairs were clear, and the guys who were inside the building were so loud while they looted a couple offices near the main entrance that they were easy to avoid. They looked different from the scrawny cannibal I left upstairs. They seemed cleaner, a
nd a lot healthier. Some of them were like the giant muscle bound woman I saw earlier, like they were addicted to fitness pills and pumping iron. I hoped that there was nothing but muscle between their ears too, a problem that I thought was common with those guys.
To my surprise, I made it to a side door, and Theo had no problem unlocking it. “I still have one of the two keys to the vault,” he whispered. “Perhaps we could strike a bargain with them for it?”
“Bargain with these guys?” I thought back to all the assholes who would come to our carnival and steal for a night, then bugger off. If they stole a teddy bear, or a space suit in a can, or a hoverball and racket set from us it wasn’t a big deal, really. That stuff was so cheap that we always made money on it, even if we lost half our stock. It was when they stole from our customers then got away. We would always get the blame for whatever was taken, and the thieves would be long gone. I know I got in trouble a couple times, and I didn’t even notice that there was someone lifting platinum and whatever else they could pickpocket from customers while they were playing at my booth. Somehow, people always thought it was us, but most carnies don’t steal. We’ll trick you into playing a game you’ll have almost no chance of winning, sell you a stuffed Nafalli toy for fifteen plat when it’s only worth one and a half, but we won’t pick your pocket or walk away with your bag if you put it down. That’s the kind of shit scum will pull, assholes who will stab you in the back for five pips. That’s the thief, the worthless crook’s thing. “They’re thieves, we can’t trust any bargain they make. I’m sorry, man.”
I opened the door a crack and looked around. Theo stood tall and looked through the crack above me. “My scanners are gathering data in passive mode,” he whispered. “There is one security robot facing this direction, he is walking along the top of the boat.”
“Could you shoot him? Can you damage other robots?”
“No, but you could severely damage him from here with the rifle.”
“From here? No way.”
“Use the intelligent scope, it works, it’ll tell you how to angle and shoot,” Theo said.
“I thought all that weaponry data was erased from your secure memory storage?”
“Yes, my product database was erased. I saw it working when we were packing and looked at it before turning it off,” Theo explained.
“Kinda too bad,” I muttered as I turned the rifle’s sight system on. “You’d be a better shot than I am.” As soon as I looked at it, I could see what the end of the rifle was seeing. “Whoa, that’s weird. Where are the other guys? Anyone else looking this way or near the smaller hover cars?”
“They are busy finding objects to support the main ramp of the hover yacht with so it does not collapse when they try to unload the industrial cutter again. The gangway was not made for that kind of abuse.”
I looked down the path that led to the slim beach. The hover car parked on the black sand felt so close, maybe fifteen metres? Less? I took a deep breath and aimed the rifle at the security bot. The head’s up display was almost as good as the ones in the fighter sims, telling me more than I needed to know and guiding my aim. The damn thing was heavy, and when I got a bead on him it asked ‘What firing pattern would you like?’ and offered me a bunch of shooting styles. It took me a minute to find the covered panel on the side of the gun, but I selected a thirty round shot. It would blast that guard bot with thirty explosive needles at once, then I took aim again.
As I got my shot lined up I saw it look right at me and raise its weapon. I fired in panic, missing completely. I could hear the metal needle rounds shuffling around in the weapon, getting another thirty ready to fire, and just as I was wishing that I set the damn thing for automatic firing, the security blot blew a hole in the door right beside my head. I let the weapon guide my next shot and squeezed the trigger. Some of those explosive rounds caught the bot in the shoulder and maybe in the side of the head. The fireworks were great, his arm was sent off into the water, his armour was on fire, and he fell down behind the yacht. “Go! Go!” I shouted as I made a break for the hover car.
Theo was right beside me, once I got inside. A few pings and loud pops on the side panels told me that someone was shooting at us. The dash beside the controls was already busted open, and a few wires were exposed. “No way,” I said as I pushed two wires into a few that were already cross connected. The last person driving it had a hot wire job all ready to go. The thing lifted off the ground, the half-fried heads’ up display appeared on the windshield, and I hit the accelerator, sending us back over the water and away.
So much time had passed since I felt anything like the speed you do when you’re in a cockpit, the world rushing past, that I kind of forgot what a rush it was. It wasn’t the fastest hover car, that’s for sure, but pushing the emitter pads as hard as they could go, skipping across the tops of the waves was a rush.
“We’re not alone, Noah,” Theo said as he looked back.
Part Twenty
If I knew then what I know now, things would have gone much smoother. Driving the hover car was easy, if we weren’t running for our lives it would probably have been fun. I took the car onto land and slowed down as soon as I was between buildings. The concrete and metal giants were huddled together with walkways that the car barely fit on. The hover beast I was driving was really made for the hanging roads stretching between clusters of tall skyscrapers, and the cargo streets far below.
I was distracted by groups of people who had to get out of our way, there were so many more than I could have expected. Many of them were armed, but they didn’t bother firing, another surprise. “There must be thousands of people holed up here.”
“It looks like many of the people who lived in this quarter survived, and I see no evidence of surviving robots.”
“What about cannibalism?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.
“My sensors aren’t quick enough to scan for food prepared with, er, human parts while we pass at this speed, but I’ll try harder.”
“You do that.” A hail of pings and taps against our rear panels told me that our friends in the other hover cars had caught up. I glanced behind to confirm; all four of the hover cars were coming onto the avenue, and people were rushing to get out of their way. “Are you sure you can’t shoot at those guys?”
“I may do harm to the biological beings inside, so my programming prohibits it.”
See, this is where I should have said; ‘Well, then, why don’t you drive? I’ll shoot at the bad guys.’ Some lessons take a while to learn. I took us up a ramp that led to one of the main hanging roads and before long we were dodging between and bumping over cars that were hit by the electromagnetic pulse. I never thought about how many accidents I would cause when I set that off. These cars were hit when they were moving at full speed. A few went over the rail, plummeting hundreds of metres in some places. Others rolled end over end, or got into pile-ups that were so bad sometimes that I couldn’t tell how many cars were actually crushed together. Most of them skidded, sliding to a stop as useless as bricks with seats.
One of the guys chasing us hit us with some kind of heat ray. The transparent metal back window was turning red when it occurred to me, and I felt like a huge idiot. “Theo, can you drive?”
“I can drive extremely well. Considering this is an emergency situation, I could drive as quickly as this car and the obstacles permit.”
“All right, I’m going to buy us some time so we can switch seats.” I said, looking to a broken railing and the field far beyond, far below. “Hang on tight.” I turned the hover car towards the opening and we flew right off. I adjusted the hover height to maximum so we could bounce instead of crater on the farmland below, I hoped we’d get it. “Nineteen metres?” I asked aloud, more frightened then I’d been since I ran into Theo the first time.
“That seems to be the maximum hover height,” Theo confirmed. “You were expecting more?”
“Pull up,” Lurk said from where he watched from my jack
et pocket. Sometimes I wondered if he had a smart ass subroutine.
“Most hover cars I’ve seen can run fifty high!” I said as I braced myself. “What a piece of…” we came down to the nineteen metre hover height and I heard the hover systems whine. We hit the ground front first, and the hover car righted itself, scooping a small crater’s worth of carrot filled dirt into the air.
I felt like something had come along and punched me in the whole body all at once, but we were all right, and the car was still hovering. I got out of the driver’s seat before I regained all my senses. “Oh, God, that sucked!” I said as I twisted to get the rifle from the back seat.
“We lost one hover pad. With five left so we will be able to compensate, but we will not be as fast.”
A ping on the roof told me that our friends hadn’t forgotten us. The rear transparesteel window was cooling, sure, but its clarity was crap, and it had to be forty degrees in the car. I popped the sun roof in the back seat and pointed the barrel of the rifle through it. The first thing I saw was the armoured grill of one of the hover cars coming down from the hanging road. “Move! Go! Go!” I shouted.
With a groan, the hover system got us moving, and the hover car coming down after us narrowly missed, sending a shower of dirt and tubers into the air behind us. I moved from the sun roof to the door and opened it. I set the rifle to automatic and leaned out, one arm wrapped tightly around the headrest.
Before I took aim I was firing, sending hundreds of tiny explosive shards in the general direction of the car that came down. The other two were on their way down too, one had more armour welded onto it, while the other didn’t look modified at all. I wish I had time to see which one made it, my bet was that the extra heavy one buried itself and its passengers, because I never saw it again, but the light one definitely made it. I know, because a minute later it was catching up in a hurry.
I managed to hit the nearest car – the one with a little armour added to its grill – a bunch of times, but it didn’t scare easy. One of the passengers leaned out through the window and started firing. It sounded like a hailstorm was hitting our back end, and then I got hit in the shoulder, the one in the car. I let go of the head rest and was falling through the door when Theo caught my shin in a firm robotic grip and dragged me back inside. “Perhaps that’s too reckless a risk?” he asked as he calmly accelerated to the car’s maximum speed. I realized that I left the rifle behind then, but didn’t have time to curse as I closed the door.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10.5: Carnie's Tale Page 12
