Embers: The Galaxy On Fire Series, Book 1

by Craig Robertson

  Anybody there? I asked in my head.

  It took a second, but in my head I heard, “Y…yes. This is…” and he blasted me with a huge data dump of symbols, which was his reference number in the Adamant systems.

  Can I just call you Al Junior? I said internally.

  Yes, you may. Why would you wish to call me Al Junior?

  It’s shorter than what you said, and I don’t have much time, I replied.

  I imagine not. There’s an escape in progress, a big one. Thousands of prisoners killed and ate the guards and are on the prowl for fresh victims.

  What a quick BS alteration of the facts. We’re frightened too. Please open the doors then lock them behind us. My little girl is so frightened she can’t stop screaming. I pinched Mirraya’s butt cheek to cue her emotional collapse. Bright girl picked right up on my hint. She screamed like a banshee with a leg caught in a bear trap.

  Please, open up. I think I hear them coming.

  “Sorry, friend, I’m not allowed to do that. Under protocol such as these, my duties are locked in. I am forbidden to override them.

  Forbidden wasn’t the same as can’t, now was it?

  So you’d rather stand there and watch the cannibals eat my baby alive? How can you be so indifferent? You’re programmed to serve us, not help aliens kill us.

  I have my role in the hierarchy, just like you do, my friend. We all live to serve the Adamant. Any variation on such service is unthinkable.

  Then serve the Adamant, I challenged. I am Mercutcio, and this is my only child. Serve Mercutcio by allowing him to pass to safety.

  Mercutcio is currently in the Divinity Sector. Mercutcio has no children. You cannot be my master.

  Crap, a detail-oriented machine.

  What do you mean I am not who I say I am. Why would I claim to be someone I wasn’t?

  I cannot respond to that…

  I cut him off. Where is the Divinity Sector from here in relationship to the explosion? It was a long shot, but just then it was my only shot.

  It is directly on the straight line drawn from our current position, through the explosion, five hundred clagons farther away.

  Don’t you see? The explosion has destroyed the relays. Information on subjects separated from here by the explosion are compromised.

  That, master, is impossible. The systems have multiple redundancies and…

  In the seconds before my child is eaten alive, please review all testing protocols and drills for the communication systems. Do you find any scenarios that even vaguely resemble its function after a fusion explosion in the Detention Section? No, I forestalled his response, you do not because such a possibility was never anticipated. Now open the blast doors and seal them permanently behind us.

  My AI buddy never said another word to me. The massive doors slid to allow us passage, then just as silently, it locked shut. Outstanding! I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when the AI refused to open the doors to those on the other side. Man, the fur would fly. More importantly, we’d have fewer pursuers for a while.

  But we were far from free. The trek to where I might be able to steal a ship was a long way off. My keepers had to assume that it was the most likely place for me to go. How else would I escape? I was certain they were confident I couldn’t, but like a moth flew toward the flame, escaping little-brains flew toward a spaceship. Hmm. Could I play that to my advantage? Was there anywhere else I could go to be safe? There was a little voice in the back of my head giggling to itself because it knew I’d forgotten something. What? And, more to the point, why didn’t the damn little voice just tell me? Stupid little … the exotic matter. Yeah. The Quep mentioned how my fuel cell might contribute to the exotic matter and that the asshole Adamant controlled it absolutely.

  If I assumed, and it was a hell of a big assumption, that what was called exotic matter in my day was the same thing they were talking about here, I had the nucleus of an idea. Exotic matter was a theoretical particle mix that had negative mass. The problem with making exotic matter was that one needed negative energy, lots of negative energy, to generate it. The negative energy required to maintain a traversable wormhole would be on a scale of the total energy generated by ten billion stars in one year’s time. That was a lot of horsepower. Back at MIT, we all figured exotic matter could be made but never would be because of those energy requirements. Then again, maybe that was my two-billion-year-old provincial thinking.

  If current technology could do the near impossible, instant travel to and from anywhere or anywhen would be a snap. Doctor Who’s TARDIS would be a reality. All that was needed was the energy of ten percent of a galaxy per wormhole. On the other hand, it was all a question of scale, wasn’t it? There were estimated to be one hundred billion galaxies in the universe. If the Adamant drew from even a fraction of these sources, they’d have enough juice to run quite a few wormholes. And they might have been able to drain energy from other time periods, though pre-created wormholes. I was making a lot of wild assumptions, but they were all theoretically possible. Perhaps the use of exotic matter accounted for the scaffolding around and attached to the massive ship I was on. The framework produced traversable wormholes, and the planetoid-vessel entered them. Interesting thought.

  But reality called, yet again. I needed an escape plan. If I nipped a ship, they’d likely reacquire me immediately. Plus, they would expect me to try that because I was a stupid robot slave. An impulse hit me. I redeployed my probes on the control panel on my side of the sealed blast doors. Al Junior, are you still there?

  Yes, Master. Where else would I be?

  Just making sure your circuits are still intact, what with all the explosions and cannibalism. You passed with room to spare.

  Oh, thank you for checking. By the way, there is an imposter ponding on the other side of the door I control claiming to be you. I thought you might like to know.

  Excellent work, Al Junior. Yes, that traitor caused the explosion in an attempt to kill me. He lies like a rug.

  Is it bad to repose as one is designed to, Master?

  Precisely. You passed my final test of loyalty. Remind me to have you upgraded when all this is done.

  When should I remind you?

  You choose. The quality of your selection time will indicate how far you will be upgraded.

  Ah, that sounds prudent. Was there something else I can do for you?

  Yes, where is the nearest exotic matter?

  Err, I’ll have to respectfully ask you to be more specific. Exotic matter is everywhere in trace amounts. Or do you mean the nearest EMG, the nearest EMC, or EMTS?

  WTF? How should I know?

  I’m sorry, Al Junior, there’s a short in my audio processing unit. Could you say the entire name of choices you gave me?

  Yes, I can.

  I waited a second before realizing my simplistic error.

  Please tell me the entire name of my choices. The ones you abbreviated.

  Exotic matter generators, exotic matter conduits, or exotic matter transportation units.

  Wow, jackpot. Is that a personal or ship’s transportation unit?

  Yes, Master.

  Stupid concrete thinking machine.

  Let me rephrase. Where is the nearest PEMTU?

  A map popped into existence on the screen below the AI panel. It wasn’t too far away. Then a more complete plan started to gel in my mind.

  Where is the nearest point where the PEMTU and either the EMG or the EMC intersect?

  The screen flashed off, then on again. Not much farther away. I could also see there were lines of blast doors honeycombing the ship.

  Al Junior, please lock down all the blast doors forming a passageway for me to proceed to, I fingered the map to get the details right, location to EMTU 33-op.

  Done.

  And do not let the traitor calling himself me or his minions open my safety zone. Your upgrade depends on it.

  Understood, Master. It is done.

  Outstanding. Now I only
had to fight the countless enemies inside the locked doors, figure out how to operate a PEMTU, and do so in a manner where I couldn’t be followed. How hard could that be?

  FIVE

  Mercutcio stood before the transmetal blast doors and seethed. His fists also hurt. Those were two sensations completely foreign to him, a master among the Adamant. Certainly, he experienced negative emotions almost constantly. Anger, rage, hatred, and disgust were everyday friends. But to seethe meant there was something he wished to do that he was prevented from doing. Galaxies had died for lesser offenses. And pain? Pain was not felt among the Purely Bred in living memory. It was as far beneath them as was physical labor. Yet there he stood, seething and in pain because of Jon Ryan. Little did he expect, and he would have cared even less if he knew, that he had joined a very unexclusive club.

  “Someone open this blasted blast door or everyone on Triumph of Might will die horribly.”

  All who heard had no doubt that their mercurial master would do that if they failed. He probably would even if they succeeded since he was so upset. They saw his frustration manifest when he erupted and started pummeling the door.

  Species ran in all directions at once. Soldiers, technicians, scientists, and high priests dashed to and fro attempting to override, disarm, blast, or otherwise open the recalcitrant portal. Explosives were brought and affixed to the panel. Unfortunately, the door was so well constructed even that failed to breech it.

  “Summon a shuttle and drive me around this infernal barrier,” howled Mercutcio.

  As if on cue, all activity stopped and every soul was as quiet as the grave. No one wanted to be the person to inform the hornet’s nest on feet that all other passages were similarly blocked.

  The master scanned his minions suspiciously.

  “Hand me your weapon,” he commanded the nearest guard.

  A gasp went out from the crowd. It was not that they feared what he might do with a gun. No. It was the very thought of an Adamant doing anything so closely related to work. Change was clearly in the air. Change plus Adamant equaled lots of dead stuff.

  Mercutcio fired at the guard who provided the weapon, and the ten or so other random folk he could target without turning his torso. Then he flung the rifle at the damn blast door. “Someone tell me why I am not moving toward the nearest detour.”

  “Master,” said an attendant who had just prostrated herself on the deck, “word has been passed that all blast doors between us and the unwashed sinners are similarly out of operation temporarily.”

  Mercutcio turned to the closest individual. “Retrieve that weapon.”

  The guard picked it up and handed it butt first to his master.

  Mercutcio didn’t even grab the gun. He only squeezed the trigger, blowing a large hole in the guard’s chest. Both corpse and rifle tumbled to the deck loudly.

  “In ten seconds, I will sign the death warrants of all crew members if I am not on the other side of that door.”

  It was a silly threat, really, and most knew as much. If Mercutcio killed the entire crew, who would arrange for the transfer of a new one? Certainly not an Adamant. No, they were hardly going to do clerical work. So, a random few would be spared as long as it took to orient the replacements. Life serving the Adamant was challenging on the best of days. And on a particularly bad days like this one, service was a terminal condition.

  SIX

  As I sprinted in the direction of the PEMTU, I did two things. One, I tried to reassure Mirraya. She wasn’t freaking out, but neither was she calm and happy. The other thing I did was wonder what the hell a PEMTU actually was and if we could use it to escape. It might have been a fancified toilet for all I knew.

  “Hey, sweetie, are you hungry?” I asked softly. Like, duh, of course she was. She was being slowly killed in an amoral prison.

  “Yes. A little, I guess,” was her meek response.

  “Really? Okay, what’s your favorite food?”

  She bunched up her slightly elongated face ever so cutely and said with some resolve, “Rostalop.”

  Great. What the heck was rostalop? If I passed a rostalop stand, I’d be sure to stop and buy her a triple portion.

  “Is that a kind of candy?”

  That brought a furrowing of her cute little brow. “No. What’s candy?”

  “You know, something real sweet and sticky that tastes better than the last day of school.”

  She lowered her head to my shoulder as we bounced along.

  “What, sweetheart? Are you okay?”

  “I didn’t go to school. When I was old enough, the people were all taken away.”

  “And brought here?”

  She nodded in the affirmative.

  “Are your parents here? Any family besides Siev?”

  Slowly, like the weight of the world rested on her frail shoulders, she shook her head in the negative. “They were, but not now.”

  I elected to let that train of thought go. I doubted very much they had been released back home after honorably serving their sentences.

  “So, what is rostalop. We don’t have it where I’m from.” I smiled as big as I could to try and ease her mood.

  She scrunched her mouth and lips side to side a few seconds. “It’s meat. You cook it and serve it on paplo. Paplo is a kind of bread.” She slapped her hands together like she was swatting a mosquito. “You beat it flat and put it over the fire.” Her eyes lit up recalling the delicacy as only a starving child could have. She was so precious. Looking at her like that suddenly doubled my hatred for the Adamant. I had no idea how many there were, but I wanted to kill them all with my bare hands.

  We were maybe halfway to the PEMTU and hadn’t run into a problem. I knew trouble was coming sooner than later, though. It always did. “So,” I asked to keep her mind occupied, “you cook the paplo over a fire. How about the rostalop? Is that cooked over the same fire?”

  She rocked her head back and forth looking very wise. “It can be. Sometimes, yes. Other times you cook it in hot water with vegetables.” She licked her lips involuntarily.

  All right, meat stew with pita bread. My kind of supper. Add a cold beer and a hot date, and I was totally there.

  I had almost dropped my guard too low. Stupid, Ryan. In war, when you lose your focus, you lose your life. It was always that simple.

  An alien guard of a species I’d never seen stepped into the passageway. I don’t think he knew we were flying down the hall, but he reacted instantly. He swung a rifle off his burly shoulders and brought it up at us. He was ready to shoot, so I decided the safest course of action was to remove his arms, not his head. Luckily, his firing position held the gun low. I traced my laser across his mid-torso. He yelped in pain as his arms glopped to the floor. The gun fired on impact with the floor. It blew most of his head off. Kelly-green blood flew everywhere.

  Mirraya began to scream, high and shrill. Ouch. Poor kid had seen her share, but this was over the top, it seemed. Hell, it was over the top for me, especially since I had Kelly-green blood and body mush splattered all over my face. Thank goodness none got on Mirraya. She probably would have jumped out of her skin. I’d instinctively shielded her behind me when the guard first appeared.

  I vaulted over the still squirming soldier on the floor and continue toward my objective. I was silent the rest of the way, and Mirraya wasn’t in a chatty mood either. No one else challenged us. When we got to the doors I was looking for, I set her down.

  “Stay right behind me, okay?”

  She nodded. I think she was still too freaked out to speak. Man, was she going to have a bad case of PTSD if my rescue attempt was successful. I tried to push or slide the door open, but it didn’t budge. I kicked it hard. Still nothing moved. I deployed my fibers to the control panel just to the right of the door. I could sense the panel, but I couldn’t pull any information out of it. Not only was it switched off, it was fully disconnected from the master system. What an odd design. It must have been on a WiFi link, not hardwired like s
hips usually were.

  I tried powering the panel up myself, but it was like plugging in a rock. Nothing. Again, weird system. I guessed that happened with two billion years of technologic advances. I started cutting the metal with my laser. It worked, but the progress was minimal. It would take half an hour to get through. That was probably twenty-nine minutes more than we had before the cavalry arrived. I set my probes on one wall and tapped on the other with my right finger. I was looking for anything—a hollow, a weak point.

  Out of nowhere Mirraya said from behind, “The men use their sticks.”

  I pivoted around quickly. “What’s that, honey?”

  “To open doors, the bad men use their sticks.”

  “Do you have one,” I asked without thinking it through.

  “No, silly.” She almost giggled. Man was she a cutie pie.

  I shot a glance all around. “Do you see one anywhere?”

  She shook her head, but she was holding something back. I could sense it.

  “What, Mirraya? This is important.”

  Her long, tapered finger pointed down the corridor we’d come from. “The man back there had one.”

  Oh, she wasn’t too keen on revisiting the bloody mess. I did a quick back-of-the envelope calculation. If I left her and ran full out, I could be back in thirty seconds, maybe less. If I took her, it’d take at least twice as long.

  “Honey,” I said as naturally as possible, “I need to run real fast to go get his stick. Can you be real brave and wait here while I’m gone?”

  Her face went pale, and she began to tremble. Not a good sign. Then from nowhere, she took a deep breath and stopped sharking. “Yes, I can. But you better hurry. I’m very scared.”

  Bless her hearts. Oh, I probably didn’t mention she had a pair of hearts. I could hear two of them pounding away in her tiny little chest.

  “I’ll move like the wind.”

  With no further delay, I turned and rocketed away. I had to imagine she was impressed with the speed I could move when not carrying her.