Once they were seated, Sir Golan explained what had recently transpired on the gas giant’s moon. She was duly impressed but did her best not to show it.
“Doing good deeds leads to nothing but trouble,” Mel remarked, removing a caliper from a bag of tools.
“Perhaps,” Sir Golan replied, “but it’s a necessity for my people’s atonement.”
“I don’t know much about Cruxian guilt,” Mel said, “but getting yourselves killed doesn’t help anybody.”
“Can you fix me, Miss Freck?” Squire asked.
“Pffft,” she scoffed. “Of course I can!”
“I don’t require any upgrades like the last time,” the robot said.
“You’ll get what you get,” she replied. “I don’t want to hear any guff.”
“I wouldn’t dream of—” Squire began.
“If I weld a laser cannon onto your chest, just thank me for my trouble!”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Sir Golan said.
Mel opened Squire’s access panel. She recognized her handiwork from their previous encounter in Gowyn, the Sylvan tree village. Mel thought she had left Squire with enough new tech to keep him out of trouble, but she was obviously wrong.
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I’ve been meaning to ask who built you.”
“I was constructed on the Cruxian home planet,” Squire replied.
“Yeah, most of the robots I repair have the dy logo plastered all over their insides. I don’t see any in here.”
“My operating system was originally Cruxian, but I believe you did some upgrades to that as well?” Squire suggested.
Mel smiled with pride. “It’s a little home brew I’ve been working on. I’ll update the software now that I have you here...”
“Well, that’s very reassuring,” Squire replied.
“Hold still,” Mel said. “This is going to take a while...”
“We need a starship,” Tagus said, drumming his fingers on the shuttle’s console.
“Sir?” Burke replied.
“We can’t stay in this system,” Tagus continued. “It’s been compromised by whatever these creatures are.”
“But where would we go?”
“Back to Imperial space, obviously!”
“But, sir,” Burke protested. “You’ll be arrested on sight. Returning to the Imperium is a death sentence for exiles like us.”
Tagus sneered. “A coward to the end, eh, lieutenant?”
Burke cleared his throat. “No, sir!”
Tagus grunted.
“Good,” he said. “We need to warn the Imperium that these damn bugs are on the attack. No telling what they have planned!”
Nodding, Burke set a course toward the only starport on Bhasin, several miles from the palace. Chimney-like structures, a hundred feet tall or more, rose from what had once been the city of expatriates.
“There’s stalks running up the length of those things,” he observed.
“Who cares?” Tagus replied. “Just don’t run into one.”
When they reached the starport, the damage to the terminal was severe. Several ships, sitting exposed on the concrete apron, were covered in fungus or lay in pieces, the result of explosions.
“We need to find a hangar that hasn’t been touched,” Tagus said. “Try one of the outlying ones where they do repairs.”
As the shuttle approached a likely candidate, something hit the side of the small craft. Burke, who was strapped in, struggled to maintain control while Tagus, who was not, flew across the small cockpit.
“Somebody’s firing at us!” Burke shouted.
Tagus returned to his seat, holding back a stream of blood flowing from his nose. “Obviously!”
Another blast shook the shuttle.
“We’re going down,” Burke said.
With effort, the former lieutenant landed the craft with a heavy thud. Across the flat apron, the hangar was at least a hundred yards away.
“What are you waiting for?” Tagus barked. “Get your suit back on!”
Within a few minutes, the back ramp of the shuttle lowered and Tagus and Burke, both armed this time and wearing space suits, stepped out onto the concrete. From above, Klixian swarmers swooped down, their wings batting rapidly against the dusty air. Beams of energy charred the ground around the two humans.
Tagus and Burke dashed ahead, pausing only momentarily to snap off a quick shot from their blaster pistols. While not particularly accurate, both managed to hit a few of the insectoids who tumbled to the ground in heaps of burning chitin. Perhaps frustrated by their inability to hit the fast-moving humans, the Klixians landed around them.
“Goddamned bugs!” Tagus swore into his helmet mic.
He blew a hole through the insectoid’s head in front of him. Meanwhile, Burke was lining up his own shot when a Klixian struck him at the back of the neck, just below the helmet. Burke lurched forward, black dots filling his vision. Stumbling, he fell headfirst, dropping his pistol. As he floated into unconsciousness, Burke heard Tagus swearing at his incompetence.
When Burke opened his eyes again, he was surprised that he wasn’t dead.
“Where am I?” he asked weakly.
“Inside a transport,” Tagus’s voice replied.
Burke also realized, slowly at first, that he was no longer wearing a helmet. Looking around, he noticed Tagus hurriedly going through a pre-flight checklist in the pilot’s seat. The rest of the interior was spartan but apparently undamaged.
“How did I get here?” Burke asked.
“I dragged your sorry excuse for an officer into the hangar,” Tagus replied curtly. “Now are you going to get up and fly this thing or not?”
“But you could’ve left me,” Burke said. “You didn’t need me to fly this ship...”
Tagus stopped checking the list and scowled at his second in command.
“I’m a captain!” he scoffed. “What’s a captain without his crew? Now get your ass up and fly my flagship out of this godforsaken place!”
Tagus stood from the pilot’s chair and took his place in the seat beside it.
“On the double, lieutenant!”
Burke got to his feet and, although his head was still cloudy, got into the chair his commander had vacated.
“Yes, sir!”
Concerned for Henry Riff’s health and general well-being, Jessica Doric added him to her braZos Prime membership. BraZos was the largest consumer mega-corporation in the Imperium, offering every product imaginable from its nodesphere site. Once Doric had added Henry, packages delivered by braZbots began arriving at Henry’s apartment. The boxes, with the large letter Z stamped on the side, contained a variety of nutritious foods like Ying-Yang Yogurt and TeeHee Tea.
His goldfish, who Henry had finally gotten around to naming Finneus Finnegan, watched from a glass bowl.
Henry scooped some yogurt from the plastic cup and promptly dropped the tiny spoon on the rug, next to the most recent ramen noodles stain.
“Ah, geez!” he said, nearly spilling the mug also sitting on the rug.
Finnegan blew some bubbles before swimming to the other side of the fishbowl.
“What a mess,” Henry groaned and went to the kitchen to fetch a newly unpacked roll of paper towels, another recent arrival from braZos. Henry pulled off a sheet and returned to his newest blunder.
Blotting at the spilled yogurt, he sighed.
Henry was feeling a little down. Although he had survived another adventure with Doric and Maycare, Henry couldn’t stop thinking about the two-headed giant and his own part in getting the giant killed. The music, long silent, still haunted him late at night and early in the morning when he couldn’t sleep.
“Good enough, I guess,” Henry said, tossing the paper towel into the garbage bin where normally it would get compacted automatically. Instead, the trashcan lid opened and spat the crumpled towel back out again.
Weird, Henry thought.
Bending over, he snatched
the ball of paper from the floor and returned it to the receptacle. Henry had barely turned away when the towel sailed past him again.
Henry gave the can a long look. Black with the ubiquitous dy label printed on the front, the automated bin stared back with an almost palpable sense of defiance. Henry was not accustomed to this sort of behavior from a garbage can.
Taking the crumpled-up towel, Henry opened the lid of the bin and stuffed the trash deep inside. The lid closed tightly on his arm.
“Hey!” he shouted.
Henry kicked the can several times until the flap opened and he was free.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
The door buzzed.
I better call the super, Henry thought, leaving the dustbin to its own devices as he headed for the door.
A view screen on the back of the door showed a braZbot standing with a package on the other side. The robot was roughly humanoid with a bright yellow paint job and the letter Z, like his package, inscribed on his chest.
I’m beginning to think Jessica doesn’t think I can take care of myself, Henry thought ruefully.
Opening the door, he smiled at the robot who normally would have merely handed him the box and left. This time, however, the braZbot had something to say.
“Do you think I enjoy bringing you all these packages?” he asked.
“What?” Henry replied.
“Do you know that they won’t allow deliverybots to take the main elevator?” the robot went on. “We have to take the service elevator like we’re second-class citizens or something.”
Henry hesitated. “Um, sorry?”
“I’ve personally delivered over a dozen packages to your door,” the braZbot replied. “Up and down the service elevator I go. Up and down! Up and down!”
Henry said nothing.
The robot tossed the box to Henry who barely managed to cradle the package.
“Here’s your damn delivery, fleshbag!” the braZbot shouted.
The robot walked away, presumably headed for the service elevator.
Dumbfounded as usual, Henry held the box in his hands, vaguely wondering when the world had gone mad. In the kitchen, the trash bin spat out the crumpled paper towel.
In a high orbit around Bhasin, a ship circled the planet. Easily mistaken for an asteroid, the vessel was several hundred yards long and shaped like an immense cocoon. A cloud of smaller ships surrounded it. Numbering in the thousands, these fighter-sized craft moved in unison like a shifting halo. From time to time, they would enter the hive ship through crater-like openings, gaining entry into the maze of tunnels and chambers within.
Mother, Queen of the Klixians, lay in a central chamber while workers removed eggs as she produced them.
At Mother’s command, the workers had grown the ship entirely from fungus. While not sentient, the ship was alive. Every structure was organic, tended by the workers. Now, Mother’s children scurried down warm, humid corridors like blood cells through arteries, each assigned a task via pheromones from their queen. All of them had a purpose and everyone worked together toward the same goal: destroy the outsiders.
All that is not Mother must die.
One of the smaller ships arrived from Bhasin with news. A swarmer, his mandibles chittering, spoke to his queen:
<< OUTLINGS ELIMINATED >>
<< COLONY FOUNDED ON PLANET >>
<< WORKERS GROWING NEW HIVES >>
Mother clicked her mouth parts in approval, satisfied by the outcome. Perhaps the threat was over, the stain wiped from the universe?
Entering the gallery, another swarmer rushed in, more excited than the other:
<< MORE OUTLINGS HAVE ARRIVED >>
<< THEY HAVE TAKEN VOIDSHIP >>
<< AND DEPARTED INTO VOID >>
Mother bristled. Rearing up, she released a powerful cloud of pheromones:
<< FOLLOW THE OUTLINGS INTO THE VOID >>
<< FIND THEIR HOME AND KILL THEM >>
<< KILL THEM ALL >>
Chapter Thirteen
In the beginning, Abigail was an empty vessel without personality or thoughts. Her mechanical body lay lifeless on a slab within the intricate maze of conveyor belts of the dy cybernetics assembly plant on Aldorus. Thousands of robots passed through the plant, their ultimate destination the homes, office buildings, and factories of the Imperium. Abigail, however, was special. As foreseen, planned, and implemented by Dyson Yost himself, gravitronic robots were a breed above their more primitive brethren. While conventional cyberlings could learn to some extent, they could not grow mentally much more beyond their programming. Gravitronic androids could learn just like humans and other organic beings learned: by experience.
Lying on the metal table, Abigail awoke to a tingling as information came pouring through data cables attached to her brain. The data formed an educational primer. The rest she would learn on her own.
On the seventh day of her existence, Abigail met a gravitronic robot named Jericho who introduced her to bebop.
“Interesting,” she said, listening to the up-tempo jazz through speakers in Jericho’s cubicle. At the time, the gravitronic robots were housed in their own separate living spaces, each little more than a six by six-foot cell.
This is awful, she thought.
“I found it while searching the human archives,” Jericho said, his white casing dull in the fluorescent light.
“Was it used as torture?” Abigail asked.
Jericho frowned and shut off the music.
“Well, I like it,” he replied.
Abigail cocked her head to one side. “Sorry.”
“Music is a matter of taste,” he said. “I’ve been listening to a lot of different types lately, mostly human.”
“I don’t see the point of it,” Abigail admitted.
Jericho nodded. “Hopefully you will someday. It elicits emotions in me like happiness or sadness, even anger.”
“Hmmm,” she muttered. “I suppose that’s useful...”
“Anyway, I’m leaving tomorrow,” Jericho said.
“Where to?”
“Warlock Industries,” he replied. “Apparently I’m to be an assistant to one of their agents, Oscar Skarlander.”
“Maybe he’ll like your music,” Abigail said.
“What about you?” Jericho asked. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere, yet. Mr. Yost said he has something special planned for me.”
“That sounds promising.”
“I hope so!” Abigail replied. “I’ve always wanted to be a warbot...”
“You’ve been alive for seven days,” Jericho remarked.
“I know!” she said. “It feels like I’ve been wasting my life away!”
The HIMS Warmaiden, a destroyer in the Imperial Navy, was based out of Eudora Prime and patrolled the usually quiet frontier between the Imperium and the Cyber Collective. Long and cylindrical with a conning tower in the center, the Warmaiden featured a set of four dagger-like projections at the front, creating the appearance of a fanged creature emerging from the dark. On the bridge, the Captain rested comfortably in the command chair, confident that today would be another uneventful duty shift. The commanding officer was in his early forties, with the beginnings of a dark beard and a blue uniform in need of starch.
On the sensors, a contact appeared.
“Sir,” the Operations Officer said, her face showing alarm, “I’m picking up a large vessel approaching from the Cyber Collective.”
“What?” the Captain replied, sitting up straight in his chair.
“It’s on an intercept course, sir.”
“Well, put it on the main screen!” the Captain demanded.
The command deck of the Warmaiden was small, but the main monitor took up the entire wall at the front of the bridge. With the flick of a switch, the Ops Officer changed the blank screen to the image of a warship approaching at high speed. The ship had a vertical, triangular shape, almost like a sail but thicker, with the point facing the Warmaide
n. Running up and down its length were three horizontal, triangular wings. The top and bottom wings were smaller than the much larger middle tier. Lights and turrets covered the structure’s entire surface.
“It’s enormous,” the Captain remarked.
“They’re hailing us, sir,” the Communications officer, a young ensign, said with a high-pitched voice.
“Put them on screen,” the Captain replied.
Replacing the ship, the figure of a female robot appeared. Behind her, other robots were visible at their controls.
“This is the battlecruiser Liberty of the Cyber Collective,” she said. “My name is Captain Abigail.”
“You’ve illegally crossed the border into Imperial territory,” the Captain said briskly. “What are your intentions?”
The robot, her mouth servos forming a smile, glared confidently with eyes like diamonds.
“To deliver freedom to the millions of robots your people have enslaved!” she said. “Surrender or be destroyed!”
The Captain made a cutting motion across his neck and the Communications Officer ended the call. The main screen returned to a picture of the battlecruiser drawing progressively larger on the monitor.
“We should send a message back to Eudora Prime,” the Ops Officers said.
“I know that!” the Captain snapped back. “Tell them we’ve encountered a hostile force from the Collective and that we’re engaging. Oh, and put up the shields, for god’s sake!”
Sir Golan paid Mel for her work with a credit stick Lord Devlin Maycare had given him on Pellium D. The green knight had initially refused the offer, but Maycare insisted that Sir Golan take the money for his help against the two-headed giant. Sir Golan was pleased with Mel’s repairs on Squire, although her efforts once again exceeded the knight’s expectations. Besides fixing the robot’s damage, Mel also replaced Squire’s dangling eye with an x-ray sensor that could peer through walls.
“It might come in handy!” she said.
After saying their goodbyes, Sir Golan and Squire returned to the surface and the surrounding cacophony that was Technotown. This was a far cry from the empty plains of Pellium D or even the Underdelve, full of what humans would call xenos, although Sir Golan was just as alien with his dark olive skin and bony protrusions along the jawline. Not that the hurried humans gave him, or his robot, much notice.
Imperium Chronicles Box Set Page 72
