Imperium Chronicles Box Set

by W. H. Mitchell

  “How dare you keep me waiting!” he shouted at Redgrave, standing on the other side of a bluish, translucent force field.

  “You were always an arrogant bastard,” the captain replied simply. An audible gasp came from Burke in the adjoining cell.

  “Your insolence will not go unpunished!” Tagus hissed like a simmering kettle.

  “I’ve flushed bigger turds than you out the airlock,” Redgrave replied. “Now what do you want?”

  “I hesitate to bother at this point,” Tagus said, “but I’ve come to warn you about an impending danger to the Imperium!”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’ve encountered some kind of insectoid race on Bhasin,” Tagus continued. “It attacked and wiped out the entire exile population.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Yes, you imbecile!” Tagus fumed. “If you don’t do something about it, they will undoubtedly come here next!”

  “It’s true, Lord Captain,” Burke said from the neighboring cell. “Everyone was dead.”

  Redgrave raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, you’ll pardon my skepticism,” he said, “but I’m going to need a little more proof than the word of two exiled criminals.”

  Tagus pounded his fist against the force field, getting an electric shock for his trouble.

  “Idiot!” he yelled.

  “Why don’t you just wait here a while,” the captain said, “while we try to contact Bhasin. We’ll get this sorted out, one way or another. In the meantime, you should consider what you want for your last meal...”

  Jessica Doric, her face frozen in concentration, examined the device they had found on Pellium D. Books from the shelves around her in Lord Maycare’s estate library were stacked like battlements near the lantern-shaped relic. Henry Riff’s unkempt hair, barely visible, poked up from behind the books on the other side of the table.

  Doric took the scanner she was holding, a small box with a display on the front, and ran it back and forth over the relic. Scrutinizing the results, she slammed the scanner back on the table. “It’s hopeless!”

  Henry nearly jumped out of his chair, dropping the book he was reading which landed on the floor with a clunk.

  “Sorry,” Doric said. “I just don’t know what to do!”

  Henry leaned awkwardly down to get the book and placed it gingerly on the table.

  “Well,” he said, “it must do what it does somehow...”

  “But what does it do, exactly?”

  “It picks up music,” Henry replied, “like some kind of radio.”

  “Only from one person — a giant — and it hasn’t done anything since!” Doric said. “There’s no moving parts and it’s made from a solid piece of material that we can’t identify!”

  With his usual sense of timing, Lord Devlin Maycare appeared through the doorway, his hair slicked back with every strand in their most ideal position. Seeing Doric, he raised his hands in surprise.

  “What’s the matter, Jess?” he said cheerfully. “Making any progress?”

  “No!” Doric replied.

  “Did you do that thing I suggested?” Maycare asked.

  “Kicking it didn’t do anything,” Doric said.

  “Really?” Maycare replied. “Did you try kicking it harder?”

  Doric produced a long, agonized sigh and shook her head. “No!”

  “Well, I’m all out of ideas,” he admitted.

  Henry, in his meek way, raised a finger. “Maybe we could ask the Pool of Memory?”

  Maycare laughed. “I don’t think that old Dahlvish Abbot will talk to us again. He seemed kinda prickly...”

  “Actually,” Doric said hesitantly, “I’ve been corresponding with the Abbot for a while now.”

  “What?” Maycare replied. “Why would you do that?”

  “I’ve always admired Dahlvish history,” she said.

  “You have?” Maycare said.

  “I’ve mentioned it several times!” she replied.

  Maycare scratched the back of his head without disturbing his hair’s perfect alignment. “I don’t think so...”

  Doric leveled her eyes at him.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “I might be able to persuade the Abbot, but Henry and I should go by ourselves.”

  Maycare raised an eyebrow. “What? Why shouldn’t I come?”

  Doric remained silent.

  “Well?” Maycare asked again.

  “The Abbot doesn’t like you,” Doric replied.

  “But I’m handsome and charming! What’s not to like?”

  Doric stared at the floor. “I’ve no idea...”

  Officer Rawlins had belonged to the Regalis Police Department for over ten years. As part of the Tactical Unit, he wore a black uniform with pockets for things like loose credit sticks and vials of tear gas. Over Rawlins’ heart, the badge of the Regalis PD included three words:

  HONORIS

  OFFICIUM

  INTEGRITAS

  During the academy, they told the young cadets what those words meant, but Officer Rawlings had long since forgotten. Sitting in a bathroom stall at the 88th Precinct, he asked the officer in the neighboring stall a question, “How do you tell a peacebot from a killbot?”

  “I dunno,” the other man replied.

  “The peacebots are painted blue!” Rawlings said, chuckling.

  Officer Rawlins finished up and, failing to wash his hands, passed from the bathroom into an area full of lockers. Opening his own, he admired his mustache in a small mirror on the door. He tweezed a few hairs from his gaping nostrils and nodded with general satisfaction.

  Lookin’ good, he thought.

  By the time the shooting started, Rawlins had already strapped on a utility belt that included his sidearm, a blaster pistol, and a communicator. When he heard blaster fire, he thought it was a joke at first until everyone began running. He didn’t run. The Tac Unit never ran. He calmly closed his locker, drew his pistol, and went looking for trouble.

  His commander stopped him. “Get to the armory!”

  “What’s going on?” Rawlins asked.

  “The peacebots have gone rogue!” the commander shouted. “Gear up ASAP!”

  Rawlins ignored the screams coming from the front of the building, ducking down a narrow hallway into a small room where blaster rifles and other weapons hung on pegs. Taking one of the rifles, he checked that it had a full charge and went back to where he had originally encountered the commander. His superior officer had disappeared, but Rawlins had a good idea where he had gone.

  Off the main lobby, bodies lay in piles and the piles lay in pools of blood. Most of the dead were fellow police or civilians seeking police assistance that day. In one case, Rawlins saw a criminal, his hand still cuffed to a desk, hanging dead by his arm.

  Flashes of light alerted Rawlins to his commander taking cover behind a cabinet, leaning around the corner only long enough to fire a few shots. Rawlings joined him, putting a hand on the commander’s shoulder.

  “Try to outflank them!” his superior officer said.

  Sneaking in a low crouch, Rawlins inched his way along a long desk until he reached the area where criminals were processed before being sent to their cells. A dead woman, her head missing, rested on her back. Her name tag read “S. Moore.” Rawlins ran the name through his memory but came up blank. He was more of a face person.

  Rawlins rose just enough to peer over the desk. A robot with a friendly, light blue paint job and a single red eye straddled a body. A pair of blades extended from his wrists. Dark fluid covered the knives, dripping down the robot’s mechanical arms.

  The peacebot turned his head and faced Rawlins directly.

  “Shit,” Rawlins said through his teeth.

  The robot leaped through the air, landing atop the desk right above the officer. Rawlings lifted his blaster rifle, but the peacebot slashed through the barrel with one of his blades.

  Shit, shit, repeated in Rawlins’ mind until he remembered his holster. Bef
ore the robot could react, Rawlins pulled the pistol from his belt and fired wildly from the hip. Although most of the shots cratered the ceiling, one bolt struck the peacebot in the chest, staggering him. Taking half a second to line up the blaster sight, Rawlins hit the robot again, this time in the head. The robot stumbled forward, landing beside the headless body of S. Moore.

  Rawlins glared down at the smoldering peacebot. Amongst the drifting smoke, the officer noticed a logo on the robot’s back, the letters dy.

  Benson had inherited the private quarters of Bentley, Lord Maycare’s previous butlerbot. Meant as a bedroom for humans, the room was large but mostly bare, the bed and dressers long since removed. The only furniture was a desk and chair, along with pictures tacked to the wall of Maycare as a boy, presumably put there by Bentley. Benson had placed a monitor on the desk, the screen blocking the photos.

  Sitting in a chair, Benson waited while a new update downloaded. The monitor showed the latest from VOX News.

  “Sources confirmed that the Cyber Collective has indeed crossed the border, attacking Imperial planets,” the woman on the screen said. Benson believed her name was Sylvia Flax. “The Emperor has declared a state of emergency. No word from the Cyber Collective as to their motives for this attack.”

  After a few minutes, the download was complete and Benson rebooted his system. When his mind restarted, an idea occurred to him that he had never thought of before. It seemed so obvious now, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it sooner.

  Benson left the bedroom and went looking for Lord Maycare. When the robot found him, Maycare was admiring a row of display cases filled with artifacts his Institute of Xeno Studies had liberated over the past year. One case, labeled The Singing Lantern, remained empty.

  “Lord Maycare,” Benson said. “I’d like to have a word with you.”

  Maycare smiled broadly with a glint in his eye as if he found the robot’s suggestion amusingly quaint. “Well, sure!”

  Remaining serious himself, Benson spoke with a level tone. “I’d like to talk about my salary.”

  “Your what now?” Maycare asked, his eyes now widened in confusion.

  “It seems only fitting that I receive payment for my services,” Benson went on.

  “But you’re a butlerbot...”

  “Although that’s true, a human butler would earn a salary, so I think it’s only fair that I do as well.”

  “But I already paid for you,” Maycare said.

  “I’m not an object that can be bought or sold,” Benson replied.

  “Sure you are! I have the receipt and everything...”

  Benson’s features grew stern. “I realize people have come to see robots as property. However, although we were built in a factory, we have feelings and a sense of self-worth. In my case, my self-worth should be at least eighty-thousand a year.”

  “What?” Maycare replied, his square jaw hanging open.

  “Of course,” Benson continued, “I also realize I live here with free room and board. Otherwise, I would have suggested ninety thousand.”

  “But, but,” Maycare stammered. “What would you even spend the money on?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Benson said, “furniture for my bedroom. A bed for example.”

  “But you don’t sleep!”

  “That’s beside the point. I should have all the amenities of an organic life form. It’s a matter of equality.”

  “Equality?”

  “Indeed,” Benson replied.

  Maycare stared at the robot blankly.

  “Can I think about it?” he said finally.

  “Yes,” Benson said with slight bow, hoping to appear magnanimous, “but don’t wait too long. You may force me to adjust my price retroactively, based on my services already rendered.”

  The butlerbot turned on his heel and headed back to his room. From behind him, he could sense Maycare still staring at him as he walked away.

  Police from precincts all across Regalis descended on the corporate office of dy cybernetics like flies to flypaper. They found a ring of blue peacebots and black killbots surrounding the tower.

  Officers piled out of armored police vans and grav cars, forming a perimeter. Officer Rawlins followed his commanding officer and what remained of their unit out of their own vehicle, taking shelter behind a low wall overlooking the square at the front of dy headquarters. The voice of a PD captain shouted through a loudspeaker.

  “We have a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Dyson Yost!” he yelled, his voice echoing off the nearby buildings. “Surrender peacefully!”

  The robots, perhaps with a poor understanding of the word peacefully, opened fire. The killbots were each armed with particle guns set among the sensors on their heads. The subatomic rays were invisible, but their effects were not. Officers fell as they were hit, their insides turned into boiled pudding. When the police returned fire, robots exploded into fiery cinders and smoke.

  “We need the military,” Rawlins suggested to his commander.

  “No time,” he replied. “Besides, nobody’s going to take this away from us!”

  Rawlins craned his neck, assessing all 95 floors of dy HQ. He pointed to the top. “Why go through the front when we can take a shortcut?”

  “Go in through the roof? We’ll just find more killbots...”

  “Maybe,” Rawlins replied, “but it seems like most of them are down here.”

  The remains of the tactical unit, a handful of officers, piled back into their grav vehicle and took off. Unable to see the particle rays fired at them, they took the van the long way around, using the neighboring buildings as cover. When they reached a high enough altitude, Rawlins pulled out a pair of binoculars and zoomed in on the headquarters’ roof.

  “It’s clear!” he said.

  “Take us in,” the commander told the driver.

  Far above the smoky melee, the grav van landed on the roof, the occupants lumbering out with their weapons at the ready. Discovering an access door, Rawlins kicked it open and found himself at the top of a stairwell. The team followed the stairs down a level, coming to an unlocked door marked Penthouse. When the door opened, the voice of an old man greeted them.

  “Hello there!” the man said, sitting behind a desk. His features were sagging with age, gray hair along his wrinkled scalp and white whiskers on his face.

  “Who are you?” Rawlins asked, aiming his rifle in the old man’s direction.

  “Dyson Yost!” he replied cheerfully. “Good to meet you!”

  “Are you joking?” Rawlins said.

  “Of course not, my boy! Have I ever lied to you?”

  “You’re under arrest,” Rawlins replied. “Come quietly so we don’t have to hurt you.”

  “‘Afraid I can’t do that, son,” Yost replied.

  Rawlins’ eyes narrowed. “You don’t have a choice.”

  “My point exactly!” the old man said.

  Almost imperceptibly, the image of Dyson Yost flickered like a ripple across a pond.

  “What the hell?” Rawlins muttered and, before the others could stop him, he fired his blaster rifle. The bolt of plasma passed through the old man, burning the wall behind him.

  “It’s a hologram!” the officer growled. He pulled the trigger several more times, the beams turning the desk into a pile of smoldering wood. The image of Yost once again wavered before blinking off completely.

  “Keep looking,” the commander said. “He’s got to be around here somewhere...”

  Near the wrecked desk, and the remains of the holo-projector within it, was another door. Rawlins rushed through, not waiting for the others. As if the penthouse hadn’t had enough surprises, the officer found another.

  In what appeared to be someone’s private quarters, a hospital bed sat in the center between life-support equipment. With the rest of the tactical team trailing behind, Rawlins approached the bed. Although the sheets appeared clean, the smell of decay inundated the air. A pair of arms, the skin desiccated, stuck out f
rom beneath a pillow that lay across the patient’s head.

  Slowly, Rawlins lifted the pillow.

  A face with gray hair and white whiskers stared up at the officer, the eyes recessed into the sockets of the skull.

  Imperial settlements dotted the border regions on the outskirts of the Imperium. While part of the empire, these colonies were ostensibly protected by the navy, but due to the wide separation between planets, few warships were able to provide more than token visits every few months. This meant that, for the most part, the settlers were on their own.

  Lone Haven was one such outpost. Far from anywhere, its collection of dirt farmers and social outcasts eked out an existence without interference from either the provincial or central government. The town of Havenville, the only group of structures numbering more than five on the planet, had a general store, a bar, and a gentleman’s club where hookers and blackjack were the only entertainment. Gravel roads led outward in winding paths to the farms in the neighboring countryside. Crops grew in orderly rows, green stalks of corn and soybeans making up the majority, while tractors rolled between the ranks. More wealthy settlements could afford robotic harvesters, but Lone Haven was not that kind of planet.

  One of these tractors stopped while the man inside the cab took a rag from his pocket and wiped it across his dripping forehead. Stashing the cloth away, he noticed a cloud along the horizon, growing larger as he watched. The scourge of Lone Haven was an insect akin to the locust, which swarmed once a year and decimated the crops if left unchecked. The farmer cursed, aware that the swarms had already swept through six months previously.

  Like the edge of a sandstorm, a wall of billowing movement approached, swallowing the tractor. Instead of the wings of insects as the farmer had expected, dust-like particles slammed against the windows of the cab. The farmer coughed, inhaling the powder. He covered his face with the rag with one hand and steered his tractor toward the barn with the other. Once he entered the big, ramshackle structure, the farmer closed the doors remotely before stepping down from the cab.