“Bolts,” said Rogan, deflating, which was quite hard for somebody made of metal to do. “We’re too late. They’re taking off.”
It took a lot to move a freighter that size, especially from a docked position on-world. Jack imagined the Final Dawn’s takeoff from Earth had been similarly cumbersome, albeit a lot more vertical. Yet despite its bulk, the first freighter was already angling itself up towards the stars.
“We can still make it,” said Tuner, inching out from behind the pumps. “If we’re quick.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jack, incredulous. “It’s practically a quarter the way out of the atmosphere already. How high do you think you can jump?”
“Not that ship,” said Tuner, pointing wildly at the other side of the hangar. “That ship!”
The other freighter was still as stationary as before. However, acolytes were disconnecting a fuelling hose from a port on its side and one of its ramps was rolling to a close. A few smaller, twin-seater ships took off further down the platform.
“Do you think we can reach it without being spotted?” asked Klik.
“It looks like all of the remaining acolytes are getting ready to leave,” said Rogan. “Hopefully they’ll be too busy boarding to notice us. Quickly, before they lock the doors!”
“Hold on a bloody second,” Jack said to an audience of none. Everybody was already on the move and he had to chase to catch up. “Let’s stop and think this through. Maybe I bashed my head worse than I thought, but it sounds as if you want to get on that ship before it leaves.”
“Where else are we going to find out what these weirdos want with a battalion of stolen automata?” replied Tuner, racing ahead.
“Right. Glad we cleared that up, then.” Jack sprinted across the concrete as fast as he could, but no matter how quickly they ran, the freighter didn’t appear to grow any closer. “And what about Adi? What are we going to do about her?”
“She’s a ship, Jack.” Rogan quickened her pace further. “She’ll catch up!”
Jack grumbled to himself and strongly contemplated suggesting that he would catch up with them too. But despite knowing this was – as he’d pointed out plenty of times already – a downright Stupid Idea, he couldn’t abandon his friends. They were the only ones he had left, after all.
They stopped behind a stack of cargo crates left over from before the factory was decommissioned. Raw materials, according to the labels peeling off their wooden sides. Enough to fetch a pretty penny in any outpost market, yet the devout pirates hadn’t taken any of it with them. Whatever they wanted the LX-14s for, Jack guessed it was about more than making money.
The last few acolytes had boarded and were prepping the freighter for departure. Only one ramp onto the ship remained; the others were all closed and sealed. Though the ship’s thrusters were yet to ignite, Jack could feel the thunderous rumble of its titanic engines through the stone floor of the hangar.
“It’s now or never,” said Rogan, apparently forgetting that a.) fleshies need to catch their breath, and b.) never really was the preferred option. “Go!”
About fifty metres remained between them and the ship. Rogan reached the ramp first. Tuner was the slowest amongst them – despite his inexhaustible enthusiasm – and would have been last had Rogan not dragged him by the hand behind her. As such it was Jack who brought up the rear, his ribs aching almost as much as his lungs and thighs.
He bumped into them all at the bottom.
“Why aren’t you—? Oh.”
A lone acolyte stood in the doorway at the top of the ramp, staring down at them with the same expression of stunned disbelief as they gave her in return. Her scaly hand hovered inches from a ramp retrieval button. Jack couldn’t see her other one. He suspected it was reaching for something a little less harmless.
“Oh, no you don’t,” said Rogan, grabbing the ramp’s handrails and charging up towards her.
The acolyte slammed her palm into the button beside her and the ramp immediately began to rise. Rogan reached her a split-second later, delivering a punch to her face hard enough to knock out a rhinoceros. While this was happening, Tuner scrambled up the lip of the ramp before it could rise beyond his reach. Klik leapt up with graceful ease. By the time Jack got the chance to pull himself up after them, the ramp was already six feet off the ground.
Knocked out or worse – her eyes had glazed over, though given they resembled those of snakes, they were pretty glossy to begin with – the acolyte slumped to the ground. After a quick check to make sure that the others had made it safely onto the freighter alongside her (or doing their best, in Jack’s case), she knelt down and scooped up the acolyte’s body in both hands.
Jack reached out to Klik, his miserable attempt at a pull-up becoming more embarrassing the longer it went on. She rolled her eyes – they were entirely black, but Jack was pretty used to her expressions of exasperation by now – and yanked him onto his feet.
“Old man,” she said somewhat tersely.
“Point taken.”
Rogan stepped past them and dropped the unconscious acolyte off the ramp and onto the cold hangar floor.
“Was that strictly necessary?” asked Jack, slightly taken aback. “She’ll roast out here.”
“The last thing we need while trapped on a stolen freighter is one of the Archimandrite’s goons waking up and alerting everyone to our presence,” she replied. “Now get inside before the ship starts taking off properly.”
They hurried down the ramp, which continued to rise. Jack practically slid to the bottom before it locked shut behind him and made a hissing, sucking sound as it sealed itself from the impending vacuum.
They stood alone in a small, dark room listening to the freighter’s engines roar louder and louder. Soon enough, Jack felt the titanic ship begin to move away from its bay.
Rogan clapped her hands. It sounded like two saucepans being smacked together.
“Right. Let’s go find some answers.”
They filed out through the other side of the airlock door. Jack lingered beside the ramp for a moment longer. There was no opening it even if he tried.
He steeled himself for trouble and followed them forward.
No turning back now.
8
Make it Last
It was, mercifully, much quieter inside the freighter than out. Cyclone Manufacturing may have cut every budget they ever received to ribbons, but apparently Negoti weren’t so miserly as to skimp on the soundproofing for their own shipping vessels.
That being said, it was hardly the Ritz-Carlton.
For one, the rest of the ship was as dark as the first airlock through which they entered. Jack guessed there wasn’t much point in lighting a freighter that predominantly transported stock rather than people, and mentally reprimanded himself for confusing the two when it came to automata. Whilst he would never think of Rogan and Tuner as anything other than friends on the same level as any fleshy, it was all too easy to slip into thinking of the LX-14s simply as machines. They may have been mechanical, they may have been as stupid as they come – according to Tuner – but that didn’t change the fact that, at least from an automata perspective, they were slaves being stolen from one master and forced into the service of another.
They didn’t deserve that, even if they were built for it.
At least the pipes weren’t leaking, and there was no haunting mist flooding the floor. Everything seemed to run exactly as it should, from what Jack’s limited engineering experience told him. No troubled grunting, no hissing and whistling from pressure building up where it shouldn’t, no weird gurgles from behind electrical outlets. He guessed that after investing the time and money to make something, Negoti liked to ensure their product got to the person paying for it.
Not that the Negoti Corporation was in control of these freighters any longer.
“Shouldn’t we have run into more of the acolytes by now?” asked Tuner, poking his head around the corner. The next corridor was as empty as the
last.
“Gift horse,” whispered Jack. Even with the acolyte’s snub-nosed pistol in his hand, he was too nervous to form complete sentences. “Mouth.”
“Not necessarily,” said Rogan. “I imagine most of them are up near the bridge or securing the LX-14s. There’s no need to set up patrols if you don’t think anyone else is aboard your ship.”
“Aren’t they about to get a nasty surprise?” said Klik, still clutching her cruddy laser rifle from the factory.
“Or we will,” Jack added.
They hadn’t been exploring the freighter at random. The holds in which the LX-14s were being stored couldn’t have been far from the hull, and the wider loading ramps hadn’t been much further down the ship’s flank than their narrow pedestrian one. They’d discovered a set of trolley tracks in the floor soon after leaving the airlock and were following them to their conclusion, wherever in the ship that might be.
A large and imposing iron door, it turned out. It sported a big, metal crank wheel, the kind one might usually expect to find on a submarine bulkhead. Old fashioned but secure.
Had Jack, Klik or Tuner tried to tackle the door alone, he doubted they could have opened it. The crank was too stubborn to turn and nothing short of C-4 would blow the door off its hinges. Luckily, they had Rogan. She was gifted with brains and brawn.
She grabbed the crank wheel and heaved it anticlockwise, the pistons hidden within her forearms practically wheezing with the effort. After an initial period of rusty disobedience, the wheel gave in and spun freely – almost too freely. Rogan had to quickly dart back to where the rest of them stood to avoid being crushed behind the massive door as it eagerly swung open.
It clunked to a stop against the wall. They stared at the dark hall beyond.
“Well,” said Jack, clearing his throat. “Ladies first.”
They stepped through the thick, reinforced door frame and into the warehouse. Here there were some lights – finally – though they only illuminated the stock rather than the hall as a whole. As such, the columns and rows of static LX-14s gave Jack the impression he was watching a troupe of dramatic actors standing motionless under spotlights on an otherwise pitch-black stage. It would have made for quite an unnerving performance.
There were so many of them.
He tried counting but had to give up. At a rough estimate, he reckoned there was close to two hundred and fifty combat automata in that warehouse hall alone. Surely there were another two-fifty or more riding just as silently in the other freighter. That meant the Archimandrite and his acolytes had stolen five hundred metal warriors – at the minimum.
“This isn’t the sort of strike force somebody steals for a simple bank job or whatever,” Jack whispered to the others. “This is a battalion built for war.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said Rogan, waving her hand in front of the nearest LX-14’s blank face. “The Archimandrite means business, whoever he is. Business that’s probably going to get a lot of innocent people killed.”
“All the more reason not to get mixed up in it,” Jack hissed. He was convinced that their voices would wake the automata up. “We’re innocent people!”
“Are we?” said Tuner. “We’re operating on behalf of the Ministry, pretty much. I think that makes us contractors.”
“Can you be a contractor without a contract?” Klik mused to herself, apparently unperturbed by their situation. “It’s not like we’re getting paid. Are we?”
“No,” said Rogan brusquely. “We’re doing this because it’s our duty.”
“We’re trapped on a ship with a mechanical army headed God knows where,” said Jack. “Let’s figure out how we’re going to stay alive before we start writing up any bills.”
Rogan reached up and tapped another LX-14 on its featureless head. It didn’t respond. Tuner tugged on the limp hand of another. That one didn’t move either.
“Funny,” said Rogan, mostly to herself. “I guess the thieves are holding off on activating them until they have orders to give. I wonder if they fear they’ll go rogue.”
Jack stood beside one of the LX-14s, his heart hammering. It may as well have been a suit of armour in a haunted house waiting to spring to life at any second.
“Does it not creep you out?” he asked Tuner. “Seeing them all like this, I mean.”
“Not really. Maybe? I don’t know.” Tuner shrugged. “It’s different than with fleshies. And it’s not like they’re dead. They just haven’t been activated yet. How did it feel before you were born?”
Jack’s brow furrowed.
“Like nothing. I didn’t exist yet.”
“I guess this isn’t much different,” Tuner continued. “Their minds won’t exist until the data cores are switched on. Their bodies have got a bit ahead of themselves, that’s all.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. But isn’t it weird knowing where you come from?”
Tuner contemplated this.
“Not really,” he replied cheerfully. “Is it weird that you don’t?”
“Good point.”
“Hey, guys.” Klik wandered over. “Do you remember when that lunatic had a gun pointed at you back in the factory?”
“Yes, Klik. It’s not an easy thing to forget, even though it did happen a whole half hour ago.”
“Who did he say it was for when he was about to pull the trigger? ”
“Erm, I can’t remember.” Jack wracked his brains. “I had a lot else on my mind. The First Daiquiri, was it?”
“The First Diakonos,” Tuner quickly corrected. His digital memory banks were a little more reliable than Jack’s hippocampus. “Why, does it ring a bell?”
Klik shook her head.
“Nah. It just struck me as odd. Rogan?”
“Never heard of them.” Rogan shook her head as he joined them. “Sounds like a cult, though, and I don’t know of any cults both stupid and funded well enough to steal automata from Negoti, let alone a pair of freighters to carry them. Are you sure it wasn’t Proto Dominion?”
Jack shook his head.
“Positive.”
“The Third Dirigibles? They’re quite loopy.”
“Definitely not,” said Tuner.
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe one of the more obscure groups changed their name recently. But that still doesn’t explain how they got the budget for this kind of operation. Somebody big must be bankrolling it, I’m sure.”
“Somebody who stands to gain from Negoti losing a bunch of soldiers?” suggested Klik.
“Or somebody who’ll benefit from a bunch of soldiers blowing something up,” said Tuner.
“Knowing our luck,” Jack interrupted, “I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. Right now, I’m more interested in finding out where we’re going. Any news from Adi, Rogan?”
“Oh, bolts.” Rogan’s eye-lenses glazed over as she hastily tried to make contact with the Adeona. “I should have reached out before we left the atmosphere. We’ve probably jumped to subspace by now.”
She shook her head apologetically a moment later.
“Sorry. Nothing. We probably won’t be able to get hold of her again until we land.”
“If our signal even reaches her,” said Jack, biting his lip to keep himself from snapping. “We could come out on the other side of the galaxy for all we know. This trip could take days. Maybe weeks.”
“Weeks?” That got Klik’s attention. “What are we supposed to do for all that time? What are we supposed to eat?”
“Calm down,” said Rogan. “We don’t—”
“…and if Adi can’t find us, how are we supposed to get home?”
“I don’t know!” Rogan took a moment to collect herself. “I don’t know. We won’t be trapped on this ship for weeks. Those acolyte people are on board too, so it’ll likely be a short trip. And regarding Adi… well, we’ll figure something out. We always do.”
“She’ll be pissed we forgot about her,” said Jack. He took a deep b
reath. “Worried sick, too.”
“Yes, I know.” Rogan crossed her arms. “I get it, Jack. We all make mistakes sometimes – even me.”
They all fell as silent as the empty LX-14s surrounding them. Jack felt his face grow red. He supposed he might have overdone it.
“I mean, it’s not like we actually have a home to get back to,” said Tuner, brightly. “Adi is our home. So I suppose home will have to come to us.”
Jack laughed in exhausted disbelief. It had been a long day.
“What on earth are you even—”
A loud sound like an anvil being struck by a giant’s hammer shut Jack up. Another industrial security door had swung open on the far side of the warehouse. Flashlights swayed and nervous alien voices whispered.
Either they’d been rumbled, or they were about to be.
“Erm, what do we do?” asked Tuner.
“Hide, obviously!” said Jack.
They spun around, desperately peering through the spotlighted LX-14s in the hope of finding something other than a bronze automata to cower behind. Jack couldn’t find anything, and the voices were getting louder.
“Erm, where?” said Klik.
“Over there,” said Rogan, pointing in the opposite direction to the approaching flashlights. The lenses of her eyes tightened to the point of almost closing. “Container units. Hurry.”
They shuffled back across the warehouse between the LX-14s as quietly as they could, hoping the hall was big enough that their footsteps wouldn’t carry all the way to the acolytes who’d come to investigate. Maybe the automata would absorb some of the sound, Jack hoped. Or maybe a few hundred metal chassis would only amplify it.
Rogan reached the doors of the first container and pulled them open. It was crammed full with boxes of medical scanners. The next was locked with a chain wrapped around its handles. Growing frustrated, she opened the third one along. Luckily, this was empty save for a small pile of bent and busted gears in the corner.
They squeezed inside and, grateful that it didn’t creak, slowly closed the door behind them.
The Tin Soldiers (Final Dawn, Book 5) Page 7
