‘Jel- ez,’ she corrected.
‘Jel- ez,’ he aped. ‘Kel Jeles,’ he repeated, correctly.
He extended his hand forward to shake hers and she looked confused. Perhaps she wasn’t from the Copernicus as it appeared it was not a custom from wherever it was she came? He imitated a hand shake and she caught on, quickly taking his hand in hers and shaking it enthusiastically. She looked happy to have someone of her own kind aboard. Hayden was impressed by this waif-like girl who stood before him. ‘Now what’s your plan?’ he asked, realising they were probably about to try an escape. He glanced pensively about at the other cages and the single entrance which led out to an untold number of Sepians.
Kel Jeles wrinkled her forehead. ‘Just leave,’ she stated with the utmost confidence.
‘O - kay?’ Hayden replied, surprised at her nonchalance and this time cocking his own head to the side. Just walk out! She’s got to be kidding?
Kel gracefully leapt across to the exit and motioned for Hayden to follow. She again motioned with sign language for him to put his ear to the door. Hesitantly, he made his way through gloom with things beginning to growl and howl more regularly in the darkness behind him. When he arrived, in the light from the small globe he saw that her hair was blonde and when she turned to him, her face was heart-shaped, with large almond-shaped blue eyes, was around his age and very good looking. She had the most welcome face he needed to see outside his family and friends.
While he listened, he tried to keep track of her as she jumped quietly up onto some of the upper cages and after what appeared to be very careful selection, to Hayden’s further surprise, gently appeared to unlock one. Quietly making her way back down, she tip-toed back across the floor toward him while he anxiously worried just what was in that newly unlatched cell. He could only comfort himself in the hope that she knew exactly what she was doing. Arriving back at the exit, Kel signed for help to prop a small crate against the opening side of the door and Hayden was beginning to understand just what it was she wanted to do.
They placed the incredibly light knee height metallic crate against the wall and onto a slight tilt then waited with ears against the door and their eyes, particularly Hayden’s, scanning the cages behind them. It was no time at all before Hayden heard something faintly. The sound became louder and something was definitely coming. Kel jumped upward and at the same time pushed Hayden aside as she smashed the light globe on the wall above the door then ducked as little pieces of glass lightly showered them and tinkled across the sticky floor. Kel swished her right leg in great arcs sweeping as much glass as possible away from the entrance with her foot.
Hayden shot a glance back at the cages and heard a growl emanating from the darkness. Something stirred then there was silence again. Kel reached for his hand firmly then dragged him toward the cage into which he’d been thrown, pulled him past herself then pushed him inside the opened door and tumbled in behind. Closing the door quietly and leaving a small gap. Kel positioned herself at the ready to run and Hayden copied. Clenching his fists in anticipation, he wondered if the small crate, most vital to their plan, could cope with the force and weight of the motorised door.
After a few moments a muffled electronic sound from outside was heard and then a shaft of light spread through the grease stained cell-block as the door slid open.
The silhouette of a Sepian was revealed and from its size, appeared to be the same one that enjoyed bashing Hayden against the walls but he couldn’t be sure. It moved warily and almost silently inside. They held their breath as it passed uneventfully by the upended crate. Suddenly it stopped then turned back and slid to the door. Hayden was sure it had discovered the plan that his new friend had tried to set into motion. They both couldn’t be sure as to what it was looking for or at? The glass from the broken globe? They didn’t dare discuss it as they watched the creature begin to turn back toward them. As it spun around carelessly in the doorway, it successfully clipped the edge of the crate so that it fell behind it, clanking lightly as it hit the floor. The Sepian paused in the gloom warily and turned its head back glaring at the fallen crate. It either could not see in the gloom- which was unlikely with eyes as big as it had- or was too dumb to work out that the crate was in the door’s closing path. They both sighed with relief when it appeared to be the latter. Sliding eerily into the centre of the room, the Sepian’s hulking features glistened in the diminishing light cast by the closing door. The beast paused for several seconds before turning a few degrees to face rearward and inspect the lower cages.
The crate had now stopped the door and there was a gap about a metre wide that the stupid thing still hadn’t noticed. Hayden’s heart was beating so fast and pumping into his ears so loudly, he was sure it would give them away. Kel, her left foot planted firmly just ahead of her body with her muscles taut, squeezed his hand forcefully.
It was time to go.
The Sepian continued to inspect the cages in the dark, unaware that one almost directly above its head was unsecured and that one a few feet away from it contained two prisoners that were about to attempt an escape. Kel opened the hatch quietly and led as they carefully ventured out of the little cell and made as quietly as possible for the exit. They were no more than a few metres away from relative freedom when Hayden slipped on the slime trail the creature had left and careened into another crate that clanged loudly onto the floor beside him. The Sepian spun round instantly and with one surprisingly fluid movement, drew its sidearm and fired a bright blast of light in Hayden’s direction as he scrambled away. Slipping and sliding along the floor toward Kel who was by now already standing tantalizingly close on the other side of the exit, rapid flashes of bright red light burned into the dirty metal walls, igniting long strands of filmy grease that quickly dripped flame. Hayden reached the opening and jumped through it. Turning to see the beast nearing, he kicked the crate away as the door closed milliseconds after another energy blast narrowly passed his head and ominously scorched the far wall of the corridor, a tendril of smoke dissipating as the shot rang out like a bell. The two teenagers momentarily caught their breath before they heard a baritone growl emanate from the other side of the closed door. Only Kel and the Sepian knew what had awakened. Several faint shots were heard from within before silence returned and all that Hayden could hear was the faint drone of the ship's engine beneath their laboured breathing and his pounding heart. Kel grabbed Hayden’s right forearm firmly and they hastened away as a creature bellowed over its kill.
The Sepian’s cell block was dark and humid no doubt to keep their skin moist. Hayden thought of the strange stare he’d been given on Salar-One. He didn’t like the look of them then and he certainly had no love for them now. Wiping a thin coating of sweat from his brow he looked across at Kel who was concentrating on their escape. ‘What was that - thing in there?’
‘Cro-Ag,’ Kel answered nonchalantly as they walked. ‘Small one.’
‘What’s a - whatever you said?’
Kel looked at him strangely. ‘Something you do not want to know.’
‘Like the Sepians,’ Hayden mumbled.
Kel turned briefly, put her hands to her mouth and drew them downward demonstrating large teeth, tensing her dainty hands and pretended they were claws as she slashed pathetically into the thick air. Hayden got it. ‘No more of them out here?’ he asked his guide nervously. Kel shook her head but looked about as if she wasn’t sure and a chill went up her new companion’s spine - again.
They were walking warily down a passage that seemed to just go on. Just how big was the ship? Hayden thought. How am I supposed to get back to the Copernicus?
‘Aft is tender storage.’
‘Tender? ’ Hayden questioned. ‘Like a life-boat?’
‘Small ship,’ Kel answered. ‘How many depends on crew size. Does not appear to be many manning this rig.’
‘Rig?’ Hayden noted her familiarity then wiped still more sweat from his brow. ‘You mean this ship?’
Kel nodded in the way she always did, pointed ahead then made a shushing gesture.
They approached an archway and Hayden involuntarily recoiled for an even uglier smell tainted the air. Peering carefully around the corner, he was surprised to see a cavernous space filled with large piles of rubbish. Forcing himself to acclimatise to the strong odour☐ which wasn’t easy, he looked over at Kel who was wincing, obviously finding it as unappealing. Hayden coughed as it was as repulsive as the cell block stink but with a heavy metallic tinge. Kel shushed him again.
The domed ceiling was at least nine or ten metres in height and at its apex was a large transparent dome allowing the starlight to shine through, illuminating a small mountain of rubbish in the centre of the room that very nearly touched it.
‘What type of ship is this? ’ he whispered, trying not to inhale too heavily.
‘Salvage.’ Kel replied, attempting same.
Piles and piles of mangled metal and other unidentifiable stuff choked the room. Kel looked Hayden in the eye with a cold stare, ‘They salvage anything.’
Hayden didn’t get what she was saying at first but then suddenly did and he understood very clearly. Like himself, Kel and those others in the cellblock had been stolen, most probably to be sold as slaves or worse.
‘This is a slave ship? ’
Kel’s solid glare and her silence confirmed it.
‘What would they have done to us? What would they have done to those others - to you? ’
Kel searched the room for any trouble and seeing, as far as she could tell, that it was clear, she leant up against the archway and threw her head back. Looking up through the dome at the freedom beyond, her face covered in a film of perspiration that reflected the blue starlight. She stood silently for a moment then looked back at Hayden, her hair falling over half her face. ‘Those others to be sold to circus. Me, you? Really you do not want to know.’
This universe was becoming too dangerous.
‘We are to leave,’ Kel announced as she searched for a safe path through. Hayden began to move ahead of her and Kel looked at him questioningly.
‘Well - because -’ and he pointed to himself trying to explain his attempted chivalry.
‘- Because you are a boy! ’ Kel stared at Hayden angrily, her brow furrowed, tainting her pretty face.
Immediately he knew better than to pursue the matter and let her pass, feeling quite stupid even to contemplate taking the lead when it was she who was doing all the escaping.
Kel stepped from the archway and into the room full of the tall mounds of junk in varying states of decay. Grimy, dirty, rusty.
‘What do you mean, ‘circus’? Do you mean they were to be sold as circus animals? Hayden asked. ‘For entertainment?’
‘They sell Cro-Ag for much on the market,’ Kel answered. ‘The bigger they are, the bigger they pay. Very hard to catch Cro-Ag without becoming dead.’
‘So they were all animals in those cages? Why?’
‘I think we later go to circus - fight with them.’
Hayden couldn’t help but think of the Roman coliseum and the gladiators and was glad not to be involved in anything like it.
Kel nodded. ‘Or we be sold to mine company or ..’
‘- Okay, I get it,’ Hayden interrupted, terrified at what could have been and respecting Kel more so than ever for helping them to get out of it. Kel stopped suddenly and Hayden moved round her, interested in her sudden fascination with the bottom of a nearby pile. It took him a few moments to work out just what it was that she was getting quite excited about.
Its parts became apparent from the surrounding flotsam in the starlight and he found himself again amazed. He saw, two legs and a torso, two arms and then a great head.
‘That’s a robot!’ He heard himself exclaim loudly.
Kel lifted her finger to her mouth and shushed him.
‘That’s a robot,’ he whispered. Kel was surprised.
‘They do not have them on _’ she paused to remember where it was Hayden said he’d come from ‘ - Herf?’
‘EarTH. Well, yes we do - but not like that really.’
Kel wasn’t really listening as she moved toward the awkwardly reclining hulk. She climbed over its bulky body as she was interested in the back of its big bronze dome of a head.
‘Wh - what are you doing?’ Hayden asked nervously.
‘This is an ADS4,’ Kel replied confidently.
Hayden shrugged.
‘Soldier mechan.’
‘Soldier-?’
‘Soldier,’ Kel repeated.
‘I know what a soldier is but what was the other thing?’
‘Mechan.’
Mechan, mechanical- Hayden decoded, smiling. ‘It’s a mechanical man. Makes sense.’
‘Yes.’ Kel shook her head slowly as she wondered how anyone couldn’t know what a mechan was.
Positioning her hand behind its sideways tilted head, she easily unhinged a small hatch and placed her hand inside. She seemingly fumbled about intently for a moment before removing a transparent card that Hayden sort of recognised immediately as a computer chipset. Standing, she moved to an area with slightly more light and rested the chip on a nearby flat piece of metal at her waist’s height. Hayden watched her study it briefly then expertly manipulate something on its thin surface.
‘Done,’ she declared.
‘Done what? ’
‘You want help to get out of here?’
Hayden nodded, fascinated at what he was sure she was suggesting.
‘Soon you will have.’
He backed up as Kel moved passed him and over the mechan. She knelt at its huge slumbering form and replaced the electronics back through the small port and into the mess of wiring in its head. A few blue-white sparks flew then a crisp click echoed around them. Kel closed the little hatch. ‘We have a few seconds before reset. ’
‘Before what? ’
There was a fizzling sound then a clunk and then more sparking. Hayden watched on nervously as Kel watched confidently.
Two long strips on its smooth but grimy bronze head flashed a few times then lit up blue and became, for lack of a better description, its eyes. It then turned its immense face slowly toward the ceiling with a motorized hum and Hayden took a hesitant step backward. Something whirred deep inside its mid-section and its golden-yellow four fingered hands crushed down on the surrounding junk. It started to push itself upright and Hayden retreated further until he stood behind Kel who thought his nervousness strange so pushed him away. Once the mechan’s arms had lifted it high enough, it raised its hydraulic legs and positioned its two thick plated, rounded off square feet underneath itself for balance. A muffled ‘thunk’ was heard and it pushed upward until it stood completely, crushing the scrap beneath it with immense force. Another whirr and its face tilted downward directly at Hayden and he gulped nervously.
‘Autonomous Drone Soldier - Model4,’ Kel revealed proudly as to her it was a gift and one that Hayden would have to accept.
He looked up and down at what stood before him. There was no doubting the fact that there was a better chance to be with it than without.
A huge brass metal man: seven feet tall with strong hydraulic legs and arms. An impervious looking upper torso with a wide trapezoidal chest and an ominous looking armoured backpack-like construction that rose over its broad shoulders and fused to its lower back. But what really impressed was its head. The two elongated thin blue light strips ran with a gentle downward curve from above the outward sides of its upper face to where the bridge of a nose should be on a human face. It struck Hayden that it looked reminiscent of a Spartan warrior’s helmet without the decoration on top.
Its mouth consisted of three small vertical slits on the bottom centre of its face. It certainly looked impressive.
‘Now that is a robot! What does it do?’
‘He is a soldier so - soldier things.’
Hayden looked at the ADS4. It looked mean and it looked like it could fight.
Reaching up to wipe some grease from its lower chest with her tattered sleeve, Kel looked into its face. ‘Now, he is our escort,’ she said tapping her dainty fingers on its mighty armoured forearms with a solid tinking sound.
Hayden was very, very impressed.
‘How did you know you could activate it? ’
‘My father taught me all there is to know about Mechanicals. Its brain, I pulled it. Erased olden memory.’ Sensing Hayden’s interest she explained further. ‘Pull out and invert the Mem-shard the old data is gone. Right the shard and it is new memory for us to use.’
‘A Central Command Unit then. So how can you-? ’
‘It is a design flaw.’
Hayden looked at the giant standing silently before him. ‘So in the heat of battle anyone could just re-program one of these?’
‘Yes,’ Kel answered, a wicked grin lifting the right side of her mouth. ‘But who be foolish enough?’
Hayden hesitated to ask more of her father.
‘We are from Devonia but my father travels a lot. We were separated on Saurian-four. That’s when I got picked up by the Sepians. ’
‘Devonia?’
‘Yes. ’
‘But that’s where the Sepians come from right? ’
‘There are many on Devonia. Sepians are just one. There are not other beings on where you are from?’
‘No being like them!’ Hayden retorted with disgust, his guts feeling uneasy at the thought of more of them on the ship.
‘We go to Devonia. I’ll get us off this ship - with your help,’ she promised feistily. Hayden felt glad he could help but then realised who she meant. He looked back at the mechan as it just stood there, towering above them.
‘How did this thing get here anyway and why didn’t the Sepians re-programme it like you just did?’
‘They have found it good but are too stupid-’ Kel pressed her finger tips together on one hand and waved it about to represent a Sepian’s tentacle. ‘No fingers to re-programme. To them it is for scrap they can crush and offload for good price. ’
‘As far as I can tell, it doesn’t appear to be damaged at all,’ Hayden noted, seeing no incapacitating wounds on its metallic hide.
The Blake Equation- Discovery Page 12
