Free Trader Complete Omnibus

by Craig Martelle

  “You’ve lived four-thousand cycles?” Braden looked at the Androids, as Micah didn’t give them a chance to answer Braden’s inane question.

  “We need to align the ship in order to transfer the survivors from Cygnus VI to the Traveler and then further to planet Vii, I mean Cygnus VII,” Micah told the Androids.

  They stood motionless. Braden started to get a bad feeling. He opened his neural implant so Holly could do his thing.

  “I’m sorry, what are you waiting for?” Micah asked them, asserting her authority.

  “We can’t do that from here, Master President. This is one of many Maintenance and Service Sections. There are over one hundred of these throughout the ship. We keep the ship systems functioning. We work with the air and water circulation on Deck 2.” The Android stood expressionless after his explanation.

  “How do we get there from here?” Micah was losing patience. The Androids weren’t volunteering information. If she wanted specifics, she had to ask specific questions.

  “Go back to the elevator and tell it Command Deck, Bridge. It will take you to a corridor similar to this one. Follow that to the Bridge. Once there, the Bridge Crew will be able to align the ship for you.” The Androids remained motionless, watching. It was unnerving. When humans talked with Holly, he moved, changed expressions, acted human.

  “Are you trying to access our systems?” the Android asked matter-of-factly, without inflection in its voice.

  “We are in contact with the Command Center on Cygnus VII. Is that a problem?” Micah asked, trying to buy time. She rested her hand on her blaster and looked to Braden. He was engrossed with Holly. She reached over and touched his arm. While she talked with the Androids, she slid his hand toward the butt of his weapon.

  “It was my impression, as the President, that the ship and the planet below should be in constant contact. We have just reestablished the link after all these cycles, years, that is. We have much to catch up on, don’t you agree?”

  “We can’t allow you to access our systems. They are delicately balanced.”

  “Holly, please stop what you’re doing,” Micah said in an authoritatively loud voice, while also squeezing Braden’s arm.

  ‘Holly. Stop what you’re doing or we’re going to have to fight these Androids.’ Braden passed through the link.

  ‘There is something strange about their systems. If you could give me more time, I’m sure I could get in and find what I need.’

  ‘There’s no time left, Holly. Stop now,’ Braden emphasized. He looked at Micah and nodded.

  “Is that better? Please accept my apologies. The system on Vii did not have authorization to cause you any problems.” Micah tried to soothe the Androids. They remained unreadable. “Please, return to your duties. I’d like to observe for a while.”

  The Androids hesitated, making the situation even more uncomfortable than it already was. Then, they went back to their monitors and consoles. They focused on the screens, punching buttons and making hand motions in front of them.

  “Are there humans on the Bridge?” Micah asked. The Androids ignored her, going about their business as if she no longer existed.

  ‘Holly, do we have anything to worry about from these things?’ Micah asked via her neural implant, while trying to watch the Androids with her other eye.

  ‘I fear that I cannot tell. I was unable to break into their systems. For this reason alone, I recommend caution.’ Micah reduced her window. She looked at Braden and casually pulled herself around the Maintenance and Service spaces. Handholds were conveniently located throughout the space. She suspected they’d see the same thing everywhere there was zero-g.

  Braden moved opposite Micah, bracketing the Androids in case they did something he didn’t like. He was ready to kill them all. Maybe the ‘cat’s inherent fear of machines was rubbing off on him. Braden stopped when he had a good line of fire and watched Micah as she continued moving around them.

  The Androids stood on the deck, held in place without using their hands. Braden wondered how they did that, but didn’t want to open the window with Holly. He needed to pay attention to the here and now.

  Micah pulled herself beside a different Android from the one who had spoken. She leaned close, trying to see what the Android was looking at.

  The screen was blank. She couldn’t tell if the system was functioning at all. She nodded at the Android and moved on. It was the same for each. There were systems functioning within the space, but not any of those the Androids were working with.

  But the Androids felt Holly when he tried to access the system. Micah realized that Holly had tried to access the Androids themselves. She took a deep breath.

  “I think that’s enough. You look busy, so I’ll leave you to it. Thank you for your gracious welcome and information.” She pushed off a bulkhead toward the hatch when a hand shot out, gripping her leg tightly. She stopped instantly.

  Braden pulled his blaster which started him spinning. He tried to aim with one hand, while holding tightly to a bulkhead hand grip with the other. He wedged his foot into the back of a console to steady himself.

  The Android closest to him turned toward him and took one quick step.

  Even floating, he was too close for Braden to miss. He pulled the trigger, holding it a little longer than normal as the light beam burned into the chest of the creature. It started sparking and then it froze. Whatever was holding it to the deck released and it floated in front of the human, blocking his view of the others.

  The Android held Micah’s leg so tightly she thought the bone would break. She pulled her blaster and leaned down, firing between her legs into the mid-section of the Android. Short bursts. She fired three times before it let go. She kicked it away from her, spinning it toward the back of the space while propelling herself forward. She completed her roll, moving feet first toward the hatch while aiming at one of the remaining two Androids.

  Braden tried to move his dead Android aside. He leaned back against the bulkhead and kicked it with both feet. It was harder and heavier than he thought it would be, but it moved.

  Into Micah’s line of fire. Her shot hit the already dead, tumbling Android. Her intended target moved quickly toward another hatch in the back of the space. His fellow was moving toward her.

  Braden regained his perch, aimed and fired at the retreating figure. He hit it in the side of the head which then exploded in a shower of sparks. Its momentum carried it forward until it smashed into the hatch, then floated slowly back toward the center of the space.

  Micah hit the bulkhead with her legs and pushed off toward the remaining Android. She aimed down her line of travel and pulled the trigger. Once, twice, then a third time.

  The chest of the creature sparked and it froze, statue-like, as it lost its grip on the deck. She rolled and kicked as it approached, sending it harmlessly away.

  Braden and Micah floated in the Maintenance and Service space with four dead Androids. Micah gained a handhold, then launched herself back to the hatch. She waved her bracelet and it opened.

  “C’mon, everybody, the party’s in here.” She left the hatch open as the companions crawled, climbed, and flew up the corridor.

  29 – Storage

  ‘Holly, the Androids were working with blank screens. They were going through the motions.’ Micah wanted insight from Holly on whether they would run across more Androids like these.

  ‘Insufficient data. If you could have kept one of them active, I could have recovered the information.’

  ‘Enough of the Engineering Spaces, Holly. We killed the vines and we killed the Androids. There was something wrong with them and then they attacked Micah. We had no choice, so stop being an ass.’ Braden had no patience for Holly’s second guessing. The Androids were dangerous. ‘Sleep,’ he told the annoying window before his eye.

  ‘Holly, can you access these computers?’ Micah inserted herself back into the conversation. They needed more information to move forward safely. How many more
of these Androids would they encounter?

  ‘Working on it, Master President. Please keep your window open while I work and if you could, tell Braden I’m sorry.’ Holly sounded contrite.

  “Holly says he’s sorry, by the way. He’s trying to access the working computers right now. Hang on, he’s telling me to do something. What was that, Holly?” Micah reached for a panel on the rear bulkhead. She counted down a number of rows, then over a certain number of buttons before pushing it in and holding it there. Nearly all the panels in the room were touch screens and not physical buttons. This panel had a covering over it to forestall an accident should someone fly about the room out of control.

  Like the Androids were doing.

  “Pik, can you secure those things please,” Braden asked. With the floating Androids and the floating companions, the space had gotten crowded.

  Pik and Aadi worked together to wedge the bodies under a table.

  The Hawkoids were using their wingtips like fish used their side fins. They were darting back and forth across the space, until Braden snagged Skirill and wrapped an arm around him.

  He was going to say something smart, but Skirill looked happy. He was still on his honeymoon, as Braden understood Hawkoid mating rituals. The human settled for a better approach. “Easy, my friend. Micah is working with Holly to figure out how many more of these things we might run across. Maybe you and Zyena can fly the corridor? It’s kind of cramped in here.”

  They zipped through the open hatch and raced each other down the corridor. Braden watched with humor as the Hawkoids couldn’t stop themselves, and crashed faces first into the elevator door. They floated for a second before coming to their senses and flew back up the corridor at a more sedate pace. He hadn’t thought about it before, and wondered how old Skirill was in Hawkoid years. He’d have to ask when they were in a safe place, like back on Vii.

  Micah continued to let Holly work. Braden moved to one of the two other hatches in the Maintenance and Service space. Neither had a window.

  He opened the first with a wave of his bracelet. It opened to a bathroom, he thought. None of the fixtures looked like what he was used to, but they would be different when everything floated. He was glad that he didn’t have to go. It would be embarrassing asking Holly for help.

  He secured the bathroom door and moved on. The next hatch opened onto a large storage space, much larger than the Maintenance and Service space. The first thing Braden thought was there had to be another way in as he spotted another hatch at the far end. They wouldn’t move boxes of materials through the smaller Maintenance and Service space.

  Holly was busy with Micah, and Braden figured it wasn’t safe to explore on his own, so he recruited volunteers. “Aadi, G, Pik. There’s something in here you need to see.”

  ‘I know you want company. Why didn’t you just say so instead of the ploy?’ G-War scolded. The ‘cat rode Aadi, now that the Hawkoids were mobile. He lay flat on the Tortoid’s shell, claws embedded in the armor and rope. Pik used the handholds and was getting adept at moving around. Unlike the Amazonians on Vii, he had hands instead of three-fingered claws.

  He was a natural in what Holly called the zero-g environment.

  The storage area was arranged radially. There was a center tube with handholds, then racks holding specially designed boxes. Boxes containing smaller items had a soft access port where a person could reach a hand through, take the desired number of parts, and pull them out without anything else floating away. There were aisles, but these went from the center tube directly to the bulkhead in each direction. There was no up or down. Braden wanted to orient himself, so he focused on a point on the far bulkhead and declared a random direction to be up.

  He was getting sick to his stomach. The constant floating was getting to him.

  ‘Master Braden. I think you should come and look at this.’ Aadi was in the middle of the center tube.

  “Okay, funny. I did it to you, now payback.” Braden laughed, but Aadi wasn’t joking.

  Braden pulled himself back down the tube, past Pik, and looked to where G-War was nodding.

  Bodies, wrapped in plastic. Stuffed between shelves. Braden looked more closely. Humans. Long dead.

  “What do you think, G?”

  ‘I think they’ve been dead a long time.’ Sometimes the Golden Warrior was a master of the obvious. Or maybe he thought the human couldn’t grasp the plainest of facts.

  ‘I suspect they died at the hands of the Androids,’ Aadi said as he craned his neck to look at the bodies from different angles. ‘Yes. I believe their necks are broken. In this environment, that wouldn’t be easy to do, unless you could stick to the deck and had the strength of a machine.’

  “I think that you’re the wisest creature I know and if you say it, then I believe you.” Braden checked the bodies over and pulled a command bracelet from one of their wrists. “Here you go, Pik. Put this on your wrist.” He tossed it slowly, then showed the bracelet on his own wrist.

  The Lizard Men must not have played catch growing up. His eyes grew wide as the bracelet approached. He waved his hands in front of his face as he prepared to catch it. He missed with his left hand which started him spinning. He flailed with his right hand, hitting the bracelet and sending it down a different radial access. Braden couldn’t see between the shelves, so he didn’t know where it went.

  Braden took the bracelets from each of the former crew members. He pocketed four and pulled himself to the central tube. Pik was rummaging in the radial access where the bracelet had flown.

  “Pik. Leave it. I have another one.”

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s here somewhere.’ Pik kept digging. Braden joined him, not searching for the bracelet, but looking at the boxes and boxes of Old Tech. Parts, bits, pieces, small motors, and other items to fix the complex machinery of the ship. He found tubes labeled as adhesive. He took one of these. There were small machines at the end of the access tube. Looking around Pik, he couldn’t tell what they did. He wanted to touch them, see if they served a useful purpose.

  Useful to him, that was. As a Trader, his mind raced in a thousand different directions. What could he trade this for? Who wouldn’t want two of those? What about this? Nothing like it in all of Warren Deep! Here was the wagon load of Old Tech that would make him rich.

  He looked at the tube of adhesive in his hand. He took the one practical thing that he’d seen. His new survival instincts kept his Trader persona from taking over.

  “Let’s go, Pik. We’re done here.”

  ‘It’s here somewhere.’

  “Pik! Give me your hand.” Pik stopped rummaging and looked defeated. Braden snapped a bracelet around the Lizard Man’s wrist. “You know, I almost called you Pack. One of our horses, back on Vii, he’s called Pack. Pack and Pik. Pik and Pack. Hmmm. I may have to call the horse Speckles.”

  Pik listened to all of this, followed none of it, then settled for nodding politely. He looked at the command bracelet on his wrist. He was a member of Braden’s patrol, just like everyone else!

  Braden watched as Pik stared at the bracelet. He slapped the Lizard Man on the shoulder, which sent him bouncing off the shelves.

  “Welcome to the caravan, Pik!”

  30 – Between Decks

  Braden pulled himself to the end of the tube where there was another hatch. He waved his bracelet and the hatched rolled aside.

  He thought there would be another room like the last one beyond. There wasn’t. It was the space between decks. There was a great deal of piping and cabling. Holly showed them the factory level of the New Command Center, and here, Braden saw many similarities.

  There was a track system with carts spaced intermittently. There was a panel where someone could call a cart for movement of people or materials. It looked both efficient and operational. Braden watched the space. He saw the outline of a number of hatches, identical to the one he floated near. There were straps and handholds outside each door. In zero-g, there was no need for a platform
or walkway, only something to hang on to.

  Floating in the space was disconcerting. Braden’s incessant nausea since they entered this level overwhelmed him. He retched, then flailed as the vomit floated back toward him. He pulled himself out of the way using the strap, then crawled back through the hatch, shutting it just in time. Without a window, he couldn’t tell what happened, but expected the other side of the hatch to be covered in spew.

  He wanted to ask Holly if this piping and cart space could take them all the way to the rear core area. He wanted to avoid as much extraneous travel as possible. Whenever they traveled through a new area, they either made an enemy or made a friend. Too much more of each could wear them down.

  He nodded at Pik to go back to the Maintenance and Service space. Pik’s eyes were wide as he looked at the hatch. He was still trying to embrace the idea that he had been on a ship his whole life. Deck 9 had been all he knew of the world and now he realized that it had been one small space in a bigger world, with an even bigger world beyond. He respected how easily Braden and Micah moved between the individual worlds of the Decks. Pik looked at Braden and nodded. He put his green hand on Braden’s shoulder and squeezed. Where the humans led, he would follow.

  Braden couldn’t read the expression on Pik’s face. He wanted him to move back down the central tube. With Aadi, G-War, and Pik in the way, he was cramped against the hatch. He knew there was puke splattered on the other side and it gave him the willies. He wanted to leave this level, maybe even make a quick trip back to Deck 2, where he could stand up.

  Aadi turned and swam away. Pik finally pulled himself down the tube. Braden followed.

  Micah was still engaged with Holly so he couldn’t hear her thoughts. She looked at him when he returned, but didn’t say anything. She raised one finger. They were getting close to finishing. They waited, floating patiently.

  More lights flashed on the panel before Micah, most of them green. The monitors had come to life, too. He sat at one and worked as he’d done at the New Command Center, but these didn’t act like the ones he was used to. It brought up various things, but they showed status and operations that Braden couldn’t understand. He left the monitor as it was.