Free Trader Complete Omnibus

by Craig Martelle

  Braden held out his hands and looked at Micah in surprise. Treetis started climbing the gate, but Fea caught him by the scruff of his neck. Treetis was slightly larger than the all-white female ‘cat, but she was a mother and this was her adopted son, so she dragged the young ‘cat off the gate. He looked funny hanging from her mouth. She stepped on him as she tried to walk away and finally gave up, dropping him to the street.

  They joined the Wolfoid next to the wall. Fea made Treetis sit at Bounder’s feet while she faced the orange ‘cat and stared.

  Pik was on the other side of the gate from Braden, next to the wall, while Micah was across the street, blending into the small crowd of people waiting to eat lunch. Skirill and Zyena didn’t see anything, until the gate started to open, and everyone saw that at the same time.

  An orange flash appeared as soon as the gate had opened wide enough. Through the opening and a hard turn toward Braden, G-War raced past the Wolfoid, Fea, and Treeits. ‘Come on,’ he told them over the mindlink. As one, the Wolfoid and two ‘cats bolted after the Golden Warrior. Pik stood frozen and did the only thing he could. He ran ten paces and stripped out of his skin suit. Braden hadn’t known he could get out of it that quickly, but there it was, lying on the ground next to one of many trees that decorated the undersea city. Pik had blended in and looking closely, Braden could see the lightning spear, but not the Lizard Man.

  Micah squeezed in closer to the door, putting more people between her and whatever was coming through the gate. With her back to the wall to hide her sword and her blaster cradled to her chest, she watched a Security Bot slowly hover out. It turned in the direction that Braden and the others had just disappeared. The Bot moved slowly away from the building, continuing around the corner and out of sight.

  ‘Lover?’ Micah tried tentatively.

  ‘We’re inside. G was right. No one seems to care. What do they do that they don’t know enough to care about anything?’ Braden wondered as he watched the Security Bot move past the door, turned, and headed into one of the radial streets. ‘It’s gone. Keep an eye, Ess?’

  ‘Of course,’ Skirill replied instantly, having a good view of the first part of the street it had taken, but not the second. He could move if he had to, but expected the Bot would spot him. At least he could see when it was returning.

  ‘This looks like a reception area, like at the Oasis or New Sanctuary, but on a massive scale. But I don’t see anyone really doing anything. Let me try something,’ Braden said and before Micah could talk him out of it, she heard him over the mindlink as he addressed one of the people there.

  “Good morning,” he said pleasantly. “I’m checking in.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” the young receptionist answered. She reminded him of the holograms that staffed the front desk.

  “I’m checking in, for work here. That is what we do here, isn’t it?”

  “No,” she replied.

  “Wow! They sent me to the wrong place. I can’t believe it. What do they do here?”

  “When summoned, we’ll enter the chambers. We are waiting for that. There is nothing in between,” she replied confidently. It was the first spark of commitment he’d seen from one of the Atlanteans.

  “There’s lunch!” Braden said, happy with his diversion.

  “When we are summoned, we’ll enter the chambers. That is it. We will wait here until that happens. There is no lunch. Not anymore.” She crossed her arms in front of her and looked at Braden expectantly.

  Who was he to disappoint a mindless young woman? “So it won’t be long, then?” he asked.

  “I expect not,” she answered rather intelligently.

  ‘G?’ Braden asked, hoping that the ‘cat sensed something different with this one.

  ‘This will be her third time into the chamber. Each time, it seems she gains something a little different. This is the Professor’s doing,’ G-War added unnecessarily.

  “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful,” Braden told the young woman. He waved the others to follow him as he walked past the tables of waiting people and headed for a hallway into the back. Some of the Atlanteans watched him, which piqued his curiosity. The closer to the center, the more different the people became.

  He had to know. He checked two different doors as they went deeper into the back, but both were locked. There wasn’t a hand panel next to them and the door handle seemed plain. He continued to the end of the hallway where there were double doors that looked like they swung open. He pushed lightly and the door moved. Bounder and the three ‘cats were right behind him.

  “Shall we?” Braden whispered. They nodded. With his blaster in hand, he walked into the single biggest room he’d ever seen, and that included some of the laboratory spaces on the spaceship.

  Tables and work spaces, everything was an immaculate white. Clear vats with supports looking like the smooth silver of buffed steel. Instruments and hoses, flashing indicator lights. A vast medical laboratory, but that didn’t hold Braden’s gaze.

  It was the people in the vats, constrained on the beds, with hoses and probes and monitors making them nearly unrecognizable. A vast number of Medical Bots moved freely around the beds and vats. Beside each person was an empty bed that looked similar to the cryo pods on the Traveler. The chambers.

  What were they transferring from one person to the other? Braden looked on in horror. Bounder sniffed the air, then dashed into a cleared aisle between chambers and equipment as they headed deeper into the laboratory. Braden, Fea, and Treetis followed. Like with the young people outside, no one seemed to care that a Wolfoid, Hillcats, and an armed human were running through the facility.

  ‘What is it, Bounder?’ Braden asked in his thought voice.

  ‘Caleb,’ the Wolfoid answered.

  Braden kept his blaster in hand, ready to shoot anything that needed to be shot. Seeing the comatose people plugged in like another piece of Old Tech made him sick to his stomach. He didn’t look too closely because he didn’t want to know.

  ‘What do you see?’ Micah wanted to know. She was trapped outside, away from her father.

  ‘You don’t want to know, but Bounder is on Caleb’s scent. I’ll get back to you soon,’ Braden replied, trying to take it all in as he ran after the Wolfoid.

  Bounder stopped at an intersection and sniffed. Braden couldn't pass, so he stood and waited. He couldn’t help but look around him. The faces of people, who looked like fisherman. He leaned closer, an old man. The one who had yelled at him on the top of the hills overlooking White Beach when there wasn’t any food. The one who encouraged the others to return to their homes and submit to the sea monster, as they thought of it.

  That was cycles ago and here he was. Braden could see his chest inflate, but he couldn’t tell if that was from the tube in the man’s mouth or if the man was alive. Maybe both, maybe neither. There were probes attached to his head and other tubes disappeared under a pure white sheet covering the man’s body. Braden hesitantly touched the man’s head. He was warm.

  “Are you alive?” Braden asked as he opened one of the man’s eyes. He’d heard that the eye was a window to the soul, but he couldn’t see anything, nothing to say that the man was more than his shell. He existed, yes, but did he live?

  Bounder’s claws raked the floor as he bolted in a new direction, and Braden found himself hurrying to catch up. The ‘cats were close behind the Wolfoid. Braden passed more and more empty beds. He slowed and looked over the room. Twenty, fifty, a hundred, more and more empty beds. The Professor had said he was going to build an army. A madman’s ravings, but he had the means to do it. Everything was right here. As much Old Tech as anywhere on Vii.

  ‘The Security Bot has left the entrance to the tunnel. It is coming your way,’ Zeeka said over the mindlink.

  ‘Lunch is served and there’s no one left out here so I’m going inside. I’ll find a corner, away from the windows. I don’t know how Gloria could tell I have an implant, but I don’t want to be any
where near that Bot when it comes by,’ Micah told them. She hoped that it was proximity, so the farther away she could remain, the less likely it was that they’d find her again. Having the implant made her a liability when they had believed it would give them an advantage. They hadn’t counted on a presence like Gloria.

  And they needed Holly to deal with another AI. They couldn’t have saved the people from Cygnus VI without him. How much would they have missed without Holly? They wouldn’t have known about the RV Traveler at all. They wouldn’t have had blasters. Micah had hers, but it wasn’t charged until they met the AI. That meant they wouldn’t have survived the Bat-Ravens. Without Holly, they’d be dead five times over. And they wouldn’t have met their friends, the Wolfoids, the Rabbits, or the Lizard Man called Pik Ha’ar.

  Braden and Micah were both thinking the same thing. Holly would have to save them again.

  ‘Kill the Security Bot. Two of you can do it if you catch it by surprise. They don’t use their shields down here for some reason, so kill it. Once the Security Bots are dead, then we can get in touch with Holly,’ Braden said, changing their tactics.

  ‘If I see it, I will take care of it,’ Aadi said.

  ‘We can’t ask you to do that,’ Micah replied.

  ‘We do as we must, for the good of all,’ Aadi added in a tired voice.

  Braden had stopped listening and focused completely on where they were and what they were doing. Bounder was standing next to a bed and G-War had jumped onto the sheet covering someone attached to the equipment. A Med Bot hovered nearby, but Bounder held it at bay by jabbing it with his spear.

  As Braden joined the others, he looked, knowing who it was going to be. The old man lying there, hooked up to the equipment, was Caleb.

  Fight!

  Aadi had a hard time getting the door open to the small building where they’d left him. He could get his mouth on it, but twisting and pulling were more difficult. Since he floated, he had little leverage. After a number of attempts, he finally managed, then swam outside.

  When they left the tunnel, they went one street over, but had returned through the alley. This was the direct route from the park to the main building where Braden and the others were. Aadi turned and saw the Security Bot coming quickly toward him. The Tortoid swam into the street and dropped to the ground, where he did not have to wait long. The Security Bot was racing down the center of the road, oblivious to everything around it. As it passed, Aadi gave it everything he had.

  The Security Bot bounced into the air, then fired its weapons in all directions, not knowing where the sonic blast had come from. It slowed, and Aadi closed his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, my babies. You won’t have a chance to know life because I failed you,’ he said to the six living Tortoids still in the eggs inside his body.

  Aadi waited, but the end didn’t come. He opened one eye. The Security Bot was no longer hovering or firing. It sat on the street with a thin line of smoke trailing from its top. Aadi couldn’t tell if there were any lights active on it or not. He was so tired. He lay on the ground and closed his eyes.

  ‘It is done,’ he told the others as sleep of the exhausted claimed him.

  Micah had walked outside, but went back in. ‘Skirill. We still have at least the one that went past you. Do you see anything?’

  ‘No, Master Micah. I will find it for you and you will kill it. Then we will save Caleb and leave this place,’ Skirill said firmly. He jumped from his perch atop the main building and flew upward to the edge of the dome, the ocean’s waters so close above him, before he followed the radial outward to the road that the Bot had taken after chasing Braden and the others inside.

  The sirens sounded again. Good, Skirill thought as he flew. That will get the innocent people out of the way, leaving only the Bots and us.

  He flew the length of the street, descending with the dome until he was at rooftop level on the outer edge. He landed on the branches of a tree in an alley as he got his bearings, then he flew off again, the next street and the next. Zyena joined in the search for the Security Bot.

  The laser beam was narrow and barely missed Zyena. She hadn’t seen it. If it hadn’t been for Skirill’s warning, she wouldn’t have dodged to avoid the next one, which disappeared through the clear of the dome and into the sea. She dove to the side, putting a building between her and the Bot.

  ‘Is that the Bot we’re looking for?’ she asked Skirill.

  ‘It’s one of them, but I can’t tell them apart. I’m going to fly past and draw it toward Micah and Pik.’

  Pik had put his skin suit back on and stood behind the tree with his lighting spear ready. Micah was outside the building again, on a corner, hoping she was on the right road. She didn’t have much cover and if the Bot got past her, she’d be skylined against the building. She’d have to count on Pik’s aim to kill the Bot before it fired at her. Then it would be up to her to finish it.

  With Skirill’s help, she discovered that she was one street off. She ran as fast as she could to the next corner, arriving at the same time as the Security Bot, which was moving almost as fast as the Hawkoid as it fired a narrow laser repeatedly into the air. Skirill dodged and danced, frantically avoiding the beams.

  The Bot raced past her, barely an arm’s-length away. She ducked and snap-fired into the thing, then took a knee to aim and keep firing. Pik’s lightning bolt missed on the first shot, but hit the Security Bot with the second. A crackling electrical bolt shot out from the Bot’s tentacle, enveloping Micah and shocking her senseless. Pik kept firing until the Bot exploded.

  ‘The Bot’s dead, but Micah’s down. I’m going to her now,’ Pik said over the mindlink. Braden didn’t respond as he didn’t know what to say. Pik would tell them how she was as he was hopelessly honest. And that’s what Braden always wanted. Don’t make him guess at the real situation.

  “We’re taking you with us,” he said to Caleb. Braden turned and grabbed the Med Bot. “Unhook him, now!”

  He nodded for Bounder to step back. The Med Bot moved close to the instruments, adjusted a few things, then departed toward the next bed. Braden had had enough. He raised his blaster and fired two short bursts into the Bot’s back. It sparked and crashed to the floor, upsetting a tray of instruments two beds down.

  Braden ripped the sheet off. There was a tube going through his abdomen and probably into his stomach. There were tubes for waste and then there was one in each leg. These were clear and carried blood. There were numerous scars on Caleb’s naked body where the Professor had cut into him, taken something. Braden was disgusted afresh.

  “I can’t leave you like this, Caleb. We take these out and either you live free or you die.” Braden’s eyes teared as he looked at Micah’s father. “Here’s to life, my friend,” Braden said as he pulled the first tube from Caleb’s leg. Blood gushed from the wound and he put pressure on it. He looked at the tray nearby. Had he not been in the Med Lab of New Sanctuary, he would have had no idea what things were for, but he saw gauze and a wrap. He asked Bounder to move the tray closer.

  He put gauze on the wound, then wrapped the other material around Caleb’s leg to hold the gauze tightly down. Then he removed the second leg tube, doing the same thing. He apologized as he removed the waste tubes and cast them away. The stomach tube bothered him. It looked like the size of an arrow. If he’d been shot in the stomach, he wouldn’t survive long. Braden took out his small knife and cut the tube in the middle. He pinched it in half and wrapped the bandage around Caleb’s body to strap the tube down. If the Med Lab on the Warden couldn’t fix it, then they’d enlist Holly’s aid at New Sanctuary.

  Braden’s first responsibility was to get Caleb out of there. He carefully removed the tube from Caleb’s mouth, aghast at how much of it there was. When it was out, he couldn’t tell if Caleb was breathing or not. Braden put his ear to the old man’s lips and listened. He heard air moving and sighed with relief. Braden’s last act was to rip off the sensors taped to Caleb’s head.


  With that, Caleb was free, but still unconscious. Braden checked the area to make sure no one was coming their way. The rest of the Med Bots went about their duties, oblivious to the fact that Braden had killed one of their own. He didn’t count on that lasting.

  Med Bots Unite

  Caleb was bigger than Braden, but he didn’t care. He would carry the old fisherman out of that place.

  ‘Micah is unconscious. I will take her to Aadi,’ the Lizard Man said over the mindlink.

  ‘You don’t know how happy that makes me, Pik. Thank you for watching over her. We have Caleb and we’re coming out. We’ll join you shortly,’ Braden answered, relieved. Together, they sat Caleb upright and Braden draped the large man over his shoulder, careful not to put pressure on the tube protruding from Caleb’s stomach.

  He was heavy, too. Braden could walk, but it was a challenge. Bounder led the way, back down the aisle toward the front door. The ‘cats circled them, watching. G-War was on edge, which made the other two anxious. The Golden Warrior couldn’t sense the Bots, and that talent, more than anything else, was what he relied on. He was afraid of Bots and Androids, but wouldn’t share that with anyone. He also counted on his ability to foresee imminent danger.

  Like now, when he saw the Med Bots descend on Braden, taking him down through the press of numbers. ‘They come, the Med Bots will try to kill you,’ G-War told Braden.

  Braden didn’t hesitate, he turned and lumbered toward an area where all the beds were empty. He knew that he had thirty heartbeats before something that G-War had seen happened. He carefully rolled Caleb off his shoulder and onto an empty bed, then readied his blaster, narrow beam, short bursts only. They didn’t have a way to recharge it in Atlantis and there were a lot of Bots.

  The Med Bots, as one, stopped what they were doing throughout the entire laboratory and made their way to the nearest aisle. Slowly and deliberately, they moved toward Braden and his companions.