A Dark Horizon (Final Dawn, Book 3)

by T W M Ashford

  Even having visited previously, Rogan found herself astonished by a world so totally dominated by mechanical life. And now that Jack hadn’t returned with them, exclusively so. Perhaps it really was better for everyone that the crew’s fleshies and automata had gone their separate ways.

  Although her mood was overwhelmingly dampened by her mourning, one thing Rogan did find particular joy in as they wound their slow path through the city was how popular the data banks in Detri’s main archive building had turned out to be. Automata streamed in and out of its doors in droves. She felt a small swell of pride. Her kind rarely took to downloading new information unless it was of benefit to their master. That they were choosing to learn for their own sake…

  They walked for quite some time, members of their small procession splintering off one by one as they passed meeting squares, workshops and garages. Even Brackitt apologetically made his excuses when their route took them via a non-sentient shipyard. By the time they reached the City Mausoleum, only Rogan, 11-P-53, Doc, Kansas and Tork remained in their party. Even then, the latter elected to wait outside out of respect for those who knew Tuner better, and who had travelled and fought beside him.

  The City Mausoleum wasn’t named as such, of course. It had no name, only a purpose and a set of coordinates. Automata got brought there when their power sources were either depleted or had fallen so low that their primary motor and processing functions became fatally impaired. Sometimes a part could be swapped out, or a battery could be recharged. But other times…

  Rogan shuddered internally. Too many automata were built to be disposable these days.

  Not like before.

  They entered the enormous block of steelwork and concrete through a pair of iron doors twenty foot in height. It was a warehouse, essentially – automata weren’t buried or cremated when they passed, only preserved in memoriam. The left and rear of the mausoleum were where the shells and chassis were hung in rows of racks; to the right, a smaller department where data cores were stored in thousands of protective cabinets. And in the centre of it all, a long and hollow hall lit in a cold shade of blue and punctuated by dark, uninviting doorways. At the far end of the hall lay a single work desk. A lone automata hovered patiently behind it.

  Rogan reached it first. She hesitantly opened her hands to show it Tuner’s remains.

  “Not long left, not long left.” The custodian had volunteered for this position given its long career preparing deceased fleshies for the afterlife – cataloguing defunct automata was a cinch in comparison. It bathed Tuner’s head in the green glow of its diagnostic scanner. “Power low. Consciousness fading. Shell is… non-existent. Follow me, please.”

  They did so through one of the dark and uninviting doorways at the back of the hall. A lanky robot lay inert across a gurney pushed to one side of the short corridor beyond. Rogan guessed the custodian had been in the process of transporting the poor guy to Shell Storage when their group turned up. Nobody said anything.

  The next room was much smaller than the last. It consisted of a matrix of cubicles and made Rogan think of a macabre waiting room of sorts – here, whether they were in a state to know it at the time or not, automata came to die. The only other patient was an old, rotund delivery unit, half obscured by the thin plastic walls of its stall. Every now and then the digits on its arm would twitch, but otherwise its body was as still as a lake on a breezeless summer night.

  “Here, please.”

  The custodian floated expectantly to one side of an empty cubicle. It was much too large a space for such a tiny thing, but there were no other options. Rogan stepped inside and placed Tuner’s head upon the plinth.

  Small bulbs crackled to life around the edge of the booth, casting miniature spotlights down on the hospice-shrine. Rogan thought it was rather sweet and respectful, albeit in a somewhat clinical way.

  “Subject stays here until he has fully left us,” said the custodian. “Then data core removed and filed away. You stay with friend as long as you want.”

  It hovered past them and returned to its duties. 11-P-53 rested a sympathetic arm on Rogan’s shoulder, but still nobody said a word.

  They each paid their respects. Then one by one they took their leave, until only Rogan was left.

  Rogan stood with her head bowed, thinking.

  It was inaccurate to say that Tuner was dead. Gone, perhaps… but not dead. Automata only died when their power cores were fully depleted and their data cores compromised. Until then, Tuner was technically only dying – though with all his sensors offline, he probably didn’t know it.

  His little red light blinked slower than ever.

  As far as Rogan could tell, Tuner’s data core hadn’t been damaged by the falling statue that crushed the rest of his body. She wondered if he was still inside there, dreaming… in as much as an automata could be said to dream, of course. Fabricating digital realities, perhaps.

  Or perhaps there was nothing, only a dry river bed through which code had once flowed.

  She didn’t like standing in that place, but she couldn’t bear to say goodbye. Not yet. Rogan didn’t believe in ghosts, but that didn’t mean the mausoleum wasn’t haunted. It was a giant tomb in which thousands of bodies weren’t buried or sealed in caskets but instead hung from meat hooks and stashed away. She must have spent too much time around Jack, because it all seemed a bit… well, ghastly.

  And yet the automata were so protective – so religiously zealous, almost – towards the shell each automata was originally built with. The continuous replacement and upgrading of parts wasn’t frowned upon – Tork, a walking museum piece and perpetual work-in-progress, was clear evidence of that – but the transference of one automata’s data core into another’s physical unit? Well, that simply Was Not Done.

  The chassis and the consciousness were intrinsically linked, they said. They defined one another. You got what you were built with and that, apparently, was that. Rogan supposed she understood. Nothing lived forever, and the majority of automata got scrapped long before their cores ever shut down. But that didn’t make Tuner’s loss feel any less of a waste. He couldn’t have been more than a couple of decades old.

  “Hard to let go, isn’t it?”

  Rogan was so lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t heard Detri’s mayor click and clack his way up behind her. She turned her head and nodded.

  “You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”

  “Oh, I’d think nothing of the sort. It never gets any easier, trust me. But eventually, you have to let them go.”

  Rogan turned back to watch Tuner’s little red light blink on and off, on and off, on and off…

  “I’m not sure I’m ready, though. I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

  Tork nodded with an ancient sageness and, with one gentle spider-leg behind her back, guided Rogan away from the cubicle.

  “Well, you’re home now,” he said. “That’s what matters. And I bet that’s what Tuner would have wanted, too.”

  Rogan sighed. She couldn’t help thinking the opposite.

  12

  The Crimson Crosshairs

  The rain grew heavier the longer they walked.

  “Are you sure you know where you’re going?” asked Klik, grimacing as her bare feet splashed through yet another puddle. “This isn’t going to be like how it was back on the Pelastar, is it?”

  Jack did know where he was going. Roughly. He just wasn’t sure how much he wanted to get there anymore, that’s all.

  The bounty chip he pilfered from the dead assassin’s corpse came from a specific organisation – the Crimson Crosshairs. They were one of the biggest and most famous bounty hunter guilds in the galaxy. Services ranged from the collection of debts all the way up to the assassination of emperors, according to rumour. Almost anything was game, provided a client could pay for it.

  Their work was about as legal as it was cheap, but that didn’t mean it was exactly outlawed, either. If you could afford them, you could afford the br
ibes. And there was ample need for an institution that could bring in rogue criminals (dead or alive) – enough so that the Ministry was plenty willing to turn a blind eye to a few unsanctioned murders every now and again. So long as they never killed the wrong people, that is.

  Or rather, so long as they never got caught doing it.

  And Jack, a man with a bounty on his head, was about to walk up and knock on their front door.

  It was madness… but it was also the only lead they had.

  “So, let me get this straight,” continued Klik. The street they followed was alternately bathed in the bright blue and yellow glow of neon billboards hanging above. “We’re going to this Crimson Crosshairs place, and you think… what? That they’re going to tell you who put the bounty on your head?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much.” Jack squinted through the pouring rain, wishing he still had his helmet. He could have sworn their headquarters was around here somewhere. “If I can prove it was the Mansa Empire that paid to have me killed then the Grand Ministers will know I was telling the truth. And if that’s true, they’ll have no choice but to go after Everett. That’s the plan, at least.”

  “Hmm. I’m not saying it’s a bad plan, but what if these Crimson people decide to just shoot you instead? There’s still an active bounty on your head, remember.”

  Jack contemplated this as a run-down cruiser hovered slowly down the street, drowning out all other noise – even the alien slogans booming out from the advertisements above – until it was around the corner.

  “Then my worries will be over and you’ll be free to go,” he said, shrugging. “From what I’ve heard, they’re actually a pretty honourable bunch. They won’t hurt you if they’re not being paid for it.”

  “Oh. Great. How very reassuring.”

  “Hold up.” Jack tapped Klik on the shoulder and pointed to a building on the other side of the street. “I think that’s it.”

  It would have been hard to miss if it weren’t for the rain. Clearly bounty hunting paid well. About a half-hour walk from the Ministry’s pyramid, the Kapamentis headquarters of the Crimson Crosshairs was a gothic, thirty-storey tower nestled in the shadow between two neighbouring skyscrapers that breached the clouds. It was old yet in immaculate condition. There were no windows amongst its stonework – none visible from ground level, at least. Grand statues of humanoid aliens were carved into each of the tower’s four corners, their arms raised to the heavens. A massive brass plaque bolted a couple dozen metres above the door depicted a large eye staring down at the street from behind a circular targeting reticule.

  “Yeah… something’s telling me we shouldn’t go in there,” said Klik.

  “Stay out here if you want.” Jack started walking towards the headquarters. “I can do this bit alone.”

  Klik hesitated at the edge of the pavement until Jack was almost at the door… and then hurried after him.

  The door was already open. A small, brightly-lit lobby welcomed them. Jack dripped rainwater across the marble floor as he crossed to the reception desk.

  “Welcome to the Crimson Crosshairs,” said the cheerful automata behind the counter. It was tall, cylindrical and had a single camera-eye that scanned Jack from head to toe. “How may I be of assistance?”

  “I’d like to speak to your boss.”

  “Do you wish to register a bounty? Leave your target’s details with me, and one of our talented guild members will be assigned to your request.”

  “No, I’m not a client. But I really do need to talk to whoever’s in charge.”

  There was a worryingly long pause before the robot replied.

  “Let’s see if I can book an appointment for you.” Still bright and cheery. “ID and registration number, please.”

  ID? Registration number? Jack started to wish he’d done a more thorough search of the hitman’s body before calling the ministers for help.

  “I’ve got this?” he said, holding up the bounty chip.

  The receptionist gave it a quick scan.

  “That’s interesting. I haven’t seen you around before.”

  “Oh, I’m rarely on Kapamentis.” Jack felt his skin grow hotter and his face redder. “I usually operate over in the Luethian system.”

  “And yet I have access to photo-data on every registered member of this guild. Funny.”

  Another long and stomach-wrenching pause. This really had been a bad idea. Jack was about to turn heel and run when the elevator doors to the side of the desk slid open.

  “Twenty-ninth floor for the Hunter’s Lounge,” said the automata receptionist. “Ask for Ichor at the bar. Have a nice day!”

  Jack shot the robot a grateful smile and then hurried into the elevator with Klik. He traced the panel with his finger. Supplies… Offices… Dispatch… There it was: Hunter’s Lounge. He pressed the button, the doors slid shut, and the elevator began to rise.

  “See? What did I tell you?” Jack took a deep breath in an attempt to cut off the thrusters from his skyrocketing heart rate. “Nothing to worry about.”

  The automata at reception waited until the elevator doors closed again, then lowered the hand cannon it had been pointing at Jack under the desk.

  Now there was something it didn’t see every day – a bounty trying to deliver itself. First time for everything, it supposed.

  The elevator doors rumbled open. Jack stepped out into the Hunter’s Lounge – floor twenty-nine of the Crimson Crosshairs guild headquarters.

  It wasn’t how Jack expected. Despite the building’s grand and foreboding exterior – not to mention its immaculately clean lobby – he had imagined a squalid bar of stumbling, roaring drunks, of stray knives and wayward plasma bolts, of suspicious odours better suited to bins and bathrooms. He half thought he’d need to duck under a throwing axe the moment the elevator doors rolled back.

  Instead, it really did look like a lounge… albeit one might expect to find in a private gentlemen’s club in Victorian England rather than a quasi-legal space-age bounty hunter institution. Soft tulip lamps growing from brass handles glowed against the panels of dark wood that ran along the walls. Beside them snarled the mounted trophies from various guild adventures (Jack hoped none of them had been actual paid bounties – that would have been much too dark), and even a few old photographs depicting the inauguration of early guild members hung in gold-plated frames. A quiet, delicate and somewhat intoxicating melody permeated the air of an establishment that could have just as fittingly been called the Hunter’s Lodge.

  Conversation was hushed, conducted in bowed heads and venomous whispers. The lounge was quite full. Two long, slender reptilians lay coiled around separate couches of brass and leather, taking turns to sip from a shared pipe and smirking at a handheld hologram of their latest (or perhaps their next) target. At one of the small tables that lined the westerly wall (these were kept private by partitions made from the same wooden panelling), a Ghuk dressed in leather raider uniform and with a sniper rifle rested against the seat beside him sat opposite an elephantine creature who could barely squeeze into the booth thanks to its purple and yellow power armour. And sitting by himself in the corner, engrossed in a document projected from his data pad, was perhaps the most grizzled man Jack had ever seen. A pair of independently ever-oscillating, ever-refocussing binocular-lenses bulged out from the humanoid’s scarred face where his eyes should have been, and rusty, rudimentary cybernetics had replaced every limb barring his left leg. Jack counted at least a dozen other patrons inside.

  Everybody raised their eyes to give Jack a cursory glance as he entered… and then everybody went back to their drinks.

  “If stopping Charon doesn’t work out, do you think we could become bounty hunters?” whispered Klik, gawping around the room. “I could get used to hanging out in places like this.”

  “Hmm. Not sure. I think bounty hunters are expected to provide their own ship.”

  “Shame.”

  Not daring to deviate from the automata receptionist’s
instructions, they approached the bar on the far side. It was partly hidden behind the pillars and assorted furniture (not to mention some of the larger hitmen and women sat upon them); the further in they walked, the more of the bar came into view. The counter was built from the same combination of dark brown wood and polished brass as everything else in the lounge, and painted with crimson highlights that matched the red leather of the couches and armchairs. Hundreds of glass, metal and plastic bottles swelled in shining green mountains upon the rows of shelves behind. Jack supposed there needed to be so many drinks in order for the guild to cater for the diversity amongst its ranks – what was liquor to one bounty hunter might be battery acid to another. In place of a mirror (installed behind the bar to create the illusion that the lounge spread out far further than it really did) was a window spanning the entire length of the twenty-ninth floor. Thunderous rain slashed against the glass and obscured the bright headlights of passing cruisers.

  It had no bartender. Jack and Klik awkwardly leant back against the counter and peered around for an employee of some kind.

  “Are we supposed to meet somebody here, or…?”

  “Hello again, sir.”

  Jack spun around and found himself face to face (well, face to metal plate) with the same tall, cylindrical, chrome automata who had welcomed them both in the lobby. He leaned over the counter and noticed that it had emerged from a circular vent in the floor.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to be insensitive…” he said, “but are you the same automata I spoke to downstairs? Or just the same model?”

  “Neither,” it replied. “I am not technically an automata, though I do operate in the physical world through various mechanical units of identical manufacture, such as the one through which I am presently speaking. I am the Artificial Intelligence responsible for overseeing all administrative duties for the Crimson Crosshairs, in this and all their other guildhalls across the galaxy. I keep a very tight ship. There’s nothing worse than two hunters accidentally going after the same bounty, let me tell you.”