“Revenge is a poor reason for getting ourselves killed.” A tank of a robot the size of a family car rose up on its treads in one of the rows about halfway down. “If our people are dead, they’re dead – ain’t no bringing them back. And I’m done helping fleshies. Spent my whole life doing it. Sure not dying for them, too. Let them tear each other apart for all I care – it’s not like any fleshy would risk its life to save us.”
“Jack did!” Doc, the enthusiastic medical automata liberated from Gaskan’s battlecruiser, hovered up beside Kansas. “He was willing to die to save the crew of the Adeona. Without him I’d still be a slave on that ship doing… doing Bad Things. Jack risked his life to save us and now he’s risking it again to stop Charon – alone.”
The tank grumbled and hunched down on its treads again. But Rogan felt a seismic shift in the audience – a fleshy fighting for automata? For many of the citizens of Detri, the idea was pure fantasy. And yet they had seen Jack inside Detri. They knew the story to be true.
Tork scuttled forward to take centre stage once more. Kansas and Doc hurried aside.
“Detri is safe because it is secret,” he said. “Detri is secret because we do not allow fleshies to know that it exists. If we go out there, if we show them that we are an organised people, do you think Detri will stay safe and secret for long? Do you think the same fleshies who once enslaved us would not see us as a threat and seek to have us destroyed?”
More frightened bleeping amongst the audience. Rogan shook her head. An ancient automata even older than Tork – perhaps even older than Rogan, not that she’d let anyone know it – rose shakily from the lowest row of benches and hobbled towards the stone clearing. It was all pistons and punch-cards with a rudimentary, low-resolution video screen for a face.
“Ah,” said Tork, politely making way. “Perhaps you can talk some sense into everyone, old-timer.”
It stopped beside Doc with a staggered wheeze and looked down at Kansas.
“I never thought I’d live long enough to see somewhere like Detri,” it said in a distorted, trembling voice. “A planet where our kind can be free. A whole galaxy like that? Ha! A ludicrous pipe-dream. Perhaps it always will be.”
Then it placed a gentle, affectionate, barely-functioning arm on Kansas and turned to face its audience.
“But how can we ever expect to be treated as equals in the galaxy if we’re not even willing to fight for it?”
Tork jolted with surprise. Rogan struggled to tell whose side the audience was on anymore. Either way, the automata certainly seemed excited by it all.
“Very well,” said a slightly disgruntled Tork, gesturing to the crowd. “Who else wishes to have their say?”
A few dozen automata – and one ship hovering above the proceedings – indicated their interest. One by one they made their way down to the sunken stage to speak.
But Rogan had heard enough and didn’t fancy being coaxed by the well-meaning crowd into giving her own testimony. She respected whatever decision the masses came to. She didn’t need to be a part of it.
There was somewhere else she wanted to be.
Tuner’s light was barely visible anymore. He had perhaps an hour left. Probably much less.
Rogan wanted to be there at the end. To see the remnants of Tuner’s essence fade away with the last of his power reserves. To say goodbye the only way she still could.
Not that she was ready to say goodbye, of course.
She was alone in the Mausoleum. The custodian was somewhere inside the colossal house of the dead, but Rogan hadn’t seen it since she first arrived. One of the oldest automata in Detri had finally ceased to function and was being fitted for internment. Rogan didn’t know if anybody had come in to bid it farewell – a possibility that filled her with an overwhelming sadness.
Automata did grieve – they just didn’t grieve the same way most fleshies did. Except for Rogan, that is. Something in her programming, she guessed. Everyone else who had been on board the Adeona missed Tuner – she had no doubt about that – but none of them felt the need to come visit him now. None of them felt that invisible hand pulling at their insides the way she did.
She sat before his stark little hospice-shrine wondering how the debate in the outdoor auditorium was going. Had they even got around to the vote yet?
That’s the problem with giving everybody a voice, she thought to herself. All of a sudden, everybody thinks they have something important to say.
Huh. She was growing uncharacteristically bitter and cynical in her mourning. If Tuner had still been around, he never would have let that sort of thinking fly… and she never would have thought it in the first place.
“How would you have voted, Tuner?”
It was a stupid question, because she already knew the answer. Tuner wouldn’t have even waited for a vote to be called in the first place. He’d already be halfway to Charon in the Adeona by now. No backup. No bureaucracy. In fact, he never would have left Jack’s side to begin with.
Tuner may have been naive, reckless and completely oblivious to the limitations set upon him by his diminutive size… but he always knew the right thing to do.
Something got knocked over in the adjacent hall. The clang of it hitting the floor echoed half a dozen times before it finally disappeared.
“Hello?” Rogan sat bolt upright. “Is somebody there?”
No reply. But then she heard the clanging sound again. Something was in there, messing about where it shouldn’t.
Rogan glanced back at Tuner again. His light was dim – very dim – but she still had time.
She got up to take a look.
“Is that everybody?” asked Tork, his midriff rotating to observe the entire three-hundred and sixty degree auditorium. “Is there anybody else who wishes to have their say?”
All of the automata looked around at one another. Nobody raised their hand or indicated otherwise. It had taken over an hour, but everyone had had their turn to speak.
“Good. Then all that’s left is the vote.”
Tork confidently scanned the crowd with his single mechanical eye. He knew which way the wind was blowing.
“All those who wish to risk the safety of Detri and save those who would seek to enslave us, say aye.”
Rogan followed the noise around to a rack of “decommissioned” automata chassis about half a dozen metres away from the room where Tuner’s data core rested. One of the bodies lay collapsed in a heap on the floor. Its hook had come loose from the rail running overhead.
She looked around the hall. It was dark. Even with her night-vision filters, Rogan couldn’t see all the way to the other end – not that she would have been able to anyway, given the legions of offline automata obstructing her view.
It was a warehouse, pure and simple. She knew that. But it didn’t stop the Mausoleum from giving her the creeps.
There were no earthquakes in Detri. No wind either. Something had to have knocked the poor guy off his rail. And not just any something – a something that wasn’t too bothered about putting him back.
“Excuse me?” she called out. “Custodian, is that you?”
Well, somebody ought to put the chassis back. She picked it up with little effort – it was a relatively small, box-shaped model – slipped its hook back over the rail, and pushed it out of the way.
Something small, sudden and full of rage came rushing out of the darkness at her. Rogan pulled her arm back ready to smash the intruder… then let it fall to her side.
“How did you get in here, missy?”
A red bird no bigger than a sparrow flapped around the bodies hanging on their racks as if they were trees in a forest. It was such a bright and pretty thing, yet it seemed to be in rather a great deal of distress.
“This really isn’t a great place to be an organic.” Rogan watched it flutter from rail to rail. “You must have good lungs. What are you doing about food? Pilfering from our salvage warehouses, I guess. There’s nothing else to eat here.”
One of the chassis caught her eye and she stopped in her tracks.
This automata had been big. “Built for combat” sort of big. Pretty much a tank with legs and a plasma cannon for an arm. This one didn’t even hang from a rail, probably because if it did it would bring the whole rail system down with it. It stood like an upright sarcophagi dutifully watching over the rest of the dead.
Rogan had heard of far bigger automata, of course. The near-mythical Titans, for one. And then there were the sentient battlecruisers, of course – some of which were kilometres in length. But the ships were rarely interned anywhere when their time was up. If they managed to avoid being scrapped, they usually set their solar sails for somewhere out in the Stellar Abyss. Nobody knew where they went… but there were stories, of course.
Compared to some of the automata out there, this twelve-foot guy was small fry. But compared to somebody like Tuner…
A tiny light blinked on in the back of Rogan’s supercomputer mind. A tiny, blasphemous light of hope that cast a shadow of existential dread.
There were rules. There were superstitions… not that Rogan knew what use people mass-produced in factories had for superstitions anyway. To swap out a defunct body part for a new or upgraded one was commonplace. But to install an automata’s mind into the body of another?
That was frowned upon, to say the least. The connection between one’s data core and one’s chassis was considered sacrosanct.
But why?
A shell was just a shell. Everybody knew that. It’s what the shell carried that made somebody who they were.
Tuner – alive and yet dead.
Dead… and yet until the last of his energy dwindled away and his light went out, still very much alive.
Rogan looked from the chassis back towards the shrine where Tuner’s data core lay and asked herself what Tuner would do if he were in this situation instead of her.
It was a stupid question to ask, because she already knew the answer.
17
Elsewhere
Ulteera. The Garnidian system. First planet from the sun.
Glorious fields of gold stretched across the blue horizon. Grains danced and bowed to the changing tides of wind, thirsty for the rain clouds that grew above the great lake a few leagues over.
Despite its close proximity to its star, Ulteera was a goldilocks planet. Such a short cosmic distance would normally render a world untenable for most species, particularly plant life so susceptible to heat. But Garnidia was an elderly white dwarf, and her blueish-white glow therefore much cooler than those of her younger red and yellow brethren. She was a welcome sight in the Ulteerian sky, even if she did occupy quite a lot of it.
A lone farmer carried a hand-woven basket through her field. Some of the grains were also fruit-bearing and made for a fine wine when properly prepared. It was worth picking them before the harvesters started their rounds. Her sons and daughters were one field over doing the same.
Her species was not spacefaring, and, in truth, most of their kind had little interest in it. The problems of the homestead did not stay in the homestead when one went to live amongst the stars. But they were a space-trading species and no stranger to the worlds and races beyond their system. They had ample harvest to spare, and in return the outsiders brought with them all kinds of wonders. The mechanical harvesters were just one such gift.
She stopped at one particular stalk. The dark red berries were plump and hung in bunches to either side of the grain like a pair of earrings. The farmer smiled and began to pluck them one by one.
Life was simple. As a result, life was good.
A great shadow passed lazily over the field and dropped the temperature by a few degrees. Goosebumps prickled the farmer’s skin. She shivered and briefly paused in her picking.
Odd. She continued her work. The rain clouds were due from the west, not the east. There weren’t any trade ships expected for weeks either, and those that came knew to land far from where the crops grew. Besides, she felt no gale from their approaching thrusters. Heard no sound but that of the gentle breeze and the chittering of bugs, for that matter.
She stopped and put down her basket.
But to block out that much sunlight, to cast so great a shadow…
If it wasn’t a ship, and it wasn’t inside the planet’s atmosphere, then whatever it was had to be incalculably huge.
The farmer’s twin hearts hammered. She looked up towards the star, using her hand to shield her eyes from the worst of its elderly glare, and felt the spring air catch in her throat.
A black band stretched all the way from one side of Garnidia’s face to the other. She watched its silhouette grow thinner as it passed slowly from left to right, felt the warmth of the sun return as the mysterious object’s shadow crossed over into the next field… and finally gasped as starlight gleamed off its edge like a halo.
It wasn’t a ship. Nor was it quite a space station.
It was a ring around the sun.
A colossal metal snake biting its own tail.
18
Celest Verte
The free shuttle took twelve minutes to reach the resort moon. Jack and Klik spent that time clutching their seats and praying that the transporter wouldn’t rattle itself apart before they got there. You got what you paid for in Kapamentis.
Despite the terminology, Celest Verte and the other casinos and resorts weren’t actually moons – they just looked that way from down on the planet’s surface. More like spherical space stations designed with the singular goal of entertainment in mind, they floated on giant helium balloons a mile or so beneath the upper limits of Kapamentis’ atmosphere, catching the neon glow of the never-ending city yet untroubled by its absurd real estate costs.
They hit another pocket of turbulence as they passed through the thick storm clouds. Jack reckoned that was another reason the resorts weren’t out in space – the shuttles there and back would never survive re-entry.
When they did finally dock with the resort, Jack and Klik were the only ones to breathe a sigh of relief. All the other visitors got up from their seats before the shuttle even stopped moving and were already stood by the doors, impatiently hopping from foot to foot or tentacle to tentacle, when they hissed apart. Jack clutched at a handrail running overhead as he followed everyone out.
“God, I miss the Adeona,” he muttered to himself.
They stepped into a short, bland, grey corridor. The airlock doors shut behind them the second they were clear, and they heard the shuttle begin its shuddering return journey back to the planet’s surface to pick up the next wave of guests soon after.
“Well this isn’t quite the carnival of decadence I was hoping for,” said Klik. “I think even the shuttle was more exciting.”
They reached the other end and the next set of automatic doors slid open.
“Ah. Nope. There it is.”
It was like being photographed by a hundred flash-bulb cameras at once. Jack thought Kapamentis overdid it with the lights and neon. Boy, did he realise his naivety now. Compared to Celest Verte, Kapamentis resembled an Amish village.
Floor upon floor was abuzz with patrons laughing, drinking and hurrying from shopping outlet to shopping outlet. Signs fizzed and flashed on every surface, promising Jack a thousand different delights if he were only to enter one of the many dark, inviting doorways. A deafening medley of music blasted from every direction. Emerald banners draped elegantly from the balconies. Sweet aromas wafted from concession stands. The soft, milky-blue floor beneath Jack’s feet shimmered and shifted like the sea.
And this was only the Welcome Lobby.
“Hello!” A turquoise woman in a green uniform approached them. “Welcome to Celest Verte, where your desires and credit have no limit! Do you have a data pad?”
Jack blinked blankly.
“Erm, no? Is that a problem?”
“Not at all! You can always check one of our Information Terminals if you need any help getting around!” She pointed at the sign above Jack’s head. “Right now you’re at Shuttle Port K. To get you started: you can reach the main casino deck by going straight ahead; go up two storeys for the PleasureDome; right for theatres and left for sports; second upper deck for the residential district and upper tier for penthouse suites; take Transport Tube C for aquatic services and D for restaurants – don’t get them mixed up! – third wing for surgeries and cybernetic augmentations; elevators for the conference centre on our mezzanine floor are clearly signposted; and the third wing houses our retail super-centre. Okay, have fun!”
“Wait! What was that about residen—”
“Hello!” she yelled, rushing towards a different airlock door as the next wave of visitors arrived. “Welcome to—”
“You know, this might be trickier than I thought,” said Jack, turning back to Klik. “I didn’t expect the resort to be this big.”
“Thought it would be a small moon, did you?” Klik shrugged. “I guess we’d better start looking. Now… where did she say the PleasureDome was?”
“Klik!” Jack stared at her. “I don’t know what’s got into—”
“I’m kidding, you idiot.” She tutted. “Let’s go find one of those terminals.”
They soon learned that the only thing trickier to find in Celest Verte than your bearings is one of the stupid machines designed to tell you where to go in the first place.
“Have we been here before?” asked Klik. “I swear I saw that guy over on the noodle stand ten minutes ago. Except he was blue before and now he’s yellow. Is that normal?”
“Honestly? I don’t even know anymore. Maybe his mood changed. How can we have walked this far without coming across an Information Terminal yet? I’m more lost than when we started!”
A Dark Horizon (Final Dawn, Book 3) Page 13