Valyien Boxed Set 1

by James David Victor

  WORKER 327 CONTRACT EXTENDED. SIX MONTH CERTIFICATION APPROVED. BONUS RECALCULATION. 10,000 COALITION CREDITS, APPLICABLE IMMEDIATELY.

  “Holy cow! Really?” Worker 327’s dirty fingernails clacked over the keyboards to his private work account, and found the money already transferred and waiting for him to spend it. “Another six-month gig, and I have all the money I could ever want already? Ha! You got it, boss!” Worker 327 laughed. The man had never been so lucky in his entire life. He wondered what accident had caused this to happen and thought better about investigating. “If I am going to get paid just to sit here and look at trash, then that’s fine by me!”

  But still, the man might have been greedy—Alpha’s psychological profile of the man’s entire data footprint had been accurate in that regard—but he wasn’t entirely stupid. He did wonder, now that the trash world of Sebopol was reporting as ‘FULL,’ what he was supposed to do. Would the trash freighters keep arriving outside the planet? Would they just sit up there spinning silently like the other ones? What was he supposed to do about it?

  Nothing, apparently. And he had been paid a heck of a lot of money to make sure that he didn’t.

  Worker 327 scratched his almost-beard at the strangeness, before shrugging and standing up, heading for the galley. It was about time to eat anyway. And he could order whatever food he wanted.

  In his absence, the screens blipped. Lines of code appeared and disappeared in fast succession. In the skies beyond the windows, more trash freighters arrived, and were carefully pirouetted into positions over the surface of the moon. It would take a while, but soon, Alpha would have a blanket of steel as impenetrable as full battleship armor-plate.

  Out of the sky, on the far side of the planet, commandeered drones fell to the moon, glaring bright for a moment as they entered the thin atmosphere, before landing in plumes of metal and plastic trash, and quickly burrowing into the treasure.

  Alpha had plans for Sebopol.

  1

  Mela

  Captain Eliard Martin of the Mercury Blade eyed the expanse of blue ahead of him and growled. “Are you sure about this?” He winced.

  “Of course. I do know what I am doing, you know,” said the woman at his side—Cassandra Milan, one-time Coalition archaeologist, full-time spy for the Imperial House Archival. She had a blonde bob of hair and sand-colored robes on over her tighter-fitting encounter suit. It was Cassandra who had told her newly-acquired friends that they could find food, repairs, and information on the planet of Mela, and that there was a way that they could do it without getting blown out of the sky by Armcore.

  Armcore, the largest military contractor and chosen navy of the Imperial Coalition, was not very pleased with them, because Cassandra and the crew of the Mercury Blade had stolen their prized possession: the alien-hybrid AI known as Alpha.

  But then we lost it. El grimaced at the memory of why he was here and having to do this in the first place. And we didn’t even make any money out of it, either! He could have sworn, what with his debt to the Trader’s Belt worlds at near-astronomical levels… If they still existed, after Armcore had bombarded it, looking for him. With his beloved Mercury now on the official Armcore radar, he could really do with some good news. Any good news, in fact.

  Mela was a water-world, which meant that most visitors either loved it or hated it. Unfortunately for El, he was in the latter camp. For some reason, the idea of being surrounded by all that water made him nervous in the way that the deadly semi-vacuum of space never could. Maybe it was because he was brought up on a home world full of mountains and forests. He was a child of the air and solid rock, not water.

  “There, that one.” Cassandra pointed to one of the star-shaped platforms on the surface of the planet. “And let me just…” She edged around El to the consoles, inputting some codes into the transmitter.

  Probably another spy trick, the captain thought. He didn’t particularly like the fact that Cassandra was a spy, even though it certainly seemed to be proving useful as a distant light flashed green in response, and the calm, soothing words of a docking control person broke over their systems.

  “The May Bell, you are cleared for entry and landing. Platform three, docking ledge seven, please,” the woman’s voice said, before snapping off.

  “The May Bell?” El raised an eyebrow. Poor girl, he threw the consolation at his ship. Don’t you worry, we still love you. He was very attached to the Mercury.

  “Yes. It’s what this boat will be called for the foreseeable future now. It’s a name that House Archival uses,” Cassandra said curtly.

  “Oh, great.” The captain sighed. “As if our life isn’t complicated enough already…”

  “It’s not that bad. It’s a codename,” the spy replied tersely. “When any House Archival agents see that the May Bell has docked here, they’ll come to help us.”

  “And if the enemies of House Archival see it’s docked?” grumbled a voice behind them. The very deep and heavy voice that could only belong to Val Pathok, the grey-blue-skinned Duergar. Like all of his kind, he was the size of a small tank, with tusks protruding from his bottom jaw. “We should have gone to my home world, Dur!” he grumbled loudly.

  “My house will help us,” Cassandra said, not even turning her head as she scanned the platform they were gliding toward.

  Each one looked like one of those close-up pictures of snowflakes, El thought. Five or six metallic ‘arms’ that further subdivided into smaller ledges and landing pads. In the center was a fantastical tower of gleaming steel and crystal-glasses, from which smaller drones and personal transports flitted and attached onto the balconies. Most of the platform is under the water, the captain thought in alarm. All of that water, all around. No escape. The panic shot through him once more.

  “Cassandra is right,” El cleared his throat to say, just a little nervously. As much as he hated to admit it, the only thing that could get in between them and the entire might of Armcore right now was another noble house, and, as his own house wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him, he guessed that he had to rely on House Archival instead.

  And despite that… El grimaced as the landing ledge swung up to meet them. He had no stomach to go to Dur again, where the primary means of relaxation was bashing each other in grueling pit-fights.

  Landing in 3…2…and down!

  The Mercury settled into the cradle of the ledge before she shook slightly as magnetic clamps attached to her smooth metals, and there was the winding-down whine of the rockets.

  “Hats and boots, people!” El called out the familiar refrain. “This isn’t away-time. We need repairs, food, and to keep ourselves under the radar, got it?” he called out as he locked the ship’s wheel, turning to see the small form of Irie Hanson, his mechanic and engineer, already ascending from the engine decks, a pack and a floating drone-carrier at her side.

  “I got a list a mile long of things we’re running low on. Who wants to come help me, huh?” She looked over the crew.

  “I’ll do it. Just so long as we can stop for food,” Val the Duergar gunner grumbled, already strapping a blaster pistol onto each thigh and slinging his shoulder-strapped heavy meson rifle over his back.

  “Okay, big guy. You sure you’re going to need that?” Irie teased him.

  “A warrior never walks into battle unprepared,” Val quoted, before kicking open the bay doors and walking down into the Mela platform.

  “He does know that he can’t fire that rifle under the surface, right?” El said with a slight sense of panic to Irie. “How reinforced are the windows in one of these things again?”

  But Irie just laughed and followed the Duergar down the extended steps and onto the ramp that led straight down into the guts of Platform 3.

  “He does know that, right?” El said after her, as Cassandra pressed a blaster pistol into his hand.

  Bloody pirates, the captain grumbled to himself as he followed his erstwhile crew. If Armcore doesn’t get us killed, then my own bloo
dy crew will! He tried not to think of the kilometers and kilometers of open water pressing around him on all sides as he stepped off the Mercury Blade.

  “Stop looking at it!” Cassandra hissed at El as she led him through one of the crowded avenues in the center of Platform 3. It was busy down here, but nothing like the asteroid world of Charylla in the Trader’s Belt. Instead of that hustle, the people here moved more sedately, and often with much better robes and finery, as they shopped and talked under large domed ceilings, looking out into the seascape all around.

  El was standing with his back to one of the fountains, looking at the crystal-glass walls with a sort of horror, as some very large serpent-like shadow wriggled past outside.

  “How do these people live like this?” El babbled as Cassandra seized the cuff of his officer’s jacket and hauled him along the gleaming marble thoroughfare. “That thing I just saw could eat any of them! What’s to stop that thing looking at the people in here as a tasty buffet cart!?”

  “They’re Lobo Worms,” Cassandra said irritably. “Totally harmless. They eat shrimp and things. And besides which, the entire platform has an energy field around it.”

  “I still didn’t like the look of that one…” El muttered as Cassandra wove past a sedate procession of people in golden robes, and then past a line of bistro cafes where the patrons sat on floating chairs and listened to synth-harp music.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” El whispered as he caught up with Cassandra.

  “Captain, you’ve been out on the edges for too long. This is culture,” she said in exasperation, turning a corner and arriving at a shopfront door. “Here we are.”

  “Where are we?” El looked at the shop display in confusion. It seemed to be a selection of old-time clocks on steel pedestals. As he scanned the boxes, orbs, and cabinets, one of the items opened like a concertina, and a tiny brass bird appeared, peeping silently before mechanically winding itself back in again. “It’s a clockmaker’s?” he said. “You do know that the ship has an onboard computer, right?”

  “Ugh.” Cassandra opened the door to the chime of hidden bells, and the captain followed, finding himself in a cramped room filled with shelves of clocks, both ancient and modern—although none from anywhere near the thirty-first century. The objects chimed and clicked, ticked and rang delicate bells. El saw a myriad of faces, from traditional round clock faces to square, to hand-dials alone, to digital displays.

  “Can I help you, ma’am, sir?” said a voice behind the far counter, a man with long dark hair and a very full dark beard, barely bigger than Irie Hanson was tall. He wore a conical hat made of metal and wood, and as El watched, a middle section of it slowly turned and tocked into place. In the proprietor’s hands was a very old-style carriage clock, made of brass and glass.

  “We’re looking for the time,” Cassandra said.

  “So is everyone who comes in here,” the man grumbled, turning his attention back to the sick clock and the tools laid out on the counter in front of him.

  “Perhaps, but we are looking for a very particular time, sir.” Cassandra said in precise tones. “I don’t want to be late for a special appointment I have with an old friend,” she said exactly, and the clockmaker nodded. He carefully put both clock and tools down on the counter and pressed a button on the desk. El heard the front door locking behind them.

  “This is some spy nonsense, isn’t it?” he hissed into Cassandra’s ear, and then “Ow!” as she stomped on his foot.

  “Please follow me, ma’am, sir.” The clockmaker turned and disappeared through the curtain behind the counter, and without a hesitation, Cassandra followed.

  Oh, bugger it. El rolled his eyes, keeping one hand on his blaster pistol as he followed them.

  “What the hell did you do!” the clockmaker turned and demanded as soon as they were behind the curtain, and the metal door that sat on the other side of that.

  El saw the little man transform from what had appeared to be a pleasantly distracted, somewhat bumbling technician into an angry, authoritative spy. He removed his clockwork hat, revealing a crown of black hair, and set it on one of the steel counters that surrounded this small vestibule-like space. Large screens hung from the walls, one half displaying three-dimensional renders of the interior of clock parts, and the other half displaying complicated lines of code.

  “I take it you’re House Archival, then,” El muttered. He hated house politics. I ran away from my own one to get away from it.

  “We had to release Alpha,” Cassandra said fervently. “It was either that or allow it to get taken by Armcore.”

  “A rogue artificial intelligence in data-space! Who knows what it will do! Or what it can do!” The little man huffed and started flicking his fingers at the screens, directing their fingerprint-keyed controls. “My name is Agent Simmons, by the way. You might as well know because when the Armcore guards arrest us all, they’ll only get it out of me anyway.”

  “Simmons, this is Captain Eliard,” the blonde woman introduced them.

  “Ah yes, Captain El of the Mercury Blade,” Simmons drawled. “You couldn’t have selected a less conspicuous bunch of rogues to fall in with, Agent?” He glowered at the woman.

  “Hey!” El said. I resent that, kind of. But he was pleasantly surprised when Cassandra took up for the disreputable crew of the Blade.

  “You know that their ship is the fastest on this side of the galaxy, Simmons.” Cassandra waved of his concerns. El got the impression that arguments and fights like this was a very natural part of the day job at House Archival.

  Simmons huffed, but said no more about Cassandra’s choice of companions. “Here is what we know so far…” He flicked at the screens again, revealing a stellar map with various coordinates pulsing red. “We managed to trace some of its code and discovered that the artificial intelligence has commandeered the trash moons of Sebopol, Tullian, and Verek.” Three entirely different pulsing lights appeared at different ends of one of the spiral arms.

  “Commandeered? Won’t the Coalition notice? Won’t Armcore notice?” Cassandra said.

  “Not the way that Alpha has done it, taking over the local servers and orders, re-directing the excess trash to nearby moons, but allowing certain shipments through. House Archival only managed to notice because well, as you know, we have the best analysts in the galaxy.” El thought that Simmons appeared more than a little proud of that fact.

  “But Armcore has the best bank accounts in the galaxy,” El considered.

  “You’re right. They’ll be able to find an analyst who can work out the cover eventually, but for now, it’s only House Archival who knows what the intelligence is doing,” Simmons stated.

  “And what is the intelligence doing?” El asked. It didn’t appear obvious to him at all. Wallowing in trash? Was it a depressed super-intelligence?

  “Ah, well, yes. We were as confused at first, but then we started examining which shipments of waste it was allowing, and which ones it was sending away.” Simmons’s hands flickered again, pulling up the cargo manifests of several freighters.

  “Machine parts. Industrial waste. Dismantled ship systems,” Cassandra read.

  “And bear in mind, these trash worlds take everything, organic and inorganic material, so the fact that it is only after mechanical items seems to suggest, to me at least…” Simmons’s voice fell. “That Alpha is making something.”

  El looked at several log entries that read ‘ship systems.’ “Tell me, Agent Simmons, what exactly does that mean? Are we talking curtains or warp engines?”

  “By the looks of it…” Simmons face was lit up by the glare of the screens. “Alpha has been requesting everything that it needs to build itself a ship. Or even a fleet of ships.”

  2

  Primatuer Hyle

  Irie whistled as she walked through the pristine avenues of the underwater Mela platform. It’s nice to be somewhere clean and pleasant again, she thought, even if she didn’t really trust the folks arou
nd her. The people here were Coalition types through and through, with long robes and refined music piped from the corners of the rooms, the delicate chimes of fountains beside carefully manicured plants. A nice place, and one that was a little like her own home world, a pleasant central Coalition-held world called Farran. The engineer was just about to get lost in the reveries of her childhood—running down to the tournament garages to work on the mecha-bots that her father trained—when she was distracted by the Gunner’s angry snarl.

  “What do you mean, I can’t bring my guns in here?” Val was looming over a comparatively smaller woman in the white suit-dress of one of Mela’s platform security.

  Oh no, Irie thought.

  “This is an unarmed section of the platform, sir,” the woman said, managing to maintain eye contact and a steely voice despite the immense size of the Duergar in front of her. Irie noticed that her hand had already strayed to the stunstick at her side.

  “Un-armed?” Val looked confused at the merest suggestion.

  “You’ll have to hand over your weapons if you want to continue.” The guard indicated the yellow strip-light that glowed across the marble floors. “Don’t worry, sir, we’ll log and secure it, and you’ll get your weapons back just as soon as you disembark…”

  “No one lays a hand on my weapons other than me.” Val cracked his shoulders, the sound as loud as the snap of projectile bullets. Irie started to pale, seeing a trio of other white-suited officers appearing out of the corners of her eye.

  The Duergar growled, a raspy, animal sound that made the nearest citizens edge away from them.

  “Let’s not make a scene, Val,” the engineer whispered nervously. “I’m sure that this will be alright. We don’t have to go into the yellow zone anyway, right?” She patted her large friend on the shoulder and tried to ease him away from the guards, back the way they had come.