Resistance

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  Svend smiled, as if explaining something very simple. “Yes, I have a proper digestive system. I just don’t require as much sustenance as you.”

  “Right, sustenance.” Bentley smiled as she trailed a hand down his stomach. “And does… does the rest of you work too?” Her fingers waggled at his lower half.

  Svend looked at her with confusion in his eyes for a second, but then blinked twice and nodded. “All my systems are fully operational,” he reported confidently.

  “Oh my gosh Svend,” Bentley laughed. She let her hand drift a little further down his stomach and over his belt line. “I meant-”

  “Calling all runaways!” Jelly Bean’s voice crackled over the pod’s communication system.

  Svend and Bentley both jumped at the sound, separating themselves like teenagers caught cuddling at the cinema. They cast a guilty look at each other and Bentley covered her mouth to keep from laughing again.

  “Bentley? Svend?” Jelly Bean sounded excited. “Are you two awake?”

  Svend paced to the center of the room. “We’re here, Jelly. What’s happening back at the home base?”

  “Things aren’t great here,” she admitted. “Our three crewmates and Captain Blackfriar are not at all pleased with your disappearance, both of your disappearances. The Chesed is staying put here for now, as Shango seems to be enjoying the androids’ hospitality and the strategic alliance. I am the only one who remembers your coordinates, Bentley, and I’ve been pretending not to remember either.”

  “What about the radioactive marker we were tagged with when we left the base?” Svend pointed out, “They could follow us with that, and this pod must have a tracking system of some kind.”

  Bentley looked at Svend questioningly at the mention of radioactive markers.

  “I disabled the tracking system back when I took the controls remotely,” Jelly Bean said in a bored tone. “As for the radioactive marker, that was a little tricky. I ended up having to replicate the specific tag you received, and then I applied it to a bunch of ships bound for different sectors. If they try to track you down that way, they’ll be chasing wild geese all across the galaxy.”

  Svend caught Bentley looking at him. “The decontamination has automatic markers assigned to each person,” he explained.

  “Oh…”

  Then what Jelly had told her sunk in. “Thank you so much Jelly Bean. I really appreciate the lengths you’re going to to get us there. Speaking of which, where is there? How far out are we?”

  “It won’t be too much longer now,” Jelly informed her. “Do I detect a trace of that oh-so-human quality called impatience in your tone?” she teased.

  “I’m feeling it, too,” Svend admitted jokingly, pacing back to the couch and sitting as far away from Bentley as it allowed. She inched away from him, too. They didn’t think Jelly Bean could see them, but just in case. “We’ve been stuck in this pod for days, with nothing to think about except where we’re going.” His eyes ran down Bentley’s body. “I’ve considered countless possibilities.”

  “Oh?” Bentley turned toward him, leaning her chin on the palm of her hand. “I’ve been stuck thinking about the same options. I didn’t know there could be so many. What do you expect we’ll find when we get there?”

  “Well, I don’t know of course,” Svend shrugged hastily. “But the most likely scenario to me would be a bunker of some sort, maybe on a forgotten world like our home base, or maybe built into an asteroid with an artificial gravity chamber and independent oxygen supply.”

  He frowned. “But then, I don’t know this Legba nearly as well as you do. If it were me in his situation, I’d want to hide out somewhere peaceful. Somewhere I could feel secure and enjoy myself. A pleasant planet, with a forest and a stream and a lake. Maybe we’ll find him someplace like that.”

  “That would be nice.” Bentley smiled envisioning Legba healthy and seated next to a campfire. “I don’t actually know if he likes the outdoors. He’s really more of a tech wizard from what I can gather from the others.”

  Svend inched a little closer and placed his arm along the back of the couch. His fingertips nearly touched her shoulder. “Well, where do you think we’ll find him then?”

  “I don’t know,” Bentley said, suddenly unable to think about anything but his touch. “Maybe… maybe he’s on a super advanced space station somewhere. That’d make sense. It could be like, his home base, you know? It’d have all the latest gadgets and gizmos, and the smartest people in the damn ‘verse would be working there, and he’d have all the answers we need as soon as we show up.”

  “Wow,” Svend’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline. “He must be pretty amazing.”

  “You certainly do have an interesting perspective on the old man,” Jelly Bean commented over the speakers.

  Bentley jumped again. Svend did not react this time.

  “Well, if you have a different perspective, maybe you can tell us where we’ll find him?” Bentley said with a little ire in her tone. “You’re the one who understands the coordinates, after all.”

  “Based on the sector of space you’re headed for,” Jelly Bean reported, “it looks like you’ll find, well, nothing. So wherever Legba is, my hunch is it’s a well cloaked location. You could be right about the space station, but he could also be aboard a ship, or on a small cloaked planet or moon.”

  “You could cloak a planet?” Bentley asked.

  “Well, not me personally.” Jelly Bean sounded slightly miffed at having to admit that, “but I’ve heard it’s possible, with the right apparatus in place.”

  “What if it is a ship? What if he flies away?” Bentley clutched the arm of the sofa. “We might have come all this way for nothing. Or worse, what if he’s being held prisoner on a ship? That would explain why he had to communicate with me the way he did. It might have been his only option. Fuck! That makes sense. What if they kill him when we show up?” She stood up and paced the length of the pod before turning on her heel and retracing her steps. “I really didn’t think this through.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” Svend reassured her. “From everything you’ve told me Legba sounds like an incredibly capable person. I wouldn’t want to be anyone who made the mistake of holding him captive.”

  “But what if-”

  “Maybe we should just focus on where we’ll find him,” Svend coaxed gently. “Not under what circumstances. That opens the possibilities up too much and ruins the game. And it is just a game, remember. Nothing we say or think will change the inevitability of where we actually find him.”

  “You’re right,” Bentley sighed, “You’re quite the philosopher. Thanks.” She lowered her eyes to her hands.

  “It’s alright,” Svend smiled. “So where do you think we’ll find him? I’m sticking with a forest. I don’t know why, I’ve just got a good feeling about that.”

  “I think it’ll be a ship,” Jelly Bean offered.

  “Space station,” Bentley chimed in. “It’s got to be.”

  “Well, we’ll know soon enough,” Jelly Bean announced as the pod started to slow. “You’ve arrived at your destination.”

  Svend and Bentley glanced at each other, and then rushed forward to look out through the cockpit window.

  Svend frowned. “Oh.”

  Bentley smirked. “Huh? I thought it’d be bigger.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Android Home Base, Orion Sector

  “I’m either a crew member who gets let in on everything,” Jade insisted as she and the three lwa followed Blackfriar down an immaculate hall, “or I’m not a crew member at all. And if I’m not a crew member, then I’m not cleaning up your shit in the mess hall, or doing maintenance tasks that keep your goddamn ship running, or-”

  “If it stops you running your mouth,” Loco interrupted, “I vote you’re not a crew member at all. I can clean up my own shit.”

  Olofi snorted. “I’ve never seen you clean a damn thing, and I’ve known you quite a while.”

 
; “Don’t remind me.”

  Jade huffed as the attention deviated from her. “I’m going to keep reminding all of you until you start remembering to treat me with some of the respect I deserve.”

  “Jade,” Shango breathed, making a distinct effort to keep his voice even, “we’ve already invited you to come along with us. We are currently on our way with you now. You don’t need to argue the point anymore. You’re a welcomed member of the crew.”

  “I think I do need to argue it!” She crossed her arms and sniffed. “You wouldn’t have even thought about me if I hadn’t bumped into you on your way here. Why am I always being left out? That’s all I want to know.”

  “Because you ask too many annoying questions,” Loco snorted. Jade shot him a scalding look and opened her mouth to complain anew.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” Olofi sighed. “Jade, we’re just not as used to having you around yet. The same is still true of Bentley, really. The three of us have been working together for a long time. It’s hard to give a new person that level of trust.” He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “He’s right,” Shango agreed. “Forgetting to invite Olofi and Loco along would be like forgetting my shoes. I’m so used to having them, it’s automatic. You’re more like a fancy new blaster pistol; looks great, works great, but still feels a bit awkward on your hip.”

  “So I’m the same as Bentley to you?” Jade smiled for a moment, but then it dissolved into a mask of worry. “Wait, does that mean you’d lock me up too?” She recoiled slightly from his touch.

  “If we thought you might harm yourself then yes, we probably would,” Shango told her sternly. “Wouldn’t you want that? After all, it was your story about the banquet that tipped the scale in favor of containing her.”

  “Oh.” Jade looked worried. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

  They had arrived in a section of the base which felt different. They had taken a separate elevator far beneath the planet’s crust to get there. The halls hummed with energy, glowing coils running through the walls and connecting through to each room they passed. Jade examined them openly with wide-eyed interest while the lwa tried not to appear too intrigued.

  “I can see you are interested in our energy systems,” Blackfriar noticed. “While I made a bit of a show of our solar, wind, and tidal energies before, the bulk of our power comes from the geothermal stations built just below us. The conduits you see in the walls transport that energy throughout our base like the arteries of a human body carrying blood. And,” he added, laying a hand on one of the glowing pipes, “they are quite safe to touch.”

  “Amazing!” Shango commented, emulating the action. “I could have sworn it was live with a high current.” He slid his palm along the smooth conduit.

  “Oh, it is,” Blackfriar chuckled, “but it’s also contained by our unique double-grounding system. You couldn’t electrocute yourself on this even if you were soaking wet.”

  “Sounds a bit boring to me,” Loco commented, laying a big hand on the conduit and then flicking it, almost as if disappointed.

  “Well, hopefully you won’t find what lies ahead quite so dull,” Blackfriar grinned. He gestured for them to begin moving again, toward the large double doors at the end of the hall. Unlike most of the other doorways, there was no sign above this one.

  The steel portals slid open at Blackfriar’s approach, and he paused on the threshold to present the interior with a flourish.

  “My friends, I give you the heart of the android home base.”

  If the halls hummed, the massive room ahead of them positively vibrated with potential. Long banks of machines, some computers, lined the walls and stood in rows through the center of the space. Everything was in clean shades of white, black, and gray steel.

  Androids dressed in utilitarian uniforms moved from station to station. Occasionally they interacted physically with a terminal or engine, but for the most part they merely stood and closed their eyes while working.

  “This is amazing,” Olofi breathed. “They all have neural links with the computers, don’t they? So they can work, type, give commands, and all? I know that lots of human scientists are working on developing this technology, but they’re years away from working prototypes, if not decades.”

  “Very astute,” Blackfriar said with a kind nod. “Indeed, since we developed the technology to manipulate our machines, mentally, we’ve reduced the workforce required in this room by almost thirty percent. It is of course easier for us to test such technology on our brains, since we can fabricate functioning android brains independent of bodies.”

  “I thought maybe some of you could use some extra brains,” Loco quipped.

  Shango shot him a warning look.

  “Wow,” Jade breathed, “it’s almost like watching a ballet.” Most of them nodded their agreement and they watched the androids work in silence awhile longer.

  Not even such an impressive scene could shut Loco up for long, however. “So what is this place?” he asked after a few moments of contemplation. “The queen android? The hive mind?”

  Shango grimaced and turned toward him, lowering his voice so no one else could hear. “Blackfriar opened this invitation to you through me, and I can withdraw it just as quickly. Behave yourself, or you can go back to our quarters.”

  “Whatever,” Loco muttered, looking away. He hated being deferential to Shango, but he knew when not to push his captain’s patience.

  Olofi cast a shrewd eye around the space. “Surely you don’t need all these workers just to maintain power flow? What else have you got going on here?”

  “Again, very astute,” Blackfrair acknowledged. “The true purpose of this chamber, and the reason I wanted to show it to you, is much more involved. This is where my people have been tracking Amroth’s progress with the corteX app. This is where we have been cracking down on what he has done to androids enslaved in places like Thralldom Station. And this, my friends, is the place in which the plans that topple the Federation will be born.”

  The three lwa all exchanged a glance.

  “And how is that going?” Olofi asked.

  Blackfriar’s mouth tightened just a bit. “We are missing crucial pieces of information. Data which I believe…” he looked at Shango pointedly, “which I believe you have been keeping to yourselves.”

  “And that is the real reason you brought us here,” Olofi stated, no question in his tone.

  “Hell,” Loco spat, “it’s probably the real reason why they brought us in on the Thralldom heist. How long have you been planning this, you glorified toaster?”

  Blackfriar raised an eyebrow, his face just as calm and friendly as ever. “Knowledge was not meant to be hoarded, my friends. It is to be shared, collected, compared for veracity, and built into data points to solve the galaxy’s most dangerous equations. I only did what I felt was necessary to gain your trust.”

  The lwa exchanged a glance again, which left Jade looking from one to the other in growing impatience.

  “What is he talking about?” she asked Shango. “This is what I mean. You three don’t tell me anything. From now on, I want to be in on all crew meetings and all crew glances!”

  Shango shook his head and looked around, then shared a final knowing look with his crewmates and shrugged. “Take us to a smaller, quieter room, Blackfriar, and we will tell you all that we know.”

  +++

  Captain’s Quarters, Android Home Base, Orion Sector

  “Is this the same office as I visited before?” Shango asked in bewilderment. Blackfriar’s utilitarian quarters had been converted into a lushly decorated living area. The marble chair and humming computer had been replaced by a thick, low round table. Cushions of all shapes, sizes and colors surrounded it. On the outskirts there were some chairs and other ornate items of furniture, and the large closet stood open at the rear of the room.

  “It can change from work to home mode with a mere thought,” Blackfriar beamed, pleased tha
t his technology impressed the lwa. “Please, everyone be seated while we await the final members of our party.”

  “Who else will be joining us?” Shango wanted to know.

  “Yeah,” Jade piped up, “I thought the whole crew was already here. You know, except for Bentley.”

  “That hurts my feelings, Jade.” Jelly Bean came through the door as it whispered open, followed by Barnabas. They joined the rest of the Chesed’s crew sitting around the table.

  “Aww Jelly, I didn’t mean it like that,” Jade reached over and touched the android’s arm. “Of course, you’re part of the crew. I just thought-”

  “It’s fine, I was only joking.” Jelly Bean smiled and patted the human’s hand.

  “Oh,” Jade’s face fell and she pulled back her hand. “I’m never in on the jokes.”

  “You’ll like this one!” Loco leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Okay, an android, a human, and a priest walk into a bar-”

  “Is the priest human too?” Jade asked.

  “Loco, not the time,” Shango admonished. “Save the humor for those who share your taste in it.”

  “So, sewer rats?” Olofi muttered. Jade giggled. Loco opened his mouth to protest, but Shango silenced him with a stare.

  “Now that we’re all settled,” Blackfriar placed his palms on the tabletop and looked at each of them in turn, “would anyone care for tea?”

  A chorus of nods and thank yous circled the table, except for Loco who merely shrugged, and Blackfriar blinked and glanced at the open closet.

  Several seconds later a serving robot appeared from the opening in the wall carrying a tray. It contained seven steaming cups, which the smooth-moving robot delivered to each of them in turn. It appeared almost as human as an android, but its skin was the pallor of steel rather than colored to look like flesh.

  The tea was perfectly warm and invigorating, with a touch of mint. The aroma wafted gently in the air around each tea cup. After delivering the last mug the robot vanished back into its alcove.