by B. V. Larson
Chiara twitched her hand from under the paw and resisted the urge to wipe it on her tunic. The rats weren’t actually dirty or diseased. It was just... a feeling, hard to shake. “You didn’t answer my question. Why do you care about this Axis of Predators?”
“Because as small scavengers and omnivores, we are natural prey. Because few care about us, we are oppressed by the millions. We are sucked dry by Arattak and Dicon, forcibly implanted by Korven, eaten by the Crocs and the Vulps. Everyone seeks to put us under Contract, often signed at the point of a gun—but the Conglomerate doesn’t care about duress. They only care about the biometric signature.”
“I do know that...”
“What all of these predators have in common is this: they prey on sentient life. The Fugjios Conglomerate does it with laws and rules—dirty laws and rules to keep their own hands clean. By contrast, the Axis of Predators are not content to farm or herd or even hunt animals for their sport. They take joy in the domination, captivity, misery and death of sentients. They are the very definition of evil.”
“Yeah, that all sounds very noble, but it applies to everyone they prey on. Why do you single yourselves out particularly?”
“Because all the Predators are purging their societies of us. There are a few other oppressed and powerless species as well—including humanoids—but we Rodentia are universally despised. All of the Axis are doing this, and more regimes are using the activity as cover to persecute anyone they find inconvenient.”
“Really? I hadn’t heard of that last part.”
“They’ve forced Contracts upon millions. They are also buying the cheapest Contractors available. And many of these Contractors are vanishing... to somewhere.”
Chiara sat back, imagining. So it went far beyond the usual Predator activities—a rumored hunt here, a secret feast there. Now it was wholesale coercion and abduction. Give what the Predators did to prey... it probably amounted to mass murder, all under a veneer of legality—as far as the Conglomerate was willing to know.
The rest, they no doubt turned a blind eye to.
As she’d always worked to cause trouble for the crimorgs—mostly out of revenge and personal hatred for what they’d done to her as a child—she decided to think of the Axis of Predators as a crimorg syndicate, not a collection of militaristic legitimate governments.
Only, they were the biggest, most powerful crimorgs she’d ever thought of messing with. “You think you can stop them?”
Sliiki folded her hands. “We will do our part, spreading the word to those who can.”
“Ah. Now I get it. You’re trying to use the Breakers against the Predators. That’s why you’ve approached me.”
“We wish to use no one. We do seek to foster opposition. The Predators must be opposed, and the Conglomerate is content to let them run amuck, as long as business goes on. Business may even increase for a time under Axis rule, but it is the increase of cancer—a growth that will eventually kill.”
“You’re eloquent, even in Earthan.”
Sliiki bowed. “I have studied extensively.”
Chiara sighed. “Okay, I believe you. But that’s for another day. Right now, I need to get six Breakers back. If you really want me to trust you, you’ll help me.”
“All we can, yes. We are not soldiers, so we cannot be seen to take direct action, but we will give you what we know.”
Chiara returned her attention to the hardcopy. “If this is true, we need to move fast.”
“It is true. It may already be too late.”
Chiara shivered. “Not if I can help it.”
“On the data stick you will find more details. It’s all we have.”
For one long moment Chiara thought about trust—about the long con, about being a sucker, about how people fooled themselves when they saw what they wanted to see. Could this be happening now? The rats were inveterate liars and cheats. But, her gut said this one was playing straight.
“Okay. I’ll take action. Keep in mind, though, I’ll be taking out an insurance policy. If this is some kind of scam or put-up job, I’ll hunt you and yours down and make you pay—or my friends will. Like I made the Korveni pay. Understand?”
“I understand... and I hope we can earn your trust, someday.” Sliiki placed the pendant around her neck again and the currency wafers into a pocket.
Chiara snapped her fingers. “I also need some things for the trip—a stand-alone carbon dioxide scrubber, a space-capable toilet pod, five hundred human-edible self-heating meals, a six-gig oxygen synthesizer, a thousand liters of bottled water, twenty bedrolls... as well as getting my repairs expedited. If you can get me all that and deliver it to the ship ASAP, I’ll pay with currency or trade goods.”
“Money in advance would help…”
Chiara dipped into her tunic and took out the other seven kilo-credit wafers she had handy. “All I have on me.”
“It will do.”
It occurred to her that she might as well think big with Breaker money. “Also... my ship could use some extra defenses. Shields, reinforcement busses...”
“Would it surprise you to learn that surplus shield modules are easy to come by, as they’re useless here in the Mechrono system? I believe one could be obtained and fitted. However, make sure you don’t activate it until you’re outside the flatspace limit!”
“Of course. Get moving on this, with my thanks.”
“Gladly.” Sliiki led her out of the building.
Chiara found the flophouse where the men were staying. Before she went in, in a shadowed doorway in a back alley, she took out the tiny dispenser tube of Erb and touched it to her tongue. Relief flooded her as the extract hit her system and soothed her jangled nerves. She wished she could do more, to let the nectar carry her to paradise for a blessed hour or two, but she was on a mission. No time for pleasure binges. Sex would have to fill the void, later—pun intended.
At the flophouse she gathered up the rescued Breakers and the badgers, and led them back to the ship. By the time she arrived, rats had begun to deliver the items she’d asked for and the repair shop was busily fixing the ship’s damaged wing. The shield module and its emitters sat nearby, waiting to be bolted on—a surprisingly advanced Langston 2013.
“Chief,” she said to Sylvester, “We’re going to have to make do, packing the ship full. Life will be miserable and tight for a while. Either that, or we leave some of your people here and send a ship to pick them up later.”
Sylvester chewed a lip. “We won’t split up. Not this crew. We want to help get the others back. We’ll be fine. We’re spacers. We’re used to living tight. Don’t leave any of us behind, Captain.”
Chiara slapped his shoulder. “Deal. I’ll drop the ramp and you guys unload the cargo hold. Take everything out. Some of it’s going to be traded for our new equipment. The rest, re-stow so you all can bunk there.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
The spacers quickly moved everything out of the hold and onto the grass, while Brock and Raj patrolled the area, checking the deliveries in and out. Normally she’d worry about the rats filching anything portable, but they seemed to have suspended their usual thieving for now. She supervised the repairs and upgrades, the trades and the re-stowing, getting rid of everything she could spare in exchange for Conglomerate credit, especially the heavy rhodium. If not for the rescue mission, she’d call this a highly successful trading run.
If they survived.
Six hours later, she launched Cassiel from the spaceport and flew low over the landscape, testing out the new wing and flight controls. When she was satisfied, she pushed the throttles forward, went supersonic and tilted the ship’s nose upward, passing through several Mach numbers before she ran out of atmosphere.
“I see you timed the departure with the orbiting Arattak ship on the other side of the planet,” Loco said from the copilot’s seat. He was looking much better after resting and letting the Bug heal him—not to mention his male pride, acting as if he were complet
ely fine.
“Yep,” she said. “But we have to assume they have a drone or two keeping watch on the ship that ruined their rhodium operation.”
“So you think they’re watching?” Loco asked.
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Guess so…”
An alarm beeped until Chiara acknowledged it with the tap of a control. “Speak of the Devil... Here we go.”
The display showed the Arattak ship rounding the planet under full acceleration and launching missiles.
Chapter 17
Hellheim Nebula, SBS Trollheim, aft cargo airlock.
Straker pressed his face against the transparent duralloy of the cargo control room looking into the capacious airlock. That airlock was big enough to transfer the largest items in deep space without wasting oxygen—more than thirty meters by thirty. For anything bigger, the cargo bay itself would have to be evacuated of air.
Inside the room, he could see Roentgen’s cargo module, a battered, windowless crysteel cuboid three meters by three by six. He noticed peeling paint overlaid with illegible graffiti and wondered idly how far that container had come. It had been manufactured decades ago in the Hundred Worlds, travelling from planet to planet filled with goods, only to end up here and now, so far from its origin.
His chrono told him Roentgen—the Roentgens—should emerge any time now. The viewport should protect Straker from the majority of radiation, and he’d get his first true view of a Thorian outside his suit. Of course, he’d seen them during the fusing, but as other Thorians saw each other. This time, he’d see one with his human eyes.
The door swung open. The suited Roentgen stepped out and paused. Had he been human, he’d have looked around and perhaps nodded in satisfaction, but the Thorian was still as ice. His “vision” needing no aiming—it functioned 360 degrees in all three dimensions.
After a moment, he stepped out of the way and another Thorian emerged, unsuited. It—Straker already was differentiating the two by calling the suited one “he,” the departing one “it,” perhaps to make the parting easier—it was somewhat octopoid. Unlike a Ruxin, however, it had four stubby legs with four symmetrical toes, like split hooves, attached to a distinctly cylindrical torso, with barely the hint of a waist. It had four slimmer arms with hands, with the evenly spaced fingers he’d seen once before.
By its movements, it had no bones, nor exoskeleton. When he’d clasped hands in the fusing, before his nerves went dead, he’d had the impression of drying clay, still slightly malleable before setting firmly. Its surface was grayish-brown, like a glistening, polished metallic granite, or some kind of exotic mineral. There were no eyes, noses, mouths or other orifices. It might have been a machine, a Lithomorphic robot made of solidified soil, by all indications. Yet it was alive, in its own way, and sentient.
What really was the difference between an intelligent machine and a living creature? Weren’t humans—and most aliens—nothing but organic machines of astonishing complexity? Thorians—and the Crystals Straker had defeated—straddled the line between the two. Inorganic, azoic life forms. If this wasn’t evidence of some Unknowable Creator, he didn’t know what was.
“So, what’s the plan for R-1?” Straker asked Zaxby, who occupied the control station behind him.
“I take your designation to mean the Roentgen on his way out?”
“Yeah.”
“The plan is simple. I will implement it now.” As he spoke, the outer doors drew aside, opening the airlock to space.
Straker could see the glow of the drive spewing reaction mass into space in its fine, high-energy plasma. “Will the drive plume harm R-1?”
“Not in the least. It’ll be like a human skydiving into a blast of warm engine exhaust.”
As if on cue, R-1 walked to the edge, its motion demonstrating that the gravity inside the airlock had been turned down to minimum. Without pausing, it fell forward, flexed its legs and shoved off the edge like a diver. When it hit the plume, it spun and vanished in the glow astern.
Straker belatedly raised a palm in a farewell gesture, feeling gut-punched all over again.
The Roentgen still in the airlock—R-2, should he say?—also raised his hand, whether in farewell, or in imitation of Straker, he didn’t know. He held it up until the outer doors closed and the inner doors opened to allow him inside.
The Thorian met Straker in the cargo bay. “I am here.”
“Yeah, me too.” Straker stared. “You’re the same person, but you’re not, either. I saw another one of you just... leap into space.”
“This is true. I am also about to fuse with the vortex. I eagerly anticipate the experience.”
“You’re in communication with... it? With Roentgen-1?”
“I am, imperfectly, through particle exchange. There is distance and interference. As you would yell across a chasm.” He paused. “It is occurring. It is wonderful. I am ecstatic.” The flat, translated voice contrasted oddly with the emotional words.
“Keep talking. Tell me about it.”
“I can’t. It is gone.”
Straker’s heart clenched. “Dead?”
“I don’t know. I felt the fusing, and then dissolution. My sibling may have been incorporated into the vortex, but this is not death. Not for our kind.”
Straker shook his head. “I can’t comprehend that. I can only see you, here with me, and... and focus on the present.” He looked away, looked around at nothing, thinking about endings, and Carla, and his own golem-clone he’d condemned to death.
Zaxby was running decontamination on the cargo module, still in the airlock, and so he and Roentgen were still alone in the cargo bay.
“I wish we could share a drink at the bar,” Straker said.
“Is that anything like fusing?” the Roentgen asked.
“A little.”
“I can safely ingest various substances through my suit.”
“I thought you didn’t eat or drink.”
“As with many truths, that is not entirely accurate. We do require trace amounts of certain isotopes in order to maintain our bodies. To achieve this, we’re able to ingest large amounts of material, filter out what we need, and excrete that which is not needed. Therefore, I am able to have a drink with you, though your drinks will not have an intoxicating effect.”
“Is there anything that does intoxicate your species?”
“Some exotic isotopes,” the Roentgen said, “especially those with short, intense half-lives. These are the equivalent of drugs to us. Some Thorians ingest too much of these, becoming addicted and useless. Some fall into a life of misbehavior to support their habits.”
Straker snorted. “Ha. Radiation-addicted Thorians! That didn’t even occur to me.”
“Every species has its problems, similar to, but different from yours.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go get a drink and you can tell me all about them.”
“I would relish that.”
Straker put in his comlink. “Zaxby, do you think you could concoct a pleasant, safe, mildly radioactive drink for Roentgen?”
“Of course. I’ve studied Thorian nutritional requirements quite extensively.”
“Then come join us at the wardroom bar. We’ll have ourselves a wake for R-1.”
Straker felt the entire wardroom watching the trio and trying not to be obvious about it. Their commander; the flamboyant senior Ruxin—and the weird new alien who never left his suit. They took a table off to the side.
Zaxby set a thermal container in front of Roentgen and ordered sea-beer for himself. Straker called for a Sachsen brew, always the best. Frankly, he’d rather have Scotch right now, but he’d grown accustomed to the good stuff in his quarters. Hard liquor from the wardroom was synthesized, mediocre, and it was tough to go back to it. Yet he was in the mood to tie one on, so he ordered a double shot of synthesized Irish whisky and dropped it into his liter of beer as a boilermaker.
“To absent friends.” Straker raised his stein.
�
��Absent friends,” Zaxby murmured.
Straker drained half the mixture, feeling the stuff hit his empty stomach like a bomb, and called for another setup. Mara approached with a petite glass of Utopian chianti, and he nodded her to an empty seat.
“May they return one day,” Roentgen added. He sipped at his container from its integrated straw-tube, which fitted into his suit’s ingestion port, near what a human would call his chest. “This is decidedly awful,” he announced.
Zaxby mimed hurt. “I made sure it’s safe and appropriate—a replication of one of your standard drinks.”
“I don’t doubt its safety and effect, but it still tastes disgusting. However, it will dull my senses soon, so I will no longer care, and it is comradely to sit and ingest intoxicants with friends.”
“Yes, it is,” Straker echoed. “Lots of intoxicants.” He polished off another double boilermaker and waved for more.
Mercy Salishan, tunic collar unbuttoned and bottle in hand, put her other palm on an empty chair’s back. “May I join you?” she asked.
“Certainly, Captain,” Mara said, standing up. Her head barely reached Salishan’s shoulder, which she slapped lightly with the back of her fingers. “What you got there, woman?”
“Real Canadian whisky, all the way from Old Earth. If I’m going to drink, I’m going to do it right.”
“Of course, of course, sit down, Mercy.” Straker slid sideways to give her and Mara room. A steward set a tray of snacks discreetly onto the table, along with more shot glasses, a liter of the fake Irish whisky, and several more cold beers.
“I presume this is a wake of sorts?” Salishan said as she turned her chair around and sat with her elbows on its back.
“News travels fast,” Straker replied. A floating feeling had firmly taken hold, telling him the alcohol was occupying his brain like a Korven raiding party.
“A ship is a tight-knit village. There are no secrets, especially about heroics. About legends... ” Salishan poured careful shots of her vintage whiskey and slid them to the humans.