Star Splinter

by J G Cressey

“Good thinking out of the box, kid,” Jumper said, “but there’s no sign of hair or nail growth and no tech for life support.”

  “Whatever the cause,” Cal said, “I think we should take it as a good sign. Whoever our captors are, it seems they want us healed and healthy.” Maybe they just overlooked my back.

  “I’m not so sure, bro,” Toker said, pulling his sleeve back down and looking about the room. “I mean, this cell. Sure it’s all nice, bright, and clean, but it’s not all that friendly.”

  “How so?”

  “Let’s just say that I’ve been in a few cells in my time. Trouble seems to seek me out,” he said with a half grin. “Even the very worst cells had at least, shall we say, facilities. Even the jails on JuJu beach have the basic life sustaining stuff, an’ JuJu’s on one of the crappiest of back worlds. I mean, this cell sucks. My mouth feels like a Casgorian desert. We don’t even have anything to drink—”

  Without the slightest of warnings, a tall, white, cylindrical tube ejected vertically from the floor in the very center of the room. Toker stumbled back in surprise to land in Eddy’s arms. “Watch ya self,” she growled, shoving him roughly aside.

  “What the hell?” Toker grumbled, making sure not to take his eyes off the strange new cylinder.

  Tentatively, Cal approached it, although it didn’t appear in any way threatening.

  “Careful, Cal. Could be some sort of alien naughtiness.”

  “I don’t think so, Toker,” Cal replied. The cylinder was about eight feet in height, and as he approached, a thin tube sprouted, branch-like, from its side at the level of Cal’s head. “You might just be getting that drink you were after, Toker. I think your voice has activated some sort of drinking fountain.”

  “It did?”

  Cal moved his lips towards the thin tube.

  “Careful,” Eddy warned. “What if it poison or somethin’?”

  Cal shook his head. “If they wanted us dead, it would have happened already. They want us in good shape.’ He sucked on the tube. “Water.” He took another sip. “Damn good water!”

  Within seconds, the rest of the gang were moving forward to relieve their parched throats. As they did so, more thin tubes sprouted, each convenient for the height of their mouths.

  “This is all well and good,” Toker eventually said, using his sleeve to wipe some watery dribble from his chin, “but sooner or later, one of us is gonna need to take a leak, and I ain’t seeing a toilet—” The words had barely left his mouth when a white, seat-sized cube with a round hold on its top slid out from the floor in the corner of the room.

  “No frickin’ way. Did I just order a toilet?”

  Cal walked stiffly over to the cube and looked down through the hole. All he saw was a curving tube of slightly grayer white. After a few moments, the cube, having obviously detected no use, slid back into the floor.

  “That’s pretty damn clever,” Toker said, sounding truly impressed. “What else d’you think we could order?”

  “Let’s find out,” Cal replied. “Door…”

  Nothing happened.

  “Exit…”

  Still nothing.

  “Viewing panel,” Jumper tried, followed by, “control panel…”

  Still nothing moved or appeared.

  “Pulse blaster,” Eddy bellowed, causing Toker to jump in fright.

  “Yikes, Ed. What the hell is up with your volume control? And your brain for that matter. Pulse blaster, really?”

  “Worth a try, wasn’t it? Don’t hear any smart ideas comin’ outa your gob.”

  Toker frowned, then said, “Bed.” A long, low cube slid a little way out from the wall nearest him. “Not much of a bed, is it?” he muttered.

  “Try stepping back a bit,” Cal suggested. “I think it senses that you’re in the way.”

  Toker did just that, and the long cube immediately slid out further until it was the size of a single bed.

  “Whoever built this place sure has a fondness for white,” Jumper said.

  “Too right,” Toker agreed as he stared at the bed. “And hard lines. Doesn’t look too comfy.” He sat himself down and looked pleasantly surprised as he partially sank into it. “Wow, who’d have thought? Looks hard, but it’s as soft as a plump bottom!” He swung his legs up, laid back, and slid his hands behind his head.

  “Lazy git,” Eddy said with a loud sniff, then shouted, “Combat knife.” She gave a disappointed huff when nothing happened.

  “Maybe we should get Viktor off the floor?” Jumper suggested and moved to scoop the still unconscious boy up. Somewhat reluctantly, Toker shifted himself off the bed, allowing Jumper to lay the boy down.

  Cal was tempted to try ordering a chair. The water had helped reduce his rising temperature, but his back still felt like it was slowly killing him. After some deliberation, he decided to remain on his feet in an attempt to keep the blood flowing.

  “Do you think they’re watching us, Cal?” Toker asked as he leaned back against a wall.

  “It’s possible,” Cal answered after a moment. “But these little pop-out cubes seem automated to me. Too quick to be manually activated.”

  “So what do we do? How do we get out?” Eddy asked.

  Cal looked at her for a moment as he thought things through. The girl was unsuccessfully trying to scuff the pristine white floor with the black heel of her combat boot. If she was scared, she wasn’t showing it. None of them were. “I’ll be honest with you, Eddy, I don’t think escape is going to be all that easy. Jumper’s already found what looks to be a door seal on that wall—”

  “So let’s give it a good kickin’,” she suggested excitedly. “Bust it open.”

  Cal shot Jumper a wry smile. “Jumper’s already used his considerable skill and cunning to get it open.”

  “No luck, eh, J man?” Toker said as he located the door seal and took his turn in giving it a good shove.

  “Afraid not.”

  Toker gave up on the door. “So unless our captors have a change of heart, all hope of getting out of here is in the hands of our little sleeping wizard and his lovely lady.”

  All eyes fell on Viktor and Melinda. The smaller of the two was snoring quietly.

  After a few moments of staring at the boy, Eddy said, “Couldn’t I just give him a nudge with my boot, Cal? We could be waiting forever.”

  Tempting. “Best to let him come around on his own, Eddy. He’ll be disorientated enough.” Cal looked down intently at the boy, willing him to wake. The way he was feeling he’d be on the floor himself if they didn’t get out of here soon. Maybe we could give him just a little nudge—

  “You reckon he’ll be able to get us out of here, Cal?”

  “Huh. I’m not sure, Toker. I don’t see anything for him to crack open and jiggle.”

  Eddy wrinkled up her nose, “Well if he can’t bust us out, he could at least wake up miss bimbo there. She’s dim for a robot, but she’ll be good in a tussle.”

  “She’s not a robot.” The words were barely audible.

  All eyes went back to Viktor. The boy still appeared unconscious, but it was undoubtedly he who had spoken.

  “Viktor?” Toker said, leaning over the boy. “Rise and shine, bro. We need your brain…”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ESCAPE

  “Can I help in any way, Viktor?” Cal asked, looking down at the boy. “Maybe we could get Melinda up on the bed?”

  Almost two hours had passed since Viktor had regained consciousness. He was now crouched on the floor with one leg splayed at an awkward angle as he leaned over Melinda’s prone form. His hands were buried deep within in an opening in the cybernetic woman’s back.

  “No worries, Cal. This is kinda tricky with her horizontal, but I think I’m almost done.” The boy reached in further still, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated. Cal heard a series of clicks that caused the boy to frown then two more clicks, which turned the frown into a smile. “Besides,” he contin
ued, “I think we’d have a hard job lifting her. She’s pretty damn heavy. I tell you, who or whatever dragged her in here must have been seriously strong. She’d probably sink straight through that bed anyway.”

  Toker, who’d wasted no time reclaiming the bed, looked happy to hear that. Over on the far side of the room, Jumper was attempting to keep an irritable Eddy occupied with some hand-to-hand combat instruction. Cal might have joined them if it weren’t for the crippling pain in his back. During the last hour, it had taken all of his will just to stand up straight and not pass out. With the situation already dire enough, he’d tried to hide his worsening condition. But his temperature was steadily rising, and the sweat was getting excessive.

  “You think you can wake her up, Vik?” Toker asked.

  “If you mean can I reactivate her, then of course I can. I practically built her.”

  “Oh, so you know what caused her to switch off then?” Toker persisted.

  Viktor huffed in irritation. “Obviously, I don’t know who’s done it, and…and…I don’t really know how they’ve done it.” The words were leaving the boy’s mouth with some reluctance. “But I do know what they’ve done. I know exactly what they’ve done. But I also know that what they’ve done shouldn’t be possible—definitely isn’t possible—which is why I don’t know how they’ve done it. You see what I mean?”

  “Man, you’re twisting my brain with your nonsense talk.”

  Cal had to agree.

  Viktor sighed and stopped his tinkering to look over at Toker. “Okay, I’ll try and talk slow and clear, and you go ahead and stop me if your mushy little brain can’t keep up.”

  The boy sounded testy, but Cal guessed he was just disguising his fear and frustration.

  “When they were first created, which wasn’t all that long ago,” the boy continued, “all synthetics were fitted with a Gata V-Tech safe switch, a trigger that could be remotely activated in case the synthetic malfunctioned. It puts them into a sort of temporary paralysis, for safety’s sake, just in case they got out of hand—something that could never happen, by the way, if they went ahead and implanted a behavioural chip like the one I developed. Anyway, it seems that someone went ahead and activated Melinda’s safe switch, even though it’s impossible.”

  “Why is that impossible?” Cal asked.

  “It’s impossible, because they, whoever the hell they are, would have had to have gotten hold of Melinda’s unique V-Tech frequency code from deep inside the military’s mainframe system, which in itself is kinda impossible seeing as how that mainframe and its three backup systems were all on Earth. But, for argument’s sake, let’s say that they did somehow manage to get Melinda’s code before Earth was destroyed. Even then, it’s still impossible.”

  “What d’ya reckon, Cal?” Toker said, leaning up on his elbows, “Think he’s ever gonna get to the point and tell us why it’s impossible?”

  “It’s impossible, smart arse, cos I bloody well removed Melinda’s safe switch sixteen months ago.”

  Cal rubbed the back of his sweating neck. “Could there be another explanation, something other than the safe switch?”

  Viktor frowned and shook his head. “It’s the only thing that I’m aware of that could disable every single one of her systems like that—simultaneously and completely.” The boy looked frustrated as he bent down to resume his tinkering.

  “Can you reactivate her without your tools?”

  Viktor looked up again, his frown disappearing. “Course, Cal. I wasn’t lying when I said that I practically built her. After I rescued her from those tech dummies on the starship, I replaced a good seventy percent of her internal workings.”

  “There’s a surprise,” Toker said.

  Viktor ignored him. “I tell you, Cal, I don’t know what the hell those Federation scientists were thinking with their design work. I mean, she’s supposed to be a combat soldier. Combat. That suggests to me that she’s gonna spend most of her time off on some distant planet kicking ass, right? Well, I’ll ask you what I asked them; what if somethin’ got damaged or went haywire during that combat? I’ll tell you what, their shoddy designs would mean that you’d have to drag her back to a full-tech engineering workshop to fix even the smallest fault. Bunch of idiots. So anyway, with my design, I can actually do most of the diagnosing and fixing with my eyes, ears, and fingers, see?” The boy sucked in a deep breath. “So anyway, there’s a few things that can’t be done by hand, so I’ve got a couple of small, purpose-designed tools stored in here: a couple of replacements for her smaller, more delicate components too. Just as well too, cos one of them’s been irreversibly disabled. Weird, I tell you. Hold up a sec. This bit’s kinda tricky.” Again, the boy’s tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth. There was a loud pop followed by a faint whir. “Got it.” He pulled his hands free from Melinda’s back, and the gap sealed over immediately with a metallic matrix that began oozing a skin-colored liquid.

  Toker was upright now, perched on the edge of the bed as he peered with fascination at the new skin rapidly forming on Melinda’s back. “So you’ve fixed her then?”

  Pulling Melinda’s clothing back in place, Viktor grinned and nodded. “Yep. Might take her a bit of time to do some self-diagnostics and adjustments though.”

  “Hey, tell her to take her time, little bro,” Toker said. “And when she’s ready, it’d be great if you could ask her to break us out of this damn white box.”

  Cal used his already damp sleeve to wipe his forehead. “I second that.”

  “She’ll get us out, don’t worry about that,” the boy replied confidently. Then, he leaned over the cybernetic woman. “Melinda? Wake up, honey. We’re gonna need your hair…”

  Twelve minutes later, Cal was relieved to see Melinda standing tall.

  “So come on then, V,” Eddy said gruffly.

  Viktor looked at the girl quizzically.

  She huffed and sharply nodded to the white wall in front of them. “Tell yer big blonde chick to kick the door in.”

  Viktor looked at the girl as a disappointed parent might look at an underachieving child. “You really have no concept of the technology we’re cocooned in, do you? Or the likely strength of the materials used to form this cell? Just because Melinda is incredibly strong in comparison to a puny thing like you doesn’t mean she can just go charging through sealed metal doors. Besides, even if she could, it’s a crude means of escape.”

  “Whatever,” the girl replied impatiently, “just bust us the hell outa here.” She turned to Cal with an exasperated look. “Cal tell—” She stopped mid-sentence, her look of exasperation turning into one of concern. “Hey, you okay? You look kinda rough.”

  Cal gave her a weak nod. For the last ten minutes, he felt as though he’d been chopped in half then crudely been put back together. “Fine, Eddy. So what’s the plan, Viktor?” Please, God, let there be a plan…a bloody good one.

  “Well I can’t guarantee that it’ll work, Cal.”

  Shit.

  “But it should. Melinda, a nano lock if you please?” Melinda reached up and took hold of a single blonde hair from her head. The hair came away easily, and Cal could just about see it squirming in her grip like an incredibly thin snake. The boy took hold of it between his thumb and forefinger and, moving to the seam in the wall, laid the hair against it. A second later, it had disappeared. “A lock of hair to pick the lock!”

  “How the hell does that work?” Toker asked, moving forward and peering at the point where the hair had wriggled into the seam.

  “It’s simple,” Viktor replied. “Melinda has full control over every single lock of her hair even if they’re disconnected from her head. She’ll be able to explore around in the internal workings of the wall and will hopefully be able to manipulate the locking mechanism. I came up with the idea after the shit we went through on Mars.”

  “Huh, simple.” Toker grinned.

  “That really is very clever, Viktor,” Jumper added.

  “Will s
he be able to disable any alarms?” Cal asked, trying his best to keep his head in the game.

  “Don’t worry, Cal, she knows what she’s doing.”

  They all fell silent and stared at the wall, occasionally glancing at Melinda’s face, which remained blank and unreadable. Cal wanted to offer advice as to the best action to take once the door opened—assuming it did open—but his head felt fuzzy and, without knowing what was waiting for them on the other side, giving advice was a tricky thing. Not that he felt capable of action anyway. In his current state, it would be all he could do to just walk out of the cell. Fortunately, his adrenalin had started to rise, bringing with it a little strength.

  “You okay, Cal?” Jumper had come to stand by his side. “You’re looking a little…hot.”

  Cal turned to him and did his best to grin. “I’ll take a cold shower once we’re back on the Star Splinter.”

  Jumper nodded but didn’t look convinced by the bravado.

  A few minutes later, the door still hadn’t moved. Cal took a deep, slow breath. His ribs hurt. Open, damn it. Sweat trickled uncomfortably down his neck. He looked at Viktor and was relieved to see that he still appeared confident. Next to the boy, Eddy looked ready to burst. And next to her, Toker kept looking back and forth between Melinda and the wall.

  Then, the door slid open.

  The few muscles in Cal’s body that weren’t already tensed suddenly became so. Beyond the open door lay a white corridor. Empty. So far, so good, he thought, feeling himself relax ever so slightly. Melinda moved silently forward to retrieve her hair, which was somehow clinging to the side of the newly formed exit.

  The long, white corridor was eerily quiet. Cal took a couple of deep, steady breaths and did his best to push his pain aside as he silently led them out of the cell. Continuing tentatively forward, he saw numerous open doors lining the left hand wall. His relief was palpable when Melinda moved up alongside him and stayed by his side.

  Feeling as though his heart could breach his chest at any moment, Cal peered around the first door. He saw a modest-sized, white room, which, judging by the setup, he guessed to be living quarters. The room was devoid of life. Not only that, but he had a feeling it hadn’t been occupied for quite some time. It was clinically clean with not a single personal artifact. Turning back to the others, he gave them a nod then continued to the next door. Peering in with caution, he saw a room exactly the same as the last. Seven doors later, all that had been revealed were the exact same lifeless living quarters.