by R. A. Nargi
The Vostok was a high-end ship, for sure—with sleek, expensive finishes. Even the main hallway looked like it had been designed by an interior decorator. Not that I had much time to take it all in.
This whole level was completely quiet, so we kept going, climbing up to the top level of the Vostok. But before we got anywhere near the bridge, a shadowy figure dressed in a crimson exosuit emerged from a side passage and began firing on us with some sort of impulse rifle.
I leapt to the closest wall—at the same time activating the magtouch on my suit. Then I jumped out of the figure’s line of sight.
Both Ana-Zhi and the Sean bot returned fire, but the crimson attacker vanished behind a bulkhead.
“I’m going after him,” the Sean bot said. “You two cover me.” He clanged forward, moving twice as fast as I could have.
The shadowy figure got off two more shots, one of which erupted in a fiery bloom on the Sean bot’s shoulder, knocking him back.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of movement. Another crimson-armored assailant dropped from a hatch in the ceiling of the opposite corridor behind the Sean bot. He was human, but tall and thin. And armed with a Gauss shaker.
Crap! The Sean bot would be caught in the crossfire.
Powered by my suit’s repulsors, I launched myself from the wall towards the tall man, grasping for the judder knife at my belt.
At the same time Ana-Zhi started blasting at the guy at the front of the corridor, but her angle was all wrong.
The second I hit the ground, I rolled. With bolts flying over my head, I sprang up and plunged the judder knife right into the space between my enemy’s chest plate and shoulder armor. The knife bucked in my hand as the sonic blade cut through the crimson-colored ceramlar body armor.
The guy howled in pain and slapped at my hand, dropping his shaker in the process. But he was not down by any means. In fact, he retained enough presence of mind to launch a savage kick at my balls—which I barely dodged. Instead, the kick connected with my thigh and his augmented muscles were powerful enough to send me careening into the side bulkhead.
My vision darkened as my head slammed against the bulkhead and all the air was driven from my body. I willed myself not to pass out, but I was stunned—unable to move or even breathe.
Then I heard the blast of Ana-Zhi’s Kinesis and her shouting “Move! Move! Move!”
The next few seconds were a blur. As I charged down the corridor I glimpsed the tall man with the shaker slumped against one wall unmoving.
One down.
But before I knew it, another crimson-armored crew member popped out from a doorway and showered us with a volley of blaster fire.
Where the hell was the Sean bot?
The air became smoky and filled with sparks, and I could barely see Ana-Zhi in front of me. This was messed up. We had to get out of this crossfire.
As we turned a corner, I saw the Sean bot, toppled over and flailing, enmeshed in a web of sticky plexus strands. He was trying to free himself, but it was taking a while.
In the meantime one of the crew members abruptly swung out from around a corner, and brought up some sort of shoulder-mounted missile launcher.
The Sean bot, still half-covered with suppressor strands, managed to track the crew member’s movement and was able to get off two blasts at him, but not before the man got a shot off.
“Down!” the Sean bot yelled, and both Ana-Zhi and I jumped behind structural columns as a projectile the size of my hand shot down the hallway. I heard a muffled explosion down the hall in back of us, but there was no sensation of a serious impact. It was like our attacker had fired a dud.
But then a cacophony of low buzzing echoed throughout the corridor. I peeked around the column to see a half dozen tiny drone grenades flying back towards us. They seemed to be ignoring Ana-Zhi and me and all converged on the Sean bot, affixing themselves to his metal frame with a barrage of clangs.
Shit. They could be anything from frag poppers to sonic grenades. Or—
“Shiver-spikes!” the Sean bot yelled, as he tried to pluck the parasites off his body. There was genuine panic in his mechanized voice. I didn’t blame him. Shiver-spikes were smaller, more localized versions of EMP jigglers. And these were drone-based and intelligent.
Within seconds the hallway filled with a discordant series of loud whines as the spikes’ EMP circuits began to overload.
And, to make things worse, the crew member with the RB danced out of his hiding place and started blasting in our direction.
“Cover me!” I called to Ana-Zhi as I dove at the Sean bot. Even still tangled in strands, he had managed to remove all but one of the spikes, flinging them away down the corridor. The last spike had lodged itself on his back between his arms where he couldn’t reach it.
Without thinking, I leapt forward, snatched the device from the Sean bot’s back, and fell on to it, trying to contain it with my body. It was a stupid, dangerous thing to do, but I knew what kind of devastation an EMP shiver-spike would wreak on a bot.
Time seemed to stop as the air above me sizzled with bolts of energy, showering the hallway with sparks and fragments of half-vaporized wall plating.
Then the shiver-spike detonated beneath me, and I felt my body buckle as the shock wave hit. A sickly pain radiated out from my gut and then blackness closed in on me.
I awoke slowly, like I was being dragged from a cold pit. My body shivered and convulsed in pain and I couldn’t see anything. I coughed at the acrid air still stuck in my lungs and realized that I was in a different room and out of my suit.
“Jannigan, you’re okay.” It was Chiraine’s voice. “Just breathe.”
I tried to rise, but my head spun and I felt like I was going to vomit.
“Move aside,” Ana-Zhi’s voice said. “It’s safe to give him this now.” Then I felt the prick of an injector at my neck.
It felt like she had shot me up with boost juice. I jolted awake and my head cleared like a hurricane had blown through it.
“You’re fine, kid,” Ana-Zhi said, helping me sit. “Just a little bruising. Nothing broken. You’re lucky those spikes aren’t loaded with much of a charge.”
“They did, however, trash your exosuit pretty badly,” Chiraine said. “It was pretty scary cutting you out.”
“Uh, thanks.” I looked around. I was sitting on the edge of an exam table in some sort of med-bay. “Where’s the bot?”
“He was doing some clean-up, but that was a few hours ago.”
“What?”
“After you got that spike off him, he went kind of berserk,” Ana-Zhi said. “Ran off down the corridor shouting at us to take care of you. He came back twenty minutes later dragging a bunch of bodies. I’m happy to say that one of them was Yates. I am pretty pissed off that he didn’t let me in on the action. Although I imagine your dad’s beef with Yates was bigger than mine.”
That was for sure. I couldn’t believe it was all over.
“What about Obarral?” I asked.
“That’s what he was cleaning up next.”
“Actually, consider Obarral cleaned.” The Sean bot appeared at the doorway. “I also took control of the Vostok. Are you okay, JJ?”
“Yeah. How about you?”
“Fine. Thanks for the save back there. Those EMPs would have taken me out.”
This was a first. The old flesh and blood Sean Beck rarely said thank you. Especially to me. I didn’t know how to respond and the awkward silence that followed lasted far too long.
Finally, Chiraine broke it. “What are we going to do about those beacons?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You heard Qualt,” she said. “He planted beacons to guide the Mayir here. We can’t let them get the Kryrk, let alone what else is stored on Bandala.”
“It’s probably too late,” Ana-Zhi said. “Once the beacon chain is built, the jump points are calculated instantly. We trash the beacons in this system, we’re actually doing the Mayir a favor. It st
ops anyone else from following them.”
“Point of fact, it is too late,” the Sean bot said. “I accessed the logs. Those beacons were planted over thirty-six hours ago.”
“So that’s it? There’s nothing we can do.” My throat felt thick and another wave of nausea hit me. It had nothing to do with the shiver-spike.
Ana-Zhi glared at me. “What we can do is get the hell out of this system before the Mayir arrive and kick our asses. And if we’re really lucky, we’ll be able to trace those beacons back to civilization.”
“We can’t go anywhere until we retrieve my father’s body,” I said. “Hopefully the shuttle made it back in one piece.”
“Let’s find out,” the Sean bot said, in a way that struck me as way too cavalier.
We made our way to the bridge and Ana-Zhi sat herself down in the pilot’s seat.
“You know how to fly one of these?” Chiraine asked.
“I’m not going to even dignify that with an answer,” Ana-Zhi replied.
I glanced down at the console. Everything looked familiar enough to me, even though Barnes was notorious for their odd placement of the throttle and repulsor controls.
Ana-Zhi readied the Vostok, scanning status indicators and diagnostic displays. At the same time, the Sean bot plugged himself into a dataport. When I asked what was up with that, he said that he was checking for booby-traps.
“Qualt’s crew are a crafty bunch. I wouldn’t put it past them.”
But luckily he didn’t find anything.
Ana-Zhi keyed the thrusters and turned us back towards Bandala. It was a short trip.
“I’m not the best at landings,” she said to the Sean bot, as we approached Bandala. “Especially with this clunky thing. You want to take over?”
“Of course.”
The shuttle landing deck on Bandala was too small to accommodate the Vostok, so the Sean bot took us into one of the large main freight decks that was only two floors away from where the shuttle—and his body—waited.
I turned to the Sean bot and asked, “You saw the medical facilities on board here, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s good enough to safely wake your body—your flesh and blood body—out of stasis, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t see a MedBed, but I’m sure there’s a soma-tank with a nutrient feed on board. The trick to the karokinesia process is modulating the body temperature and—”
“I know how the procedure works. I just wanted to know if we can finally revive you. It’s pretty nerve-wracking worrying about your body getting lost or damaged or something.”
“I’m touched, JJ. I really am. Obviously my first choice would be to have Dr. Mott revive me back at HQ, but I’m not sure when we’ll make it back to Anglad. And it is a lengthy process. Twenty-four hours at least, if I recall correctly.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“Honestly, JJ, I’m not really focused on that right now. We have bigger things on our plate. Ana-Zhi is right about the Mayir. We need to be gone before they get here. And we have to keep the Kryrk out of their hands—at all costs.”
His words hit me like a meteor, and suddenly I knew what to do.
“Jannigan?” Chiraine asked. “You okay?”
“I think I know how we can prevent the Mayir from gaining access to Bandala,” I said in a low voice.
“Do tell,” Ana-Zhi said.
“The Kryrk…” I trailed off, my mind spinning with the realization.
“Yeah, you’re not making much sense, junior.”
All the color drained from Chiraine’s face. It obvious that she had guessed what I was proposing.
“No,” she said in disbelief.
“It’s the only way.”
“What are you talking about, JJ?” the Sean bot asked.
“We have to destroy Bandala.”
Ana-Zhi shook her head. “I think you bumped your head, kiddo. We don’t have that much firepower. The core is too protected and even with the Vostok’s array of void cannons—”
“I wasn’t thinking about using the Vostok.” I cut her off. “I was thinking of using the Kryrk.”
22
Even though my plan made a lot of sense, it had one flaw—and it was a big one. No one knew how to activate the Kryrk. Not Chiraine. Not the Sean bot.
But it wasn’t from lack of trying.
My father had heard the same legends Chiraine had—and he believed them too—at least enough to study the artifact once he found it. But after years of on-and-off brute force attempts to make the Kryrk do something, as well as a multitude of scans, slices, radiant tests, and everything else he could think of, the Sean bot had finally given up hope.
Until now.
Now it was clear that he was excited to be working with a cultural anthropologist of Chiraine’s stature.
“Together we might have a chance to figure this out,” he announced. “I know it.”
“But first we get your body,” I said. Through the main viewport I saw the landing deck grow larger.
The Sean bot touched the Vostok down with just the slightest jolt and then we prepared to disembark. My exosuit was totally trashed so I had to avail myself of one of the bright red Mayir suits. It wasn’t as advanced as the state-of-the-art Welkin I had been wearing, and didn’t have any sort of haptic pulse, but beggars can’t be choosers. Ana-Zhi figured out how to link our comm, so I was pretty much ready to go.
Chiraine would remain on board and continue to work on the Kryrk, while Ana-Zhi, the Sean bot, and I fetched my dad’s unconscious body and a bunch of other things that the Sean bot wanted to take with us.
Then the plan was to leave Bandala and fly the Vostok over to the location of the Fountain—just in case Qualt (who was still unconscious and locked in the brig down the hall) was messing with us. As Sean was fond of saying, “trust but verify.” According to my calculations, the Fountain should be almost open—if it was still there.
Ana-Zhi, the Sean bot, and I headed towards the lower airlock, with Chiraine in tow. As we wound our way through the upper levels of the Vostok she asked about the security bots. “Who’s going to shut down the grid as you go?”
“I will,” the Sean bot said. “And I don’t need some remote slicer box to do it, either.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Perfectly. Besides, there are hardly any active defenses on these upper levels.”
As we turned to leave, Chiraine touched my shoulder. “Be careful in there.”
“I will.”
“And keep an eye out for something we can use to make a resonator.”
“What?”
“For my biklode.”
In all the excitement I had forgotten that Chiraine had kept her little data storage unit.
“You think that there’s something on that thing that will help us figure out the Kryrk?” I asked.
“I’m sure of it. But we’re back to the needle in the haystack problem. I’ve got so much xenological data on there, it will be practically impossible to—”
“You have a biklode?” the Sean bot asked.
“Yes, I keep all my research on there. Over ten years’ worth.”
“What, did you start when you were five?” Ana-Zhi cracked.
“Let’s get going,” I said.
We exited the Mayir ship and the Sean bot opened up the access doors that led into an immense cargo depot that looked like a twin of the one we traveled through when we first entered Bandala.
The Sean bot knew how to turn on the illumination system in this area and soon we were marveling at the maze of cargo crates, heavy loaders, gantry cranes, conveyer bots, and other freight handling equipment that filled the cavernous space.
“JJ, help me get a hover-cart operational,” the Sean bot said. “Z, keep watch.”
“I thought this area was safe,” she said.
“Generally,” he grunted. “But you know what a careful guy I am.”
We had to swap out the ba
ttery on the hover-cart we found with another one that was up on plinths in a repair bay, but eventually the Sean bot got the cart working and we were off.
The shuttle landing deck was on the other side of Bandala and two levels down, so we had a ways to go. Even though the hover-cart’s lighting array did a passable job of cutting through the gloom of the dimly-lit access corridors, it was an eerie journey. I gripped my impulse rifle tightly, half expecting a squad of arthrodes to come clacking around a corner.
But every five hundred meters or so, the Sean bot accessed a wall-mounted control panel and worked his magic to shut down the next section of the security grid.
We kept going, but at various points during our journey, the Sean bot would tell us to wait while he took off down a side corridor to find a gallery that held one of the artifacts on his mental list of things he definitely didn’t want the Mayir to have.
“Not that I am being pessimistic,” he said. “But if your girlfriend doesn’t come through, we—”
“My girlfriend?” I sputtered in surprise. “Where did you get that?”
“Come off it, JJ. I see how the two of you look at each other.”
Ana-Zhi smirked at me. “He’s not wrong.”
“You guys are way off,” I said, even though I knew they weren’t. “Besides, have you forgotten about Lirala?”
“For Dynark’s sake, are you still hanging around with that slattern?” the Sean bot asked.
“Who’s Lirala?” Ana-Zhi asked.
“The daughter of Phelina Windsing,” the Sean bot said.
“Windsing Stables?”
“Yes,” the Sean bot said. “An entitled bitch. Zero class. Zero morals.”
“Hey, that’s no way to talk about your future daughter-in-law,” I said. “Besides, since when did you care who I married?”
“First of all, Jannigan, I actually never thought you were the marrying type.”
“Why’s that? Because of the example you set with Mom?”
I probably shouldn’t have brought that up, but the Sean bot was pissing me off. Big time.
But he ignored my jab.
“No,” he said. “You just never seemed very interested in the concept of commitment.”