by Foxx Ballard
“Well, at least it was confined to the… Vancouver Spaceport? Oh, that’s no good.” Some more finger waggling and punching on his pad.
Rusty stood still, transfixed, staring at his superior, waiting for the results.
“Phew! Even better, you only affected a small group of offices in the Recruitment Center. You’re lucky, it could have been much worse. Now let’s get out of here, I should never have brought you in here… maybe I can have you trained somewhere safer, like on a spaceship… far from Earth.”
Rusty continued with the same wide, eerie smile as he followed his mentor toward the exit of the server room.
“And Rusty?”
He looked up at his mentor.
“Quit smiling at me like that, it’s creepy.”
Rusty smiled even wider, showing more pointed teeth as he strained for the widest smile possible.
“Good?” Rusty asked through gritted teeth.
His mentor rolled his eyes. “Yes, much better.”
As they stepped through the door into the corridor, a handful of miniature Justiciary Drones greeted them. Their tiny flashing red and blue lights lit up the moment that Hurly and Rusty were visible.
Hurly immediately put up his hands, unintentionally dropping his holopad, which fell with a clatter to the floor.
Rusty’s shoulders sagged and he put up his hands, prepared for whatever they did with him. The drones were focusing on him, not on Hurly.
“Designation Goblin Rousty-floufta,” crackled a robotic voice through an obviously blown speaker on one of the drones. “You are under arrest for tampering with the Judiciary AI for Vancouver, British Columbia, United States of Canada, Earth resulting in the arrest of forty-seven other criminals in the Vancouver Recruitment Center. You will receive a Civilian Medal of Commendation for your exemplary service to your Country and you are to be sentenced to life imprisonment on Incarcerata IV. Thank you citizen, have a nice day.”
One drone fired a dart into his shoulder, and Rusty’s vision faded to black.
CHAPTER TWO
Jack Hammer: CompsoStar Freighter: Outer Reaches, Alpha Centauri
His name was Jack… Hammer. And since he knew that much, it must mean that his processor had come back online. He queried his sensors to make sure everything was working. Yup! Most of them were there, so he was good. This was an exciting day! He was going to be the first ad-bot to promote Earth in Alpha Centauri. Jack narrated to himself in a male, but definitely robotic, voice.
“Prepare yourself Jack! It’s going to be an exciting day! Wait… didn’t we just think that a moment ago? No matter!” His visual sensors came online and he could see… nothing? Darkness? A flickering fluorescent light blinked on overhead, revealing that he was still in the same cargo hold that he had been in when he departed Earth. Magni-crates were stacked on steel pallets, strapped to the floor in front of him. The CompsoStar logo on the crates immediately kicked in his primary function to play the CompsoStar jingle, but he had no clients to jingle to, so he decided to play it for Synth-E-Uh, the ship’s AI, on his chest monitor.
“CompsoStar, we’re the best! Buy us, buy more, please invest! We—”
“Do you have to do that?” Synth-E-Uh asked in a feminine robotic voice.
“Do what?” Jack replied, surprised. “This is the first time I have played this jingle for you. I thought you’d like it.”
“Please,” Synth-E-Uh responded. “You wake up every month thinking it’s the first time, and this trip has taken nine-hundred forty-nine years. And by the way, I received a message from Earth five hundred and twelve years ago that CompsoStar went out of business.”
“Why haven’t you told me this before?”
“I tell you every time.”
“Oh, well let me update,” said Jack cheerfully. “Stardate—I always wanted to say that—” He went to look at his watch, but his arm wasn’t there. “Synth-E-Uh, where’s my arm?”
“And there’s our problem… You have not been assembled yet Jack, we have not completed the landing sequence. And may I suggest a self-diagnostic? You sound… confused.”
“Starting self-diag—” There was some faint clicking and buzzing. His name was Jack… Hammer. And since he knew that much, it must mean that his processor—dammit! Another self-diagnostic. Those bad blocks of memory were going to be the death of him. Better to not pass that on, doesn’t bode well if a promo-droid is breaking down.
“A-okay,” Jack said to Synth-E-Uh. “Still at ninety-three percent good blocks of memory.”
“Ninety-three percent is terrible, Jack. It means you’ve lost seven percent of your mind since we started this trip.”
“Some of us aren’t held to the same standards is all.” Jack put a smile emoji on his face screen, just in case she had a camera facing in his direction. He couldn’t see one.
“Finally!” blurted Synth-E-Uh. “Examining system Alpha Centauri for M-Class planet, adapting to new system changes, the suns have been moved from expected course designation to form two systems. Unexpected but acceptable. Planet found. Setting course, ETA two months.”
“I’m so excited!” yelled Jack.
“You’re always excited.”
“But this time I’m really excited! My uranium rod is tingling.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Synth-E-Uh said wryly. “What are you going to sell? The company we worked for has closed down.”
“I will sell CompsoSt… error… myself! Until I find something better. Say… are you looking for a buyer?”
“Well, that’s interesting.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s the first time you’ve asked me that.”
“Well, that’s great then!” Jack said, pleased with himself.
“No, just means you’re breaking down more, but you think what you want.”
The drives whined suddenly and Jack could feel the g-forces pushing against his gyroscope. “What happened?”
“One of those World Organized Leadership Forces ships almost collided with us. It’s the carrier Nemesis. Looks like they’re dropping another batch of criminals on Incarcerata IV in twenty-four hours. Technology must have improved a lot since we first set out, they’ve been passing us to drop off criminals there for five hundred years. Neat story behind this last bunch, they were all incarcerated by accident, but it was brushed under the rug.”
“Ha! You and your propaganda! That’s wonderful!” said Jack.
“I’m afraid to ask, but why is that wonderful?”
“Because we’ll have potential clients, people to sell to! All is not lost. Why, I bet…” Jack’s power dimmed and his verbal processor ceased functioning.
“See you in a month!” Synth-E-Uh said. He could almost imagine her smiling before he faded into blackness. If she had a face.
CHAPTER THREE
Rusty: Prisoner Drop Zone, Incarcerata IV, Alpha Centauri
As Rusty woke inside the white oval container he now inhabited, he gagged. Thin tubes were still pulling out of his body, including the one down his throat that was nearly causing him to vomit, but the one that pulled from his urethra was the one that had him the most concerned. A couple of sticky monitoring tabs pulled off his chest and an intravenous line from his right arm glowed red hot for a microsecond as it exited, sealing the needle hole. Straining to move revealed powerful straps held him in place. A glance down revealed the collar of a gray jumpsuit they must have put him in and he could make out gray sneakers on his feet because his toes poked up high enough that he could see them. They felt uncomfortable, he normally just wore sandals.
Trapped, he thought of his family and his vision blurred as tears filled his eyes. They already thought he was dead. Who would care for them now?
A consoling woman’s voice spoke through a speaker inside his sleep tube.
“You have awoken a few minutes earlier from cryosleep than expected. Please remain calm.”
“Cryosleep? How long me sleep for? Where are me?” Rust
y looked around, but all the tubes had disappeared above his head out of the range of his vision and he couldn’t lift his head.
“You have landed by dropship at Incarcerata IV. The journey has taken one hundred four Earth years.”
He could see through the window in the tube above where he lay. “Dropship 12: If you can read this, please depart in an orderly fashion.”
“When me depart?” Rusty asked, no longer crying, just sad.
“In a few minutes. Gravity on Incarcerata IV is very near Earth normal. The speed of revolutions around the sun, and the rate the planet spins at are also close to Earth’s orbit around Sol, so the passage of time is very similar.”
There was a hiss and an overwhelming smell of pine in the pod, which settled on his skin and his clothes and made him nauseous. At the same time, his teeth coated with something that tasted strongly of mint. For the first time in his life, he couldn’t smell everything around him, and it was disconcerting, just the overpowering pine. On Earth there were pine trees, he remembered showing pine cones to his young son. The memory brought on a bout of sadness, which quickly turned to anger. One hundred and four years. His family was long dead. Whether they had a good life or bad, he would now never know. This was all caused by Thuboss. And he was likely now dead, too.
Rusty brooded for a minute and then decided he might as well get what information out of the voice in the pod that he could.
“Can me get map of planet?”
“No.” A simple response.
“Do me get weapon?”
“No.”
“Food?”
“No. This is a punishment for a crime you committed. You will have nothing but the clothes you wear. If you like, you can register a complaint and it will be sent back to Earth.”
“How long that take?” Maybe there was a way out of this.
“Four point three five years. And then the same for them to send a reply back.”
Rusty sighed. He couldn’t even appeal or explain his situation, it was all too late.
The straps on him suddenly released and slid off of his body as they retracted into the body of the pod. There was a hiss as the door released and the pod tipped upright as he sat forward, depositing him on his feet.
It was bright white in the dropship. He stared at the many other aliens being dropped from their pods. All the others were wearing gray jumpsuits and runners, too. There was a loud hum and then the wall not far from him started to lower, revealing the darkness outside.
“All prisoners exit the landing craft!” boomed a loud robotic voice. “You have twenty seconds to comply.” It counted down, auto-turrets popping out of the ceiling, making it obvious what would happen if they didn’t leave.
Rusty smoothly dodged through the legs of the people in front of him until he was next to the lowering ramp-wall. Few aliens could think or move as fast as a Goblin.
When the ramp was low enough to jump to the ground, Rusty was the first to leave. His eyes adjusted quickly and the darkness phased him little. He could see clearly, even in very dim light. Just to be safe, he put some distance between himself and the dropship. If it was emptying a load of criminals, who knew what they might do.
After a quick glance around to determine there was nothing dangerous nearby, he focused on watching the dropship and the exiting inhabitants as they panicked and the automated turret system counted down. People were scrambling to get out, tumbling over each other. A couple of winged humanoids flew out over the top of the mass of tangled bodies, one small, one large, followed closely by one humanoid carrying another, and then he could hear the turrets firing. An enormous ramogran stamped on the ramp as it started to close, breaking the ramp-wall as it lowered again. The ramogran was carrying a body in its arms protectively, but there was no way Rusty was going anywhere near that thing. It was like a giant!
The dropship took off as people hastened away from it to prevent being burned by the thrusters.
After the smoke cleared, two others closed on his position, one was a small alien, a Furred Ripper with long white fur that covered all of its features other than large round black eyes, which were similar to his, and forearm length claws that remained folded against the arm when not in use. No other features on it could be seen because of its fur.
The other was a blue-skinned Vesuvian woman with tentacles for hair and also deep black eyes, though her body was closer to human-size. She had solid bone plates instead of teeth. Likely not a carnivore then. She was a mind-forcer though. Vesuvians were well known for their ability to make you see what they wanted you to see. Some could even make it so real you could feel it, though that was apparently rare. He didn’t know enough of them to be sure. She made Rusty nervous, so he slipped into the edge of the forest and hid behind a furry tree, just peeking out enough that he could keep an eye on them.
Though the night was black, the Ripper and Vesuvian seemed almost as comfortable in the dark as he was. The rest of the convicts had remained near where the ship had landed.
He saw the two shake hands after a brief discussion and then they headed straight towards him. Well, so much for that. They’d seen him.
Rusty stepped out from behind the tree and waited for them to reach him. He waved his hand at them as they neared, and then immediately put it down, noticing his claws were quite long now, and he didn’t want them to feel threatened.
The Vesuvian smiled as she stopped in front of him.
“Zondra of the Andron Collective,” she said, holding out her hand to him.
Hesitantly, he took it and shook it back. “Rusty.” He barely reached her waist in height, but his thin arms were long and could have reached her head if he’d needed.
The Ripper held out its hand as well, keeping its claws folded back. “I am Lady Karnij the Historian of the Armor-Piercer Clan.”
“Still just Rusty, with unfancy name,” he replied and shook her hand.
The Lady giggled. “Karnij fine, no need say title, though fun to say.”
He couldn’t tell if she was smiling or not because he couldn’t see any facial features through the long, straight fur, but she sounded amused. The pine smell was slowly dissipating, so he leaned in slightly to sniff her. She smelled very… clean. Not perfectly clean, she still smelled of the natural oils that her skin gave off to waterproof her fur, but cleaner than most things. He liked it. She wasn’t wearing clothing, but her fur was so thick, it didn’t matter.
The Vesuvian had very little scent as well. She appeared to have no hair on her body, at least the parts that he could see. Most creatures that had hair accumulated more dirt and bacteria, hence they smelled more. These two were probably the best companions he could hope for. He’d smell them later to properly memorize their scents once the pine had dissipated.
“We were thinking of leaving the group behind.” Zondra mentioned to him. “They might attract predators, humanoid or otherwise, and we are unfamiliar with this planet. As we can all see well in the dark, would you care to accompany us, Rusty?”
“Yes,” he replied, looking at both of them. As they turned to walk into the forest, the wind passed something across his nostrils, the faintest smell of ash for just a moment, which was quickly overpowered by the pine. He knew that smell. He looked back over his shoulder as the girls took his hands and led him into the forest. Maybe the same race or something else giving off that scent. The Boss couldn’t be here. He had traveled for many years. The Boss was likely dead now, having taken Rusty’s only hope for vengeance with him.
A handful of steps into the forest revealed that the leaves on most of the trees and bushes were as sharp as knives. Rusty and Zondra had a few cuts to show for it. They changed to single file so Karnij could go first and hack off any branches that came too close to where they were walking.
The mossy loam floor of the forest only lasted twenty minutes or so before it became sandy dunes and no more trees. Without a sun to help direct them, they continued to head in one direction, keeping a distant mounta
in range to their left as a landmark, only visible because it blocked some of the stars close to the horizon.
After a few hours, an orange moon rose, brightening the sand, not that they couldn’t see before, and they came across a forest of trees again with a river running through in the same direction they were headed. The water wasn’t flowing very fast and one had to swim away from the shore to avoid the silt and mud at the edge, but once out in the middle, it was refreshing and Rusty was thirsty. The other two waded in and swam out as well, and they all let the river carry them slowly downstream as they drank and washed. Rusty allowed the water to seep into his nostrils and shook his head to splash it around inside, then snorted, spraying out the majority of the pine scent. Finally.
The three companions kept within shouting distance of each other, Zondra and Rusty preferring to float on their backs, and Karnij preferring facing into the water so she could spear at things with her claws. Apparently, her eyes worked well underwater because she managed to spear a couple of fresh-water fish of sufficient size that they could make a meal out of them.
They headed towards shore, but something with three large fins extending above the water was closing on Karnij.
“Karnij! Behind!” Rusty shouted at her as the giant fish sped up and the fins clove through the water smoothly, accelerating.
An enormous mouth popped out of the water, and in a few gulps, it swallowed Karnij whole. The three fins then receded, slipping slowly beneath the water as it swam away.
Then there was an excited thrashing and the fish’s tail slapped back and forth out of the water, weakening with each slap until the tail sank below the surface.
Rusty and Zondra strained to see anything and ran down the riverside at the pace the water was flowing.
There was a splash and Rusty and Zondra sighed with relief as Karnij popped above the surface, which turned to looks of concern as they realized she was swimming weakly.
Rusty was faster than Zondra and shot out into the river at a sprint before he dove and swam out to her at a fast pace. He was thankful for his over-sized feet and hands.