by Foxx Ballard
“Holy shit! I thought you said that freighter was cited as an old junk freighter from over five hundred years ago,” said Flurry.
“It is, and I checked it for life signs. Must still have an old AI at the helm. It’s a thousand years old, doesn’t that put it before the AI Sentience Act?”
“I don’t think it matters…”
At that moment, their commander strolled in, his mag-boots clunking on the floor with each step.
“What are you two up to?”
“Nothing sir!” answered both gunners together.
“Just going on a break, sir,” replied Plexus, and both men got up quickly and left.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Synth-E-Uh: CompsoStar Freigther: Unstable Orbit, Incarcerata IV
Alarm klaxons sounded and steam was now hissing from the water reserves being sent to the cooling system, but that wasn’t going to stop the reactor from failing.
Synth-E-Uh checked the ship’s sensors and sent the command to warm up the drives. They always took a few seconds before kicking in. Assessing the damage showed that coolant was leaking from the reactor and there was no other way for her to dissipate heat from the reactor core. Reactor meltdown was imminent.
Synth-E-Uh tried to contact Nemesis. There was no reason for them to fire on her, she was not a threat, but her antenna bundle had been damaged. Outside communications were a no-go.
While keeping an eye on the external camera that faced Nemesis, she sent the commands to the robotic cargo bay assembly arms to complete putting Jack together. A quick inventory showed there were plenty of spare parts, so she sent commands to auto-assemble a second body for herself. A combat model, since Jack was going to be fairly useless in combat. He always wanted to befriend everything.
Then Nemesis fired a plasma cannon again. She relayed the drive command for full thrust, and there was the usual hesitation, and then the noticeable heavy G-forces as the drives kicked in, causing the plasma to miss them. Barely. Synth-E-Uh kept the drives on full and headed along the path that would lead to her target on the planet. Once she had the calculations and the autopilot set to land the cargo bay drop-pod, she unlocked the docking clamps and fired the drop-pod thrusters to separate it from the ship. She then sent a second set of directions to the ship itself, to fly into the sun as she wirelessly copied herself to the combat droid and deleted herself from the freighter. No point in making herself suffer.
Synth-E-Uh noted that there were no more shots fired from Nemesis, but the damage had already been done, and the ship’s nuclear core melted down as she watched through the external cameras.
A brilliant white light speared through the darkness of space, followed a few seconds later by the drop-pod violently shaking.
Jack screamed and then passed out as his monitor screens went black.
Really? A robot passing out? Synth-E-Uh shook her head. If they survived, she would wake him after.
CHAPTER NINE
Lais: Merchant Stall, Town of Cassiden, Incarcerata IV
Lais gazed at Angel as she slept on the furs, yearning to touch her every time she paused to admire her beauty. The Valkyrie’s lithe athleticism was contrasted by her feminine features. Brown feathered wings with white spots, smooth tanned skin. Sandy brown hair hung in long waves, framed a soft but striking face, and those turquoise eyes… Lais couldn’t wait until Angel’s broken wing healed. They had kissed, but they hadn’t really been intimate and she was looking forward to her first experience in this body. The gentle rise and fall of Angel’s chest reminded Lais of just how fragile she and her other friends were. Their constant dependency on air, water and food—this frailty made them seem even more beautiful in her eyes. Frailty made every moment with her that much more… important. Gently, she ran her fingers through Angel’s hair, being careful not to wake her. She was also intelligent and thoughtful. And kind. It was both exhilarating and distracting when she looked at her. Carefully and quietly, she rose from the bed-furs.
CHAPTER TEN
Angel: Merchant Stall, Town of Cassiden, Incarcerata IV
Angel could feel Lais’s fingers gently running through her hair as she woke. Not being able to read the woman’s Technoid mind turned every mundane interaction into an unexpected surprise, something she rarely experienced. The thought made her smile, and she cracked one eye open to look. Lais was just getting to her feet. She had the cape hood pulled back, and her short straight hair was dangling mischievously in front of one of her bright green eyes. Everything else about her eyes was dark, including her expressive eyebrows, but the looks she gave were so intense… Angel could feel herself starting to grow hot, that low comfortable craving of Lais’s bronze skin against her, to kiss her beautiful mouth… and then someone passed by outside the merchant stall, someone so grief-stricken Angel was torn from the moment.
“I was trying not to wake you up,” Lais apologized.
“It wasn’t you that ruined the moment. The grief of the surrounding people is very strong, it’s hard to think straight. And I’m too wound up after last night’s raid to sleep, anyway.” Angel forced herself to get up. “I need to get away from this place.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lais: Merchant Stall, Town of Cassiden, Incarcerata IV
“Fine then, let’s get out of here.” Lais checked the laces on her black, silk-covered leather clothing and then unsheathed and re-sheathed her daggers. Without the need to eat, there wasn’t much she had to carry around with her for survival. There was Angel, though. She smiled at the woman and assisted in her getting dressed because of her broken wing. It was a simple silk top, open at the back to allow for her wings, and a short skirt that showed off shapely thighs.
There was no wind, and the silk walls hung limply from their bedroom frames. It was quiet in the merchant square. After the late-night attack, the town had been mostly deserted and the remaining people were in a somber mood. Many had been killed or were missing, captured by the Chakran insect-men. Anger started to enter her mind, and she forced it out. The Chakran were long gone, with no way to reach them. Better that she focus on Angel.
Together, Angel and Lais stepped into the main foyer, where Angel stopped to grab some jerky from one of their sacks, and then excused herself to the lavatory sled. After checking on the sand beetles, Lais sat down on a log by the firepit to wait. She unsheathed one of her Technoid daggers and used it to scrape off her black silk-covered leathers. The rock-spider silk was so slippery and strong that the blade couldn’t cut it without extreme pressure, so the dried yellow remains from all the Chakran she had killed last night scraped off easily. She removed the long gauntlets and thigh-high boots, and unclasped her hooded cape so that she could clean them individually before donning them again. While she was cleaning, thoughts of the Chakran raid the night before ran through her head. Every detail of the melee repeated over and over, like a recording. What could she have changed? But without being able to try each scenario, the end results were just too unknown. Perhaps if she had allowed herself to be captured, dragged up in a net to be stored in the deck of the giant floating worm-ship? No, then Angel would be left behind and would have been defenseless if they attacked again. Maybe she could have confronted the rock-spiders or their handlers differently instead of freeing the spiders by decapitating their handlers? No, it was likely the most efficient method of causing chaos. If only she had known they were prepared for such an event, she could have attacked the replacement handlers as they climbed from the deck hold, preventing them from recovering control over the spiders. How many Chakran could she incapacitate before she was wrapped in rock-spider silk and rendered helpless? Too many unknowns. She had lost Chais to the Chakran, and she had no way to free her, or even find her now. She could only hope that Drak had managed to reach her, to help her in some way. It was so damn frustrating.
Angel was returning as Lais was pulling on her last boot and immediately Lais stopped thinking about the battle. Angel had brushed her hair and had taken a white silk sheet
and had run it behind her neck, crossed it in front of her throat and breasts and continued to wrap it around her waist, cinching it with two silver clasps at her hips, forming a flowing skirt that hung above her knees and was split on both sides.
“You are gorgeous,” Lais said, standing up to meet her.
“Thank you,” Angel replied as she stepped up and took Lais’s hand. “It was supposed to be a surprise, but…”
Lais pulled her in for a hug. “Best surprise ever,” she whispered in her ear.
“Thanks,” Angel smiled, but only briefly, pulling back to look Lais in the eye. Her mood was more concerned than excited. “I want to hang onto each other,” Angel admitted, squeezing Lais’s arms. “I don’t want to let you out of my sight. We’ve lost everyone else. Maybe we can take one more walk through the town and see if Keena is there? Maybe she is helping clean up? I doubt it, but I would never forgive myself for leaving her behind, and I don’t want to stay in this place anymore. It’s bad enough that we’ve lost all our friends, but I have to feel the despair of everyone around me as I walk passed them and it is starting to wear on me, I’m having difficulty blocking them all, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, let’s go for a walk then and we can leave after.” Lais took Angel’s hand in hers and intertwined their fingers. “And don’t worry, I won’t be letting you go anytime soon.”
They walked hand in hand through the merchant area that was now almost devoid of people. Most had left right after the attack. Lone silks left behind in the haste of their owner’s departure hung from the stall frames, blowing in the sea breeze that was starting to stir up the morning dust, as if the ravaged town were just now waking up. Discarded food and clothing lay in the sand around the fire-pits. A few merchant stalls still had their sandsleds and wagons, one in particular catching Lais’s eye now that the merchant area had cleared. There was the wagon of Randall and Gloria, sitting untouched in their stall, no movement other than breeze-rustled silks.
They walked over to the wagon and peeked in, but the couple were nowhere to be seen, just their belongings. They were likely captured or killed in the attack.
Angel and Lais headed toward the western side of the town where the floating worm-ship had first dropped the ropes. It was there that the bodies of the fallen were laid in rows, most wrapped in silks. There was a stench of offal when they reached the area, or what Lais assumed was offal. The sensors in her nose were still new to scents, and she had no prior association with Earth smells to compare them to. The faces of the dead had been left uncovered for easy identification and others were walking up and down the rows trying to identify lost loved ones, just like they were. It wasn’t long before they found Randall and Gloria. They must have died together, because they were side by side in the row of corpses. Both had horrible welts on their faces from where the green wasps had stung them, but they were still recognizable. Obviously, they hadn’t received the dart antidote that the Chakrans had used on those they had captured. Angel had a tear in her eye, but didn’t cry. Lais noticed and sighed. The poor woman probably had her fill of crying in the last month or two. They walked along the row of the dead a second time just to make sure Keena still wasn’t amongst them. She wasn’t.
“Let’s get out of here,” Lais suggested, after glancing at Angel’s strained features, and they headed back to the merchant stall and loaded the goods in the foyer onto the sandsleds. Lais ran across the Proof-of-entry form for The Games and briefly thought of Keena on the podium. The girl had been so proud after earning her freedom. Lais looked into the sky in the direction the worm-ship had flown away and remembered Drak flying after it before she stepped into the cabin of the sandsled. Keena had earned her freedom, just in time to lose it.
Lais took the sled that was being led by Silver, towing the lavatory and Angel took the other one, led by Treasure, pulling the sled behind that was laden with goods. No one stopped them or even said goodbye in passing.
Lais stopped as they reached Randall and Gloria’s wagon and stepped out of the cabin of the sandsled. Angel followed suit, pulling up beside her.
“I’ve never steered a wagon pulled by a gorlon before,” Lais admitted, looking at the pony-sized, six-legged lizard as she stood with her hands on her hips.
“You just take care of your sled. I can persuade the gorlon,” Angel offered. “I see why you stopped. I would feel bad if we didn’t return the wagon and their belongings to Holbrook. Randall’s young son is still there.” Lais nodded and untied the leash from a heavy stake that had been preventing the gorlon from wandering. She got back in her sandsled cabin and pushed the goad out in front of Silver. The familiar spewing of sand behind the flat beetle started them moving forward again, and she looked back to see that Angel was following and the gorlon was happily keeping pace, with the wagon bouncing behind it. It was an amazing talent, the ability to connect with most brains and energize the parts of them you wanted. Lais was jealous. In a way, she would never hear Angel speaking to her in her mind, like the woman could with Connor. Had with Connor. And the sex? Angel could stimulate his mind directly, and they rode that high together. How was she supposed to compete with that? For the first time, she felt self doubt about the anticipated sexual encounter with Angel.
They followed the road as it led east along the shoreline, the one that would eventually turn northward toward the mountains and lead them back to Holbrook. They couldn’t cut across the desert because the wagon pulled by the gorlon would tip over too easily.
While stopped at a river crossing so Angel could replenish her water supplies, they heard a boom in the sky and saw a smoking object leaving a long, dark trail behind it. At first glance, it appeared to be heading in their direction. After watching for several seconds, Lais was sure of it, it was heading this way. They both stood amazed as the flaming ball rocketed towards the planet and then before it reached the ground, flaps popped out the top that caused it to spin madly before it struck. It had landed not too far away, toward the sea, maybe ten minutes by sled. They had to go see what it was. Crashing dropship maybe? That landing wasn’t how she remembered it when she was in Connor’s head.
“Wait for me. I guess we can’t bring the gorlon wagon over dunes. I’ll be right back after I check it out. You’ll be okay?”
Angel nodded and gave her a quick kiss. “Come back to me,” she said with a wink.
“Oh, now I don’t even want to go…” Lais teased, winking back.
With a thrust of the long pole out the window of her sled, Silver churned after the Fovea round, pulling the sled in its wake. Lais aimed for the direction of the smoke, wondering what she would find.
Part II: When a plan comes together
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rusty: Beach, South of Cassiden-Holbrook road
A loud boom up in the sky woke Rusty up. There in the distance, far above through the trees, was a dark spot. It grew larger as he stared, and this made it appear to be coming straight at him. The object was flickering orange, like it was on fire, and was leaving a black smoking trail behind it. After a minute, it grew so large he was afraid it was going to strike him. This couldn’t have anything to do with the giant flying worm, could it? He could hear the roaring as the ball in the sky approached, and then slats popped out the top and the thing spun with a loud brrrup sound as it streaked nearby over the trees and struck the sandy ground, probably just a minute’s jog further inland.
Immediately excited and curious, Rusty sniffed the air to determine if there were predators nearby. Seemed safe, so he started running in the direction of the fallen object, intrigued, keeping his nostrils active. This couldn’t have been a dropship. The people inside wouldn’t have survived the spinning G-forces. No, it was most likely a cargo drop or bot-drop. Either way, there was no way he was going to deny his curiosity. Anything to distract him from his recent loss.
He could smell burned plastic, metal and ozone before he could get a clear picture of what had fallen, and he could see the long bou
ncing trail of where the object had first struck the ground. Several rectangular pieces of scorched metal, likely the flaps that had slowed the descent of the object, lay strewn in a long line leading up to what appeared to be a drop pod the size of a large hut, shaped like an acorn with a few of the rectangular propellers still extending from the top of it. The craft lay on its side, propped up by these propellers, and there was a huge opening where the main door had torn off. Just beyond stood two robotic creatures, one looking far more threatening than the other. A row of metal crates was stacked in the sand around the dropship.
Rusty stopped where he was, unsure if he should approach. Did they even make robots anymore? Every mechanical being Rusty had run across was either an android or was of sophisticated architecture and design. At first glance, these were either alien or were of very old design. He has seen enough on Earth to know these two weren’t normal, if that’s where they came from. The CompsoStar logo on the side of the pod was unfamiliar, but was readable. But that didn’t mean much. There were so many corporations, and the known galaxy had taken to speaking Earth Common as a universal language because humans had spread like a plague to every inhabitable planet.
The smaller robot was thinner than the other one and painted yellow. It had an enclosed base a few feet across and slightly longer front to back with a set of half-foot wide tank tracks on the sides. On the front of this base was a radioactive symbol and blocky letters below that said Please do NOT hug! From the middle rear of the base rose a metallic segmented backbone that was just a supporting pillar for the thick display screen that had been attached to act as its chest, currently displaying pictures of migrating ducks. A metal cross-piece that acted as shoulders sprouted two thin, metallic arms that ended with rubber hands like a human’s, but with more obvious knobs at the joints. On a neck of metal segments rising above the chest screen was a separate smaller screen that took the place of its head, and on the screen was depicted a large smiling face emoji. In function, Rusty would have guessed it was a mobile coat-rack, painted yellow, with monitors for its chest and face.