by Foxx Ballard
There was another blast of heat on Lais's face as the two fighters accelerated, pulling the airship to the right several degrees. And then the constant warm wind and roar as they maintained a level and straight flight path, pulling The Maiden along after them.
Jack stayed at his position on the airship so it didn’t drastically sink or rise, but Synth-E-Uh just locked the propeller straight and finished re-engaging her treads. She was obviously letting the fighters do the work.
Lais sauntered over while Synth-E-Uh was testing her tank treads to make sure they spun smoothly. “So... have they said what is going to happen to us once we are on the Nemesis?”
Mogul leaned in as well to listen.
“Not to me, or I would have relayed it to you.” Synth-E-Uh turned her head toward the fighters. “So, Officer Hawking, Officer Nikodemos, what’s going to happen to us once we’re on the Nemesis? Where do we go from there?”
Didi’s voice answered through Synth-E-Uh’s speakers. “You’ll likely be registered and delivered to Alpha Centauri 2 as you should have been originally. Mechanicals are dumped on high-grav planets to prevent escape using conventional means.”
“You mean the Neptune-sized planet that has a gravity so great that we would barely be able to move?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Technology is inherent in your make-up, so extra precautions have to be taken to ensure incarceration is permanent.”
Jack’s face turned to a scared emoji. “I don’t want to go there! I wasn’t built for strength. I probably couldn’t even move under that gravity! Why did I ever let you talk me into coming here, Synth-E-Uh?!”
“Yes. That’s how it happened, Jack.” Synth-E-Uh sighed. “Those can’t be our only choices…”
“They’re not,” Lais stated with conviction, putting her hands on her hips. “That’s just what they want us to think. They discovered we have technology because I was shooting Buck into the air, my fault, but they found us because he is using wireless and they homed in on his signal. At least, that’s what I suspect. If I’m wrong, well, we’re no worse off. You willing to turn off your wireless, Buck?”
“If that is your command, it will be done,” the shotgun replied from behind her back.
“It is.” Lais put one foot on the rail of the airship. “You two should do the same. Are you both waterproof? Jack? Synth-E-Uh?”
“We both are,” Synth-E-Uh replied.
“Good, then follow my lead. Mogul, my friend, I’m really sorry, but looks like we have to part ways again,” and Lais stepped off the side of the ship.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Rusty: Unknown forest, Unknown land mass
Rusty looked up at Angel. He could smell her excitement clearly, and her pheromones. Something had been changing in her over the last while. At those levels, it was no wonder she was always interested in sex. He made a point to make sure he didn’t take advantage of her. It was likely she could barely contain her arousal. The problem was, anything else that relied on smell would detect her as well. They weren’t safe if there were predators around, and they had no weapons.
He scratched his head idly as he thought, glancing around at the trees. Pretty much the same as the ones they had first encountered. Gnarled limbs. Tall, thick trunks. Broad, knife-edged leaves. They could give a nasty cut, but likely most animals in the forest would have thick skin or fur, so would ignore them. No weapon there. But they couldn’t leave the forest either, at least not here, because of the fliers. And they were thirsty. And he was getting hungry, despite the fish he’d eaten earlier. And she hadn’t had anything. She must be hungry, too. Her glance at him and her smile told him that this was true.
“Me be right back.” Rusty leapt up to catch a branch on the tallest tree he could see near them and then scaled the height of it with the grace of a panther leaping through the branches. At the top, he swayed dangerously back and forth, but he risked that the tree’s limbs could hold his weight. He trusted his reflexes to catch himself if he fell, anyway, so wasn’t too concerned. In the distance was a ridge of snow-covered mountains to the west, and leading up to the base of them was the forest they were currently in, which blanketed his vision as far as he could see to the left and right. The land naturally sloped out of a valley and was probably the lowest point towards the north, so that was their best chance for a river.
Rusty dropped off the limb he was standing on and slowed his descent with the occasional grab of a branch, landing him firmly but safely at Angel’s feet again.
“Me think river maybe this way,” he said, pointing up along a path through the forest that would keep the coastline on their right, so they set off walking in that direction.
Rusty kept his nose to the wind, and detected the normal things which were quickly forgotten: moss, small insects, moist dirt and loam, fungal spores from a variety of fungi, flowers… The secret was in picking out the hormone or scat scents of predators. He wasn’t worried about the rest. Something large had marked its territory on several of the nearby trees, and he could smell a gamy scent, but it was days old, so they were safe for now.
Rusty made sure whatever path he chose was open enough for Angel to walk through with her wings.
“I love how considerate you are, Rusty. Most non-telepaths are… selfish. Though to a point I understand why.”
“Life much better with friend. Me take care of you, you take care of me, everybody happy.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
From that point they said little, walking quietly on the soft moss, but occasionally their steps would make crunching noises when they stepped on the dry leaves or old twigs. Thankfully, the dead leaves were friable enough they didn’t have the same sharp edges as they did while still on the trees.
The sun was sinking on the horizon to their left, leaving long shadows and spears of light through the leaves. They needed to pick up the pace. Traveling after dark would be difficult. He could, but Angel didn’t have eyes meant for operating at night.
“You jog?”
Angel nodded and picked up the pace. Rusty was agile, and dodged between the trees gracefully, his loping stride covering ground quickly, but Angel was soon tired and couldn’t keep up the pace. She had to bend down a lot to get her wings beneath the lower hanging branches.
“I think I can fly now. I’ll see what’s ahead.” Angel said, huffing a bit. “We shouldn’t be near those fliers anymore, and I make far better time when I’m flying.”
Rusty waited with her until she had caught her breath and took off above the trees.
“Meet you ahead!” he called out and took off at a run. He caught glimpses of her above through the leaves as he sprinted. She was slowly getting ahead of him, but not by much.
They made good time this way, and nothing gobbled her up out of the sky, which was his fear. The Pteras surely would have if there had been any about. And he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it if something did happen.
After running for close to an hour, with sweat dripping off of him, Rusty suddenly broke free of the forest and had entered a long yellow-grass meadow that descended to the beach on the right, and climbed up through the low hills on his left. And in the center of the meadow, running from the hills to the sea, was a stream, a much-needed one. Angel had already landed, watching him as he emerged from the forest. She stood next to the stream and motioned him over, but put her finger to her smiling lips to tell him not to make any noise.
Rusty approached her quietly, watching his steps. The surrounding grass was tall enough that he couldn’t see the edge of the stream that she was next to, and she was now looking upstream, so he followed her gaze with his. Even before he saw them, he knew by the scent that something had recently given birth. A herbivore if he got it right. It was amazing and very endearing. Next to the stream was a small three-horned deer or antelope that was lying on its side. It had four newborns that it was licking off in various stages of learning to walk for the first time.
Angel was cooin
g. “They’re so sweet!”
Rusty didn’t want to say what he was thinking. Doh! Too late.
Angel took in a sharp breath. “Rusty! How could you?!” she said quietly, scrunching up her face.
Rusty shrugged. “Me eat small things.” On purpose, he ran his mind through the many things that his people ate that other humanoids tended to find cute. Kittens, guinea pigs, mice… He had first thought a pet store was just an expensive buffet.
Angel was appalled, her mouth was open and her brow creased tightly, but better that she think he was a monster. Maybe help curb some of her sexual urges. He knew it was a mistake the moment he thought about it, because her eyes immediately lost focus and her tight brow relaxed as her mind wandered. He was sure if her mouth stayed open she was going to start drooling. Angel took in a slow, deep breath and looked at him like a predator looked at prey. Now he’d done it; plan backfired.
Immediately he started thinking about eating any cute thing he could think of, their bones crunching in a satisfying way in his powerful jaws, the taste of the warm blood trickling down the back of his throat.
She gagged once and then gave him a look that said “Really?”
Rusty shrugged with a helpless smile on his face.
Angel took a deep breath and let it out with a slow sigh. “Thanks, I think.” She gave him a genuine smile. “It’s hard to curb this. I mean, you’re gross for eating small animals,” and she stuck out her tongue at him playfully. “But you’re you, and I love you for it. Like as a sex… friend,” she added quickly, obviously not wanting him to misunderstand what she meant by love.
He knew what she meant. “Me love you as… friend, too. You… okay at sex.” Rusty laughed at her fake look of surprise.
Rusty took a drink from the stream, cupping his hands and dumping the water in his maw several times as he looked about the meadow. Angel was doing the same, though she was just sipping.
“Camp here?” he asked. “If deer safe, likely safe for us too.”
The sun was half below the horizon, and no moons were present, so darkness was descending rapidly. He could also feel the temperature starting to drop.
“Bathroom in trees, bury it,” he said, pointing back at the line of trees they had emerged from. “No want smell to bring predator.”
They hid behind separate trees. Rusty emerged first and made his way back to the stream and started trampling down the grass to give them a hollow to sleep in. He was thinking of pulling up some grass to put over them to keep them warm.
“Don’t bother with that,” she said. Angel laid on her side with her wings forward and held out her arms. He accepted her hug and being wrapped in her wings.
He wondered how much sleep he was going to get tonight.
Not much, but let’s make it last this time.
It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Lais: Ocean bottom, Coastline of unknown land mass
Lais landed on the sand at the bottom of the ocean and looked up at the lights dancing on the surface of the waves far above to see a large splash. The silhouette told her it was Synth-E-Uh, and she was holding Jack in one of her arms. She probably had to drag him over with her. A pang of guilt struck her at leaving Mogul behind. The pilots had said they would tow him to safety, so she didn’t think anything would happen to him, but they had just been reacquainted and now they were abandoning him. He had helped build the ship and accompanied them without so much as a single complaint.
The shadows of the two fighters passed over the waves a few times before disappearing. She doubted they would be able to detect them this far beneath the surface, but decided to keep moving away from the area anyway. The shore wouldn’t be safe, of course, and the ridgeline looked like it descended even further into the depths to the north, so she headed south along the coastline. A quick glance behind assured that Synth-E-Uh and Jack were both following. There was a steep drop-off to their left, so she kept several paces from it, unsure how difficult it would be to get back up to the shoreline. To the right, the sand slowly ascended up to a beach. Must have been a long beach. They were likely a hundred paces beneath the waves and about twenty minute’s walk from the shore before they would be able to step out of the water onto dry land.
The going was slow, but there was no particular rush. They just needed to lose the fighters. Once she was sure they had escaped, the chance of them being found on a world with no satellites would require more luck than anything, so long as they kept traveling away from this point and didn’t use any wireless communication.
At that thought, Lais wrote in large obvious letters in the sand “No wireless!”. She also took Buck off her back and aimed him at the words as well, so she was sure the weapon would get the idea. It couldn’t hurt to remind them a second time. And no more stupidly firing him into the air, she chastised herself.
It was a shame they had to abandon the airship. They had put so much work into it. And it had been Connor’s idea. He had been so excited about it. It was one of the last things she had that reminded her of him since his death. Mogul might stay with it for a time. There was so much uncertainty. She needed to keep her mind on the present. Lais knew much of the fauna on this world was far larger than that found on earth, similar to how it must have been when dinosaurs roamed. Staying wary was important.
Large shadows further out to sea could occasionally be seen, but nothing approached the shallows. There were plenty of smaller denizens in amongst the beds of colorful seaweed and kelp. Fish, barnacles, crabs. Different from Earth, yet similar in function. Many creatures, she noted, had rounded elastic mouths, pentagonal, with five rows of sharp, curved teeth designed to latch onto whatever they bit. Lots of them burrowed. That seemed to be a thing on this planet. A few thin and long fish attached themselves to Lais, and she didn’t bother shaking them off. They let go themselves when they realized there was no blood or flesh beneath her skin and her nanites then closed the small, harmless lacerations.
#
After a few hours underwater, it was becoming dark and there were no moons out. They were forced to approach the shore because the expanse of sand and occasional rock outcroppings had given way to steep rock and very little sand. If they didn’t leave the water at this point, they risked falling into the depths and the tank-like treads of Synth-E-Uh and Jack, while sure footed on sand, weren’t made for climbing.
Cautiously, they worked their way towards the shore, just poking heads above the water to see if the fighters were anywhere to be found. In the far distance to the north could be seen several lights sweeping the beach and the sea. Looked like they had called in reinforcements to help with the search. And here she was, thinking they would give up by now.
“Well, we can’t just stay here, they’ll eventually find us. Let’s get into the trees and follow the forest inland towards the southwest. It’ll still put some distance between us and them and we’ll just stay under cover.”
Jack had a happy face on again, and was humming, but he was keeping it low, so she didn’t bother telling him to be quiet.
Once they reached dry sand, Lais got a branch and swept over their footprints and tracks, and then shrugged. It would have to do. If they found the tracks in the wet sand before high tide wiped them out, there was nothing she could do about it.
Traveling through the trees was overall louder than Lais wanted it to be. Jack and Synth-E-Uh had treads, so couldn’t pick their path as easily as Lais, and Synth-E-Uh weighed a ton. Sometimes she even had to shove branches out of the way until they snapped and broke. She doubted fighters had audio sensors, since they would have to be able to hear over the engines, but they didn’t want to attract anything big to themselves either.
It reached a point where it became so dark that only Synth-E-Uh could see because she could adjust her sight to night-vision, so Synth-E-Uh took the fore with Lais riding on her front like Rusty used to do, with Jack staying close behind.
As she rode, Lais wondered
if there was ever a way to get off this world and back to Earth. She hadn’t realized that there was an orbital patrol. A heavy gravity prison planet for robots didn’t sound like fun, and the suffering and slavery here… it gave her a purpose. It had to be stopped before she even attempted to leave. And she needed to find Chais. She missed teasing her Sis about her robotic form and getting teased in return. She wanted to tell her about Angel, and the awesomeness of her first real sexual encounter, even though she would never likely get to relive it. Thankfully, she could play it back in her mind with near perfect clarity anytime she wanted.
They emerged from the edge of the forest into some plains and the blue moon had peeked above the horizon, its reflecting glow lighting up the land before them.
“Stop for a second, let’s see if they’re still following us,” Lais suggested. In the distance, still over the ocean, she could see searchlights scanning the water, and some more on land. Probably twenty now. And they were gaining ground.
“They seem to be taking our presence on this planet seriously,” Synth-E-Uh remarked while scanning the horizon full of searching ships.
“I don’t want to go to Alpha Centauri 2.” Jack pulled around to watch too, and he had a sad emoji.
“Let’s keep moving then,” suggested Lais. “The harder we make it for them to find us, the sooner they’ll give up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Captain Leucantis: WOLF Carrier Nemesis, Orbit, Incarcerata IV
“We’re not going to give up until we find them!” Captain Leucantis said with a wide grin, sitting up in her Captain’s chair. It rose with her to the point where she automatically decoupled the magnetic power charger from her right forearm and stepped forward. The recliner lowered back into a seat once she was free. Her tight, drab gray uniform accented her curves and the metallic shine of her skin. She was always amazed at how real all the implants felt. When she had become fully bionic, she had expected to feel different, but despite being shinier and more curvaceous, she felt decidedly human. She brushed the black, carbon-nano-tube hair behind her ear, another aesthetic she was happy she had chosen. Not bad for a hundred-and-seventy-year-old woman.