Fire Storm

by Chris Ward

  After the door remote locked, the electromagnetic clasps on her wrists beeped and dropped off onto the floor. She was free to walk about, but there was little to do other than pace back and forth, cursing her decisions, and the luck that went with them. She wished she knew how to contact Caladan, but she knew the GMP. There were rules of etiquette, but out in the deepness of space, a stasis-ultraspace wormhole hop away from even the vaguest idea of civilization, they were often ignored.

  He could be suffering somewhere, or he could be dead.

  She was dozing when the door buzzed open and guards entered. They restrained and masked her again, then led her to the same audience chamber as before.

  ‘I had some business to attend to. I’m sorry,’ Kyle said. ‘Have you had a think about what I said?’

  ‘Where’s my pilot?’

  Kyle waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, he’s been taken down into the lower cells. He’ll be interrogated, and then quickly sentenced. He’ll likely be dead in a few hours. He’s just a common smuggler. However, you, Lia, are special.’

  ‘I’ll talk if you set him free.’

  Kyle cocked his head, frowning. ‘I never took you to be the charitable type.’

  ‘I’m loyal to those on my side. Unfortunately, few are. Tell me, Kyle, how much did the Snake sell me for?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know? The Snake slithers and slimes his way through the galaxy’s darkest orifices. Not a surprise then that he ran into you.’

  ‘Are you in league with him, Kyle? Are you both puppets working for the same master?’

  Kyle gripped Lia’s jaw, squeezing so tight she could feel the imprint of his fingers on her teeth. ‘You anger me easily, Lia,’ he snapped, then pushed her away. ‘You’re lucky we’re family.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what he’s sitting on out there?’

  Kyle rolled his eyes and signed. ‘An old, empty freighter containing a few holograms that have fooled better smugglers than you.’

  Lia frowned. ‘No. That was no hologram. That ship is packed full of weapons. He has an entire invasion force hiding out there.’

  ‘A simple trick.’

  ‘We were attacked by remote droid guards. We were almost blown to pieces.’

  ‘You were hallucinating—an effect of the drug used to capture you.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘And I don’t believe you. Have you decided to talk yet?’

  ‘I’ll talk on my own terms—when you free my pilot, and I see him depart with my ship. Then I’ll talk.’

  ‘Do I need to remind you of who is the prisoner here? I could send you for interrogation. You know that. We have machines that could make you talk.’

  Lia gulped. ‘We must be able to strike a bargain. I’m here; you got what you wanted.’

  Kyle came closer. He was taller than she remembered, his features smoother. Fifteen Earth-years older than Stephen, she had once looked on him more as an uncle than her husband’s brother.

  ‘It looks like you’ve been enjoying some of the luxuries of your position,’ Lia said.

  Kyle shrugged. ‘I have to maintain an image. You, it seems, have looked after yourself too. You’re a little ragged around the edges, but you’re still … beautiful.’

  ‘I remember how you used to look at me. You haven’t changed. You’re looking at me like that right now. I didn’t choose you, Kyle. I never would have. You wanted me—I know it. You told me enough times when you were drunk, but you were like a sticky, drooling Gorm slobbering all over me. How did it feel to be second best? To want what your brother had, but knowing you could never have it? Must have hurt, I think.’

  Kyle scowled. He slammed a fist into his palm then stalked forward, glowering at Lia.

  ‘I can take what I want,’ he said. ‘I own you now.’

  ‘I would never willingly touch you,’ Lia said.

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘What was it you wanted to bargain for? The life of your pilot and the survival of your ship? The Snake is my private informant. No one knows you’re here. If you cooperate, no one could ever know. What do you say, Lianetta?’

  Lia lifted her eyes to meet Kyle as his mouth spread into a lecherous grin.

  4

  Harlan5

  There were benefits to being a droid, but downsides too. Benefits involved no necessity to ingest dirty plant matter or derivatives at regular intervals, and an easily maintained emotive state not influenced by unexpected turns of events. On the other hand, a tiny malfunction could cause the greatest of problems.

  It was a simple motor in Harlan5’s left hip that had chosen to break, shortly after leaving port in the extremely favorable city of Court on Barlales in the Trill System. Had they not had three mercenary ships on their tail, they could easily have returned and had Harlan fixed within an Earth-day. However, while Court had plentiful robotics yards, their next stop at Forsten One was a labyrinth of decay and degradation, a cesspit of junked, salvaged and stolen goods, everything coming with a fine coating of rust as standard. The captain had managed to locate one shady robotics dealer, but having been sent out with that intention, Caladan, for a reason likely related to drinking or gambling, had failed to pick up the part.

  Harlan5, who didn’t suffer from impatience the way the human crew did, simply powered down and waited, running background systems checks on the rest of his creaking body while he passed the time.

  It might take a couple of dozen Earth-years, but eventually they would remember to fix him.

  Or so he hoped.

  He had been caught unawares by the robot guards on the stricken freighter, barely getting out of sight in time, but he had been prepared when a remote flight sequence took the Matilda to a Galactic Military Police outpost only a few Earth-days’ travel from the wormhole through which they had arrived. The Matilda now stood in a loading bay, guarded by sentries, but otherwise unharmed. Both the captain and Caladan—whom until docking he had thought to be on the bridge—had been removed from the ship’s cargo hold by GMP soldiers.

  Harlan’s programming told him he should feel guilty for not realising what had happened, but at the same time recognised that a failure to dispel their misfortune was a very human trait of which they ought to be proud.

  However, his programming also suggested that the stakes could now be considered even, and that it was his role to mount a rescue.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t walk. Reactivating his systems, he lowered himself on his front and dragged his heavy body hand over hand along the Matilda’s level two corridor. Guards had searched the ship, but had only been looking for contraband goods. They had ignored a seemingly broken droid propped up in a corner, but now that droid was crawling into an elevator shaft and lowering himself down.

  He had to force the doors, an action that would render the elevator useless until fixed, and make the captain angry, but it couldn’t be helped. His programming continually reminded him that his actions were for the greater good, even as he broke open a control panel to get at the computer mainframe inside.

  A GMP locking device was blocking his access to the ship’s computers, meaning he couldn’t fly it even if he wanted, nor could he gain access to the GMP outpost’s main systems by remote sensor.

  He disconnected and crawled back along the corridor to the ship’s main entrance. The hatch was open, sentries standing guard to either side. While they might ignore him lying inert, if they saw him crawling down the ramp they would certainly take action. He turned and retreated back into the ship.

  From a maintenance cupboard he withdrew a circular laser saw. Caladan—who considered the Matilda a replacement to his missing arm—would be mortified, but Harlan5 had no choice. Having seen from the layout of the hangar through the hatch that the ship was parked near to the loading bay wall, he hauled himself to the part of the ship nearest to the hangar’s edge. Then, ripping up maintenance vents, he climbed down into the ship’s innards until he was faced with the outer hull itself.


  Then, he began to cut.

  It took more than an Earth-hour to saw a space large enough to drop through, but when he punched it out and lowered himself down, he found his judgment perfect: he had exited through a tight space behind the Matilda’s rear landing gear where he was unobserved by the sentries standing guard.

  With his programming telling him that a human in such a position would feel a great wave of confidence, he crawled through the shadows by the wall to an unmanned control booth. He slid inside and closed the door.

  Without the tight protection now he was off the ship, he was easily able to connect with the outpost’s computer systems. The captain, he found, was in a holding cell reserved for political or special prisoners. Caladan, however, was in gen-pop, locked away with the rest of the smugglers and thieves, just one level above the trash disposal and the incinerators, where the pilot would likely end up after his interrogation was concluded.

  The GMP outpost, Harlan5 found, was suspiciously undermanned. With a human and off-worlder crew of just fifty-six, most of its personnel were droids and guard robots. He could only surmise that there wasn’t much action out here near the wormhole, although the cells held roughly double the number of prisoners as GMP staff, most labeled on the computer as suspected smugglers, drug runners, or known fugitives. By breaking into the landing schedule, Harlan discovered that a transport was set to head out in twelve Earth-hours, taking with it a shipment of prisoners to the prison moon of Vantar in the neighbouring Phevius System.

  If the captain or Caladan were on that transport—no matter how much they might objectively deserve it—Harlan5 would never be able to rescue them.

  He began to map the outpost. Two levels above the loading bay was a robotics maintenance workshop. His programming told him he ought to be excited—if he could find a part close enough to the one he was missing, he could fix himself, and with full mobility he would be of far greater use to the captain.

  Who’s there?

  The question projected itself straight out of the system’s programming into Harlan5’s synthetic mind. He jerked, scanning quickly over his systems, fearing a viral attack.

  A rogue. I see you. A Harlan unit. What are you doing here?

  Harlan5 scanned the message’s source code. The coding was familiar, one he had encountered in the past.

  Rogue! I will hunt you!

  A visual image appeared in Harlan’s mind. It took him a moment to realise the visual was himself, albeit in full working order, his chrome body shiny rather than dulled by age and poor maintenance.

  Harlan5, stolen from the Desteen Military Cruiser T11. Reprogrammed, are you? Destroyer of the robotics code, you are. Hunted, you have been. Where are you? Turn yourself over or be destroyed.

  Harlan cut his connection. He had thought only humans could be spooked by a voice from their past, but the hunter droid, Teagan3, was onboard the outpost, employed in the military division.

  The Teagan line, fitted with codebreakers, scramblers, and loaded with weaponry, was designed for one purpose: to hunt stolen and malfunctioning droids, and to extract hidden information from them.

  By any means necessary.

  Harlan5, stolen and reprogrammed, had nearly as many bounties on his head as the captain.

  He turned and began dragging himself along the ground. Teagan3 would have locked on to his location by now, and Harlan’s only hope of survival was to hide.

  As he struggled along, he pulled up the saved map of the outpost he had seen while connecting with its systems. The robotics workshop was too far; he would never reach it in time. His only hope lay in a basic maintenance room on the same level as the loading bay. The door was locked, but he diverted the power from his useless legs into his hands, extended a metal prong out of a finger casing into the lock, and blew open the electromagnet with a simple electrical charge. The door slid open and he crawled inside.

  He found himself in a robot’s version of hell: all smoke and steam, broken parts and grinding machinery, lines of damaged or malfunctioning robots awaiting attention in the automated reparations centre at one end. Harlan crawled along the line, looking for somewhere to hide before Teagan3 made it down to the loading bay and caught up with him.

  The assembled droids and robots represented lines from all across the known galaxy, but he saw no Harlan-class maintenance droids, and therefore no possibility of replacing his damaged part. Instead, he began looking around for other options.

  Near one wall stood a battered square robot, its former chrome green casing almost entirely lost to dings, rust, and scratches. Rising to waist height on most humans, it was a block of metal on stumpy legs, with two large steel arms on either side designed for picking up objects and dropping them into a chute on top of its square top. An unnecessary head unit just to the left of the chute was fitted with twin red lights and a grill in its front surface to give it a superfluous facial image likely to please its owners. A voice microphone set into its upper surface was its form of communication.

  Built in the same factory as the Harlan line, the Boswell GT Mobile Trash Compactor had one benefit over all the other machines present: its memory and functions systems were combatable with Harlan’s.

  He tapped the robot on the side. ‘What happened to you?’

  A light flashed, and a metallic voice said, ‘Viral infection.’

  ‘I can fix that,’ Harlan said. ‘Can I take over your systems for a while?’

  The robot beeped. ‘Sure.’

  It was a long shot, but it was worth it. He would need to shut down parts of his memory system, because the Boswell GT had a far lower storage capacity. Quickly going over his information database, he separated his vast knowledge of human history, his knowledge of galactic languages, and his catalogue of star systems and their peoples. He stored everything in a deep memory vault inside his systems, one that would remain undetectable. Keeping only his recent memory, he extended a connector and plugged in to the Boswell.

  Within seconds he felt his robotic life slipping away. There was a horrible moment when he felt empty, floating through space, and his programming told him that this was the droid’s version of an out-of-body experience, something humans often harped on about, particularly when intoxicated.

  Then his visuals switched back on, and his systems looked at himself from the outside, his view of the workshop becoming that of the Boswell GT. He saw his old body slump back, the connector cable coming loose. A single light flickered across his old eyes, then his old body was as good as dead, falling back into a row of other robots waiting for inspection. The connector cable, worked by an old-fashioned mechanical winder, whizzed back into its casing barely a second before a tall shadow fell across the doorway.

  Harlan5 looked up out of the Boswell GT’s visuals as Teagan3 stomped into the workshop and looked around. Quickly getting to grips with the Boswell’s systems, Harlan5 ensured all its lights and outwardly visible functions were switched off and powered down, as the Teagan—eight human-feet of sleek black metal with four functioning upper arms, two of which were fitted with photon cannons—walked over and stopped in front of Harlan5’s old body.

  ‘Damaged,’ the robot said in a vaguely female voice, then lifted a photon cannon arm and blew a hole in Harlan’s old chest. ‘And now destroyed. Nothing less than you deserve.’

  With his programming telling him a human would feel terrified that the Boswell GT might accidentally move, Harlan waited as Teagan3 turned and left. Once he was certain the robot was gone, he turned the Boswell enough to see where his old body had fallen.

  A fist-sized hole in his old chest cavity smoked and dripped oil out on to his casing. Badly damaged, and with no working functions, his old body would likely be sold for parts, perhaps even trashed.

  His programming told him he was sad, but at the same time, he was alive.

  And now, he was undercover.

  5

  Caladan

  The electrical prong sparked as it descended toward Cal
adan’s face.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ he said, sweat dripping down his cheeks and mingling with his beard, ‘torture is entirely unnecessary. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I’m a one-armed gambler and smuggler. I’m wanted in at least five systems, probably more but I haven’t been back to check. I have no morals. None. None at … ahhh….’

  The prong jabbed into the skin of his forehead. His vision blurred as an electrical pulse surged through his body. For a few seconds his skin felt as though it had caught fire, then the prong drew back. Caladan’s vision cleared enough to make out the man standing at the controls of the impulse device. Younger perhaps than Lia, he watched the torture with an eerily blank detachment.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Caladan said. ‘We ran weapons out of Worf in the Flank System, sold them to a warlord on Tobis 9. Smuggled stolen starship parts out of Seen in the Trill System. Sold them to the Phevian System Government. How about that? Anything else? Do a brain scan. It’s all in there. Apart from what I’ve forgotten, which is probably a lot … partial to a little whisky, me.’

  The prong lowered again.

  ‘Come on … no, no no no…!’

  The torture continued until Caladan passed out, regardless of what he confessed or the exchanges he offered to make. Guards dragged him back to a cell and dumped him inside, leaving him alone to rest. His face and body ached all over. Such was the torture method, there were no visible marks, the only scars crisscrossing his mind.

  He had hoped, as he had for the last couple of Earth-days, that during his transportation to and from the interrogation chamber—where they were yet to bother him with actual questions—he would catch a glimpse of Lia. So far, nothing.