Hauk winced. He remembered the time he was starving, soon after his mother had died. The unspeakable things he did just to keep himself from dying filled him with shame.
“So I was used and abused for a time,” Puteri said. “I hated it, of course, so I ran away. I don’t know how but I somehow made it back home. The moment I saw my mother at the door I felt safe. Guess what happened next?”
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
“My mother took one look at me and handed me back over to the ones who owned my rights,” Puteri said. “At that moment I knew I was alone in the whole galaxy.”
Hauk looked down at the floor. The loud metallic clicks of his magnetic soles reverberated through the recycled air. “How did you end up here?”
“I ran away again,” Puteri said. “I learned a few skills and used my body to get from one world to the next, until I bumped into Lieutenant Strand while he was undercover during a mission.”
“Yeah?”
Puteri nodded. “Yeah, it was just blind luck. I was looking for something to steal in this marketplace at Lemuria when I spotted a guy who looked suspicious. I followed him into an alleyway, where he got jumped by somebody else—a riwwr. I still don’t know why, but the two of them started fighting, and one of their weapons fell onto the ground beside me.”
Hauk could only blink in surprise. He could hardly believe what she was saying. “Wow. Then what?”
“I made a choice when I picked up the weapon. Shoot one or the other, or just run. I shot the riwwr just as he was about to tear Strand’s throat out. I wounded the riwwr on the first shot, and the second shot killed him. The lieutenant just stood there and looked at me.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“He was silent for a bit, then he asked me if I wanted a job.”
Hauk suppressed the urge to laugh. “That’s a hell of a story.”
“It is, and it’s true,” Puteri said. “Everyone’s got their own little tale about how they ended up here, but one thing’s for sure—we’re all loyal to each other, and ain’t no one gonna mess with us anymore.”
8 The Aphid
News and information traveled across Union space via drone couriers. This massive fleet of fully autonomous small craft would continuously dart in and out of the dark matter fields of every major star system, exchanging data with every passing starship before relaying the latest updates back and forth to a chain of communications satellites across the galactic network. Core worlds had a better information hub due to their more developed relay infrastructure, and news reports traveled fast. Frontier worlds would sometimes experience information delays of weeks—or sometimes even months—before any news from the other side of the galaxy could be updated onto their planetary servers.
The first shadow zone was discovered just beyond the heliopause of the Sol system, and with it the subsequent invention of the tesseract drive occurred a hundred years later, giving humanity the keys to traverse across the stars. Named after its discoverer, the Brinton Shadow Zone quickly became the prime information hub of the galactic net in the entire sector. With hundreds of passing starships and t-drive-equipped information couriers making their way back and forth across the area at every single hour, the unceasing flow of information became a profitable opportunity for those who had the guts and talents to exploit it.
Randy Art Smith smiled while staring into the ship’s command console. He had named his little spacecraft the Eloise, and even though she didn’t have a t-drive, he felt the ship’s unusual capabilities were more than adequate for the kind of work he did. “Emmet? You good to go?”
His brother’s shrill voice came over the earpiece. “Yeah, just about. Now don’t you use the thrusters like what you did the last time, goddamn it. I’m gonna stay tethered like I always do.”
Randy shrugged. “Yeah, yeah. I had to pull us out because of an alert.”
“Well, you tell me beforehand. I nearly got my arms and legs ripped out of my sockets the last time you pulled that stunt. Give me a few seconds’ notice so I can let go at least.”
“Yeah, yeah. Coming up on the drone. Stand by.”
The Eloise was once a small pleasure yacht, but Randy had her heavily modified after he bought the secondhand spacecraft ten years before. The ship’s bow was replaced with a long stem with jutting heatsinks, terminating into a large bowl-shaped plate, giving her profile a slight semblance to an umbrella. Randy also added external water tanks that were attached to the side of the hull, to be used as a sort of stealth thruster whenever the Eloise got too close to the network hub’s security perimeter.
Randy and his kind were called aphids, so named after the terrestrial parasitic insects who sucked off sap from plants. He had worked his way up as a load supervisor after growing up poor on Mars, but there was never enough money to make a decent living from it. After a stint in prison for theft, he fell in with a group of convicted aphids and soon learned the secrets of their trade. Not long after his release, Randy worked for one of their crews, bringing in his younger brother to help out. A few years later, they had saved up enough to go on their own, and now Randy and Emmet were truly independent.
Keeping an eye on the proximity sensor, Randy maneuvered his little ship until she got closer to the disabled drone. Autonomous courier drones worked nonstop, but there were times when they needed to be serviced, and their simple AI programming would shut off their engines and await a maintenance ship with the right transponder codes in order to be repaired.
Randy smiled as he began a deceleration maneuver in order to match velocities and heading with the drifting drone courier. Ejecting small spurts of steam as a propellant was a slow process, but at least it didn’t alert his target. The cooled, lightweight radar absorbent plate in front of his ship masked the Eloise against most radiation tracking sensors; all the target could see around it would be the usual random noise which characterized this busy area. With all her navigation and external lights turned off, the Eloise would be nothing more than an encroaching shadow coming upon the unsuspecting courier ship.
Within minutes, he had expertly piloted the Eloise until she now drifted side by side with the courier drone. Checking the long-range sensors, he could tell the repair ship was at least twelve hours away. Plenty of time. He activated the com-link to his brother. “Matched heading and velocity with target. All yours, Emmet.”
“Roger. Opening airlock.”
Sorting through the external camera feeds, he saw his brother using the EVA thruster pack to propel himself out of the airlock. Randy judged the distance to be within a hundred meters, so the trailing tether line being unspooled from the airlock’s interior ought to be enough. Within seconds, his brother was on his way towards the equally darkened hull of the sleeping drone.
“I’ll reach the target’s hull in about five minutes,” Emmet said over the com-link.
“Roger that,” Randy said. Despite the intense security precautions to keep the data they carried secure, there was always a flaw to be exploited in the system. Randy and the other aphids had learned that while encryption was strong when the drones relayed their data streams over the secure com-link channels of the net, there was only a simple network lock on their maintenance ports. Therefore the best way to hack the data these drones carried would be to physically access their interface ports and download the unencrypted info streams by hand.
“I reached the drone’s hull,” Emmet said. “Activated magnetic boots.”
Randy switched over to his brother’s suit cameras, allowing him to observe at close range. With only the small shoulder lights on the skinsuit running, the rest of the scene was shrouded in darkness. “You didn’t forget the drill, did you?”
“Of course I brought it along. What do you think I am, an idiot?”
Randy watched his brother take out a power drill dangling from his utility belt. Emmet began walking along the shadowy hull of the drone ship until he stood in front of one of the maintenance panels.
“Here goes,” Emmet said. He crouched down and began to unscrew the covering on the emergency access ports of the drone. Emmet also carried a fist-sized server unit in his belt, and he would just plug it into the open port interface once the panel was removed.
Randy let out a yawn while stretching his arms. He could easily afford to buy a robot to do all the things his brother was currently working on, but he felt Emmet had to earn his share of the profits, and the cost savings of not having to buy a bot would only get them closer to their dream. Randy figured it would be another few years before they could happily retire and buy a couple of luxury villas in Mars’s exclusive Valles Marineris suburb.
“What’s that?” his brother said over the com-link.
For a few seconds Randy was momentarily confused. “What’s what?”
Emmet’s loud breathing could be heard over the com-link. “I thought I saw some movement from the corner of my eye.”
Randy shook his head. “What are you talking about? It’s just us out here.”
“I’m telling you, I saw something.”
“Where, Emmet?”
“I thought I saw something moving along the other side of this drone’s hull. When I held up the light it was gone.”
Randy snorted. “You’re imagining things.”
“I’m not kidding, goddamn it,” Emmet said. “Can you swing the Eloise around and take a look?”
Randy rolled his eyes. Emmet always had an oversized imagination, even when they were kids. “If I do that I’m going to have to release the tether line; it’s close to full extension already.”
There was a slight pause. An indicator popped up on the console, indicating that Emmet had released his tether. “Just do it, okay? All I can see right now is what’s ahead of me.”
Randy cursed. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll do a rotation, but I’m not activating the lights. With the tether loose you’re gonna have to use more go juice with the thruster pack to get back here.”
“Okay, just do it and report back.”
“Yeah, yeah. Keep working on the panel in the meantime; this is just another one of your false alarms.”
“I’m telling you, I saw something. Now hurry up and look!”
Hissing with irritation, Randy placed his right hand on the control stick and activated the maneuvering thrusters again. Letting out a few jets of steam from her port side, the Eloise began a slow orbit around the target craft. As the other side of the drone’s hull came into view, Randy activated his ship’s passive sensors.
The ship’s onboard computer adjusted the sensor readings and converted them into a virtual picture. The moving images leapt out at him, making Randy open his mouth in mute terror. His brother was correct. Two humanoid security robots, their magnetized feet allowing them to move freely along the length of the hull, were moving slowly and deliberately towards the aft side of the superstructure, hoping to catch his brother unawares by coming up from behind.
Randy began a counter-rotation maneuver to get his brother back in view. “Jesus Antecessor! Emmet! There’s bots on the other side. Hang on.”
Emmet’s bewildered voice reverberated through the audio speakers. “What?”
“There’s sec bots moving around out there. Blast off and get back in here!”
Letting go of the power tool, Emmet immediately pushed a button on his left wrist, disengaging the magnetic soles of his boots. He was just about to activate the thruster pack when the two bots came into view along the far side of the drone’s hull and fired their lasers at him. The flashing bursts of pulsed heat impacted his left side, burning through the flexible outer layer of his skinsuit and scorching along the length of his left arm, all the way to the bone.
Randy could hear his brother’s screams as his shaking hands maneuvered the Eloise back to the flipside of the drone’s hull. “Emmet!”
With his left arm no longer functioning, Emmet still attempted to activate the thruster pack using his right hand, but the second burst of pulsed laser fire hit the left side of the oversized backpack, burning through the outer material and penetrating into the propellant tank. There was a short, sudden implosion as what was left of Randy’s brother was thrust out into the darkness. The robots continued their merciless barrage, still firing their lasers at the unending night.
Tears covered Randy’s eyelids, blurring his vision as he accelerated to maximum speed with the water tanks, their scant thrust barely giving the ship much delta-V. The accursed drone courier slowly receded away from his exterior camera views. Randy felt like turning around and ramming the damned courier ship for getting his brother killed, but his own sense of self-preservation had won out.
What am I gonna tell my sister-in-law? He kept looking at the cascade of numbers on the console that indicated the relative distance between the Eloise and the galactic network’s security zone perimeter. He figured it would take the Eloise at least thirty minutes until she was well enough inside the designated public transport corridor, and he could fire up the ship’s fusion engine to make the trip back to Phobos Station without arousing suspicion. The half an hour wait was going to be excruciating, especially when all he could think about was Emmet’s screams, which would surely haunt him until his dying days.
A high-pitched alarm jolted him out of his lethargic grief. Wiping the tears away from his eyes, Randy turned to look at his virtual map and let out a terror-filled yelp. Another spacecraft was in the area, and it was closing in on him fast.
Randy pressed the emergency button on his console. The Eloise quickly jettisoned the side water tanks and the nose plate while activating her plasma radiators. Less than a second later the fusion drive started as the auxiliary power unit diverted all the ship’s energy into the small reactor near the aft module, firing up the old thrusters.
Within moments, his head and shoulders were pressed into the accelerator couch. There was no longer any reason for subtlety; he had to get away by any means possible. Randy grimaced as he closed the faceplate over his helmet. The Eloise was easily doing two-and-a-half-gees of acceleration, her deployed plasma radiators giving out the effect of glowing butterfly wings. He should be able to lose his pursuer once he got to the main spaceway. Should be there in five minutes. Once the background noise picks up, I’ll shut down and do another stealth maneuver, he thought.
Glancing at the virtual map, Randy let out another gasp. The pursuing small craft not only matched his velocity, but actually surpassed it. The enemy ship trying to intercept him was doing close to six-gees of acceleration.
Randy’s lips trembled. He recalled the one time they nearly got caught. Both him and his brother were part of an aphid crew, busy doing their work sucking up the information bank on one disabled drone courier when a patrol ship spotted them. Randy and Emmet were both able to deactivate their magnetic boots and the tether wire strung them along like dangling toys as their employer’s ship accelerated away. The intense g-forces had knocked him unconscious for a time, and Randy woke up while still suspended in space. Emmet had reeled him back into the airlock. It seemed the patrol ship attempted to pursue, but their aphid ship ran near the folds of the shadow zone until they both lost sight of each other.
Figuring it was the best thing to do, Randy twisted the control stick, altering his ship’s heading towards the Brinton Shadow Zone. If he could just get towards the outer rim, it ought to be enough to shield the Eloise’s sensor readings.
His seeming confidence was quickly torn away when he felt a shudder. A series of noises suddenly erupted. The first sounded like a distant tapping, followed by a loud bang. When the alarm bells rang, he knew it was all over for him. The Eloise shook and began to decelerate.
Randy gritted his teeth. They shot at her. Blinking lights on his console indicated his ship’s hull had been ruptured and her fusion drive was heavily damaged. Randy could have done some evasive maneuvering, but he was never trained in the arts of war and never expected it. He shook his head in both despair and disbelief. It was supposed to be agai
nst the law to fire any kind of weapon inside a transport corridor, for any ordinance that missed might end up hitting someone else. Whoever wanted him must have really wanted him very badly.
Shutting off the drive, he had just begun unstrapping himself from the gravity harness when he heard the earsplitting noise of metal being torn apart. Looking up, Randy screamed as a bald man with skin of midnight blue tore open the wall above the cockpit, reached down and grabbed him by his neck.
Randy tried to fight him off, but the adversary’s singlehanded grip around his throat was too powerful, nearly rupturing his suit’s neck seal. It felt like a vise was being tightened around his airway; the excruciating pain was making it hard for him to breathe. Randy thrashed about, raining hammer blows with his gloved fists at the bluish man’s dispassionate, unyielding face. The purple-colored eyes were unnerving to him, but the pain in his throat was much worse. Randy quickly blacked out.
When he came to, Randy found himself bound to an accelerator couch, his hands firmly locked in a secure restraint. His helmet had been taken off, and it looked like he was in the enemy ship’s cockpit. The pain in his throat had settled into a dull ache. With the back of his neck still tender, he let out a series of coughs to help alleviate the dry soreness.
Seconds later the hatch above the small room had opened and the other man floated back inside. The synthetic stared at him with detached eyes that lacked pupils; his dark bluish skin seemed almost black as it glistened from the refraction of the glowing lights coming from the piloting console.
Randy’s pained confusion was replaced by a mix of curiosity, fright, and anger as they both stared at each other. If only he had a weapon. “Why’d you kill my brother but keep me alive, toaster?”
The synthetic continued his silent, unblinking stare. Toaster was slang, a pejorative directed at all sentient AIs, even though it was always ignored by them. Synthetics simply had no use for emotions, so it was practically impossible to provoke them via insults. Nevertheless, humans kept on trying.
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