Metal in the Sand: Book 1

by Corbett, Lynne

  Sprinting full out, Cressida dodged down a street to the left. An auto swerved out of the way, and she had to push off a couple walking out from a shop to keep her momentum. A quick glance behind showed her three pursuers almost a half block behind. She was running down different streets than those she’d come in on, but she turned right, aimed west down a street running parallel to the main drag, and dug in.

  Cressida. Where are you going? I’ve ordered Yig to take the MTEV to the western entrance. Can you meet it there? What’s your extraction plan?

  Do you really think it looks like I have a plan? I’m running like a sand devil without a head, Baz. Don’t you have a map or something? Can’t you just triangulate my position and get me the blight out of here?! The street ahead was congested, full of what looked like a neighborhood dinner, children dashing about underfoot and people passing around plates of food. Cress swerved down a cross street, expecting it to eventually intersect with the main road.

  Your position is compromised. Additional troops are approaching from the north. You need to get out of that alley now!

  At that moment, two people careened around the corner ahead of her. These didn’t wear the factory overalls—they wore uniforms. Cressida glanced frantically along the sides of the buildings. She was right—the road had led her towards the edge of the town… which meant she’d quickly approached the warehouses, where heavily padlocked gates fenced off any escape. Baz...I could really use a plan right about now.

  The AI offered nothing, and it was too late, anyways. The soldiers had closed the distance. She dodged, trying unsuccessfully to juke out the soldiers, and resisted when they grabbed her, but she didn’t fight back. On Bara Skar, you quickly learned just how little a villager’s life meant to the machine of industry. Soldiers and townies grew fat off the sweat of villagers, and she wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of hurting her more.

  Her mind raced. Would Baz still honor their agreement, even if she was caught? Yig got out, so that meant Baz could still retrieve the hull section, maybe. Would it just find another pilot, another clueless villager to take the fall until it could leave? Baz, I could really use some help right now. Silence.

  “You!” The factory worker pulled up in front of the soldiers, panting, his cronies falling in behind. A nod of gratitude for each, then he straightened up and continued. “Cressida Jannis, you are charged with material larceny, and will be taken to Bara Skar 1 for processing and trial.

  “Larceny! I stole from Deadsand! If anything, you should be overjoyed!” Maybe bravado would help her get out of this. Baz certainly didn’t seem to be doing much. “They’re your rival—I’m surprised they even warned you of a potential threat like me. Not that I am a threat—”

  “Oh, but I think you are,” the soldier on her right chimed in. “Actually, it seems like the Jannis family is full of troublemakers.” She saw Cressida’s face shift, first with confusion, then with fear. “That’s right. We told Deadsand’s mayor about the abandonment your father was planning. Looks like he was trying to jump ship, make a deal with us, instead. Well, we’re loyal to Cyandown, and don’t want to see such backbiting and fighting among towns. It’s not good for Skar, is it? So, we told Deadsand, and they in turn shared this little tidbit with us. I’ve got to wonder… with a traitorous village leader and his rogue daughter causing trouble, what will happen to Peripheri?”

  Burning fury brimmed over. Cressida thrashed, straining against her captors. She couldn't think of the ill-conceived move her father had made. She could only think of how he’d been betrayed, of how her own actions might bring ruin upon her family, her friends, who were all just struggling to survive. Her flailing elbow caught the smug officer across her cheek, and she cried out, letting go of Cressida’s right hand. Before she could land more than two ill-angled punches at the gut of the man on her left, the factory workers were upon her. They knocked her to the ground, pinning her arms to the street as the soldier wiped her hand across her mouth, looming over Cressida’s prone figure.

  The woman sneered, “You riving glebe. Maybe we don’t take you straight to Heat. Maybe you spend a few days here, first… in the cells.” The soldier grabbed her stun stick from her belt, cocked back her wrist, and bent her knees. Cress could see the inevitable trajectory, and braced herself for a rib-breaking blow across her torso.

  A roar drowned out the woman’s next words, and the sky went briefly dark. Everyone threw their heads up, but whatever it was, it was gone. Still, the disruption had distracted the party enough for Cress’s would-be assailant to forget the planned strike. Laughing off her unease with the others, she and her comrade heaved Cressida up and frog-marched her down the alley. Cress didn’t protest. Her captors might be clueless, but she had a pretty good idea what that had been.

  Baz, you here?

  Affirmative. Rendezvous point 200 meters, in the middle of that wide street. You’ll need to break free at that point. Roger that?

  Blearily, Cress processed what she was hearing, and just barely remembered to not reply aloud. Got it, Baz. I’ll try. This woman’s got a grip like an industrial class 2 pincer. She trudged to the street, putting up token resistance—it wouldn’t do to look like she was plotting anything. As they approached the end of the alley, Baz’s immense shadow whooshed over their heads once more.

  “Malley, I don’t like this. What the sands is that? ‘Sgotta be a ship, but we ain’t got none o’ those in Drytown. Where’d it come from?” The younger officer, acne scars sharing equal placement among his freckles, winced visibly. Cressida felt something almost like pity—had it been a week earlier, she was sure she’d have been just as worried. Well, not that worried.

  The three factory workers flanked her, two in front, their leader bringing up the rear. They rounded the corner, and Cress made her break. She took advantage of the young officer glancing distractedly at the sky, and stuck her foot into his path. He went down with flailing arms, and Cressida lunged away from the woman—Malley, apparently. She broke free from the distracted cop’s grip, and spun around. Two in front, one behind; she’d take her chances one-on-one. The man surged towards her, arms outstretched, and Cress leapt aside nimbly. With a clear path down the street, she gathered herself to run.

  The stun stick cracked across her temples, felling her instantly. Pain blossomed in a thousand tiny sparkles across her eyes, while her body twitched uncontrollably from the accompanying voltage. Through the fireworks in her vision, she saw Baz approach once more. This time, the ship hovered in place, casting a cool shadow over Cress’ throbbing eyes.

  Her captor’s surprised shouts were cut short as a condensed staccato burst of five roaring coughs broke the air, and five bodies dropped to the ground bonelessly.

  Blinking furiously, Cress tried to clear her vision. Her head swam as she swiveled it around, trying to make sense of the last two seconds. Her eyes looked up, to see Baz’s aft-mounted stinger turret swiveling back into its neutral position. Get up. This is no longer a safe zone for extraction. Run to the west, and I’ll pick you up out of town.

  Stumbling to her feet, Cress blearily shambled after the retreating silhouette. People started to open their doors to investigate the sound, and Cress was met with stares and shrieks of horror. She was in the center of a killing field, the five bodies pouring their lifeblood onto the streets. Cress picked up her pace. She wasn’t going to be caught in the middle of this. Again. It wasn’t even her fault!

  Her brain had started to clear by the time she made it to the outskirts of the town, thought she still wasn’t sure how she got there. As she rounded the last few buildings, Baz came swooping down, kicking up sand as the powerful machine made an abrupt landing. The hatch popped open, and she scrambled onto the wing and launched herself inside. She hadn’t closed the door behind her before Baz was airborne again.

  I’ve programmed Yig with coordinates for a safe meeting point. Cress collapsed in the pilot’s chair and turned off the neural link. Her side and head throbbed,
but what pounded across her eyelids was a replay of the street, five humans with lives and loves and futures, suddenly snuffed out. She couldn't face Baz right now. She didn’t know if she ever wanted to.

  ***

  “We’ve landed, Cressida.”

  Rousing herself from her hunched up position in the chair, Cress willed her eyes to open. A glance at the control panel showed that they were roughly in between Drytown and Peripheri, in the open desert to the west of Drytown’s encircling villages. A slowly approaching target was marked as her MTEV, and Yig’s signature was identified on the radar. Its ETA was twenty minutes. Twenty minutes until the servbot returned with her rig. 20 minutes stuck with Baz. With a killer.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Cressida. You’ve disabled our neural link, but your elevated heart rate and shifting eyes, accompanied by 4 distinct facial cues, registers disgust. I surmise that killing is not something you’ve become inured to.”

  “No. I’m not… inured to death. So sorry.” She huffed, turning away, realizing too late that, with sensors throughout the cabin, there was no privacy or retreat possible.

  Baz’s voice seemed grave. “I didn’t kill them lightly. They posed a serious threat to you, and by extension, your entire village. You have information that can greatly aid your fellow villagers and perhaps keep them safe.”

  “Oh, so you were being completely altruistic, yeah? Nevermind that you wouldn’t be able to get your hull piece, or that I’d disappear with the neural implant you seem to care so much about. Why do you even want a human copilot? The way you treat humans, seems like one would just be a bother.”

  Silence greeted her words. “I did not kill them lightly.” The quiet echo of Baz’s earlier words calmed Cressida. This was an AI that had seen over 6 solcades of service, and had seen and caused far more death than Cressida could fathom. But had probably also prevented just as much, if not more. It didn’t make things square.

  “I’m not going to say I’m sorry. What you did was still pretty messed up, and I’m not okay with it.”

  “I won’t ask you to be. But I do need to know: what next?”

  Cress’s head shot up, her arms uncoiling from their defensive cross to hang firmly at her sides. “I need to go home. Drytown has turned on my village, my friends, and I need to prepare them for it before they’re blindsided.” Taking a ragged breath, she continued. “We both know you said you’d help, so I won’t insult your intelligence by dancing around it. Honestly, I don’t expect you to keep to that. You still don’t have your hull piece, but I’m sure Yig can be good enough to fetch it, once it’s done. Or you can always just blow up the entire town, and waltz in yourself to get the piece made.”

  “I do need my hull piece, yes. And a few other supplies. And it is urgent. It’s a weak point an enemy could exploit, and I’d be exposed to danger if I went into a fight without my plating secure. And now that I’ve shown myself, Cyandown may soon be made aware of my existence. If I go to help Peripheri… well, we don’t know how the situation might escalate.”

  Baz trailed off, showing the first sign of indecision that Cressida had seen since she met the AI. Then it clicked. “Oh, no you don’t. Don’t try to make me make your decision for you. I’m not going to assuage your guilt by offering to go get that hull piece. And I’m not going to hold it hostage over your head, only promising to get it once you help my friends. This is all on you.”

  The main screen kicked on, showing Yig and the tevver approaching within visual range.

  “When that vehicle arrives, Baz, I’m headed home. Whether it’s with you, or in the tevver by myself, is a decision you need to make.” Her pronouncement was met with silence, so Cress spun on her heel and palmed the sensor to open the hatch. She was two steps down the fuselage when the now-familiar voice cut through the air.

  “Wait.”

  * * *

  Epilogue

  Quyen was a courier at the imperial court on Bara Prime. A pretty decent courier, if he said so himself. As a courier, he had learned a few things.

  Don't ever let your message get to its recipient before you do.

  If you're on time, you're late. And if you're early, you're on time.

  Always check the recipient name three times.

  Always check your personal appearance before presenting yourself to the recipient.

  If it weighs more than 22 kilograms, get help.

  Finally: If it's bad news, give it to an intern.

  Unfortunately, today was literally the only day this cycle that both the interns were gone. He didn't know for sure that what he had was bad news, but it certainly didn't sound great.

  Commander Ranklin looked up immediately as Quyen walked in, removing his hand from the table where a datacube sat between himself and Commander Lomont's servbot. "What is it? Make it quick."

  "Vid message, lords, from one of your informants on Skar."

  The hulking AI ship, Lomont, compelled its servbot to action, the bot’s appendages clacking delicately on the stone floor as it approached, lights gleaming an emerald green as one of its arms snatched the datacube.

  "Ohhh.... well isn't that interesting," Lomont purred, as it ostensibly began sharing the holovid with Ranklin through their link. The man stared intently at the vacant air. Quyen, who saw nothing, shifted nervously.

  Ranklin snorted derisively at whatever the datacube was displaying. "Well, looks like some local managed to scrape up enough parts to throw a sky skimmer together."

  "It could be space worthy," the resonant voice of Lomont speculated.

  "What miner would be that stupid, to flaunt it out in the open?"

  There was a brief silence as the two continued to watch.

  A brief grunt of grudging admiration and maybe even a little surprise. "Weaponized."

  As the message concluded, Commander Ranklin shifted his focus back to his AI partner’s servbot. "We'll task the informant network to get a clear shot of the vessel... and to keep an eye on whether they try to push into space or not."

  Lomont’s voice echoed through the bay. “We’ll advise them to observe only—no sense in more death until it’s needed.”

  Lomont’s servbot finished the sequence to reprogram the cube, and Ranklin tossed it casually back to Quyen. "See that this is delivered to the informant. Dismissed."

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