Maauro nodded and then went up to the top turret, to her accustomed spot for watching the clouds. After we’d crossed the mountains, I climbed to 5,000 feet to avoid the turbulence of the hot air near the jungle surface. Hours rolled by uneventfully.
I ran my hand through my hair. I thought about putting Sinner on autopilot. Morning coffee was now many hours behind me and a soft drink sounded like a great idea. I reached for the panel to engage the autopilot.
Sinner’s wing flashed orange and black and disappeared. The world spun over my canopy as Sinner tumbled.
“Maauro,” I shouted. “We’re going in. Punch out!” The force of the spin shoved me back in the seat. I tried to raise my hands to pull down the yellow and black ejection bar but couldn’t. My vision was red-tinged fading to black.
My God, I thought, I’m in trouble. I’m going to die. Really die.
A shape lunged into my vision. Maauro. She’d abandoned her seat to help me. She was struggling with the g-forces that were beyond me. In an instant, she reached my seat, activated the bailout switch and reached up for the bar.
I tried to scream, to stop her. If she pulled the lever, the canopy would shatter and the seat would blast into her as it blew me clear. I could barely force sound out of my crushed lungs, “Nnaaaaaahhhhh.”
She yanked the lever and tried to duck back. Too slow. All I had was a jumbled series of impressions: the canopy exploding as the ejector system shattered it, a roar of jets and the slam as the seat flung itself up and struck Maauro. All was sound and fury until a red chute spread over me. Then I was floating in a silent world of sky and cloud. The sky was impossibly blue and the ground was a palette of greens and browns, dotted with brilliant flowers in every tropical color. I felt numb, noticing without interest that my right pants leg was torn off. I wiped my face and my hand came away reddened. I stared at it without comprehension. Then something flashed and exploded below me.
I snapped out of it, looking at the ground floating up below me. I must have punched out only a few hundred meters up. A tower of flame and acrid gray and black smoke rose from where Sinner had struck. I twisted in my chute, checking the sky, but there was no other canopy to be seen.
Automatics in the chute flexed and twisted as I steered for a clearing near the crashed ship. I came down as easily as if stepping off a stool, the chute balling up behind and the grab-harness dropping off, freeing me to run, more like stagger, toward Sinner.
The ship had shattered into several large pieces but fragments and flaming debris lay all over. My hearing was coming back. I heard the crackle of flames and the pop of small explosions. Sinner’s forward hull lay jammed into some trees. I raised my hands to protect my face from the radiant heat, forcing my way. I wondered if I could make it back out before the fire cut me off.
I looked around hoping for any sign of movement. Seeing nothing, I pushed into the tangle of wreckage, heading for the cockpit. As my head poked up to the top deck, I saw a foot. I threw debris out of my way and jumped in.
I froze. Maauro lay twisted on the deck. Her eyes fixed and frozen on nothing; her face was dented and burned. Her hair was partly torn off. I heard a voice shouting her name over and over and realized it was mine.
I shook myself to get a grip and knelt by her, running my hands over her unresponsive body. It had reverted to rigid and cold from its normal malleable and warm. I tried to lift her to sitting, but my hands slid off her left shoulder. The arm was gone, midway between shoulder and elbow.
Indecision wracked me. Should I move her? She wasn’t human or even biological. She didn’t bleed or have a spinal cord to sever, but would I damage her further?
A waft of smoke set me choking and decided the issue. There was still plenty of fuel in Sinner’s fragments. Even if it didn’t explode further, the radiant heat would kill me.
I started to pull her up and reality smacked my cut and bleeding face again. Maauro looked like a teenage girl, but weighed far more than I did. I yanked and jerked frantically, barely moving the android.
“No, no, no,” I screamed. The heat was increasing, yet how could I leave her? Was she already dead? Could she even die?
Maauro’s right arm moved faster than I could see, fastening on my throat. Her head snapped around, eyes flat-black panels from lid to lid.
“Alad var doshna unlik vor,” she demanded in a voice I’d never heard before. Even her face seemed strange. I recognized the machine I’d first seen on the asteroid.
“Maauro, it’s me, Wrik.”
She repeated the alien phrase. I suddenly noticed serrated teeth in her mouth that hadn’t been there before. I knew better than to struggle against her impossible strength and speed, even in this damaged state. I forced myself to relax.
“Maauro,” I whispered through her steel grip. “It’s me, Wrik. I’m your friend. I found you on an Infestor base. The war is over. It’s been over for 50,000 years.”
A change swept over the face. Feminine curves reasserted themselves. The teeth disappeared and the eyes filled with the beautiful, gentle blue-green I knew. Her hand opened immediately.
“Wrik,” she said in her little-girl voice, with only a hint of distortion. “Did I hurt you? Are you all right? There is blood on your face.”
“I’m ok. You got me out in time. Can you move?”
She seemed to look inside. “Severe internal and external damage; I am effecting repairs to reestablish mobility.”
“You weren’t there when you came to,” I said, casting anxious glances at the billowing smoke behind us
“All higher systems were offline or disrupted. I had only my basic combat CPU. Fortunately, it did not perceive you as an enemy.”
“Fortunately,” I said rubbing my throat.
“Please look for my left arm while I am regaining my mobility.”
I looked down at her. “Does it hurt?”
“Not as you mean it, but I am upset at being maimed and damaged so.”
I searched through the cockpit while Maauro’s body jerked and clattered on the deck behind me, the result of damage, or the repair effort, I could not tell. I found no sign of the arm—it might have been torn off by the ejector seat, or perhaps flung off in the crash, but it was nowhere to be found.
I came back to her. The heat and smoke were becoming overwhelming. “Maauro, I can’t last much longer.”
She jerked upright like a badly made toy. Her good arm reached out and dug into a nearby stanchion. “I will not touch you. My fine motor control is not operating. Help me on my left side.”
Halting and stumbling, we made our way out of the wrecked ship, heading for the thicker brush...
“Into the forest, upwind of the fire,” Maauro ordered, gesturing with her head.
“Why?”
“We were shot down by enemy action, Wrik. Logically a force will come to make sure we are dead, unless our enemies are sloppy fools, and I do not believe they are. This is a Guild ambush.”
“Then we’re dead,” I muttered, shock and exhaustion taking hold. “We’re out here on our own, no help and no weapons.”
Maauro turned her damaged face to me and to my utter surprise she gave a small smile. “Do not, my brother-in-arms, think so little of me. We are not done yet.”
We reached the treeline. “Proceed in one hundred meters. I will call to you when it is safe to come back. If you hear weapon fire and I do not call, flee as best you can.”
“What are you going to do?” I demanded.
“One good ambush deserves another,” she said.
Maauro sank to the ground and twisted her limbs and torso. In seconds she was so distorted and broken-looking that it made me sick.
“Go,” she said, closing one eye and causing her face to discolor. “Hopefully, they will believe me destroyed and try to salvage my parts.
***
I see that W
rik is distressed by my physical appearance and by leaving me, but it cannot be helped. I take stock of my situation. I have never before been damaged to this degree, not even when I was blown up on the asteroid and lost forty percent of my mass. Most of what I lost then was armor. My self-repair mechanisms, those that survive, are working at high speed. I am designed to resist battle damage in this way and indeed, I am in less trouble than when the sclerotic system failures were afflicting me. I’m designed with multiple redundancies. However, I used most of my backup material repairing myself when I was hit 50,000 years ago. I can repair some aspects of my body, but I can not regenerate an arm without a supply of my basic material.
My self-repair proceeds at such a pace and using such prodigious quantities of energy that I must slow them, or the waste heat generated will catch the vegetation on fire.
I miss my arm. I have always prided myself on my appearance and maintenance. This is distressing.
I shelve these thoughts. The enemy has arrived. A helicopter platform slides into the clearing. It is little more than a railed platform under whirling blades. A good choice tactically, as it allows the five armored troopers to pile off, their heavy weapons searching the smoking debris field.
At first they take no notice of me; evidently I do look like a ball of wreckage. I watch them search the area as I analyze them: two Nekoans, a male and female, two Kandalorians muffled in cloaks and head-coverings and a Dua-Denlenn. It is not Dusko unfortunately. This one holds a sensor pack in one hand and an RPG launcher in the other, its tube over his shoulder.
The weapons concern me. In my damaged state they could be lethal. I must destroy this group in one fell swoop.
The Dua-Denlenn finally spots me and calls to his force in Confed standard.
“Over here.” He points the RPG at me.
It is the moment of truth; will they fire first, or hope to salvage me?
“Great Stalker,” the female Nekoan says, her large ears twitching. “It’s slagged. The Collector won’t be pleased; she told Dusko to get her intact.”
“Is it dead?” one of the Kandalorians croaked in its base voice.
“Must be,” the Dua-Denlenn said, “The scanner says its temperature is over 300 degrees C.
“Easy money,” the male Nekoan adds.
“We’re not done,” the Dua-Denlenn growls in annoyance. “There is the human to account for. He ejected before the crash.”
“I cannot smell him,” the male Nekoan said, “with all this burning plastic.”
“I wonder what human tastes like,” the female laughed, her teeth in evidence.
“We’ll take this back when the scraps cool,” the Dua-Denlenn. “You two follow the human.”
They are all around me in a circle; none has a weapon bearing on me. Now is the optimum time. Despite the apparent twisting and bending I have my limbs in the ideal position to fling me straight up in the air in their midst. I lunge. From my right hand flechettes fly out of my finger tubes, striking the Nekoans. My feet strike the Kandalorians crushing the skull of one and impaling the other. This fouls my aim at the Dua-Denlenn with my hand projectors, but I fling the dead Kandalorian stuck on my leg at him. He fires his RPG and I twist, evading the round. Then I slash at him with my hand, severing his head from his body. I hit the ground and roll up.
The male Nekoan lays on the ground, dead, the RPG round stuck in his chest. The female is also down, bleeding, her weapon nearby, her arm shredded by flechettes. Our eyes lock. She backpedals on the ground as I scuttle toward her on three limbs.
“No, no,” she screams. “No, no, please, wait…”
I scramble over her and slam my hand down, ending the pathetic entreaties. I try to remember, as her whimpers trail off into silence, that she was wondering what Wrik’s flesh tasted like.
I stand. “Wrik,” I call. “Wrik.”
In a minute he is standing with me, looking at the slaughter.
“That all of them?” he asks.
“Yes, but others may come. We should escape in the heliflyer. You will need to fly, as my systems are not in order.”
He scoops up a weapon and starts toward the flyer. When I do not follow, he stops. I am looking down at the Nekoan female’s dead face.
“I am here again,” I say, motivated by what I am not sure. “Standing over a pile of dead bodies that only a minute ago were aware, filled with thoughts, hopes, wishes for a tomorrow.”
“They were Guild, Maauro. Predators. They’d have destroyed us both.” He moves to place a hand on my shoulder, but the heat from my body makes him pause.
“True and yet it troubles me. Is this all there is to me? Do I only exist to end life? It did not trouble me with Infestors. Perhaps it should have, but I was made to do fight them and I can see no merit in those creatures. But this one at my feet is so like the one that you make love to. Yet I must kill her to survive. I could grow tired of this.”
“You’ve preserved my life, Jaelle’s and many others among the Murch. We don’t attack others. Our lives belong to us and they are precious. Why should we weigh the lives of these murderers,” he gestures at the bodies, “against ours?”
“Perhaps you are right. But Wrik, another thought occurs. Who knew that we were taking this route to the Murch encampment?”
“Jaelle…wait, Maauro, you don’t think she sold us out?”
“I think that we must find Jaelle and put certain questions to her. For one, it appears we have a new enemy, a female named the Collector, who gives orders to Dusko.”
“Let’s get out of here, Maauro. I want some answers.”
We stagger to the heliflyer, I lay prone and Wrik straps me to the decking. He takes the single seat behind the windscreen and manipulates the controls. We lift into the sky. In this slow machine it will be several hours back to Vanceport. I power down and concentrate on repairs. I miss my arm.
Chapter 13
I dropped Maauro at a flophouse on the edge of the space field, then took the helo to long-term parking and left it in an isolated section. You only paid when leaving such places. It would be months before anyone bothered to check on the flyer. I knew every place in Kandalor that a poor spacer could go for a free shower or cheap eats. We’d need that knowledge now that bad times had returned. I stopped in a noodle shop, cleaned up in the rest room and wolfed down some noodles. The locals wouldn’t recognize one human from another and couldn’t care less.
I waited until dark and moved through the old, safe ways back to where I’d left Maauro. I brought nothing back with me. There was nothing I could do for the android, and I knew her capacity for self-repair was astounding. The alley behind the flophouse was clear, though I waited a few minutes before chancing the door to our hideout.
Maauro opened the door to my coded knock, and I slipped in. I studied my companion; her repairs had proceeded apace. Her face had returned to normal; her hair was back to its usual length. Her chassis…her body, was cleaned of dirt and scratches. For a second the illusion held, and then she moved. One leg dragged and the other seemed both inflexible and unsteady. The edge of her severed arm was now smooth, but it looked somehow the worse for it.
“How are you?”
“I will not dissemble for you. My damage is very severe. I’ve effected the repairs I can, but used up almost all my reserves of energy. Ages ago I used up most of the spare chassis material I carried in my body when I was hit by a blast on the asteroid and lost several limbs. I am actually 39.476% smaller than my original size for that reason.
“The problem is that the ceramic and malleable metal of my body is beyond any replacement capability of your sciences. Even undamaged, I could not manufacture replacement arm and leg materials in my own interior factories. Small patches, yes, over several months, but not whole limbs, not without a supply of my original material. My combat capabilities are reduced to almost nothing.”
; I sat on the bed, despair overwhelming me. “What are we going to do? There’s nowhere to run to. No one to help us”
Maauro tottered over and sat awkwardly on the floor near me. “We have our wits and our perseverance and these are powerful weapons. Right now our need is for information.”
I nodded. “The most pressing question is whether Jaelle is in on this. I find it hard to believe. But I’ve been wrong about people most of my life.”
“I do not believe she betrayed us, at least not consciously. It is a critical issue. If we can rely on Jaelle’s help, we have a greater chance of reaching the Tar Sea where once I found supplies and materials.”
Hope surged in me. “Do you think you can find something there to help us?”
“It seems our only chance. I can move better than I am doing so presently for short periods. I will reserve that for emergencies.”
“Let’s rest up today and wait for nightfall,” I said. “I’ll make my way to Jaelle’s after dark and see what I can find out.”
“No,” Maauro said. “We are safest together and will wage our battle so. Rest now, I will keep watch.”
I sank back on the thin mattress, staring at the one panel in the ceiling. Jaelle’s face came to me: her soft, blond hair piled up on her head, the large ears that were so mobile and sensitive, small nose, yellow eyes, sensuous lips, though one had to kiss carefully around the fangs. I hadn’t been with anyone I hadn’t paid for since I’d left Retief.
Retief. They’d be howling if they knew I was dating a non-human. Hell, other types of humans weren’t good enough for them. They’d regard her as one step above bestiality. Screw them, I thought. Jaelle was a dream to me, if only she wasn’t the one who’d betrayed us.
Sleep slammed down on me.
***
I slept like the dead and awoke ravenous. All that was available were cans of rations from a vending machine. I devoured two as the sun slowly rose over the spaceport, limning ships and towers with golden fire.
“A beautiful sight,” Maauro said.
My Outcast State (The Maauro Chronicles Book 1) Page 11