My Outcast State (The Maauro Chronicles Book 1)

by Edward McKeown

  We trooped down to the hatchway and opened it. No dangers awaited us here on a settled world. In the distance, we saw vehicles coming. They’d wait until the ground, heated by our drive, cooled enough to cross. We drew in deep lungfuls of air. Well, Jaelle and I did. Maauro’s chest rose and fell, but that was just artifice. Other than using it to speak, she didn’t need air. Though like us, she seemed to enjoy having natural scents to vary the atmosphere.

  Jaelle ran a practiced eye over the oncoming throng. “Well, enough smelling the flowers, I see anxious customers awaiting us. The weather looks good, so I plan to set up a tent and trade tables.

  “I will ready the crab robots to unload,” Maauro said.

  “I’ll get Dusko and set up the tent,” I added.

  Hours later we gathered around Jaelle, who was looking at the pile of goods she’d traded for. Our entire Stauver cargo had been snapped up and at premium prices in credits, or in gems and other natural products. The locals hadn’t stood a chance against a trader of Jaelle’s qualifications, but she in turn, had not overplayed her hand either.

  “It’s a bad trader who gouges,” she said. “It’s best to be regarded as hard but fair. We may need these people again.”

  I followed Jaelle to dinner and mercifully did not have to do too much of the talking. Jaelle was in her element: beautiful, exotic, intelligent, she looked enough like a human female to attract and entrance the men, but not so much that the local women seemed to resent her.

  I came in for a certain amount of ribald kidding about my attractive cargo master as the evening continued and the wine flowed more freely. The planeting of an unexpected ship with a trade cargo and a load of mail and news had become an unofficial holiday. There were fireworks, impromptu bands and dancing.

  Maauro did not accompany us this time. Nor did she fall in with the young people who flocked around the ship. I wasn’t sure if it was a lack of confidence in her ability to pass as a human, or if she had not quite recovered from the experience of making friends only to leave them behind. I also noticed that she now wore sunshields that covered her overlarge eyes and made it seem more probable that she’d grown up underground. She did not stray from the ship, pleading duties and a fear of the bright sunlight and wide open spaces. The locals quickly lost interest with Jaelle around.

  Dusko disappeared into the town’s small offport. He did not return that night. I assumed he found a colony girl who was curious. Since I didn’t care if he came or went on this isolated world, it did not matter to me. This world was too small and new for Guild to have much interest. I debated whether to broach leaving him here with the others and decided to save the subject for another day.

  Stuffed with food and too full of good wine to drive, we were taken back to the ship by the Mayor’s assistant, a good-natured Morok who did not seem to mind hizzoner snoring in the back. When we got to the ship, we found Maauro seated outside, contemplating the stars.

  “Are you ok?” Jaelle asked, slurring slightly. The Mayor had unexpectedly turned up Nekoan flower brandy.

  “I am well,” Maauro said. “I am enjoying the stars. A girl told me that in the early morning hours there is a nebula that slides over the horizon. I wish to see this.”

  Jaelle bent down and stroked Maauro’s hair. “Goodnight, little one. Do not stay out too late.”

  I smiled and waved at Maauro and we made our unsteady way past her into the ship and our warm bed.

  Chapter 19

  With Wrik and Jaelle safely aboard, I climb to the top of a small rise a kilometer away. I can see the ship perfectly. Given the complete lack of threat, I do not deploy the crab robots since I am outside on watch. I note that Dusko has failed to return but do not sense any threat in that.

  Others are about: mechanics, flight crew and passengers for a small aircraft taking a night flight. I move silently and have changed my appearance to flat black, even taking off the silk hairbow that Wrik bought for me and placing it in my travel cloak.

  Up on the rise, I lie down to minimize my silhouette and position myself to where I can watch the ship and the sky. In an hour the promised nebula appears, flaming over the horizon of the world. From the vantage point of this world, the nebula presents a large sweeping curve and the locals call it the Sword of God. After a time and wishing to return to the ship well before daybreak, I bid a reluctant farewell to the nebula and its flaming, eternal beauty and head back to the ship. I continue to watch the stars as I walk.

  My combat systems crash into my awareness, sweeping away my appreciation of beauty. For a nanosecond I am tempted to believe I am malfunctioning. My sensors have picked up the bioelectric signal of an Infestor unit.

  I automatically drop to the ground. Now, I adjust my limbs so I can scuttle forward, flat to the ground, my sensors extended to maximum on passive settings. I do not wish my target to know I am here.

  Even as I do so, I am trying to figure how this is possible. My own survival to this age was under the most improbable of circumstances. Is it possible that I face a survivor like myself? Or have the Infestors somehow survived to this time, undiscovered by the Confederacy? It seems even less likely given what I know of Infestors.

  My sensor sweep does not disclose anything biological in the area. Even a spacesuited biological emits enough traces for me to detect. Unlikely in any event, Infestors are large creatures, several times the mass of a human. How would one remain hidden here? That must mean a mechanism.

  I gain the immediate area of the ship without being attacked and lie in wait. This is an old game, but I am literally made for it. The stars crawl slowly overhead while I wait for my unseen enemy to reveal itself. Dawn closes in inexorably. This leaves me a dilemma, light and dark are irrelevant to me and my quarry, but with the sun will return the biologicals, who are linked to the diurnal cycle.

  As if on the cue of my fear, the hatch to the Stardust is cycling open. It throws a huge volume of visible light into the area. Wrik is stepping out. Had it been Dusko, I would have waited to see what action he provoked, but Wrik is essential in my network. I will not risk him. I hit all my active sensors while accelerating up to attack speed.

  My psionic detector picks up an Infestor mechanism instantly. It flings itself toward the ship and Wrik, who with his merely biological reaction time has not yet detected the danger. The Infestor device and I collide in midair ten meters from Wrik. I tear it to pieces instantly, bringing it to the ground and smashing it to flinders with ease...

  ***

  “What the hell!” I exclaimed, backing up from the cacophonous crash of metal on metal. I caught sight of two blurring objects as they hit in midair then crashed onto the hard-packed dirt of the field. A sound of rapid pounding continues for a second as I frantically angle the airlock spotlights.

  The spots show Maauro kneeling, looking distorted and twisted over a pile of wreckage. For a second, my heart is in my mouth and then I realized she’d just altered her body as she flowed back into her normal shape. She remained raptly absorbed in her study of the remains at her feet.

  “Maauro,” I called. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  “It is alright. You may come over. I have destroyed a mechanism that was stalking the ship.”

  “What?” I scrambled down the ramp. When I reached her I got a clearer look. She’d smashed something suggestive of a meter-long metallic centipede. “What the hell is this thing?”

  “An anomaly,” she replied. “This is a modern mechanism of Confederate make from the metals and computer tech. But Wrik, this unit also had an Infestor psionic unit and some other tech in it.”

  “How could that be?”

  “I do not know. It defies logic that they would be active in large numbers near Confederate Space without detection. Such was not their cultural imperative. Where they were, they asserted control. If they could have changed, they would have avoided war with the Creators.
Perhaps there is a survival like myself, or someone has discovered a cache of their technology such as was preserved in the Tar Sea. Yet that too makes little sense. We are far from the theatre of combat I was created for.

  “What is of more concern is, why it was here? This cannot be a coincidence.”

  “Guild?” I said, fear making my heart thud as I searched the darkness. Stupid, I thought, if there was anything there Maauro would know.

  “Perhaps. But what connection is there between the Guild and my ancient enemies? How could such an alliance come to pass?”

  “The Collector,” I said.

  To my surprise, a spasm of annoyance passed over Maauro’s face. “Yes, such is logical, and I should have reached that association. Thank you, Wrik. Sometime the non-linear way your mind works surprises me even now.”

  “Now I’m the one who is surprised,” I said. “I didn’t think I did anything as well as you.”

  “Then be pleased. Free and intuitive thinking is more your strength than mine.”

  “What do we do?”

  “For now, say nothing to the others.”

  “What? Lie to Jaelle?”

  Maauro looked at me confused. “I did not suggest you lie to her; merely withhold tactical information that does not affect her.”

  “Maauro, that’s the same as lying. And how can the fact that we have a new enemy not affect her?”

  “Is this something related to your relationship with her?”

  “Yes. But it is also something related to your relationship with her. Withhold this and you cannot expect her to trust you again.”

  “I am unpersuaded that she trusts me now.”

  “Trust is built, Maauro, one brick at a time.”

  “Very well, we will tell Jaelle. Will you at least agree to not inform Dusko?”

  “Fuck him.”

  “I take that for a form of agreement and not an instruction.”

  “Ah, yes. Sorry.”

  “Please return to the ship and get a carryall for me to put these bits in. I will guard the ship until full dawn.

  ***

  Aboard the ship I examine the fragments of the destroyed Infestor probe with great interest. I disassemble and use interrogation programs on the relatively simple Infestor CPU. I find what I feared. The unit has been programmed with a likeness of me and a variety of technical data, some of it erroneous, but clearly of Guild origin. This unit was sent to look for me. From programming I find inside, it is obvious that this unit was one of a series, so it may be that others of its type have also been sent to lay in ambush across any likely course we might set.

  There are further useful intelligence finds. If the unit located me, it was to report to a local Guild safe house, transmitting instructions that would have its Infestor module removed and returned to a certain spatial coordinate. I seize on this information greedily. It is the path back to my enemy.

  I quickly access our own nav-computer. The coordinates are for a system off most of the commercial pathways. Information is scarce— just a bare mention of mining interests and a research station orbiting an outer gas giant, an excellent cover for a covert Guild operation.

  I now have a target for my counterstrike.

  ***

  Jaelle reacted calmly to the centipede’s destroyed fragments. Her reaction to Maauro’s plans about it was less calm.

  “That’s insane,” she said. “You want to save them the trouble of running us down by pursuing whatever sent this?”

  “Consider,” Maauro said. “We are far from where we started, yet this device was planted here in the hope of encountering me.

  “Or destroying you?” I asked.

  Maauro looked insulted. “Even the relatively simple CPU of this machine was adequate to tell it that it stood no chance against an M-7 combat android. That was why it went for you, hoping to injure you so I would divert from my combat assignment to care for you.”

  I decided that I did not want to ask if she would have. I might be happier not knowing.

  “So we face the fact, that while it would appear that we are not in ourselves a remunerative target for the Guild, they nonetheless continue to pursue us. It is not cost effective for them to do so. I do not believe, nor does Dusko, that they are sufficiently motivated by pride or anger to do this, so it is something else.

  “That something else means that however far we run, we are likely to be dogged by Guild and perhaps others. They are in possession of some degree of Infestor technology, superior to your own, which makes them deadlier still.

  “So while your instinct is to run, we may not be able to run far or hard enough to do any good. In addition, if we leave the initiative to our enemy, we will never know when, or in what form to expect the next attack. I may not be as successful in warding it off next time.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs, maybes and supposition on your part,” Jaelle countered. “Too much speculation to risk our lives on. The best way to avoid trouble is to avoid it. You want to take it head on. This is a freighter, not a fleet destroyer.”

  “I disagree.”

  “This is not your decision to make,” Jaelle said with heat.

  “You do not have to go,” Maauro said. “You may remain here.”

  “While you take the ship?” she said, outraged.

  “If I must remind you, I took the ship from Dusko. While you have operated the enterprise for us successfully and profitably, the ship is mine. Though I need it only for transportation to my target and in all other aspects leave it to you. Any wealth we have accumulated, I would forfeit to you.”

  “You are not leaving me behind.”

  “You are not interested in or vital to the mission and indeed I fear for your safety.”

  “More likely you’d rather be rid of me.”

  “Untrue.”

  Great, I thought, a threesome with the arguments and without the sex.

  “Did you say something?” Jaelle asked.

  “I hope not,” I replied.

  Maauro gave me an enigmatic look. “Wrik, this matter demands serious attention.”

  “Then let’s give it some,” I replied. “Jaelle wants what we want: to be free. With what we owe her, how can we leave her behind? I will not leave without her in any event.”

  Maauro considered. “Very well. You have selected the one argument that could move me. Jaelle comes with us if she wishes. But where we go, that choice remains with me and must, for all that I regret how it both endangers and antagonizes both of you. I have updated the nav computer. We leave in the morning.”

  I left Jaelle to make arrangements with the Mayor for our departure, advising that we might not be landing at a Confed world for a while but took the uploadable mail for a fee. The ship was refueled and reprovisioned with Maauro’s crabs doing most of the work to the amazement of the local chandlers, who had never seen a vessel turned around so quickly.

  Dusko returned, despite my hopes he wouldn’t, looking more pleased with himself then usual. We told him nothing. While I did not care if he jumped ship, leaving the intelligence of the new threat with him was another matter.

  We launched into deep space and into the unknown with a divided crew and an unsettled vessel. No longer were we merchants building to a secure existence, or even explorers. We were fugitives again.

  Preparation for the hyperspace jump kept us all busy, but not busy enough. Now that he couldn’t flee, Maauro informed Dusko of our new mission. He took the new information far better than Jaelle did. He agreed that something was driving the continued effort by the Guild against us. Something beyond greed, anger, or even the desire to “collect” Maauro, though he refused to speculate as to what that might be.

  “Sorry to let you in on the suicide mission after we lifted off,” Jaelle said.

  “It would not have mattered,” he replied. �
�Maauro would not have allowed me to remain behind alive with this knowledge. Would you?”

  “There is no need to address a theoretical situation that has passed,” Maauro replied.

  Dusko laughed but there was no mirth in the sound. “She doesn’t like to say the truth in front of Wrik. He sometimes prefers to avoid reality.”

  I started to stand, but Maauro forestalled me with a hand on my forearm. “Do not annoy Wrik, or it will be you that faces a harsh reality.”

  “Good to know where one stands,” he said.

  “Your position has never changed,” Maauro replied, “as I told you before.”

  I looked at her, still upset and wondering what it was that she’d talked to the Guilder about. It seemed that things were slipping from what limited control I’d ever had.

  “Look,” I said. “We are committed to this. We’d better settle down to figuring out how we’re going to face this and make it through.”

  “Face what?” Jaelle said. “How do you plan when you are flying blind?”

  For that, no one, not even Maauro, had any good answer.

  Though it seemed that time would never pass, the next few days did crawl along. Jaelle and I tried to avoid discussing Maauro and our mission, as it merely ended in fruitless fights, some of which saw me sleeping in my flight chair. My opposing Maauro wouldn’t stop our inexorable leap into danger. It wasn’t that I agreed with Maauro. I had no idea which was the safer course of action. But I knew that there was no deterring her when Infestors became involved and when it came to tactics. Maauro had defeated Infestors and Guild both. Her plan might be the best bet.

  I knew there was no persuading Jaelle of that. She was a trader, not a fighter; for all that, she was personally fearless. So I continued to walk my tightrope between the two women in my life and wished the seconds away until jump.

  Chapter 20

  We came out of hyperdrive near the edge of the system Maauro had indicated. I set course for the gas giant. If the Guild information we’d stolen was accurate, we’d find an orbiting station near the big planet.