Then, while the even-numbered troopers provided covering fire, the odd-numbered troopers executed a two-mile jump. Once on the ground, it was their turn to provide covering fire, and so forth, until the entire unit had reached its objective. So that’s how we leapfrogged our way to the dome. Yeah, we lost four troopers, all caught at or near the apex of their jumps, but most of them made it.
The domies did what they could, and sent volunteers out to stop us, but they were like sheep to the slaughter. We went through them like a knife through warm butter, forced the lock, and made our way inside. And that’s when things went black, when the memories disappeared, when the door slammed shut. The nothingness was so sudden, so complete, that it seemed as if I had died in the dome, except that Wamba continued to talk. But what about the darkness? Then I realized that my eyes were closed. I opened them. Light flooded in. I blinked. Wamba smiled and nodded sympathetically.
“You remembered, didn’t you? But the memory ended at the lock. And that makes sense, because that’s where the tool heads cleaned our clocks.”
Machinery whirred, and Wamba shook his head. “It was my fault. I assumed we had neutralized the majority of their forces. That the worst we’d encounter were some poorly trained nerds. What I didn’t know was that a team of commandos had been sent to stiffen T-12” security and help the tech types evacuate. The only reason they were inside rather than outside was the shortage of battle suits. So they waited until all of us were inside, secured the lock, and let us have it. You charged them, and killed some too, before a man in an exoskeleton pulled you down.”
Wamba shrugged philosophically. “I got mine about thirty seconds later. You can see what it did to me.”
Thoughts burbled through my mind like coffee in an old-fashioned percolator. I felt my hand touch the top of my head and couldn’t remember telling it to do so. The metal felt cold. “So, I was hit in the head?”
Wamba frowned. “No, that’s the weird part. The guy in the exoskeleton peeled you like an orange. I was kinda busy at the time, but it seems to me that you eeled your way out of the battle suit, stood up, and took a slug in the chest. The skull plate doesn’t make sense.”
I opened my shirt and looked down at the patch of scar tissue on the right side of my chest. It was the size of an antique quarter, slightly puckered, and rougher than the surrounding skin. I had spent hours staring at it. wondering what had happened to me, but blocked by the darkness that still obliterated my memories.
I looked at Sasha and had one of those sudden flashes of intuition that come from time to time. None of this was new to her. She had known from the start. I didn’t know how I knew it, or why I knew it, but I did. I could see it in her carefully neutral expression, feel it in the way she looked at me, and hear it in her voice. It was as if she already knew what had happened but wondered about the details. Her voice was filled with wonder. “But how? How could he survive?”
A robot scampered into Wamba’s lap. He stroked it like the cat it resembled. “He survived the same way I did. The tool heads were assholes, but there were compassionate assholes, and had some damned good doctors. I spent the next three years in their hospitals and always assumed Maxon had as well.”
Three years? Had I been in their hands that long? The information had been available to me all along, buried in the records I couldn’t read, and obscured by the darkness that shrouded my thoughts. And what about the metal plate? Where had it come from? And who was responsible? My thoughts whirled and emptiness filled my stomach. All my assumptions, all my beliefs about who and what I was had been torn apart. I wanted answers, and Sasha was the logical place to start. But I had questioned her to no avail. No, it would take time and patience, but it was a long way to Europa Station, and my opportunity would come. I broke the growing silence. “Thanks, Major. You opened some important doors for me.”
Wamba smiled and I realized what a handsome man he had been. “You’re welcome, and it’s ‘Colonel.’ A silly distinction unless you earned it the way I did.” He gestured to his surroundings. “That and my kingdom are all I have left.”
I nodded and glanced at Sasha. She used her one remaining eye to gesture towards the entryway. I took the hint. “Well, thanks again. We’ve got a long way to go, so…”
Wamba held up a hand in protest. “You must accept a gift.
Something to remind you of me and help along the way.” He clapped his hands. “Joy! Where are you? Come to Poppa!”
A small door opened towards the front of his undercarriage. A flash of ebony caught my eye as something twirled its way into the light and struck a dancer’s pose. She—for there was no doubt about her sex—was the only android in the room that had been fashioned from black metal. She was perfectly formed and stood twelve inches tall. Her face bore the slightly mischievous expression of an elf come to life. A mane of black hair cascaded down around shapely shoulders and was captured in a pink ribbon. The rest of her obviously female body was smooth and shiny, with no sign of the sensors, joints, and drive units common to less sophisticated androids.
No, this was a work of art, and it showed in the way Wamba looked at her. There was pride in his eyes, and love as well, for this was his finest creation. A surrogate daughter? Lover? It made little difference. Whatever the android was to Wamba, she seemed to know how much he admired her and drank it in.
Music came from somewhere and Joy began to move, running at first, then launching herself into a dizzying series of forward flips, twisting in mid-air, touching the ground, and going airborne again. There were cartwheels, somersaults, and dance steps, all in time with the music, all done with amazing perfection, until one last run in which she executed a series of backward flips, stumbled, and landed on her ass. Mars gravity reduced the impact, but feedback circuits fed her the robotic equivalent of pain. Her disappointment was clear to see. But she picked herself up, bowed in our direction, and scrambled onto Wamba’s lap. The mechanical cat hissed its disapproval, jumped to the floor, and stalked away.
“So,” Wamba inquired eagerly, “what do you think?”
“I think she’s marvelous,” I said honestly. “Absolutely incredible.”
“She’s beautiful,” Sasha added sincerely. “Like a doll come to life.”
The subject of all this praise beamed with obvious pleasure, and so did Wamba. “Thank you. I was an engineer prior to the war and have lots of spare time.” He gestured towards the robots that continued to glide, roll, crawl and hop all over the room. “Joy is different from the rest. Do you know why?”
I took a shot. “She has feelings?”
Wamba shook his head. “No, not in the actual sense anyway, although I’ll be damned if I could tell you how the simulated emotions she feels are any different from the supposedly real ones that we experience.”
I was still working on that when Sasha spoke.
“The difference is that Joy can make mistakes.”
Wamba pointed a finger in Sasha’s direction. “Bingo. And that’s one of the things that makes humans unique, isn’t it? The capacity to make mistakes.”
I thought about T-12, of what had happened there, and knew which mistake Wamba meant. He nodded agreeably, stroked the android’s back, and looked down into her liquid brown eyes. “Go with Maxon, Joy. Make him happy and do what you can to keep him alive.”
Something passed between them at that moment—something that looked a lot like love, but couldn’t have been, since robots don’t feel.
Joy climbed up to Wamba’s shoulder, kissed his cheek, and slid back down. She jumped to the floor, dodged a mechanical dog, and ran in my direction. I felt my trousers slip half an inch downwards as she grabbed a pants leg and pulled herself upwards. Tiny hands fumbled with my jacket pocket, released the snap, and held the flap up. Long black legs flashed as she climbed inside. I looked at Wamba. “I could never accept such a gift, Colonel. Call her back.”
Wamba smiled sadly and shook his head. “What’s done is done, and there’s no going back.
Take care of yourself, Max, and let me know how things turn out.”
I considered hugging him but decided on a salute instead. It felt natural, somehow, and very right. He returned it, smiled his broken smile, and turned away. Kaa met us at the lock, and Burns led us up towards Deck Four. Joy felt warm and wiggled in my pocket.
12
“Unauthorized personnel will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
A sign posted in locks one through twelve of the Mgundo Tug and Barge Company’s Hull 264
Ships have names, but barges don’t. Don’t ask why…it’s one of those traditions spacers like, because it makes their profession more romantic. It seems silly somehow, especially when the barge is a hundred times larger than the ship that pushes it around, but that’s the way it is. Ask, and spacers will feed you some bull about how a ship has a soul, and a barge doesn’t, whereas the only real difference is that ships have propulsion systems and barges don’t, or so it seems to me.
This particular barge was cylindrical in shape and at least three miles long. Numbers, each of which was white and about three stories tall, slipped by as our shuttle made its way towards what I assumed was the bow. One of them, a “4,” was cratered where something had hit it. My stomach contracted. A meteorite? Traveling at what? Twenty miles a second? Whipping out of nowhere to hammer the barge?
No, I told myself, chances were the crater had been caused by something more prosaic. A docking accident or a collision with another barge, perhaps.
Whatever the cause, the crater gave way to an almost featureless gray hull and disappeared behind us. The barge did have some solar arrays and a small antenna farm, but nothing like the maze of sensors, duct work, and other installations that crowded the skin of the average ship. But so what? It didn’t matter as long as the barge was well built and headed in the right direction. The “right direction” being defined as the asteroid belt, since passenger ships bound for Europa Station were way out of our price range.
Sasha resourceful as always, had rummaged through some of the habitat’s seedier dives until she found a half-stoned shipping agent willing to accept half fare in return for a ride on the barge. A ride that, while illegal, and minus the comforts of a liner, would be quiet and peaceful.
Sasha painted a glowing picture. Rather than work as we had aboard the Red Trader, and kowtow to the likes of Killer, we would eat and sleep our way to the belt, grab some new transportation, and arrive on Europa Station in tip-top shape. I should have known better.
We sat three abreast with Sasha occupying the jump seat in the middle. Our pilot was a sallow little man with a pitted face. The green, yellow, and red half-light filled the craters with darkness and made the condition seem even worse. His eyes pecked at the readouts while his hands jumped from one control to the next. “You be ready now…I can stop for two, maybe three minutes. Any more and the tug crew will get suspicious.”
I knew problems could result from the fact that the tug crew wasn’t aware of us but wasn’t smart enough to know what they were. Which just goes to prove that ignorance isn’t necessarily bliss.
The pilot touched a series of keys. The shuttle slowed relative to the barge, tractor beams made contact, pulled the smaller vessel into place, and held it against a lock. Metal clanged and a motor whined. The pilot swiveled towards Sasha and rubbed thumb against fingers. Sasha nodded, pulled a roll of currency out of an inside pocket, and dropped it into his hand. The pilot slipped the rubber band off, counted out loud, and nodded his satisfaction. “…One thousand eight, one thousand nine, two K right on the nose. Grab your gear and haul ass.”
We hurried to comply. Sasha went first and I followed. I had released my harness, floated free, and was pulling myself towards the stern when the pilot grabbed my ankle. “Hey, chrome-dome.”
I looked back over my shoulder. “Yeah?”
“The barge is loaded with all sorts of stuff, including crystal generators.”
“So?”
“So, the generators don’t work worth shit during zero gee. Makes the crystals come out all weird or something. That means the tug crew’s gonna put some spin on the moment they break orbit. The results could bust your butt.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
The pilot grinned. “Hitched a ride once myself. Nobody told me. Now get the hell off my shuttle.”
I nodded and propelled myself down the short passageway. There were equipment racks, padded corners, and lockers from which most but not all of the uniformly olive drab paint had been worn away, leaving patches of shiny metal.
Sasha had transferred most of our supplies to the shuttle’s lock, and I was surprised at how bulky they were. Our food was concentrated but still took up a lot of space, as did the first aid kit, a cube reader, and our clothes. I was worried about water but Sasha had assured me there was plenty on board.
And so it was that we sealed ourselves into the lock, waited for pressures to equalize, and watched the hatch iris open. It took about fifteen seconds for the airtight door to open all the way. The adjoining lock was larger and padded to protect it from damage. We pushed our duffel bags through and followed with our bodies. My boots had barely cleared the hatch when motors whined and the opening closed. A few moments later we heard a thud and felt the hull vibrate as the shuttle pushed itself away. We were alone. Or supposed to be, anyway.
A duffel bag hit me in the nose. I pushed it away. The suction pulled a piece of paper in front of my nose. I knew what it was before I grabbed it. A Mars Bar wrapper. I held it out for Sasha to examine. “What’s this?”
She looked defensive. “The tug crew ran a check on this tub yesterday. One of them left it.”
Spacers are a tidy bunch—they have to be—so I had doubts about her theory but knew better than to pursue it. Sasha would stick to her point of view until forced to change. That reminded me of someone else I’d known, but I couldn’t remember who.
Joy had agreed to maintain a low profile aboard the shuttle, but the promise had expired. She floated free of my pocket and peppered us with questions.
“Where are we? What’s going on? Why is Sasha holding that wrapper?” It was like dealing with an articulate six-year-old.
I did my best to answer Joy’s questions while trying to capture a duffel bag under each arm and maintain my equilibrium all at the same time. I handled the zero-gee stuff better than I had at the beginning of the trip but was clumsy compared to Sasha. She took pity on me and grabbed the second bag in addition to her own. That left the emergency pressure suits we had liberated from Marscorp. They had been duct taped together and were floating just below the overhead. I was about to reach for them when Joy launched herself off my shoulder. “Don’t worry about the suits! I can handle them.”
And handle them she did, using a combination of zero-gee savvy and some highly skilled gymnastics.
Air hissed as the inner hatch irised open. Joy pushed herself away from a storage locker and drifted through the aperture. I formed words but didn’t get them out in time to do any good. My stomach muscles tightened. She would draw fire if someone was waiting on the other side. Nothing happened. I heaved a sigh of relief and made a note to speak with her later. Yes, she was an android, but with a difference. Maybe it was the fact that she’d been a present, or maybe it was her pseudo-personality, but the result was the same. I liked Joy and would be sorry if she were hurt.
I passed through the hatch next, towing the duffel bag with one hand and holding my weapon with the other. I noticed that Sasha made a point of leaving her gun in its holster. I tried a flip, hoped to land feet first, and hit the bulkhead with my back. Sasha laughed, did what I had tried to do, and hung there with a smirk on her face.
I looked both ways, made sure the corridor was clear, and holstered my weapon. It wouldn’t hurt to have a free hand.
Joy was disgustingly cheerful. “Hey, this is fun! Where do we go? This way or that way?”
Our head swiveled as Sasha and I considered the alternat
ives. There wasn’t much difference. The passageway was sufficiently wide to accommodate a standard autoloader or a train of power pallets. And, judging from the longitudinal marks that scored the walls, a good deal of cargo had been hauled through this corridor. Though pretty much interchangeable during zero-gee conditions, the distinctions between overhead, bulkheads, and deck were more meaningful when gravity was present.
The deck, or what would be a deck during a normal gravity situation, was covered with heavy-duty mesh. Conduit and cable snaked along below.
The overhead was comparatively smooth, interrupted by little more than rectangular glow panels and a recessed track. Hundreds on hundreds of vertical ridges gave the bulkheads an organic look, as if we were inside a worm, or a giant serpent. The intent was obvious. By grabbing the ridges with our hands, or pushing on them with our feet, zero-gee pedestrians like ourselves could make pretty good time.
The bulkheads had other features as well, including emergency com sets, surveillance cameras, fire-fighting equipment, and slots where one could escape an oncoming cargo train. Arrows pointed in both directions and words announced possible destinations. I tried to read them and was thrilled to find that I could. The first set said, “Holds 1-12,” and the second set said, “Holds 13-24.”
It went without saying that someone who had legitimate business aboard the barge would know where they were headed. I didn’t, but Sasha did, or pretended to. “The shipping agent said that holds one through twelve would be crammed with cargo modules. Let’s try thirteen through twenty-four.”
I nodded, motioned for Joy to stay behind me, and was about to launch myself in the proper direction, when something whooshed over my head. It came and went so quickly that it took me a moment to realize that whatever it was had traveled via the recessed channel. A small robot, perhaps? Rushing from one end of the vessel to the other?
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