by J. N. Chaney
Awen pulled Sootriman away, wondering if the bot was about to explode. She feared for Ezo’s safety too.
“I am extreme-eme-emely sorry, sir,” TO-96 said to Ezo, his head still chattering. “I do believe-eve-eve that this is the end of the line, as they s-s-say-ay.”
“Uh-uh. No way, buddy. This is just some bad code. Listen, I need you to access your—”
“It has been an honor to kn-n-n-know you, Idris…” TO-96’s voice trailed off, and the lights in his eyes dimmed. The creak and tick of cooling metal accompanied the slow deceleration of the bot’s gyros. “Goodbye…”
“Splick, splick, splick!” Ezo slammed his fist on the bot’s chest with a metallic thump. “Nooo!”
Sootriman raced back to him in a few long strides. “Love,” she said, placing her hands on his shoulders.
Ezo flung them off and stepped away, running his hands through his hair. “He’s offline,” he said, lips drawn tight over his teeth.
Sootriman looked between TO-96 and Ezo. “Well, you can just reboot him, right?”
Ezo shook his head. “No. He’s offline.”
“Meaning what?” Awen asked, rejoining them.
“Meaning he’s gone!” Ezo shouted. “He’s gone, okay? Whatever that was”—he pointed to the orb—“wiped him. Wiped everything.”
“But how’s that even possible?” Sootriman asked.
“I don’t know what did it, all right? I just know that something wiped him. Electromagnetic pulse, a quantum distortion field—whatever. I don’t know.” Ezo let out a quivering breath and bent over, hands on his knees. The tick, tick, tick of TO-96’s cooling frame slowed.
“Isn’t there anything you can double-check?” Sootriman asked. She was only trying to be helpful, but Awen knew Ezo was beyond help.
“Just give him a second,” she whispered to Sootriman.
The woman glared at her as if ready to tear her apart—either one. Awen knew she was out of Sootriman’s league and didn’t know anything about marriage. But she did know people, and she knew what suffering looked like.
But then Sootriman’s eyes softened, and she nodded. “You’re right,” she said, turning away from Ezo.
The two women stepped several meters away, studying the robot and trying their best to give Ezo his space. The bot meant more to the bounty hunter than—well, anything else. She didn’t know the robot’s origin story—admittedly, she and Ezo weren’t that close yet—but she guessed TO-96 had seen him through some dark times.
* * *
“He started building Tee-Oh back on Caledonia,” Sootriman confided as if hearing Awen’s unspoken questions about the bot.
“Caledonia, as in the Caledonian Wars?”
“The same. Idris was working on him when the revolution began. He was almost twenty but still a boy in so many ways. His island got wiped out by the Akuda—everyone but him, that is. He ended up surviving on his own for almost a year. But he wasn’t alone. He had Tee-Oh.” Sootriman looked over at Ezo. The man was grieving. “That bot was his best friend. Sometimes I wonder if he knows how to love anyone but him.”
“Is that why you two, you know, split up?”
Sootriman looked back at Awen. “Over the bot? Hardly. Although he did seem to spend more time with him than with me.”
“Idiot.”
“Thank you,” Sootriman said appreciatively. “That’s what I thought too.”
“I mean, you’re gorgeous, you have a body to die for, features that should be carved in Inishrit marble, and you run a rogue planet.” Suddenly, Awen cupped her hand over her mouth and turned red. “Oh mystics, I’m so sorry. That just kinda spilled out.”
Sootriman let out a soft laugh and placed a hand on Awen’s back. “Well, if that’s not high praise, I don’t know what is. Thanks, love.”
“You’re welcome?” Awen said, still too embarrassed to believe Sootriman was anything but offended.
“Truthfully,” Sootriman added, “I’m surprised you find me beautiful. Many people find all of this”—she gestured to her large body—“unattractive. I suspected you might have been of the same opinion, given how petite your people are.”
“Beauty comes in a lot of different packages, I guess, doesn’t it?”
“I agree.” Sootriman seemed lost in thought for a moment, then resumed her story. “Anyway, when the Marines finally made it to his island, all they found was Idris and Tee-Oh.”
“He was liberated then?”
“Liberated? Not exactly. It’s more like he… escaped. The unit that found him saw plenty more action. But Idris made his own way, like he always has.” Sootriman looked back at Ezo, who sat on the floor, back leaning against TO-96. “It changed him though—the wars, his time alone, his escape to a new life.”
“So you knew him before all this?”
Sootriman nodded. “I was an island girl too, you know.” She winked at Awen.
“You’re Caledonian?”
“Sun and sand for life,” she replied with a wide smile, raising her thumb, pinky, and ring finger in a casual salute.
“But—what about the wars?”
Sootriman pursed her lips thoughtfully and hesitated. “Let’s just say my family was important enough that we were evacuated before the first shots were fired.”
“What, are you like a princess or something?”
Sootriman looked back at Ezo, a wave of melancholy coming over her. “Something like that.”
“So you and Ezo…”
“We found each other after the wars. I convinced him to marry me,” she said with a wink. “My father and mother wouldn’t allow it, of course. So we made our home elsewhere.”
“Ki Nar Four?” When the woman nodded, Awen said, “Not exactly a honeymoon destination.”
“It suited us. At least for a while, anyway. Like I said, the wars… they changed him. And in the end, he wanted the island life, wanted to be alone. So he bought Geronimo and took Tee-Oh.”
“He got his island back inside a starship.”
Sootriman nodded, her eyes wet with tears. “He got his island back. And now he’s lost his best friend.”
* * *
“So, I guess I’ll go find a skiff cart or something, and we’ll find a way to get him outta here,” Ezo said. It had taken him nearly twenty minutes to pull himself together. Sootriman and Awen stood by the railing that overlooked the orb and the theater. It was amazing how, in one moment, Awen couldn’t wait to explore the cosmic wonders the Novia had created, and the next, she couldn’t care less. Grief has a strange way of reordering priorities, she thought.
“That’s fine, love,” Sootriman said, placing a hand on Ezo’s arm. When he didn’t shrug it off, Sootriman leaned in and hugged him. Surprisingly, Ezo hugged her in return. He let out a long sigh burdened with sorrow. His lips quivered, and tears slid down his cheeks.
Ninety-Six had been more than a bot; he’d been part of Ezo’s life. Awen felt deep sadness for him, enriched with a sense of empathy. She thought of the Luma elders who died in Oorajee. She thought of Matteo. She wondered how Willowood was and if she’d survived So-Elku’s retribution, whatever that might have been. These were people she’d lost, yes. In addition, they represented parts of her life she could never have back. While TO-96 might not have been real in the same way an organic sentient being was, he was still part of Ezo’s life, and that counted for something.
The all-too-familiar pang of loss thumped in Awen’s chest. She stared into the orb, wondering if it was the key to speeding them home. Just then, a hand grabbed her shoulder and yanked her backward. Ezo pulled her into a group hug. As her tears mixed with theirs on the black marble floor, Awen heard TO-96’s robotic voice from across the room.
“What species are you, and is lacrimation a custom or a reflex?”
15
The intersection filled with blaster fire from all directions as Selskrit laid into Magnus’s platoon. Cyril and his remaining bomb tech hugged the ground as if they were dead. Amazingly,
however, the kid still worked on the bomb, his holo-pad clutched between his shaking hands.
“Son of a gun,” Magnus said, pausing between shots to look at the pair. “Abimbola, once that bomb is cleared—”
“You want me in the thick of it. You do not even have to say it, buckethead. I am there.”
Magnus smiled and then took aim at a second-story window across the street. A Jujari stood just inside and to the left, half-cloaked by a tattered piece of fabric. The MAR30’s sights went red and locked stock to muzzle with a soft beep. Magnus squeezed, and a high-frequency round leaped across the street, burning a hole in the fabric. He watched as the Jujari staggered and then tipped forward across the window’s edge and into the street below. One trigger, one target, one grave.
Approaching Magnus’s right flank were three Jujari in the middle of the street, blasters raised. They laid down a steady stream of fire, trying to hit the bomb techs. But they were too far away and too poorly trained to be accurate.
Magnus switched his blaster to wide displacement, reduced the wave sign to its flattest setting, and pointed the weapon toward the center of the street. He squeezed, waited for the capacitor discharge, and then felt his shoulder jerk back. The energy wave shot out like a strand of blue garrote wire stretched across the road. The three Jujari stood still long after it passed them, their heads turned down as they looked at their midsections in disbelief. Then, as if blown by a gust of wind, their torsos toppled off their hips and hit the ground.
“Saw that,” Simone said over comms, her voice as calm as ice. “Three kills confirmed.”
“Don’t be too impressed,” Magnus said, charging his weapon and firing a high-frequency burst of fire into a first-story window. “I wouldn’t want you getting distracted.”
Simone didn’t reply.
“Sniper, you there?”
“Sorry, Marine. I got distracted.”
Magnus chuckled. “Cover me. I’m going for Cyril.”
“Let me do it, LT,” said Dutch.
Magnus spun around to see her squatting behind him. “No way in hell, Corporal. You stay put.”
Before she could argue, as he knew she would, Magnus was off and running. There was a momentary break in fire as the Jujari took stock of the new player in the street. Rix took advantage of the respite and trained his modified MC90 blaster–grenade launcher on two Jujari who looked ready to fire at Magnus from behind a stone column. A grenade kuh-thunked out of Rix’s barrel and arched toward the pair of Selskrit. One moment they were there, aiming their weapons at the Marine; the next, they were obliterated in an orange blast followed by a large plume of dust and smoke.
Magnus ducked at the sound and looked at Rix. “Thanks!”
“I didn’t do it for you!” He pointed to Cyril. “For him!”
Yeah, yeah, Magnus thought as he neared the techs. “You’d better be done, kid!” he yelled. “You’ve had way more than ten seconds!”
Cyril lay with his arms over his head, holo-pad still clutched in one hand. “Yup, yup, yup. All set, sir.” His voice was muffled against the road, but he sounded tired.
Magnus grabbed the kid’s arm and yanked him up just as blaster fire resumed on the new target that Magnus offered. Cyril struggled to gain his feet, boots skittering across the pavement. Magnus looked down and saw a wet red streak along the kid’s left pantleg. Aw, splick. He’s been shot.
“How you doing, kid?” Magnus needed the kid to keep talking.
“Fine and dandy, dandy and fine.” But Cyril’s voice was weak.
“You stay with me, copy?” Magnus hauled the tech toward cover, boots dragging furrows through the dust.
“I’ve still got another man out there,” Cyril said, straining to look over his shoulder.
Damn, he’s a good kid too, Magnus realized. Now he really didn’t want Cyril dying on him. “I’ll get him,” Magnus said, ducking under the blaster fire. “But you first.”
“I can’t leave—”
“Don’t worry about him.” Magnus knew the third tech was already dead. Before he could say any more, a blaster bolt bit into his right thigh, searing the back of it like hot iron. He cursed as he stumbled to the road, dropping Cyril in a heap.
“Gotcha,” a deep voice said.
Magnus felt a large hand wrap around his wrist and start dragging him. Cyril was headed in the same direction. Magnus looked up to see who had them. It was Rix.
“I owe you an ale,” Magnus said between clenched teeth. The pain was ridiculous. He hated being shot by blaster bolts—it always ruined his day.
“You owe me a whole cantina,” the infantryman said, dragging the two bodies to cover. “But an ale will do for now. You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Magnus rolled to his back and sat up. The blaster bolt had seared the back of his thigh, passing right between the armor plate and his duraprene suit. “It’s cauterized. The sting’ll wear off. But he needs a medic ASAP,” Magnus said, pointing to Cyril. “Get him to the field unit.”
“Copy that.” In one smooth motion, Rix bent down and hefted Cyril onto his shoulder then turned and ran back toward the convoy.
Magnus looked back at the intersection. “You got any more bomb techs, warlord?” he asked Abimbola, eyeing the two corpses in the middle of the street.
“A few. But I do not want you killing any more of them.”
“Deal. Just get up here and start blowing splick up.”
“You do not have to ask me twice.”
* * *
Now that the bomb was deactivated, four of Abimbola’s monstrosities, including the Basket Case, filed into the intersection. Blaster fire pinged off their armor plating like mad firewasps bouncing off a Boresian taursar. The sparks of molten metal that sizzled through the air created a deadly fireworks display that rivaled any number of planetary celebrations Magnus remembered from his youth.
“You’re gonna wanna cover your ears,” Simone said as if the Marines needed the warning.
“Copy that,” Magnus replied, already holding his head and ducking behind a concrete half wall.
As one, the four vehicles unleashed a barrage of blaster power that utterly decimated the surrounding buildings and roadways. Abimbola’s M109 turret chugged away at an old ground-level storefront until its pillars gave way, sending the top two levels sliding into the street. Several Jujari got caught in the collapse and were buried alive.
Another skiff, one with a 70mm RBMB—really big missile battery—fired on a building with at least two snipers on the rooftop. Two missiles whooshed up the street, trailing furious jets of smoke, and collided with the crenelated wall the snipers used for cover. The result was a bright-orange explosion that sent chunks of sandstone and Jujari a hundred meters into the air. One of the Marauders gave a howl of triumph in the explosion’s aftermath.
Magnus heard the distinct banshee-shriek of a MUT50 incinerating a section of the road on the left flank. The 50mm ultra-torrent stream of blaster fire delivered through the weapon’s tri-reticulated barrel made for one hell of a show. And by the sound of it, Abimbola’s engineers had found a way to up the stock speed even more.
Magnus stole a peek over the half wall and watched as the MUT50 tore through Jujari at the far end of the street as if they were made of cinder leaves. Bits and pieces of the enemy vaporized under the withering assault, their organic matter dematerialized by the sheer volume of firepower.
“Yesss!” Rix roared, exulting in the display of destruction. He’d returned from delivering Cyril to the medics and pumped his blaster in the air overhead as spittle flew from his mouth. So much for covering his ears, Magnus thought. The man would surely be deaf by nightfall.
The convoy skiffs continued firing on enemy positions, gutting buildings and spilling rubble on the road. The streets grew pockmarked with divots, some large enough to swallow a small skiff. And everywhere Magnus looked, Jujari remains littered the pavement like steaming piles of street meat from Junglaton vendors.
Magnus, Rix,
and the rest of their makeshift platoon joined in the slaughter, taking aim at any combatants Abimbola’s skiffs weren’t targeting. Magnus noticed a Jujari head pop out of a second-story window across the street, probably spotting for an LRGR hit.
“Not on my watch,” Magnus said purely for his own satisfaction. He aimed his MAR30, sights illuminating the target, and fired. The single round streaked across the street and popped the beast’s head like an overripe grape. The headless body tipped through the window and flipped, crashing in the street below.
Rix targeted another Selskrit who kept advancing by ducking in and out of cover. The Marauder was counting out loud, and Magnus realized Rix had found a pattern in the combatant’s progress. “Stupid little doggy,” the man growled. “Somebody should have taught you better than that. You’re liable to get”—Rix’s weapon bucked as a blaster bolt leaped from the muzzle—“killed if you’re not careful.” The Jujari had emerged from its latest hiding place just as Rix’s round caught him in the chest, spinning his body like a top. By the time the enemy warrior stopped turning and hit the deck, he was a corpse. “He won’t make that mistake twice.”
When Abimbola finally called for a cease-fire, each skiff’s weaponry took several seconds to spin down. Muzzles smoked, barrels creaked, and bits of stones continued to fall along the street like drops of water in the aftermath of a rainstorm.
“Are we good?” Abimbola asked no one in particular, his tone of voice reflecting a near-euphoric state.
“I’m pretty sure you missed a few,” Magnus said.
The giant of a man laughed over comms. “Then I guess you had better catcall them back so we can start over again.”
The general mood was optimistic as Magnus’s platoon gained their feet, save for the absence of the three bomb techs.
“Haney,” Magnus said to the medic. “Head to the back of the line and check on Cyril. I want to know his status.”
“Roger, Lieutenant.” The Marine tucked away his blaster and took off in a run down the column of skiffs.
“Simone, how we looking from up there?”