by James McEwan
Commander Cotton Paw could also see in the low light conditions. Being that she was basically a cat, she was completely at home in the dark. Also being able to walk on two feet or all fours was yet another advantage in this terrain. She walked ahead of the group scouting for the best route. It was slow going in the thick jungle and it didn’t help that the humans were plagued by a verity of flying biting insects. Yet no one complained as it was better than being a slave and bait for a trap for Thad.
Meanwhile Thad sat high in a perch. He had found the villa and easily avoided the guards as this was the kind of work he was born for. In his hands was a sniper rifle, as it was with Thad only used non powered fire arms. He had a fondness for antiques and he was using a custom built .308 tactical rifle. On the end of the muzzle had attached a suppressor to quiet the rifle’s considerable bark.
He watched through the high powered night vision scope. Something had happened at the villa because it was in the dark and there were a lot of slaves and some Ralnai running around with flash lights. It was about as good as it was going to get for him. He took his time and did the calculations in his head. He squeezed off his first round and the 180 grain all brass bullet covered the distance to his target in less than a second. The target was the head of a Ralnai who was standing near the door that he wanted to enter. The big lizard shook as the bullet redecorated the building’s wall with Ralnai brains. The Ralnai was dead before it hit the ground. Thad worked the bolt with the smooth precision of a master marksman.
Six more shots and six more bodies fell. Thad had cleared his path and no one was the wiser yet. Thad hated to leave the rifle in the tree, but he couldn’t risk the light from his DDSD giving his position away. He dropped down to the ground and unslung the sub cone-machine gun and set off for the door as fast as he could.
Thad had no need for night vision equipment as he was already equipped thanks to Doctor Hammer and his eye replacement. He made it to the door without making any contact. Once he got there he checked his weapon. He made sure there was a round in the chamber and that the magazine was seated probably and most important of all that the safety was off. The sub gun was also fitted with a suppressor and a targeting laser. He flicked the selector switch to burst. Every time he pulled the trigger it would fire a three round burst.
Using his left hand, he pushed the door open. He entered the dark building. He was in some kind of entry way with a hall way that was across from him. He crossed the entry way quiet as a ghost; he could hear muffled shouts farther away. It was coming from somewhere outside. He needed to be fast because he knew that it wouldn’t be long before the dead guards would be found. He made his way down the hallway. There were doors on each side and he would have to search each one. He had tried using thermals, but the walls were made from some kind of mud mixture that was too thick for heat to pass through.
Thad eased the first door open and was ready to shoot, but it was a storage closet with no threats to be eliminated. He turned to open the door on the opposite side of the hall when it opened on its own. Thad came face to face with a human male slave. He was armed, but he didn’t have it at the ready. He tried to bring the weapon to bear. However, he never got the chance. Three bullets tore through his heart killing him instantly.
Thad stepped over the body and into the room. It was devoid of any other threats. The room was a utility room, on the walls hung tools and other things needed for the maintenance and cleaning of the building. There was an open door on the other side of the room and Thad had surmised that is where the man had come from. He needed to be methodical about his search because he didn’t want to miss something. He would come back to that door later for now he turned back to the hallway.
Thad checked a few more rooms and killed two more human slaves, and then he started to wonder where all the Ralnai had gone. He didn’t have to wait long to figure out where they had all gone. Thad reached the inner chamber and he stepped through the double doors and as on cue the power came back on and so did the lights.
It took a few seconds for his normal eye to readjust to the bright lights. However, his other eye was much faster at adjusting. Once it did he could see that the room was far from empty. Thad was standing face to face with Tor Tran-Kor. He almost gunned him down, but the full squad of heavily armed Ralnai pointing disruptor rifles at him changed his mind.
The big Ralnai who was obviously in charge spoke, “You can put your weapon down Mr. Hammer.”
That got Thad’s attention and he unslung and lowered the weapon to the ground, then slowly he raised his hands. “You know who I am?”
Tired, hot, hungry, and tired of being bitten by bugs, Fiona said, “Lex we need to stop and rest a bit.”
Lex wanted to stop just as much as they did, but fear drove her on. She had seen what had happened to slaves that tried to escape and it wasn’t a fate that she would wish on her worst enemy. “I know, but we need to make the desert before daybreak. If we can get to the dunes these Ralnai won’t follow us there.”
“Dunes, like sand dunes?” Freya asked.
“Yes, there is a vast sand sea ahead of us and I know there is a human settlement that operates independent of the Ralnai. If we are going to find a way to contact your husband it will be there,” Lex answered.
“I thought Ralnai love the sand?” Fiona asked remembering the sand baths on the Ralnai ship that they used to get off the Untar world.
“As it turns out the Ralnai are a lot more diverse that we thought. These Ralnai are water Ralnai,” Lex said as she stopped walking. “Water Ralnai?” Confused Fiona asked.
“It seems to run by clan, some clans live on desert worlds and have adapted while others are more like alligators and like the water. Not all Ralnai come from the same place and even though we look and think of them as walking talking lizards they do have differences just like humans do,” Lex answered. She wanted to press on, but after stopping for a few seconds to explain she felt just how tried she was.
“Do you think we could chance a small fire?” Freya asked, “It would make me feel better to have a little light.”
Eve looked at heavy foliage and decided that the light wouldn’t travel far and it was too dark to see the smoke against the sky and the wind was light and blowing ahead of them. “I think we will okay everything seems to be in our favor.”
Rod sat down grateful for the rest, even though most of the way Eve carried him. He was still wiped out and being injured really sapped his strength. Yet he still wanted to help, “I was a space scout and I know how to start fire just about anywhere so if you ladies would be kind enough to gather up some wood I will prep the fire.”
True to his word he used his hands to dig in the soft soil. After a few minutes he had a nice little fire pit dug out. The rest of them looked around for dry wood, vines, brush; basically anything they thought would burn.
The women watched as Rod chose the best material to burn. He carefully layered up the fire with small tinder at the base and progressively larger pieces until he had a beautifully crafted fire ready to go. “Now I have some steel here I just need some kind of flint stone to spark it to get the fire going,” Rod said proud of his work.
“I got this,” Eve said and she extended her force blade again. The force blade uses a magnetic force field along the edge of the blade encapsulated a highly focused beam of plasma. It is what gives the force blade its incredible cutting power. Eve simply stuck the blade into the base of the stack of wood and dialed back the power on the force field so the blade would produce more heat. In a flash of light and smoke the fire came alive.
She pulled the blade from the fire and retracted it back into her wrist. While the others sat down and warmed their hands by the small yet inviting fire, Commander Cotton Paw found a branch that over hung the heat rising from the fire. She stretched out along it balancing on it with her four legs hanging down. Lex looked up at her and laughed, “Cat you look like we are trying to roast you so we can eat you later.”
“
Just remember if you try I will claw your beautiful eyes out and play marbles with them,” she replied.
Fiona was shocked by this, “She does know you are joking right?”
“She knows, but after over ten years hanging with a human she still hasn’t really gotten the concept of sarcasm down yet. That was her attempt at it,” Lex said as she took a bite of an apple like fruit that was native to the planet.
“I thought it was rather good,” Cotton Paw said sounding a little hurt.
“Tone, Cat, it is all about the tone. The words were good and sarcastic, but your tone made even me believe that you were serious,” Lex said as she cut a section out of the fruit with a small knife that seemed to appear in her hand from nowhere.
She handed a piece to Freya, who was impressed at the sleight of hand, “Where were you hiding that, and how did you move so fast?”
“Years of practice,” she said and then handed a piece to Fiona.
“You will have to show me how to do that sometime,” Freya said.
“Later,” Eve said. “We still have a couple of hours before dawn and you all should get some sleep. I will stand watch.”
“Okay wake me in an hour and I will take second watch,” Lex said, not knowing that she was a full robot body and not just a robotic arm.
“Don’t worry dear I don’t need to sleep,” Eve said kindly as she walked off to start patrolling around them.
“What does she mean she doesn’t need to sleep?” Lex asked the twins.
“She’s not human,” Rod answered with his eyes closed as he was trying to sleep.
Lex’s face contorted, “What do you mean, is she an Eli with clipped ears or something?”
Fiona chuckled, “No dear, she is an AI in a custom love bot body. She is one of kind and there is nothing else like Eve anywhere in the universe.”
“Oh,” was all Lex said as she began to understand why they didn’t tell her. She was basically illegal just about anywhere in the universe and would be destroyed if her secret was ever discovered by the wrong people.
Chapter 13
On Earth, the Eden had just touched down on the Hammer’s private estate outside of London. The estate had been unused and uninhabited by humans for over forty years. The place was maintained by a small army of maintenance robots and security bots. A property management company oversaw the whole thing and a few times a year a human would check up on the property. The reason it had sat empty for all these years was because it was a shrine to Eva O’Reilly.
Eva O’Reilly was to become Eva Hammer, but a tragic accident had taken her from Doctor Hammer. She was the one person he wanted to save more than any in the universe, but couldn’t because he was at war. Doctor Hammer had been away serving on the Ardent as the chief medical officer. It was only after he learned of Eva’s death that he resigned his commission and returned home.
At the time he was a young doctor with little money. The money and the estate were hers. Eva had been the only child of a wealthy Irish family, who made their money from a construction company that her great grandfather had built up after the days of empire wars. It was O’Reilly construction that helped rebuild Earth’s greatest cities. Still to this day they were one of the largest construction companies in the former Terrain Empire.
Doctor Hammer had been nearing the end of his deployment and was set to come home and marry Eva. However, fate intervened and he ended up inheriting all of her assets. He became wealthy overnight. But everyone knew that he would have given it all away just to hold Eva one more time. In his grief he closed up the house and hired the property management company to handle the care of the estate and he left. He never came back.
Now the place was seeing life again. After the events on Isis, the Hammers lost about half of their wealth almost overnight, but so did all of the wealthy. They however, still had many assets and holdings on Earth and their wealth was still far greater than most. After Doctor Hammer was killed on Nome, Thad inherited everything and he had spent a good amount of time learning everything about his new fortune. In his last message to his mother Amanda Hayes just before he went radio dark, he had instructed her to reopen the estate and set it up as their new home and as a new home for Ruby.
Amanda, armed with the account numbers and access codes, was not only able to set herself up with a nice place in Rio but she had hired an army of humans to run the estate. She wanted Ruby to be around people not just robots even though Ruby preferred the company of Robots to humans. She was set up with a full staff of expert tutors on every subject. She wanted for nothing, except her family that was all away for the moment. Amanda had the authority and blessing of the Emperor turned President to establish a permanent post of Marines as guards on the property.
The man she had chosen to command the detachment of Marines was the newly commissioned Captain Erik Hunter, the only other Marine from the Emperor’s personal guard to survive the battle on Isis. Captain Hunter’s torture had been so severe that he would never be the same again. He would never be fit enough to serve in a front line unit again. For a combat Marine that was a fate worse than death. However, he was the perfect man for the job of running a protection detail. No one in the Marines had more firsthand experience at keeping a VIP safe than Hunter, with the one exception of Commandant James Grunt. Happy to still be of service he accepted the post and took on his new job as seriously as if he were in combat.
Over the last two months he had become extremely attached to Ruby. He took it upon himself to instruct her in hand to hand combative training. He wanted her to be able to handle herself no matter what happened in the future. He of course didn’t know that Ruby could take care of herself nor did he know that she could and had killed with her physic abilities. No one knew except St. Claire. And he chose not to say anything about what she did.
Hunter wanted to assign some Marines as personal bodyguards, but he didn’t need to. She already had a bodyguard. Archie was with her twenty four hours a day. He was never far from her even when she was out riding. He would jog near or behind her horse. However, right now he was standing on the landing pad waiting to greet St. Claire and Kára.
The Eden’s ramp lowered and the airlock opened. St. Claire and Kára walked down the ramp and stopped just short of Archie. “New chassis Arch?” St. Claire said noticing that Archie was no longer using the LPM-48 chassis that he had been using on Isis, he was now using a custom built one that was smaller and more like his original.
“All kinds of Shiny,” Kára said.
Archie liked the highly polished chrome look. When he was picking out his new chassis he insisted on chrome. “Yes, do you like it? It is basically a Myrmidon chassis with some custom enhancements and the chrome plating.”
The Myrmidon class combat warbots are a medium combat robot. The Myrmidons were well tested in the fires of combat. They have proven time and time again to be an excellent choice for the all-around combat robot.
“It’s nice buddy. I’m sure all the lady bots get their transistors in a bunch every time you walk by,” St Claire said as he clapped him on the back.
“You really think so Sir?” Archie asked.
“I’m sure, now where is our girl?”
“Uncle Dom!” came an excited squeal from the distance.
St. Claire looked over Archie’s shoulder to see a young woman which looked to be about twelve. She was riding an all-black Arabian stallion. St. Claire was floored as he knew that kids grew fast, but this was unbelievable.
As she rode up to them St. Claire took the horses head and stroked it softly, “Ruby, my how you have grown.”
She was doing better about blocking out people’s thoughts, but his where loud and clear. “Grandmother says that it was the accelerated growth protocol that was engineered in me. It kicked in soon after we got to Isis, but we didn’t know it at the time. Even though I am only eight years old, biologically I am twelve. Grandmother also says that at the rate I am currently growing I could be a full grown adult by the end of
this year.”
Ruby slipped off the horse and hugged him, then hugged Kára. She didn’t speak to Kára as she didn’t have to as they were already talking from the time she got close.
Meanwhile on Isis Seven sat in Drakes office. He was going over troop readiness reports, logistical requests, and a ton of other things that he hated to do. He had spent his whole life in the shadows as an operator and he longed for it again. He never wanted to be in charge. He was more than happy to be Drake’s weapon, but now Drake was dead and he was filling his shoes.
He could tell from the slight fishy smell that the Nekton bounty hunter had arrived. He activated his com, “Just send him in Jenny.”
Outside Drake’s office, his assistant pointed to the door, “Go right in.” The Nekton nodded and walked through the door and closed it behind him. Jenny hated her job and hated what had happened, but she liked life too much to do anything other than what she was told. She had seen firsthand what happens to those you refuse to serve and it wasn’t a fate she wanted.
She also didn’t like Nektons. She had come from a colony that was constantly attacked by Nekton warriors. Granted it was one of their native worlds that the colony had been established on, but that didn’t matter to a six year old girl who watched her friends and family members get blown up by Nekton suicide bombers. She hated them so much that she refused to eat fish.
No one knows why she did what she did next, maybe it was out of guilt for serving evil, or maybe it was because she hated Nektons, or maybe she was just curious. Before she got promoted to her current position she was a communications expert. She knew com systems backwards and forwards and she knew how to tap into the coms without leaving a trace. She slipped a data chip into her custom built com interface. She then plugged it into her com panel. She accessed the cameras and microphones in Drakes office and recorded the exchange.