“Where did you get these? This is 1st age Federation and they’re perfectly preserved.”
“Are they worth anything?” Jessie asked and the man considered for a moment before answering.
He could probably buy the whole lot for a few credits, the backwaters didn’t have a clue. He glanced down at his son who had picked up a coin and was reverently turning it over in his long-fingered hand. He’d never seen one before in real life, only in holo’s when they studied ancient history. This could be easy credits, he could give them enough to pay their dock port fees and a little extra so they could pick up a few supplies. The profit from those coins would be more than he made in the whole season. They’d never know they’d been swindled. He watched his son carefully place the coin back on the counter. His boy would know, though and think less of him for it.
He made the clicking sound at the back of his throat again and told them to put their things away.
“Jazrah,” he said, making up his mind. “Take them down to the Collector on two. Introduce them and come right back. Don’t stop at the gamers lounge, you have work to do. You hear?”
The kid was fast and they had to hurry to keep up as he led them away from the docks, the hum of machines loading and unloading freight and gatherings of revelers going down to the party planet. He led them away from the main terminal, slipped past a pair of heavily armored enforcers and down an employee stairwell. Jessie tried to play it cool, didn’t gawp at everything and everyone while Maddy absorbed as much information as she could. She listened, analyzed and sorted a thousand snippets of conversation as her metamatter cells categorized risks and danger and her eyes roved and missed nothing. There were all manner of people and creatures, some armed, some not. Jazrah pointed out a few of the people he knew and gave a running commentary until he spotted someone else. The men he identified were different races but all had a similar look, all wore blasters at their sides and all were captains of their ships. Some freighters, some smugglers, some pirates. Jessie recognized the type, revelers instinctively got out of their way and they kept their eyes moving, always on the lookout for danger. Their guide seemed enamored by them.
Much of the technology was the same or similar as it had been thousands of years ago. Gravity generators, oxygen synthesizers and other life support systems operated in the same manner. The machines worked then, they worked now. She didn’t spot any new races of people, she was familiar with the dozens they encountered and as much as she could, she relaxed a little.
The boy led them to a well-lit avenue with bustling shops that had the feel of a tourist area. Wares were displayed in windows, many people were strolling casually and sipping on various drinks as they spent the last of their credits waiting for their transporters to take them back to their home planets. It reminded Jessie of an airport concourse. Jazrah took them down an alley, away from the hustle of the main walkway and after a few more turns they wound up in front of a dusty shop with a holographic battle playing out across its display windows.
Jessie puzzled out the words over the entrance and came up with Chala’s Military Antiquities. He smiled his crooked smile. An army navy store. Some things were universal no matter where or when you were.
They thanked the boy and stepped inside. It was similar to thousands of shops on earth with an eclectic mix of new and old. Uniforms and weapons and all manner of gear was displayed. Some haphazardly, some exquisite pieces in cases or mounted behind faintly shimmering lights. He didn’t have to stick his hand through the glow to know it would give him a shock or maybe worse.
The proprietor was human of the large eyed, six fingered variety and watched them both with curiosity. He’d never seen creatures quite like them and he’d seen a lot in his lifetime. They’d either been altered to work in a particularly harsh system or like some of the radical youth, they had gone under a skin doctors’ knife to change their appearance. The male wore animal skins that had been armored with spikes and metal plates. Ridiculous. He wore blacked out blasters low on his hips and from the looks of them, the handles had been hand carved. They were playing dress up. He frowned slightly at the silliness of the young but greeted them cordially. If they had credits to spend, he didn’t care what they looked like. When they said they were selling, not buying, his frown deepened and he waved in annoyance for them to lay out their trinkets. Probably more useless nonsense from one of the minor border skirmishes, a spent blaster recharge or a damaged helmet…
He stopped his internal grumblings and his eyes shimmered in surprise as Jessie laid out the coins and bits of ancient memorabilia. He carefully picked up one of the coins and examined it then did the same with the medals, the buckles and the insignia. He knew, or thought he’d known, of every 1st age naval coin in existence. Specimens of this quality were in museums or private collections. Most that remained were damaged and only partials. They had been internal currency on the ships, a hard money, not an electronic credit. They were used by soldiers of the Federation, mostly for gambling and making purchases they didn’t want traced. They were thousands of years old but extremely well preserved. He ran them under a scanner, scrutinized them with a magnifying lens and slowly examined each piece again. Jessie got bored and wandered off to check out the uniforms and other gear.
“Where did you get these?” he finally asked Maddy as she patiently waited.
“Legal salvage.” She said. “We found a naval ship.”
“But how?” the man asked, perplexed. “All that are known to exist have been found, the rest were destroyed during the war and any that hadn’t been completely obliterated have been lost in the void for eons. No one goes out there.”
“We did.” Jessie said in his badly accented universal. “Are you interested in any of them?”
“Yes.” He said. “But their value would be a bit higher if we knew the name of the ship. Collectors like to know the history of their artifacts.”
“The Madroleeka.” Jessie said and the man pursed his thin lips.
“I’ll have to do a bit of research.” He said and laid their items back on the counter.
He pondered for a moment, his long fingers stroking his cheeks as he looked back and forth between the two. “I can give you two hundred credits for these.” He said and indicated everything except the coins.
“For those, I have to contact someone. A collector I know may be interested. Are there anymore?”
“Only a few.” Jessie said, knowing enough not to flood the market and drive down the price.
The man nodded and waited. He seemed to be expecting something from them.
“We’ve just arrived in system, we don’t have a credit chip.” Maddy said “Can you issue one?”
“There will be a charge for it.” He said, turned to a machine that may have been a cash register then handed her a small piece of plastic, much like a credit card. One hundred ninety credits showed on the readout.
“Where did you come from?” he asked. “I’ve never seen ones such as yourself.”
“Colony ship.” Maddy said and the man nodded. Some had been in route for millennia and it explained much. All contact had been lost with them after the war and the colonists would have kept traveling, most of them in hibernation pods, until they reached their destination and built the jump gate.
“When can we expect an answer about the coins?” Jessie asked as he casually scooped them up and dropped them into his pocket.
The man winced to see such rarities treated so callously. These two really had no idea the value of their find. An intact Federation naval ship from the first age. It would be filled with things of untold value. If the AI were still viable, a man could be set for life. There were stories and tales of their power although most of it was too fantastical to believe. The ancients had harnessed the power of the gods and it had destroyed them. The technology was long lost but even if traces of the AI were intact there were data hackers that could probably figure out how to recreate it. If someone had even a microscopic sample, he coul
d name his price. He could buy his own world.
“I should have an answer in a few hours.” He said. “Which sector did you say you came from?”
Jessie ignored the question. “We’ll be back in a while, then. Thanks.”
The man considered for long moments everything they’d said and everything he’d gleaned from the scanners at the door. He had some very valuable items in his shop and the scanners detected hidden life forms, tiny thieves hidden under coats that would rob a man while he was distracted with the customer. It had only detected one life form when the pair went through them. He hadn’t thought much of it, the machine wasn’t infallible but he paid close attention when they left. Their claim of being on a colony ship was a good story. It was a rare thing in this day and age but not unheard of. It could be used to explain a lot of unusual things about them but it couldn’t explain how they knew the name of the 1st Federation Battleship. Very little was known about the inner workings of the world killers, only ancient bits of hulls had been found. If the legends were true, the ships were never named. No markings on the outside, no labels on the inside. The AI was born and given a name and when she entered the ship, she became a part of it. She ran the engines, the mapping, the battle stations, the life support and everything else. She WAS the ship, without her nothing functioned. It was said she could take any form, become any tool, speak any language and every ship had a different personality. There was no way they could have known the name of the ship unless they found a functioning AI and he was pretty sure he’d just witnessed one. She was almost perfect; he never would have suspected if the sensors hadn’t alerted him. He considered the risks he was thinking about taking. If the tales were true her intelligence was unmatched, her speed was impossible and if he failed, she would know who was responsible. His life would be measured in minutes.
But if he succeeded…
If he succeeded, he would make the Queen of the Outer Reaches seem like a money-grubbing peasant. He could buy whole solar systems and immortality to enjoy it.
The human was inconsequential, he didn’t know where he came from or how he got here, he could be shoveled into the organic matter processors for all he cared. He would have to be very, very careful. She was too dangerous to attempt capture on the port, it would have to be in space where they would have a slight advantage.
Jessie and Maddy went back upstairs and wandered the avenue, blending in with the tourists, the freighter crews and the locals. They were different but so was everyone else and most people didn’t look twice at them. The streets were wide and tree lined with a bluish sky and drifting clouds projected on the ceiling. The light seemed natural and an ocean could faintly be heard breaking against a shore line. Courier bots scurried around, there was a slight breeze from the fans and the air smelled faintly of water and fruit. Maddy’s newfound emotions liberated her from the rigid machine she had been programmed to be. Before, she had pretended to emote because that’s what humans wanted. Now she actually felt the emotions and had to shut them off unless she became completely overwhelmed by the sights and sounds and smells. She opened them incrementally, a little at a time, or she would have stood there crying and laughing and screaming all at the same time. Being human was difficult.
The overpriced and opulent establishments were on the main level. The lower you went, the seedier the stores and bars became. As you descended, it went from hologram filled theme clubs with live bands to hard drinking establishments with skin shows and dancing girls. The lower you went the worse it got. Jessie had money in his pockets, there were sights to see and they tried a variety of foods as they drifted in and out of shops. Each smelled better than the last.
“Does that say what I think it does?” he asked and pointed to an understated sign across the street.
“It’s a travel center.” Maddy said. “Their clientele is likely people who have indulged a little too much on the vacation planet.”
Jessie was already angling his way across the street, the sweetened fried thing on a stick he’d been eating tossed in the nearest garbage can. Maddy caught up with him and when they entered a pale skinned woman looked up from her viewer and frowned at their appearance.
“Welcome to Rejuvenations.” She said in universal “How can I help you?”
“You have a time machine?” Jessie asked, excited.
“Of course, we do.” She said and stood. “Do you have your bracelet or are you first time customers?”
“First time.” Jessie said. “I have a set of coordinates; can you send me there?”
The woman’s look soured. From their clothes and accents she knew they were from a primitive colony and it was highly unlikely they could afford her services. It wasn’t unusual, the spaceport was one of the biggest, the vacation planet one of the best, and the manufacturing world drew businessmen from around the galaxy. It also attracted all manner of outlanders and colonists wanting to start fresh in a civilized system. She answered a few of his questions, briefly explained the procedure then ushered them out. When they left the shop, neither had a travel bracelet. They didn’t have enough credits and it wouldn’t have helped him anyway. Maddy was right, time travel was strictly forbidden but licensed shops had specially constructed rooms that blocked the diffusers that instantly obliterated travelers. They were of limited use, though. You couldn’t actually go anywhere.
Basically, it was an immortality machine. Once you were mapped and digitally downloaded, a copy of yourself was stored in a bracelet. Whenever you wanted, and if you had the credits, you could utilize the travel centers to reset yourself with the option of keeping or deleting any new memories made since the last backup. It could be used to forget traumatic experiences or bad romantic encounters. Cheating spouses could have the times of their lives and then forget it ever happened. It was a quick fix or any unwanted diseases you may have caught and an easy, albeit expensive, way to get rid of a hangover.
Those who could afford it mostly used it to remain young. They could live life for a few years and when they started gaining weight or getting a few wrinkles or came down with a terrible disease, they could reset. Basically, time travel back to their former, perfectly healthy self. The technology had only been in use for a few hundred years but anyone with the credits could live forever, in theory. It reminded him of a story he’d read in high school about some guy named Dorian Gray who had a magic portrait. He ate and drank and did whatever he wanted but always stayed young and in perfect health. Only his picture aged and got ugly. He wondered if it was sort of the same. You could keep a beautiful shell but what was inside could be old and bitter. What if people weren’t really designed to live for more than a hundred years, what if that was long enough?
The credits were going fast, they’d already spent almost half of them on the overpriced drinks and exotic foods. They took a staircase down to the bazaar level and the lower they went the worse the air became. Lights became sporadic and whole flights of stairs were cloaked in shadows and strewn with debris. When the doors opened, they were greeted with a different city. It was dimly lit and they were assaulted with a hundred different smells. The air rejuvenators weren’t designed for so many people, the level had once been used for storage and life support mechanicals when the port was small. Now it was home to resellers, trinket fixers, and skin doctors and data hackers. The open stall flea market gave way to squatter’s quarters where the menial labor workers lived. The cleaners and dishwashers, the runaway slaves, AWOL soldiers and drunks who lost all their credits at the gambling tables. Missing boxes of freight, stolen items and shady characters populated the level and as long as no one got too ambitious, the crimes they committed were petty, the enforcers from above generally left them alone.
Jessie had no desire to sample any of the foods on display when he realized they were operating the burners with methane gas from pipes illegally jacked into the sewer system. The offerings were more basic, there weren’t multi layered cheesecake like ice cream dishes. There were mostly slow roasti
ng meats that looked like it may have been rabbit or maybe rat. He didn’t want to find out. They strolled along the main thoroughfare where seaweed weavers and shell sorters created homemade trinkets for the travelers. Last minute gifts as they wandered the shoppes upstairs before they climbed aboard their transports home. Hand crafted by the ocean planets secretive mermaids in their underwater homes, or so the labels claimed.
Maddy haggled with a four-armed man over a data chip he claimed held the most complete maps of all known systems and a number of secret ones, not noted on official chips.
“Guaranteed.” He said. “If you have a mining rig, you’ll get rich. Best maps of all valuable ore asteroids. Very rare, it is priceless.”
Its price turned out to be thirty credits.
Twice Jessie’s fast hands stopped a pickpocket before he could steal anything and when he broke a lizard boy’s finger, word spread it was best to leave them alone, they weren’t easy marks. Halfway back up the noisy, overcrowded path Jessie spotted a vendor with blasters and other weapons. He needed recharge cartridges for his pistols and slipped out of the flow to check the man’s wares. He examined a few but none had the same shape. He glanced around for Maddy but she was deep in a conversation with a dark, hooded man selling electronic wares.
“Looking for anything in particular?” the weapons dealer asked.
Jessie pulled a blaster from its holster, flipped out the cartridge and held it out in his palm.
“Got any of these?”
The man’s eyes got wide, all three of them and he pushed back his cowl. A long tongue darted out and licked his thick, full lips.
“I don’t think you’ll find anything like that.” He said as he rolled it over with a long finger. “These are from an ancient age. Do they still hold a charge?”
Zombie Road | Book 8 | Crossroads of Chaos Page 17