by Joseph Lallo
“Yeah, shut ‘er down.”
“Please evacuate the area, and prepare for hawking radiation discharge,” Ma warned.
The pair of men hustled out of the room. Lex watched as the door started to close.
“Okay so you owe me a fully rebuilt ship and...” Lex began, slowly realizing that Karter was still running at a fairly brisk pace down the hall.
He stopped talking and started running. It is a lesson you learn pretty quickly when you spend time around a race track: If someone is running, follow first, then ask questions. It had saved him from being pancaked by rogue hoversleds on more than one occasion, and it turned out it was a pretty good policy for life in general. After closing the gap between them, Lex and Karter turned a corner in the hallway, where the older man caught his breath. A moment later, there was a soft clap and a wave of heat wafted down the hall.
“Why’d you run?” Karter asked.
“Why didn’t you TELL me to run?”
“Because that wouldn’t have killed you. It just would have singed you a little. You big baby.”
“Well then why did YOU run?”
“I didn’t want to get singed.”
“Attention. The salvage vehicles have returned with the remains of Mr. Alexander’s ship,” Ma alerted.
“Great! Let’s go check it out!” Karter said, rubbing his hands together.
Chapter 10
The inventor and the pilot stood in the hangar. It wasn’t one of the cavernous aircraft storage facilities people tend to envision when you use the word hangar. At least, not currently. It had a massive, towering roof that lead all the way from the subbasement to the ground level where the bay doors were, but thin, temporary walls were dividing the full hangar up into a few dozen spaces just large enough to house a single ship and various pieces of repair and diagnostic equipment. It gave the place the overall atmosphere of the intensive care unit at a hospital, each bed separated off with curtains. In a way that’s what it was. Right now the patient was a mangled pile that the automated rovers had hauled in. It took a trained eye to even recognize it as a ship, let alone the one Lex had been piloting. Karter let out a low whistle.
“That’s a CA double I revision... 34D, right?” he asked.
“Uh... yeah, actually.”
“Ni-i-i-ice. They don’t make them like this anymore. Well, they NEVER made them like this. Too many engine mounts. You got the schematics?”
“No, there aren’t any. I sort of just grafted stuff on, you know?”
“Free form. Nice. But a bitch to repair. I’ll just pull up the schematics on file, then. Ma! Get the diagnostic cart out here and draw up the schematics.”
“I don’t know how useful the official schematics are going to-”
“I’m not putting it back together the way you had it. Obviously the way you had it sucked. It needed fixing before it even crashed.”
“Look, it might not have been top of the line, but it did what I needed it to do.”
A small, motorized cart appeared from an access tunnel on the far side of the hanger. It was heavily hung with tools, both from its sides and from a gantry that was supported over its work surface. As it puttered along the floor, a roll of paper that jutted from one edge dispensed a sheet, which was clamped down and cut to length. A pen plotter descended from the gantry and danced quickly across the poster-sized sheet, so that by the time the cart jerked to a halt in front of Karter, a full structural schematic was completed. He pulled it free, grabbed a pen from the rack on the cart, and started awkwardly folding and notating the plans.
“Paper? Seriously?” Lex asked doubtfully.
“The problem with engineers today is that they don’t think on paper. So you had, what, four engines?”
“Six. Double the usual complement of Cantrell engines, plus-”
“Yeah, I see. Two of those little ones. Any steering considerations?”
For a few minutes, the pair worked through the various changes Lex had made. When they were through, Karter scribbled down some calculations.
“Those specs look about right?” he asked.
Lex looked over the numbers.
“Well, it’s been a while since I benchmarked it, but yeah, that’s close.”
“Okay, meet or beat,” he said, “What sort of direction were you thinking for upgrades?”
“Speed. I need this thing fast. And a little more maneuverability would help.”
“Weapons?”
“Absolutely not. If I get caught, the last thing I need is them being able to claim I opened fire on them.”
“Nothing obvious, then. Plausible deniability and all that. Defenses?”
Lex glanced at the twisted metal that had been the cockpit.
“A shield upgrade seems appropriate, I guess. Other than that, I usually depend on not being seen.”
“Stealth, right. Countermeasures?”
“Nothing fancy.”
“Okay,” he said, finishing off his notes, pulling up a chair, and staring to sketch out plans.
After a few seconds of standing quietly, the pilot cleared his throat.
“Are you still here?” Karter asked without looking.
“Yeah. What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t care. Busy.”
“So I should just-”
“DON’T CARE, BUSY!” he said, standing up and ushering Lex away, “If you need anything, ask Ma.”
With that he slammed the rickety door to the temporary room, leaving Lex outside. The pilot stood still for a moment, not sure what to do. There were a few things he needed, one rather urgently, but judging from the general attitude the computer had shown, he wasn’t eager to speak up. As if detecting his reluctance, the system spoke up.
“Do you require anything, Mr. Alexander?” it asked, with the mechanical politeness that was the hallmark of voice recognition systems.
“… Bathroom,” he said, sheepishly.
“Of course. Please follow the blue line.”
A line in the floor, what Lex initially thought was simply the gap between two rows of tiles, began to pulse blue. The lights streaked steadily forward. There was a fifty-fifty chance that these lights were going to lead him somewhere unpleasant. Considering the sort of stuff he was likely to encounter if he were to wander blindly around, though, what she had in mind couldn’t possibly be worse. With a shrug, he followed the lights.
Five minutes later, he was still following them. He had taken four elevators, six flights of stairs, and was fairly certain his bladder was about to explode.
“Okay, stop. Message received,” Lex said, fidgeting.
“I do not know what you mean.”
“There is no way we haven’t passed at least ONE bathroom. You are screwing with me.”
“Mr. Alexander. That would be petty.”
Lex sighed and tried to stand still for a moment.
“Ma. When I first spoke with you, I was not aware of the depth of your intelligence and the complexity of your role. As such, I did not treat you with the courtesy and respect that you deserve. For that, I apologize,” he said, steadily, “And I’m sorry if my sentiment seems rushed or insincere, but I’m now crossing over a whole new threshold of urgency, so if I don’t get to a bathroom soon, there is going to be a mess.”
There was a handful of short bursts of sound, as though the first few milliseconds of a reply had been played and cut off a few times. Finally, the blue lights running down the hall abruptly shifted their path, leading down a hallway to the right, and up to the top of a clearly marked bathroom door.
“Thank you,” Lex said gratefully, rushing inside and beginning the complicated process of opening enough of his flight suit to make use of standard bathroom facilities.
“Karter estimates time to repair is seventy-two hours,” the voice said at the precise moment he was about to begin.
Once he recovered from his body’s stinging reprisal for interrupting a necessary function, Lex replied.
“Ye
ah, uh, that’s great... Are you watching me right now?”
“My local sensors are active.”
“I can’t pee while you’re watching me.”
“Interesting. Karter is not similarly afflicted.”
“Could you, I don’t know, turn around or something?”
“I can deactivate the visual sensors. It would be a strictly symbolic gesture. I am still aware of what you are doing and where you are doing it.”
“It is a psychological thing.”
A moment later there was a faint beep, “Deactivated.” The voice came from the hall outside the door.
The pilot finally took care of some very pressing business. He heard the cameras blip back on while he was washing his hands.
“Ma?”
“Yes?” replied the voice, now clearly from the nearest speaker again.
“Well, first off, should I be calling you Ma? It seems kind of personal.”
“That is my designation.”
“Okay then. Would you please show me the way back to my stuff? And maybe lead me someplace where I can catch a few hours of sleep.”
“Follow the red lights upon leaving the bathroom.”
A refreshingly short walk and an elevator ride later, Lex found himself on a floor that looked like just about any army barracks he’d ever seen. It was broken up into a handful of long rooms, each lined with a row of double bunks along each wall. On the opposite side of the room was a bank of lockers and a doorway leading to a white tiled room. Every bed was made and immaculate, and none of them looked as though they had been used recently, if ever. He opened his mouth to ask where he could find his things, but before he could make a sound, the packages and his helmet were carted in by a pair of the same robot grippers that had delivered Karter’s arm.
“Bathroom and shower facilities are at the far end of the room. Jumpsuits are available in the lockers.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
“Processing... You are welcome, Mr. Alexander.”
The lockers were unlocked, and it only took a little bit of digging to find an outfit that was roughly the right size. In his search, Lex also found a towel and some toiletries. He stripped out of his blood soaked and more than a little rank flight suit and cranked up one of the showers. The result wasn’t what he was used to. His own apartment had what could charitably be called a shower, but the pressure and temperature made it more seem like the wall was peeing on him. Hygiene on the ship came in the form of a periodic rubdown with glorified moist towelettes. In comparison, the facilities here were like a piping hot pressure washer. The almost scalding water hammering on his muscles released knots that had been there for weeks.
Nearly half an hour under the hot spray finally left Lex feeling halfway human again. Granted, wearing a second-hand jumpsuit commando style wasn’t how he’d planned on spending the night, but you win some, you lose some. By rights, he probably should have been trying to find some way to get back to the task of delivering his package, but getting shot down and torn up had done a number on his body. The inevitable crash after all of that adrenaline was making a bed that didn’t serve double duty as a pilot’s chair sound awfully good.
Within seconds of plopping down on the nearest bed, he was dead to the world. Unfortunately, his nap was hardly a pleasant one. It turns out having your ship blown out of orbit and sent crashing to a barren planet’s surface is the sort of thing that sticks with you. He jerked awake at the moment of impact for a third time before he decided a distraction was in order.
Lex wandered over to the spot on the floor near the shower where he’d left the jumbled mess of his flight suit. He’d had his slidepad in his pocket, but hopefully it hadn’t been too badly damaged during the fall. The suit wasn’t where he left it. Instead, it was neatly laid out on a nearby bed. The blood stains were conspicuously absent, and the slashed leg had only a faint line of fine stitches and sealant to suggest it had ever been damaged at all. The contents of his many pockets were arranged with care beside it, including casino chips in neat piles, a fresh roll of duct tape, and an unopened pack of gum. The helmet was there, the damaged visor replaced and polished. He picked up his slidepad, to find it whole and functional. The battery had even been charged.
“Um... Ma?”
“Yes, Mr. Alexander?”
“Did you do this?”
“Yes, Mr. Alexander.”
“Thank you.”
“You are very welcome. I thought you’d intended to sleep.”
“Can’t. Bad dreams.”
“I can offer you a sedative if you like. We have a full chemical synthesis facility, and I keep a ready supply of many potent narcotic, anti-psychotic, and analgesic compounds.”
“No, thank you,” he said, taking careful note of the presence of anti-psychotics on the short list, “Why are you being so nice all of a sudden?”
“Because you apologized, and you thanked me. Neither Karter nor any of his rare guests have ever done that. I appreciate a gentleman.”
“Wow. Thanks. That’s... kind of a quick turnaround.”
“As an artificial intelligence, I am capable of assessing and altering my disposition and the resultant attitudes quite rapidly.”
“Like mood swings?”
“That is an adequately similar human emotional phenomenon.”
“I will try to stay on your good side, then.”
“That is advisable. If you have any more requests, do not hesitate to ask.”
Lex poked at his slidepad for a bit. It was more responsive, too. Improvements aside, though, the data connection was down, and it wouldn’t come back up.
“Um, actually, before you go-” he said quickly.
“I am everywhere, always. I do not go anywhere,” she replied.
“Oh, right. Not to be a pest, but I can’t seem to connect to the net.”
“I am afraid the debris field makes stable connectivity to the network impossible with small scale devices. Once a week a local cache of data resources that Karter considers relevant is pulled down. The next differential replication is scheduled immediately following the remapping of the field. If you have a request for additional information, I can add it to the data list.”
“What sort of stuff do you have on the local cache?”
“Approximately 1% engineering periodicals, 1% general reference material, 1% contact information directories, 2% multimedia entertainment and news feeds, and 95% pornographic materials of the following subcategories-”
“That’s fine!” he said quickly, not terribly interested in what sort of tastes Karter might have in that area, “Thanks. I should have figured. I’ll just look at what I pulled down before I came through.”
He pulled up the saved data and started to chew through it. Most of it was the usual stuff. Cantrell was issuing a new model of pleasure cruiser. Half a dozen messages offering him vast wealth and/or massive genitals in exchange for his bank account info. He was about to shut the slidepad off and try to find something else to do when he saw that there was a news alert saved. He tapped the file and a pert young anchorwoman all the way back on Earth began to work her way through her “solemn” routine.
“Tragedy struck the planet Golana today, as a small commuter shuttle succumbed to pilot error while on a routine trip. The transit hub oversees thousands of passenger and cargo flights per hour, and this is the first such accident in more than five years. Links below lead to the profile pages of the twenty-seven passengers and crew who lost their lives in the event.”
She went on to fill in details that they couldn’t possibly know about the pilot that made him out to be solely responsible for the crash. That was always the way. When in doubt, throw the pilot under the bus. Lex pulled up the list of victims and began to scroll through it. There were over a billion people on his planet, and a few dozen times that used the transport lanes around it every year, so the likelihood of him recognizing a face or name was pretty slim. Regardless, it was a big galaxy, and when something happens as ne
arby as your home planet, you take a look.
It was for that reason alone that he found himself looking at the face of a woman named Sarah Jones. She was thin, with unremarkable features and mouse-brown hair... And he’d seen her before. She hadn’t said her name, but there was no mistaking it. This was the very woman who had handed him the package. His heart started beating faster as he tapped his way back to the main article and searched the transcript.
“… after investigators were able to contact VectorCorp, owners of the shuttle, for comments regarding the disaster …”
VectorCorp. Granted, it wasn’t a long shot that VectorCorp would have been the owners. They probably owned half of the ships that used those lanes. But in the time he’d been running packages, he’d only had two people even threaten to pull the trigger on him. Now he’d been shot down carrying a package sent by a woman who had been killed in the crash of one of their shuttles just hours before? It COULD be a coincidence... but it could be the package.
He looked to the silver case on the floor beside his bed. Unlike the package Blake had given him, which was somehow mostly intact, the special delivery had taken a hell of a wallop when he slid down the cliff side. One of the locks was a mess of broken metal, and the other was hanging on by the skin of its teeth. It would probably pop open if he looked at it wrong. Taking a peek inside would be easy enough. He walked slowly over to it, leaned down, extended his hand...
“No,” he said, slapping it down and forcing the lid tight.
“Were you addressing me, Mr. Alexander?” asked Ma.
“No. Thank you. Where is Karter?” he asked, starting his fresh roll of tape and wrapping a few layers around the damaged case.
“He has just unleashed a short sequence of profanities in his workshop before ordering me to prepare an array of replacement struts and some burn ointment. I suspect he will be taking a break until fabrication is complete. Did you want me to repair the metal case? I presumed it was one of the packages you were delivering, and thus should not have been touched.”
“Uh, no, no. Can you lead me to Karter, please? I need to talk to him,” Lex said, gathering up his things.
“Certainly, follow the red lights.”