Aye, Robot (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) (Starship Grifters Book 2)

by Robert Kroese

  “Great story,” said Rex. “Who do I see about getting a martini around here?”

  “That would be me,” said Pepper. “Except I don’t serve martinis. Fortunately, Rubric Malgastar only drinks beer.”

  “Splendid,” said Rex, ignoring the harsh glare he was getting from Pepper. “A round of your finest beer for my crew and Hookbeard here. Put in on my tab.”

  “Of course,” said Pepper. “Speaking of your tab, I did have a question for you, Captain Malgastar.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Rex. “I’ll find you later.”

  “Now would be better,” said Pepper. “Unless you want to lose another eye.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with my eye,” said Rex.

  “Not yet,” said Pepper.

  Rex got up from the table. “All right, then. Let’s talk.”

  Pepper turned to Tim. “Get a pitcher of beer for the rest of them.” She turned to me.

  Tim nodded and hurried away. As Rex followed Pepper toward the back of the bar, Pepper turned to me. “You too,” she said.

  I glanced at Rex, who shrugged. I got up and followed them into a small office behind the bar. Pepper took a seat behind a hefty wooden desk while Rex and I continued to stand.

  “If this is about the martini,” Rex started, “I was just testing you. Obviously I know that a legendary space pirate isn’t going to drink something classy like a vodka martini, extra dry, with three olives. Although if you have one lying around—”

  “You can drop the act,” Pepper said. “I know you’re not Rubric Malgastar.”

  “You do?” Rex asked. “How?”

  “I’ve met him before, you nitwit. He’s got a hundred pounds on you and doesn’t wear an eye patch.”

  “Right, but how else?”

  “You know,” said Pepper, “I had assumed this was all an act. I was happy to play along, but I’m starting to believe you really don’t remember me.”

  “You’ve got me dead to rights, Pepper,” said Rex. “Our pretending not to recognize you is all part of an elaborate ruse. Perhaps we should put all of our cards on the table. We’ll tell each other exactly who we are and how we met and then compare our respective stories for any discrepancies. You go first.”

  “Nice try, Rex. Fortunately, your con man spiel has never worked on me. I know when somebody doesn’t recognize me. The question is, why are you pretending to be Rubric Malgastar?”

  “That is a good question,” Rex said. “But here’s a better one: why didn’t you blow our cover?”

  Pepper smiled. “Malgastar and I had a deal. Your ship is broadcasting the identification code for the Chronic Lumbago. And I checked—the signature hash is genuine. Either you stole the code from Malgastar or he renamed your ship, planning to take it for himself. That means you outsmarted Malgastar and probably killed him.”

  “Preposterous!” Rex declared. “I’m insulted that you would think I have such a callous disregard for human life.”

  “No air,” said Squawky. “Can’t breathe. Curse the cold-hearted bastard who tricked us into taking this ship!”

  “Zip it, Squawky,” Rex snapped. “You’re giving the lady the wrong idea.”

  “Relax,” said Pepper. “Malgastar and I weren’t close. But we did have a business arrangement. I had commissioned Malgastar to retrieve something for me. Something very valuable, which was aboard the Raina Huebner. My spies tell me that the Raina Huebner was destroyed by the Malarchy shortly after being boarded by pirates. I can only assume that you knew about this cargo and somehow managed to get it away from Malgastar during the battle. Perhaps you even knew about Malgastar’s plans and tipped off the Malarchy, planning to use their attack as a diversion.”

  “But if I took this cargo for myself, why would I have come back here and risk being discovered by you?”

  “Obviously Malgastar told you about his arrangement with me, and you were hoping to take his place and sell the cargo to me. Hookbeard and the others out there are only sucking up to you because they think you’ve got the booty from the Raina Huebner on your ship. But of course you wouldn’t bring it here for fear that I would just kill you and take it.”

  “See, Sasha?” Rex said. “No booty at the pirate haven.” He turned back to Pepper. “I do indeed have the cargo of the Raina Huebner ensconced in a safe place. There were a lot of crates in that hold, though. Just to be sure we’re talking about the same thing, would you say that the item you are looking for is larger than a breadbox?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Rex Nihilo. I don’t know why you didn’t recognize me, but you wouldn’t have come here if you weren’t trying to sell something. You know what I’m talking about. There was only one deep freeze container on that ship.”

  “Of course,” said Rex. “The deep freeze container. The one with the frozen beets in it.”

  “Very funny. How much do you want for it?”

  “What was your deal with Malgastar?”

  “Ten million credits.”

  “No way I can part with it for less than twenty.”

  “Twenty million credits! That’s absurd!”

  “Then I’ll just have to find another buyer.”

  “Another buyer? Who in the galaxy do you think you’re going to sell it to?”

  “I have some ideas,” Rex said. I was fairly confident Rex had absolutely no clue what he was talking about, but he had been through so many of these negotiations that he could play his part in his sleep.

  Pepper regarded him coldly for a moment. “Thirteen million.”

  “Fifteen and you’ve got a deal.”

  “Fine. Fifteen million. When can you have the cargo here?”

  “Give me until tomorrow.”

  “Done. Don’t double-cross me, Rex Nihilo. You may not remember me, but I’ll find you.”

  “If I may ask,” I said, “how do we know you? I thought you seemed familiar, but I don’t recall having met you.”

  Pepper told us a long, ridiculous story about how she supposedly helped us bust someone out of the impenetrable prison known as Gulagatraz. I had no memory of it whatsoever. Was she pulling some kind of scam on us? I couldn’t figure out what she had to gain by making up such a story. And she really did seem to know who we were. It was very strange. Rex, for his part, seemed entirely unconcerned. But then Rex is used to having gaps in his memory, and has little to no capacity for introspection.

  “Nice doing business with you, Pepper,” Rex said, when he noticed she’d stopped talking. “We’ll be back tomorrow with your cargo.”

  Rex and I left the office. On the way back to the table, I asked, “Sir, do you have any memory of Pepper?”

  “Nope,” Rex said.

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “I meet a lot of people in this business. It doesn’t pay to remember them all.”

  “I see. And do you know what cargo Pepper was referring to?”

  “Of course not,” Rex said. “But how hard could it be to find a deep freeze container?”

  “Sir, you realize that the contents of the Raina Huebner’s cargo hold are spread across several thousand cubic kilometers by now, right?”

  “Is that a lot?”

  “It’s too much to search in a day, sir. And the longer it takes to find, the bigger area we have to search.”

  We sat down at the table again. Hookbeard had left with his crew, and Boggs was drinking alone while Donny watched.

  “Blast,” said Rex. “I wish you’d have told me all this before I promised that deep freeze box to Pepper.”

  “I didn’t really have a chance, sir. I only just found out about it. It never occurred to me that we’d need to recover any of that cargo. I had a hard enough time rescuing you.”

  “Your excuses aren’t going to cut it this time, Sasha. Your carelessness just cost me fifteen million credits.”

  “Sir, I hardly think it’s fair to—”

  “Good grief, what has gotten into you, Boggs?”

  I turned
to look and saw that Boggs was quietly sobbing into his beer glass. Donny was trying unsuccessfully to comfort him.

  “I’m sorry, Potential Friend,” Boggs blubbered. “It’s just that when I heard you say ‘deep freeze,’ it reminded me how much I miss my Frozen Friend.”

  “Your what?” Rex asked.

  “My Frozen Friend. We left the other ship in such a hurry that I didn’t have time to get him.”

  Rex and I exchanged glances.

  “Boggs,” I asked, “is this something from the Raina Huebner that you grabbed with the crane?”

  Boggs nodded. “You told me to go nuts making new friends, and I did. I went nuts and made a Frozen Friend.”

  “This Frozen Friend,” I said. “It’s a person?”

  “I think so,” said Boggs. “It was hard to see inside the box.”

  “Good gravy, Boggs,” Rex cried. “You’re a genius! That’s the deep freeze container we’re talking about!”

  “It is?” Boggs asked.

  “It does sound like it,” I said. “That means the cargo Pepper is after is actually a person. Someone who has been cryogenically frozen. Strange.”

  “And whoever it is, they’re aboard the ship formerly known as the Chronic Lumbago. You can find that ship again, right, Sasha?”

  “Of course, sir,” I said. “Assuming it’s still floating in space where we left it.”

  “All right then, crew,” said Rex. “Finish your beers and we’ll head back to that ship.”

  “We’re going to get my Frozen Friend?” asked Boggs hopefully.

  “That we are, Ensign Boggs. And then we’re going to trade him for something even better than friendship: fifteen million credits!”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Chronic Lumbago-cum-Raina Huebner was right were we’d left it. I docked our ship with it and we made our way to the cargo hold. It was empty.

  “I don’t understand,” said Boggs, looking dejectedly about the empty hold. “Where is my Frozen Friend?”

  “Somebody got here first,” I observed. Whoever it was apparently hadn’t been after the cryogenic chamber in particular: they had taken all the other crates Boggs had “won” as well.

  “Pirates,” Rex said, adjusting his eye patch. “Scourge of the galaxy. Blast them all!”

  It seemed odd to me that pirates would have left the ship, but maybe they had come to the same conclusion as Rex: it wasn’t even worth selling.

  “Donny found something,” Donny said. He had been skittering anxiously around the empty hold, but now had stopped to peruse something on the floor. “A small piece of wood.”

  “That’s great, Donny,” Rex said unenthusiastically. “There’s really no end to your—wait, did you say a small piece of wood?”

  “Very small,” said Donny. He picked something up from the floor. Rex walked over to him and took it out of his hand.

  “Toothpick,” Rex said.

  “Hookbeard,” I said.

  Rex nodded. “That bastard must have gotten suspicious and went to look for the Raina Huebner. He found this ship, boarded it, and took the cargo for himself.”

  “Do you think Hookbeard knows Pepper is after the cryo chamber?” I asked.

  “Doubtful,” said Rex. “I didn’t get the sense Pepper trusts him. She wouldn’t have confided in him. He probably just thought he could sell the cargo for a fast buck.”

  “Where would he go?”

  “Xagnon,” Rex said. “It’s the closest port.”

  “It’s also the first place the authorities are going to expect cargo from the Raina Huebner to show up.”

  “Does Hookbeard strike you as a strategic thinker?” Rex asked.

  I saw his point. If Hookbeard and his crew were as dimwitted as the other pirates we’d run into, they’d dump their booty at the closest planet, regardless of the risk.

  “Plot a course to Xagnon, Sasha,” Rex said. “We’re going to get our Frozen Friend back.”

  Xagnon, a non-descript industrial planet, was only a short jump away. The spaceport was fairly large, but Rex was able to talk a gate attendant into giving us the location of Hookbeard’s ship, the Coccydynia. We made our way across the spaceport to the cargo unloading area, where we saw two men loading crates from the Coccydynia into a hovertruck while Hookbeard and his crew watched. We spied on them from behind a stack of crates. One of the men closed the back door of the truck and he and Hookbeard shook hands. We didn’t see a cryo chamber, but maybe it was already in the truck.

  “All right, men,” Hookbeard said. “Time to celebrate! Let’s get some drinks at the Event Horizon. Hookbeard and his men disappeared inside the main building of the planeport. The other two men got in the truck.

  “They’re going to get away, sir,” I said. “What do we do?”

  We looked around but there were no other vehicles in the vicinity. The truck pulled away. There were no markings on the truck and there was no way we’d be able to follow them on foot.

  “Maybe we should follow Hookbeard and his crew to the bar,” I suggested. “If we eavesdrop, we might overhear something about who these guys are or where they’re taking the stuff.”

  “I know who they are,” Rex said. “Ursa Minor Mafia. But where they’re taking the cargo is anyone’s guess. They’ve got warehouses all over the city.” The Ursa Minor Mafia was the largest criminal organization in the galaxy. They were known to have a large presence in Xagnon City. “If we lose that truck, we’ll never get our Frozen Friend back.”

  “Donny can catch the truck,” Donny said. He skittered after the truck on his hand-feet. When the truck stopped before pulling onto the street, Donny ran underneath it and then stopped, reversed his arms, and grabbed onto the undercarriage. The truck sped away with Donny affixed to its underside.

  “Brilliant!” Rex cried. “When the truck gets where it’s going, Donny will call us and give us the location!”

  “How will he call us, sir?” I asked.

  “Don’t be silly, Sasha. He’ll just… uh. Boggs, does Donny have any radio transmission capability?”

  “I don’t think so, Potential Friend. But he can probably use a comm.”

  “He wouldn’t know where to call us,” I said.

  “Hmm,” said Rex. “Maybe he’ll find his way back to the Flagrante Delicto. We’ll just have to wait there for him.”

  “Wait for whom?” screeched a familiar voice behind us. We turned to see Heinous Vlaak himself striding toward us, flanked by two lazegun-toting marines. Vlaak was a large man who cut a striking figure in his tight-fitting crimson leather uniform, a helmet festooned with peacock feathers and a luxurious cape that was said to be made from the pelts of a race of furry humanoids who had made the mistake of assisting the rebels in the Battle of Zondervan.

  “What are you doing here, Vlaak?” Rex asked.

  “I’m asking the questions here!” Vlaak shrieked. “What are you doing at the Xagnon spaceport?”

  “Just seeing a friend off,” Rex replied.

  “You’re sure you’re not unloading goods stolen from a certain cargo ship?”

  “Goodness, no,” said Rex. “That sounds illegal.”

  “Don’t make me laugh, Nihilo. You’re a born scoundrel. I hear a report of pirated goods being unloaded at the spaceport, and here you are. Tell me why I shouldn’t execute you on principle.”

  “I’m not sure you really understand how principles work,” said Rex. “But look, you’ve got us all wrong. We’re not pirates.”

  “I’m a born pirate,” said Squawky.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Rex said. “He just jabbers nonsense.”

  “If you’re not a pirate,” Vlaak said, “why are you wearing an eye patch?”

  “It’s a medical condition. Lost my left eye in a hunting accident.”

  “You’re wearing the patch on your right eye.”

  “Yes, I lost my right eye and was hunting for it with the left.”

  “So you didn’t hijack the Raina Huebner?”
>
  “Well, yes, we did do that,” said Rex. “But here’s the thing. We’re not the pirates you’re looking for. The guys who sold the Raina Huebner’s cargo just left. Hookbeard and crew.”

  “Thaddeus Hookbeard is here?” cried Vlaak. “He’s the second most wanted pirate in the galaxy, after Rubric Malgastar.”

  “Well, I’ve never heard of that second guy,” Rex said, “but Hookbeard just left. They said they were going to a place called… Sasha?”

  “The Event Horizon, sir.”

  “They’re going to place called the Event Horizon. Probably a bar. You know pirates.”

  “Your Lordship,” said one of the marines, “that does appear to be Hookbeard’s ship over there.”

  Vlaak regarded the Coccydynia, then turned to Rex. “You’d better not be lying to me, Nihilo.”

  “I’m totally not,” Rex replied. “I’m one hundred percent telling you the truth about where Hookbeard is.”

  “If you aren’t, you will rue this day.” He turned. “Come with me, men! We’re finally going to capture Hookbeard!” The marines spun around, flanking Vlaak as he returned inside the building.

  “I don’t like that man,” Boggs said. “He is not a friend.”

  “You’re right on that score, Boggs,” I said. I turned to Rex. “Now what, sir?”

  “Now we get a cab to the Event Horizon.”

  “But sir, you just told Heinous Vlaak that’s where Hookbeard is.”

  “Yes, but Vlaak knows I’m a liar. He’ll check every bar in the city before he goes to the Event Horizon. Trust me.”

  “Even so,” I said, “I thought you said Hookbeard wouldn’t know where the cargo is.”

  “He probably doesn’t,” Rex replied, “but he’s our only lead.”

  “I thought we were going to wait at the ship for Donny,” said Boggs.

  “Change of plans,” Rex said. “Vlaak’s marines are sniffing around. We can’t afford to wait. We have to find Hookbeard and find out what he knows.”