Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1)

by Darcy Troy Paulin

  “I’m really not.”

  He sighed. “I really am doing all I can to get him here…” His eyes floated upwards and he seemed to be considering whether he had done all he could. When his eyes returned to her, there was no new spark, no new plan or idea.

  “Ya. It’s a rocket ship.”

  His eyes brightened. “It is? Of course it is. What else could it be. Still… Thank you.”

  “But it doesn’t work. That’s why you haven’t used it?”

  “Oh no. It does not work. It is very, very old. We have maintained what we can. Some of the maintenance files were corrupted or missing. Quite a lot of information is unavailable. The entire database devoted to farming is just gibberish. Life sciences are mostly corrupt. Half of Science Fiction, and all of the Soap Opera movie files are amongst the casualties of data corruption. We shall perhaps never know what we’ve missed.”

  “I don’t know about all of that.” Though she intended to look it up when she had time, Soap Opera’s sounded like they might be important. Culturally. “But I can help out with Icarus. On the condition that you keep the info, and the subsequent repairs on the down-low.”

  “The down-low?”

  “Don’t tell yer boss. Or anyone else unless they need to know to do the work.”

  “Deal,” he said and held out his hand to shake on it.

  She took his hand and shook it.

  “Oww,” he said.

  When she returned to her terminal, Snow released Doozer from his box to roam free once more in the limited space of her office terminal.

  A heavy clank-clank sound alerted her that Doozer had dropped a steaming pair of crab-stones, which as poop went, were rather inoffensive. After cleaning up the mess, she ruffled his fur and fed him, then returned immediately to her escape plan. It was more than an escape plan, though, it might in fact be a step toward finding the answer.

  The pieces had come to her, bit by bit. A decent thrust controller here. Air purification module there. Food production and storage in this file. Suits, boots, thrust, lift, hull integrity, velocities, trajectories, orbits. Landing. There were thousands of files on the building and maintenance and flight of Icarus. And Snow had her vague and ghostly memories too. When she put it all together, it told her there was something more. Something up there. The trajectories in the Core, they lead right to Mega. If there was any outright plan or statement or manifesto from the first people, it was nowhere to be found. But the information was there, in pieces. She had only to add it up.

  Chapter 50

  Too late, the hunter realized his error. What he had taken for the body of the target, screened by branches and leaves, was not a body at all. It was a bag, the hunter’s bag, along with the shell of some dead creature.

  “Don’t move a muscle.” It was the target’s voice and it came from behind the hunter.

  The hunter froze, imagining his own pistol in the hands of the target.

  “When you shoot too much at the void, the void shoots back at you,” said the target.

  “Abyss, not void. You mean abyss,” the hunter said.

  “Whatever. Throw your weapon out into the clearing.”

  Carefully the hunter flung the weapon, as gently as possible to spare the precious barrel from damage. The rifle clattered to the ground.

  “Now turn around.”

  The hunter turned, slowly.

  The target stood with the pistol pointed at the hunter’s center of mass.

  “I think it’s fair to call that bad… asss—”

  ‘thwat! veeeeeee…’ sounded from across the gap.

  The hunter dropped to the ground on his back and heard the ‘crunch’ sound of the lance impact behind him. He lifted his head and found the target. He too was on the ground, reaching for the pistol he’d dropped while diving for cover. The target’s hand hovered over the pistol, then he was suddenly was jerked violently sideways, leaving the pistol where it lay. He was dragged a few feet before something on his back was ripped off and dragged away in his place. On hands and knees, he scrambled again towards the pistol.

  Effortlessly the hunter rolled over and scooped the familiar weapon into his hand before the target had any chance to reach it. The hunter rolled to his feet and pointed the gun at his target. “Feel free to move your muscles,” he said through the thoroughly satisfied grin on his face.

  The target, with a look of determination, reached for the stone axe that was slung in the pack on his back.

  The hunter waited until the target was standing with the axe raised before he pulled the trigger. The pistol exploded. Shrapnel flew, and bits of ceramic hammered into the flesh of the hunter’s face, neck, torso, while the concussive force turned his right hand to jelly. He slumped to his knees, his grin gone, and clutched his shattered right hand with his left. His face twisted as he cried the plaintive cry of a target.

  Chapter 51

  “I don’t know what to do with you,” Max said to the killer. “You seem shattered and broken. Though you’ve seemed that way before and somehow never were…”

  When he looked at the killer, what he saw was a wreck of a man. His face was pockmarked with bloody wounds. Max touched his face where a shattered bullet had wounded him at the beginning, in the True North. The bullet had been fired by this man who, assuming he was right-handed, would never make that sort of shot again. The hand was grotesque. Max had tied the killer’s arms together above his head to reduce the swelling, but the hand was already a nasty bag of blood.

  “You should kill me of course,” the killer said, his voice was tight and hoarse from the throbbing pain of his swollen hand. “If not for revenge then for your own security.”

  “Skreeee!” Anthony said, seemingly in agreement with the killer. Anthony had returned too late to help but was making up for it with moral support.

  Max gestured at the killer’s hand, “You want to die? Is that it? Life is not worth living if you can’t take it from others?”

  “Of course I do not want to die,” the killer said, “and you won’t kill me.”

  “I might.”

  “No. You won’t. You should, but you won’t. You have won, and you have me captive. But someone like you must lose more before you cross this line.”

  Max considered killing the killer right then, just to prove him wrong. But he didn’t.

  “If I kill your woman, then—”

  “You leave her out of this.” Max jabbed the killer’s rifle barrel into the killer’s spine.

  The killer raised his arms just a bit, showing the tiniest bit out doubt of his assertion that Max wouldn’t kill him.

  “Sorry. I misspeak. I mean killed, past tense. Sometimes I make this mistake.”

  If Max simply left the killer to die in the woods, that would be the same, or worse than bashing his villainous brains in with the back of the axe. And then he, Max, would deserve to be murdered, if-when, inevitably, the killer tracked him down to finish the job.

  He could murder the murderer or bring him along. He had little time to consider, but he knew who he was. He knew what was right and what was wrong, and he knew, that sometimes, extreme measures needed to be taken. He lifted the axe high above his head. The hunter quietly muttered a chant, preparing himself for death.

  The blow never fell. Max dropped the shaft of the axe into the sheath on his back and bent down to grab his backpack.

  “First things first,” Max said to the killer. “You are going to swear to do no harm. Either to myself or to Snow. Ever. And further, that you will assist me to escape this forest and make it to her, Snow, in Tawnee. All without murdering anyone.”

  The killer narrowed his eyes, but he nodded agreement. He made the vow, repeating Max’s words. He then added, in his own language, a scripted recitation. Max couldn’t follow most of it, but he found it encouraging. He imagined that some assassins likely had a code they followed. An ideal that mattered more than life itself. Just like in the movies.

  Of course, he knew with certaint
y, that some killers, most killers, had no such code. But if this one did have such a code, then it was worth making him swear on it.

  “So, your woman with the yellow hair, Snow? You think you can reach her still?” the killer asked.

  Max shrugged. “I don’t know,” he mostly mumbled.

  His ears were still ringing from the sound of the pistol’s explosion, but over that, Max thought he could hear the lancer trying to eat through the lizard’s empty shell, which it hand lanced instead of Max. He wanted to get across the gap before the gorgers recovered, and before the lancer reset its lance.

  Using a length of the lance tether he had collected from the dead lancer that had attacked Snow, he tied a loop around each of them, tethering them together, though leaving enough slack between them so they wouldn’t both be dragged down into the same pit. Releasing the killer from the tree he’d been tied to, Max put the remaining shell in the killer’s tied hands and mimed what to do with it. Pinning his hopes on the solitary nature of the lancers, he ordered the killer to lead the way across the gap and through the currently obvious, though narrow, path.

  Without further pause, the killer set out into the wide gap in the tree cover, towards the open pits lining the center of it. His feet moved quickly and lightly across the denuded terrain with his knees bent like some sort of ninja.

  Max followed close behind, the killer’s rifle in Max’s arms, and soon they had reached the band of gorgers. Without slowing down, the killer picked a path through the field of open pits. The gorgers were tightly packed, and in many cases were pressed directly against each other, forcing the killer and then Max to leap across from one diamond shaped patch of earth to another.

  They were almost past the line of gorgers when another lancer launched its projectile. It was so close, that Max actually saw the movement of the creature as it let loose its missile. It hit the shield in its center and a moment later tore it from the killer’s hands. He let it go. But not before being pulled off balance. He fell forward and landed on a narrow bridge of soil between a pair of gorger pits, one gigantic the other merely humongous. His legs straddled the bridge and his hat bounced to safety, stopping in the next diamond shaped patch of dirt. He looked like he would be okay. But his legs couldn’t grip against the inner sides of the gorger pits, which were coated in slime. The killer was slipping down the side of the merely large gorger on his left, inch by inch.

  Max reeled in the slack on the line connecting them and used it to stabilize the killer’s slide.

  The killer, now steadied, carefully lifted his legs from the pits. Once they were out he wormed his way forward to his hat, and the diamond shaped patch of soil ahead. He took a moment to rub his boots in the dirt, removing some of the slime. Then he placed his hat back on his head and moved on, faster than ever.

  With a few more hops they cleared the gorgers and sprinted for the cover of the trees where they stopped to take a breath. The killer recovered more quickly, though he still looked like hell. His face smeared with blood and sweat, his long black jacket and dark gray suit beneath were also covered in blood, though it was a sludgy brown now, mixed with the dust, dirt, and slime on his travel worn garments. His hat, however, was still in excellent shape. He attempted to adjust it with his mushy purple hand, winced and switched to his good left hand. Max suppressed his sympathetic feelings, he reminded himself that the killer was a killer.

  The next few hours of travel were predictably stressful. With the killer in the lead, they walked miles through forest that was little different from that on the other side of the gap, apart perhaps from having a little less rock and a little more water. Max’s mind was filled with scenarios of lancers and gorgers. Of being trapped in a pit and needing the killer’s help to escape. How foolish he would feel as the killer walked away and left him to die, or somehow worse, helped Max escape. What the hell would he do then? Thank him? It would be difficult to nurse a feeling of hate towards a man that had just saved your life.

  Then it happened. They passed through a dense wall of foliage and found themselves in front of a ten-foot-tall, gray stone wall. The wall, like the gorger gap, stretched on as far as the eye could see, it curved slightly in the distance and disappeared behind itself. Max thought he had the idea. A big wall that keeps the monsters in the forest, and out… of Tawnee.

  Max looked at Anthony. This was the place to set him loose. Anthony wouldn’t like it, but he would recover, in time. And maybe have a normal yigrit life. Obviously, Max couldn’t bring him along. Even if, by some miracle, the Tawnee didn’t shoot Anthony on sight, they soon would after he swatted or slashed a few people, which he was certain to do eventually. Anthony regarded the killer as one of the pride, but that didn’t keep the killer from being smacked from time to time. To keep the killer in line and for Anthony to assert himself in pecking order.

  Max approached Anthony. He tapped him on the head a couple times and then grabbed the tape holding the sock in place. He pulled it off quickly.

  Anthony swatted at him playfully.

  Max dropped the tape-sock combo onto the ground. He made a guttural ‘off-leash’ command.

  “Go on, buddy,” he said, “Go get yourself some of that secret forest grub you won’t tell me about. I’ll ah… I’ll call you when I need ya.”

  Max watched Anthony clamber off without any sign of haste.

  “I will miss you, you gangly little weirdo,” Max said when the yigrit was out of sight. Then he turned his attention to the way forward.

  Climbing the wall would be easy enough for Max, who still had the use of both hands.

  “One toe…” Max said.

  Chapter 52

  A call out to the Expansion Zone was rare. The ‘new’ wall, completed several decades ago, kept the forest-dwelling beasts from casually wandering in and setting up shop. Occasionally a yigrit would clamber up and across. Presumably to feast upon the other, mostly harmless critters that had themselves slimed or scuttled their way over the wall but were too small to show up on the dish. And when there was a blip on the radar, Traket, along with his rotating partner of the day, would have to go chase the buggers back up and over. Then they would have to find and remove the tree or vine or whatever it was that helped the beast over in the first place.

  “Once people move out to the EZ, it will be… eeeasy.” said Holdain, Traket’s partner for today. Holdain, who was driving the patrol car, slapped his own knee and laughed at what for him passed for a joke.

  Traket considered slapping Holdain’s face. But he wasn’t supposed to do that anymore. Instead he gave a ‘friendly’ knuckle to the knucklehead’s head.

  “Oww!” Holdain swerved on the empty road and shot Traket a nasty look. “It’s true what people say about you. You are a mean old bastard.”

  Traket grinned. “That’s, Sir mean old bastard,” he said, and dropped the grin, “Now shut up and keep driving, we still have our regular rounds to do after we finish the roust n’ oust.”

  The kid was right though. It would be easy once people moved into the Expansion Zone and got their stink all up in the joint.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Holdain said, pointing out of the domed front window and up at the sky.

  Traket ducked down so he could see up and out to what the kid was pointing at. Flying above them, in the direction their patrol car was headed, was the AT-5 Transport ship. Traket recognized it right away. He had seen the roomy but still sleek white aircraft up close a few years back. It wasn’t the AF-12 Scramble fighter or anything, but he sure as hell wouldn’t say no to a ride in one. He wondered where it was going when the answer became clear. It dropped below a small rise in the landscape, not too far ahead, right about where they were headed in the patrol car.

  Apart from the few small hills and the occasional tall clump of invading vegetation, there was nothing to block their line of sight. The complete network of roads had been built, but as yet only weeds and sproutlings filled the gaps between those roads where housing would ev
entually be constructed. Holdain maneuvered the car around the hill, and there on the ground in front of them was the AT-5. It was just like he remembered it. Sleek and aerodynamic, it looked like the future. A future that, though it had arrived some time ago, was still somehow just up ahead and around the corner.

  “Well, look at that, actual intruders,” Holdain said, “And that sky jockey is trying to rustle ‘em up!”

  That drew Traket’s attention from the ship. Holdain was right again, which had to be a record. There were two men in the distance, caught out in the open with nowhere to run. They were tied together and dressed like… New Yorkers? Northerners maybe. How in hell did they get here?

  “Those are our intruders,” said Holdain, looking to Traket. “What do we do?”

  “We do our job is what we do,” Traket said, “Keep driving, right up to those two shifty buggers.”

  He was as certain that these two were the sensor blips, as he was surprised that these two were the sensor blips. He had never even heard of someone hopping the wall. Never, ever. But here they were right as the dish said they would be.

  The Sky Jockey had exited his ship and tried to flag them down, but Holdain drove right by without even looking at him. The squat patrol car skimmed along on its curtain of air and quickly ate up the distance to the intruders. Holdain circled the car behind the two men, dragging the landing strut menacingly on the road. He stopped behind the pair with a clank. Both Traket and Holdain leapt into action, jumping from their car, and approaching the intruders.

  “Put your arms up high if you know what’s good for you!” called Traket. Holdain stood beside him, arms crossed, and doing his best to look official.

  “Or what?” said the one whose hands were not tied up. A detail Traket had only just noticed. The next detail he picked up on was the rifle held in the arms of the speaker.

  “Or…” Traket said, taken off guard. But he refused to back down, “There’ll be trouble, of that you can be sure.”