The high-voltage cable brushed against the robot's front plate, and a 2,000-volt spark shot out from the cable, right into its battery cells. The rotund robot exploded like a grenade, sending metal and plastic splinter over its comrades. Venix was lucky enough to be shielded by the cabinet door, which buckled from the impact. The cable fell to the floor - which was rubber-coated - blocking the passage for the other robots.
Venix saw her chance: in a far corner of the long hall lay exposed a short stretch of brick wall, painted over in the same color as the rest of the room, but the wall had a visibly older texture than its surroundings. Holding the steel chair, she leaped over the generator casings and tubes, and reached that wall in just two seconds.
The steel chair shot sparks as she banged it against the brickwork. Across the room, three guard robots were cautiously clearing the passage and would come after her in a few moments.
"No! No!" she cried out furiously, hitting the wall with every syllable, like a humanoid jackhammer. "I'm better than you stinking machines! Smarter! Faster! Human! Alive! You're not getting your hands on me again!"
A portion of the wall crumbled, creating a hole just large enough for her to get through - and much too small for the guard robots. Venix dived through the breach and fell into utter darkness.
16: Escape Velocity
The old derelict tunnel system ended, abruptly, in another old brick wall. Someone had sealed this secret passage long ago. Venix checked the time on her view-display, and understood that it was evening above ground; she had to try to break through and hope nobody saw it.
She pressed her hands and feet against the sides of the narrow tunnel, put her back against the brickwork, and pushed with all the electrically powered, composite metal muscles in her body. Only in this position could she produce maximum output; her body was otherwise not designed for brute force. She clenched her teeth, pushed without a pause for breath... and the wall began to come apart.
Venix fell through, tumbled around in the grass, and slipped into a shrubbery.
The sun was setting in the open countryside. A road lay nearby, cracked and half overgrown by weeds. From 400 meters away, past an abandoned house from a previous century, the rumble of aircraft and heavy shuttles rolled across the fields. Her luck was unbelievable. A spaceport, in the middle of nowhere. But if the military was guarding it...
A rusted signpost by the road read: CLOUDON COMMERCIAL AIRFIELD (0.5 KM). The cyborg started to run toward the lights.
In a short while, Venix came up to a long fence and hid down in the underbrush. The airstrip lay just ahead. A flat-bottomed cargo shuttle was just taking off from it, shaking the landscape with its mighty booster rockets.
A hundred meters to the southeast, she spotted a large hangar bearing the dirt-flecked fluorescent sign FOSS FASTLINE - WE BRAKE FOR NOBODY. Another hangar, 200 meters away on the other side of the airfield, carried the billboard AUTOSHUTTLE STATION 2438 NORTH. Reluctantly at first, then frantically, Venix rushed for the building, and in through a side door. If she could not sneak aboard, then she might at least force the pilot to bring her along.
The room she first entered seemed to lack the comforts of a modern building: it was grimy with thick layers of dust. One of the strip-lights in the ceiling was dark. In corner stood an overstuffed wastebasket, filled with emptied food-and-drink cans. Venix looked about for hidden cameras, but spotted none - that was decidedly odd.
An old-fashioned flat-screen on the wall showed a few commercials for brands she had never even heard of: THADBURY CHOCOLATE, YESTER JUNG-IT-YOURSELF DREAMKIT, and - again - FOSS FASTLINE.
Her artificial ears picked up footsteps across the gravel from far away; no pod or ground-car was nearby, and the airstrip seemed all but empty of people. The footsteps were heading for the office; she hid behind a drapery and waited. Holding her breath was the easy part - she just didn't pretend to breathe. And the door opened; shuffling footsteps and a labored breath entered. Venix recognized the typical sounds of a spacepilot, a man who had spent too much time in weightlessness with lacking equipment.
A sharp, organic stink filled the room and stung in her nasal sensors. The smell made her remember old, old colonists back on Venus, who gathered to inhale the fumes of expensive Terran herbs. More than that, the smell of sulfur in the air felt familiar, a smell that suffused the supposedly airtight domes in which she grew up. She smiled to herself.
"Come out, you snot," growled the voice belonging to the man Venix could not see. "I've a gun aimed right at your kneecaps. And keep your hands above your head, so I can see them." Without a word, Venix began to shuffle sideways, past the drapery. The stranger on the other side rushed up close. "Oh no, you're not scampering off without answering a few questions. Who sent y-"
That was his mistake, getting close enough for Venix to reach out and grab him by the hand, twice as fast as humanly possible. He barely had time to react to the gun being snatched out of his hand, as she spun around him. When she put her arm around his throat, he reacted; he spat out his cigarette, tried to wriggle out of her hold, and she twisted his arm until he groaned.
"Don't... don't..." the man gasped. "Who sent you? The goons from Autoshuttle?"
"Be quiet," she hissed, released his arm, and removed the old-fashioned vidphone from his wrist. "I'm taking you hostage. You will get me on board one of those shuttles."
"Well, throw me down a reactor core... where do you think you're going, girl?"
"Mars. As of now."
"You're in trouble with the police, eh? Stop strangling me, and we can talk business... I have just the offer you seek..."
"Try anything and I'll kill you." She wasn't so sure whether she meant it. Holding the man's gun, Venix let go of his throat. He coughed, rubbed his sore larynx, and glared at her with bloodshot eyes.
"Haven't I seen you somewhere? Never mind... we brake for nobody, and ask no questions. I thought you were one of the bully-boys from my competitor over there."
"What is this place?" she said.
Venix eyed the man from top to toe, scanning him in different wavelengths for hidden comlinks, cameras, or weapons. He was a bearded man of indeterminate adult age, face puffy and lined, wearing a greasy blue spacesuit coverall. Around his head was tied a bandana, covered by a piece of astonishing antiquity: a captain's cap, complete with a gilded "F" on its emblem. His entire left sleeve was covered with badges and mission insignia from various assignments. Venix gaped ever so little, when she recognized one of the badges.
"You were with the Flying Icebergs? I was a little girl back then. You people were heroes, who speeded up the terraforming of Mars by several centuries."
The man straightened up just a little bit, and said with no ceremony: "Christof Foss, fourth wingman of Icefleet Eight. The very last one, before the Saturn ring-line went fully automated. Can I please pick up my smoke, before my office catches fire?"
She urged him to go on. Foss bent down, picked up his still-smoldering cigarette and took a puff; then he coughed again. Venix shook her head.
"You're from Venus, aren't you?" he prodded, blowing out smoke at her face. She raised her eyebrows and Foss grinned with a set of plastic teeth. "Young thing like you, breathing in this poison without a flinch - has to be a Venusian."
She wanted to apologize for her brutality, but there wasn't time. "When's the next flight? I must get away as fast as possible. The military will sweep the entire area in a matter of minutes, if they haven't already."
The man frowned in a sort of determined way, and said: "Come along, miss. Got a bike, take you there real quick."
Ignoring the gun being pointed at him, Foss opened a closet door, and rolled out a contraption the likes of which Venix had never seen in her lifetime. It wasn't a pod, for it had no transparent plastic bubble to sit in. Instead of frictionless drive-plates, it sported two wheels mechanically fitted to each end - and the wheels had inflated rubber padding. The worn but clean machine was a rare fuel-cell motorcycle from
the early 21st century.
"Hop on," he said, straddling the saddle and grasping the steering-handle. "Got a scheduled flight in two minutes." Thinking that it was some kind of trick, Venix nevertheless sat down behind Foss, and put her arms around him. "Let's go." He drove out through the door.
The electric doors opened just in time for them, and the motorbike speeded out along the runway with a distinct humming motor-sound. The rubber-tires created a lot more noise against the ground than modern wheels, and Venix worried that pursuers might hear them. Her long red hair fluttered in the draft, and she felt slightly exhilarated by this crude, physical mode of transport.
Foss increased speed; they reached the parked shuttle in less than twenty seconds. With a remote, he opened a side door and a walkway telescoped out to the ground.
Venix kept looking for work-robots that might report her presence. She had been foolish to board a shuttle without disguise, and expected to be ambushed any moment. Strangely enough, nothing of the sort happened. Foss dragged the motorbike into his ship and secured it, then climbed up to the cockpit with Venix following close. He sat down into the left seat, and gestured at her to duck down.
"Mission Control, this is Foss Fastline Flight One-O-One, ready for takeoff. Course to Mars orbit M-0094957-G has been sent. Over."
A computer-voice over the radio sent a clearance command, and a flight-code that would grant him flight access through all space sectors in his course. Using two joysticks, Foss began to tax out onto the runway while the shuttle engines warmed up. The runway ahead was eight kilometers long, and quite narrow; this was deserted countryside where farms were run by robots, owned by people who lived elsewhere.
"Do you know who I am?" she asked the pilot anxiously.
"Nope," Foss said, keeping his eyes fixed on the moving runway, "but you've got some nerve trying to hijack a shuttle. You one of those subversives, the Pro-Bonobo people? A brain-spammer, maybe? Ooo, nasty. Or you sold animal organs labeled as pure human-cloned material? Stunts like that could get you lobo'ed."
"Just get us off the ground!"
"If they catch you I'll tell the truth, I was kidnapped... now, let me get you a coat, it can get cold in here during long flights."
"I said no tricks! And I'm not cold."
The captain sat back and let the seat lock him into place. The craft vibrated as the jet-booster roared and Flight 101 accelerated. With a slight hiss, pressure was automatically decreased in his boots, to prevent the ship's acceleration from rushing too much blood to his head. Venix looked at the slightly grimy walls of the craft, strewn with new and old equipment, and wondered how the man managed to stay in business.
"Are you a smuggler?" she asked, as the shuttle took off under a tremendous noise.
The captain's teeth rattled from the vibrations, and made his reply sound funny: "I'm just a small-time businessman, transporting rare goods and antiquities to and from the colonies."
"That tobacco-stick you were puffing on... when I was a kid, grownups gathered in secret to use that stuff. Isn't it illegal here?"
"Only for Terran citizens... I was made an honorary Martian citizen for serving with the Flying Icebergs... my lawyer bot goes through the process, every day, that keeps my legal status diffuse enough they can't fine me for smoking. Besides, the competing shuttles don't run on liquid flammables anymore, so it's only my own neck I'm risking... now, which route to Mars do you want me to choose? This time of year there are two orbits, one takes me six months, the other just three. I was going to take the short route, but with you on board, I'd rather not... the MSF always check and search the faster ships more thoroughly."
"Where's your crew? You can't manage this rust-bucket all by yourself."
"Two people, and a damned fine rust-bucket, thank you! Moravia's on leave, he's home on the Moon I think. Keaton went into the sleep-freeze before takeoff. He's going down to Mars, so we keep him frozen during most of the flight, or the zero-gravity makes him too weak to manage it when we get there. Just a few maintenance drones, a leisure droid, and my P-A over there."
"But the P-A's broken."
"Yep."
"Something's wrong here. How come you just happened to be around when I came to this random airfield, which is otherwise almost completely automated?" They accelerated diagonally through the clouds, while automated shuttles flew to and from the spaceport in the distance. "Who do you work for? Did you know I was coming?"
"Let's see you come out of that skintight bodysuit first. You must be sweating buckets underneath it. Nice curves, by the way. Are they genuine or implanted?"
Her face was dry; his wasn't. The ascent of the shuttle was putting a strain on his body, and he tried in vain to act relaxed and in control. Venix rolled up her eyes in frustration.
"Who told you I was coming?" she insisted, and moved a grasping hand toward his head.
"Not my neck! Wait..." He concentrated on the controls for a minute, and then turned on the autopilot before turning to face Venix. "I didn't know it was going to be you, or this particular time, this airfield. All they told me two weeks ago was, someone is likely to try and smuggle someone off Earth soon. All I had to do to score a significant reward, was to wait at any spaceport or airfield in the vicinity of that estate in Britain... what's its name again... Wind-sore something? I bet I wasn't the only, um, independent pilot who got wind of the reward."
"From whom?"
" Sshh ... you don't ever say their name. Well, who do you think they are, girl? Haven't you noticed a war is going on?"
Venix stared at the aging pilot, and he didn't smile back. He could only mean the other side in the war. The rumors were true, she realized; Martians were actively supporting Jupiter's independence under the cover of neutrality.
"I... I'm not involved in anything. You have to believe me. I'm just a dancer from Venus."
Foss gave her a lecherous, knowing look: "I bet you are, I bet you are..."
"And what prevents you from selling me out to the Fleet, old man? "
The captain's face darkened, and he asked tersely: "Do you think I'm a lousy clone? You think I don't have family?"
"Why do you ask that?"
" Exactly. Now, which is it: the short route or the long one?"
"The short one."
"Can we pick up Moravia while we round the Moon? I could need a hand, and Keaton's going to try for the Martian Skysurfing Grand Prix. The Fleet authorities are probably not going to bother us, they're on their way to Jupiter for another campaign."
"Have you heard anything about Argus-A? Where is he going?"
"Do I look like I know everything? Go look on the Net. I'm busy."
Being a prototype cyborg and a civilian, Venix lacked the near-limitless access to Fleetcom that Argus had. She would have to search from a screen on the shuttle itself - but she had the time. The search proved inconclusive. The Fleet and its flagship were officially flying out to Jupiter, and would arrive within five to four weeks - and Argus was expected to make at least an appearance in active combat.
Please return safely, she thought. If only I could tell you I'm almost free. Just three months, and I can seek political asylum...and someone seems to be helping me to it.
A sound from the open door of an adjacent room alerted Venix. She spun around and heard a throaty female voice yawn with exaggerated laziness.
"Oh, Captain," the voice cooed from behind a wall, "what a rough start..."
"That must be your droid," Venix said. "Sounds like a phony voice."
"You ought to hear your own voice, girl," the captain retorted. "You've done nothing but dissing me, my ship, and my crew ever since you hijacked this flight. You Venusians are all the same: smug, prissy snobs, telling other people how uncouth they are."
"Sorry," the female cyborg said, and added: "I don't travel much."
The voice in the other room changed to a colder note. " Captain ... I thought I heard a woman 's voice. Who's in there with you?"
"It's just t
he Vehicle Inspection going over the ship and crew, Sugar."
17: Bomb Run
If only I could hear from you, Argus thought. Just so I'd know you're unharmed. I can't live on just the memories...
After just four weeks' flight from lunar orbit, the flagship of the Terran Fleet E.S.S. William Jefferson approached the outer rim of the orbits of Jupiter's moons, and turned around for a brake run. It was, apart from Argus's personal ship, the fastest vessel ever built for traffic within the Solar System. The Kansler himself had planned and pushed for this juggernaut to be created several years before the war began, in anticipation of colonial rebellion. Other smaller, slower cruisers lagged weeks behind on their way to join it.
The flagship was named after a once famous so-called "porn-star" of the early 21st century, whose reputation for sexual appetite bordered on the mythical. On 22nd century Earth, the cult of "Mother Earth" had in turn spawned a fertility cult, and this choice of name was merely one facet of it; Earth produced less and less children to replenish its aging, constantly rejuvenated population.
Despite its speed, capacity for destruction, and excellent defense measures, the William Jefferson could not land on a planet or fly in atmosphere, which created a crucial weakness. The almost 400 meter long dreadnought was worthless for supporting grand-scale invasions. Even in the shortest possible orbit around an enemy moon, a landing craft still had to cover thousands of kilometers between the flagship and the ground - which, regardless of intensive cover fire, meant certain death.
The great expenses of keeping Terrans alive in this remote sector only compounded the problem. Even if - by some miraculous effort - a Terran invasion could succeed, a permanent occupation force had to be recruited from the native colonists - and that was too obvious a pipe dream.
The real war had deteriorated into an endless series of strikes and counterstrikes. With every month, the Fleet's Marketing Department invented ever more desperate ploys, and whipped up ever more virulent hate against the colonists, to divert public attention from the costly stalemate. The colonists, on the other hand, were convinced they just had to wait out the war. Once Jupiter had broken free from Terran taxation and laws, other planets were expected to follow - and the war effort would run out of funds.
Yngve, AR - The Argus Project Page 12