Multiple boots clanged on the metal ramp, and soon three bodies emerged, their backs to me. They wore thick armored suits, and each of them walked slowly, methodically, toward Magnus. “What the hell are you?” I heard Magnus ask, and I cringed. He backed up, holding his pulse rifle to his chest. They followed him, stopping a few yards from his position.
“Where is the rest of your crew?” the question translated.
“What you see is what you get,” Magnus said. It was my chance to slip by. I took one last look at my buddy, silently hoping he’d be okay, and climbed down the back of the ramp, hitting the bottom of it with as little noise as I could muster.
I peeked upward and saw one of the pirates starting to look back before Magnus got his attention with an insult. Something about a rust bucket. I hoped the pirates weren’t extra-sensitive about their ship, because Magnus could be unrelenting when provoked.
I left them in a standoff and crept down the ramp to the open bay door on their ship. To the side, I could see the expanse of space, and my breathing quickened. I knew I was invisible, but seeing the stars in the blackness beyond, with nothing but a pirate’s containment field between us, filled me with a moment of dread. I shoved it down and kept moving. The outside of the ship before me was painted red, large rivets bolting it to a black section.
I tentatively crossed over the fifteen-foot bridge they’d laid down to connect the two ships and entered their vessel. It was poorly lit onboard, lights dimming and getting brighter, reminding me of a generator running out of gasoline.
Whatever they were using to kill our power was draining theirs, and quickly. That was a good sign.
No one met me as I stealthily moved into the back of the pirates’ ship. I was still using the cloaking device, but it wasn’t infallible, so the fewer of them I came across, the better. The ship was a mess, clutter and crap piled high. I had to creep through the labyrinth of junk to get out of the open room. If I met anyone in here, there’d be no way of hiding, since there wasn’t enough room to get by someone in the narrow pathways amongst the garbage. A smaller ship sat inside their cargo bay. It looked like it was maybe an escape pod, made for one.
I scanned the area to see if anything would constitute a device used to cut our power off. Nothing fit the bill, from what I could see. These space pirates appeared to have a penchant for picking up anything not bolted to the ground. I tripped on a metal chair as I neared the exit and saw it had indeed been ripped off a ship somewhere. I’d spoken too soon.
Once I passed the junk, it opened up to a wide hallway. The lights continued to dim and brighten repeatedly as I walked quickly but quietly toward the first door on the left. A whirring noise snagged my attention, and I pushed my back against the wall beside the doorway. Something was rolling my way, and I looked in their direction, knowing they couldn’t see me if I stayed still.
One of the pirates was coming down the hall, the same armor covering its body, only this one was rolling instead of walking. As it got closer, my stomach churned. It wasn’t what I’d expected. This wasn’t made of flesh and blood. Its legs were soldered together, mechanized rollers replacing feet. The rest of it was covered by the thick muted gray armor, but the face. The face was what made me recoil in horror.
It felt like a child’s drawing of what a humanoid would look like, having never seen one. Skin of some sort was pulled tight over a robotic face, ripped and sagging on a cheek to reveal shiny metal behind it. Dead machinelike eyes blinked and twitched under flapping fake eyelids. A gray nose was sewn onto the material, slightly off kilter. It wasn’t from a human face, but the premise was the same.
The idea that the nose might be real, stolen from one of their victims, made me shudder in disgust. It rolled closer to me, turning sharply. This was it. This pirate creature was going to see me, and the whole plan was over. My hand lowered to my Relocator, and I was ready to press the icon.
Only, it didn’t turn to me; it was rotating to the door beside me. As I watched it pass me by, entering the room, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was all wires under the armor, or if it was only partially synthetic. On the other hand, I decided I didn’t really want to find out.
It whirred into the room, and the door slid shut behind it. I took a few deep breaths to slow my racing heart and kept moving down the corridor. Frayed wires stuck out of the walls, spliced together in intricate patterns. They might understand electronics, but these pirates didn’t care about aesthetics. The whole area looked like the garbage bin of an electricians’ trade school after their first week.
Careful not to trip on any loose wires, I stepped cautiously and ended up peering into two open rooms, which held nothing that I could see from the hall. The device I was looking for had to be large to be able to cut our power from that far away. None of these small rooms off the corridor would house it.
The lights dimmed the farther down the hall I made it. I was close. A double door hung at the far end of the corridor, and two robots emerged; one on wheels, the other walking with obvious mechanical steps. They didn’t have fake skin on, just round heads that lacked a mouth or eyes. It was almost as creepy seeing them with no face at all.
I kept still as they moved past me with a sense of urgency I hadn’t see from the others I’d encountered. I hoped Magnus was all right. How many more of these things were on the ship? The double doors slid open as I approached; the sensors knew someone had stepped by the doors, opening them.
I peeked inside and was greeted with a large room, this one free of debris and junk. A computer the size of my old master suite clung to the left side wall, and that was where I went first. It hummed with energy, and I did a three-sixty looking for any signs of nearby robo-pirates. The room lay empty.
At first, I tried to find a control panel I could understand. Fail. Next, I looked for a power source. Fail. My rifle came off my back in an instant, and I held it, deciding blowing it to pieces might be my best bet. Right before I pulled the trigger, which would undoubtedly inform them as to my location, I saw a blip on a monitor. It was an old screen, the rounded kind I used to play pixel games on my computer in the eighties. Two rectangular objects sat on the screen with a boxy ship in between them. Pixelated lightning-bolt images shot from the ship into the rectangles, which were glowing yellow.
It hit me. They weren’t ships. They were the devices the pirates were using to cut our power. But how to disconnect them?
Six
From somewhere deeper into the ship came the sound of clanking metal. A voice sang in an unknown language, and I was too far for the translator to pick up the words. Against my better judgment, I followed the sound. Pirates often took hostages. I couldn’t abandon a being in good conscience if they needed my help.
I stopped. Couldn’t I, though? Mary needed me, and I shouldn’t be wasting my time trying to help every random alien, human, or robot, no matter how much they needed me. From the other side of the room, the voice was clearer, even beautiful, alien and imaginative.
“Damn it.” I exited the room with the massive computer through the door on the adjacent wall, and the moment the door opened, the voice was much clearer.
Words and phrases hit my translator, and it relayed the song reflexively but with no rhythm. “Here I am alone. But my love hasn’t forgotten me. When I die, we will reunite. When I die, we will reunite.”
It kept going along the same lines, the words more touching in their alien tongue. One of the pirates swung into the room, and I quietly followed it, still cloaked. A short blue creature stood behind bars. Bald and skinny, it looked close to death, its collarbone jutting from taut skin, but it stood erect with pride as it finished its song.
The robot uttered something about “power down,” but it kept singing, even after the pirate repeated the phrase four or five times. When the song was over, the pirate lifted a hand, and a ray of red light shot from its finger tips, shocking the creature’s body with electricity. She – as I was sure it was a female now – shook in pain but
kept standing.
The robot spun on wheels and left the room. The lights dimmed and brightened again; then the door slid shut behind the pirate, and the two of us were alone, me free, her behind bars. Her prison was tiny. A blanket on the floor, a bucket in the corner. It was heart-wrenching to see.
Holding my rifle, I snapped the cloaking device on my leg to the off position, revealing myself. The prisoner yelped and scrambled to the back of the cell.
“It’s okay,” I said quietly. My translator didn’t know what language to translate, and I tapped my arm console, telling it to use the language from the song. It was identified as Molariun. The database the Gatekeepers had provided us was vast. I had no idea where this race hailed from.
“It’s okay,” I repeated. This time, it was translated at the same volume I’d spoken in.
“Who are you?” Her question came back to me through my earpiece in English.
“I’m Dean.” I pointed to the bars. “Why are you here?”
Her shoulders slumped, and I could now see how ragged her clothing was. It hung on her skeletal body like a sail with no wind on a mast. She couldn’t have been taller than four feet, and there was no hair visible on her. Her pigment was dark blue, her four eyes piercing pure white; no pupil met my gaze. Holes acted as a nose just above her slip of a mouth.
“I’m Rivo. They are gone. My love, Nico. All dead. These… Ligros” – the last word didn’t translate, but I guessed it to mean the robot pirates – “attacked us. They took me and killed everyone else.”
“How long ago?” I asked. Judging by the shape she was in, I assumed it hadn’t been recently.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was slight but still strong.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I said.
She rushed to the bars, her tiny hands grabbing them. “My ship, is it here?”
“I saw one in their cargo bay. Is it a single passenger?”
Relief flooded her face. “It’s still here.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” My intuition was sending warning bells off in my head.
“No point in hiding it. My family’s very wealthy. A small fortune was hidden in the escape ship. They ripped every inch of our vessel apart, but I don’t think they thought of that. They seem very single-minded, especially for artificial beings.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “You don’t know me.”
“Because I’ll pay you to get me out of here. Isn’t that how this works?” I had to replay the translation to catch the quick words.
“Can’t someone help because it’s the right thing to do?” I asked her as I stood a foot away from the bars. I reached for them and tried to tug on the door. It wouldn’t budge.
“No one I know. Either way, I appreciate it.”
“Where are the keys?”
“I’ve never been let out, but the one with the face unlocked it when I arrived. I’d been beaten up, was dizzy and confused. At first, I thought I’d dreamt the robot with a face, a terrible nightmare. But he comes and visits me. Never says a word, just watches me. Sometimes I wake up and he’s there, outside the bars, staring at me with dead eyes.” She shivered, and I knew there was no time to waste. I had to make sure Magnus was okay, and I had to shut down the rectangular power cells.
“I have an idea.” I told her my plan and crossed my fingers that this would work. We were running out of time.
____________
My back pressed against the wall again, my cloaking device on. Two of the pirates entered the room, and they listened as Rivo admitted she knew where the family fortune was stored. They needed to bring her to the cargo bay, and she would finally show them.
The robots turned to one another and silently discussed it, with no words needed. I imagined a series of ones and zeros flying from one data processor to the other. They didn’t reply to her; instead, they moved to the side as the door slid open and the pirate with a face rolled in.
It moved to the bars, stopping just before them. “Finally,” its word translated into my earpiece. It was speaking her language. “Come,” it said, sticking its finger into a hole on the bars. A loud click, and her cell was open. My heart beat faster as they clanked to the side with a tug from the creepy pirate. She came just past the robot’s waist, and it reached for her, pulling her arm and dragging her before it.
I nearly shot the repulsive thing there and then, but with Rivo so close, I couldn’t risk it. I didn’t know what effect my pulse rifle would have on their thick armored bodies, though I intended to find out. Initially, I’d only wanted to get power back to our ship and leave, but now I was going to obliterate these freaks, making sure no one else was hurt by them.
Rivo led the way, and the three pirates followed her out of the room. I kept my distance, making sure to stay at least ten yards behind them at all times. Even though they couldn’t see me, I wasn’t silent, and any mishap could give away my position.
We headed back to the cargo bay, sidestepping junk piles on the way to her ship. She’d claimed she just needed to get near it, and from there, she could escape. I wasn’t sure how, especially with the pirates right on her, but she seemed adamant about this. All she needed, she’d said, was a distraction. That was why she hadn’t attempted it before. She’d also thought her father would track her down eventually.
I looked toward the bridge leading to the ship where Leslie and Magnus were. What was happening over there? Were they okay?
I’d find out soon enough. I waited at a distance, hiding behind a stack of glass containers, each filled with electrical components. I noticed a strange triangle symbol on many of the supplies around the ship.
“Hurry,” the pirate voice translated.
“Step back. I need space to show you,” Rivo said, and two of the robots did as she wished. The one with the flesh face didn’t obey. Instead, its monstrous face twitched in several directions, as if it was programmed to convey emotions like a dead puppeteer.
“Hurry,” it repeated.
Rivo looked around the room, as if trying to spot me, and crouched to her small ship. A door hissed open on the side, and she stepped inside. The robot held the door open so she couldn’t close it. It was time.
I pushed the wall of jars. Over a hundred of them went crashing down in a symphony of shattering glass. The pirates turned their attention to the noise, even Face, and Rivo had her moment. The door closed, and its small engines fired up. Before I knew what to expect, rear thrusters burned hot, scalding the nearest pirate, leaving him a scorched pile of melted metal. Her ship launched toward the opening between our two ships before racing through the energy of the containment field. With that, she was off.
I was already moving for my ship, hoping Rivo was going to keep her half of the bargain. She claimed her ship had enough firepower to destroy the amplifiers trudging along in space with this patchwork vessel. If she blew them up, we could escape.
The remaining two pirates were angry. Face bashed some junk away from him, sending a large unit heater toward the wall with a swipe of his hand. I didn’t want to be on the other end of that fist.
I leapt away from them, my cover blown. I had to get back on my ship.
The bridge was thin, almost like a ladder dropped between our two ramps, giving access. I ran over it, the whirring of Face’s wheels giving chase. Once I was across, I tried to push the bridge over the edge, only I couldn’t. They’d attached it somehow. Spot-welded, maybe.
I swung my pulse rifle toward the oncoming robot and fired. The beam hit it square in the chest, and it slowed, a black hole showing wires beneath the armor suit. It kept coming.
I pulled the trigger again, hitting the other pirate in the head. It lifted an arm and shot an energy pulse from its hand. I ducked, and it narrowly missed striking me in the upper body. More pirates emerged into the cargo room, each of them shooting energy beams. There was no time. I had to prevent them from coming onto our ship.
Wondering why I ha
dn’t thought of it in the first place, I shot the bridge between our vessels. It melted in the middle, collapsing with two robots in the center. They fell and passed through the containment field into the ice-cold confines of space. There was no screaming or panic from them, just digital acceptance of their situation.
The others continued to fire at me while I ran inside, hitting the manual controls for our ramp. Though they couldn’t see me, more energy blasts shot at me, and I wasn’t quick enough to avoid them all. I went down when one of the red rays hit me in the legs. Pain erupted in them, and as the ramp lifted, separating me from the attackers, I pulled myself forward, further into my ship, my legs hanging limp behind me.
I rolled onto my back, holding my rifle up, ready to fire at the three pirates I knew were onboard. No one else was in the room. Relief flooded me.
If all went to plan, my crew were in the belly of the vessel, showing our “guests” a surprise or two. My feet began to tingle, and I could move my toes after a minute or two of lying on the metal floor. Our ship rumbled slightly. Either Rivo had done as promised and had blown up the power grabbers out there or the pirates were still trying to get into our ship.
Before I could check our engineering room, I had to go check on my friends. Another minute passed, and I was able to get to my knees. One more and I was on my feet, the feeling coming back to my legs. I stumbled to the corridor that would lead to the stairs.
My hands bounced off the walls, helping to keep me upright, and I fell more than ran down the hall, panting by the time I found the doorway. It was closed, and I used the manual lever before pushing hard to slide it open.
Shouting exploded below, and I found my footing as I rushed down the thirty industrial stairs to the storage area below. Smoke stung my eyes as the lights came back on, telling me our power was back. I silently cheered Rivo but knew it was all for naught if Leslie or Magnus was hurt.
The Survivors Box Set Page 89