"Now, I could bring them over here and claim that bounty," the Cutworm continued, "or I could be minding my own business while the three of you slip by."
"How much are you after?" asked Rogan, tapping her foot. Gaskan and his guards grew closer with every second.
"Ten thousand credits," said the Cutworm. He grabbed Jack and lifted him so that Jack’s face was only inches from his own. "And this runt apologises to my daughter."
Jack turned his head towards the grub’s stall. His daughter hadn’t moved from the corner. She was still excreting a weird, sticky substance down the side.
"I am so, so sorry." Jack turned back to her father. "Honestly. I'm new around here. I don't know what I'm saying half the time. Please let us go."
The Cutworm grunted and dropped Jack to the floor. It turned to face Rogan.
"And the credits?"
Rogan shrugged and shook her head.
"Ten thousand credits? We're automata. How in the galaxy would we have that sort of money?"
"That's a shame. Your bounty's only worth half that much."
The Cutworm rose up to its full height, teetering on its tiny pair of hind legs while the rest waggled in the air for balance. It towered above the rest of the crowd.
"Hey, you guys!" it bellowed. "Those bolt-buckets you're after – I've got 'em right here!"
"Go!" said Jack. "Now’s our chance!"
With the Ubekian Cutworm standing upright, its body no longer blocked their way. The three of them ran through the gap. The bug was big, but it wasn't quick. It dropped back down with an earth-shuddering crash.
"Oi!"
The crowd reluctantly parted for them. Nobody wanted to get involved. They raced through as fast as they could, not daring to slow down – not even when the muscles in Jack's legs burned hot, or when his lungs turned dry and raspy. To stop meant death or dismantlement.
The snarling Rakletts gave chase. They were slower than Jack and Rogan, but not Tuner… and they may well have caught him, had they been a little brighter.
Instead, one of them tried to shoot him… and missed.
The plasma round whizzed past Tuner's head and blew a hole in the chest of a poor, unsuspecting crowd member, who went crashing through the rickety wooden stand behind. The beams collapsed and knocked out a second customer. The market descended into chaos as people screamed and fled. The empty divide was lost.
Still Jack ran. He could only pick out glimpses of Rogan amongst the flood of hysterical aliens. Sometimes all he had to go on was a hint of the cables that ran out from the back of her head. At one point he thought he'd lost her… only for Tuner to climb on top of her shoulders and wave to him.
"Jack!" he screamed. "This way!"
They were outside the entrance to the spaceport by the time Jack caught up with them. He never would have known it was there otherwise – from the ground, its enormous metal walls looked barely any different to those of the towers and skyscrapers everywhere else.
"Thanks for waiting," he said, gasping for air.
"Don't thank me." Rogan nodded at Tuner. "He's the one who insists on being your guardian angel. I don't know why – you've been nothing but trouble since we landed."
"Hey, I saved your life back there!"
"No, you almost blew us all up!" Infuriated, she shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Let's hurry. It won't be long before Gaskan works out this is where we're docked."
"If he hasn't already," said Tuner, quiet and scared.
They sprinted through the port. Other ships were taking off in sharp fashion – nobody wanted to hang around in case a full-scale riot was on the cards. Clouds of dust blew across their path as massive thrusters roared into the earth. The sirens of police cruisers grew louder.
"There she is," yelled Rogan.
The Adeona lay dead ahead. Her loading ramp still lolled open like a metal tongue. 11-P-53 stood at the bottom, watching in bafflement as they approached.
"What's going on out there?" it asked. "And what's he still doing here?"
"No time to explain," said Rogan, pushing him back up the ramp. "We need to take off now."
"Did you get the codes?"
"No," said Tuner, "we—"
"What do you mean, no? Without them, we're—"
"It was a trap, Captain.” Rogan grabbed and shook 11-P-53. "Gaskan is coming after us. So unless your plan is to give yourself up, may I kindly suggest you get this ship in the air right now!"
There came an enormous rumble from the Adeona's engines, and the whole ship rattled as she rose from the ground. The loading ramp and the landing gear retracted with a mechanical grinding sound.
"Looks like she's doing it herself," said 11-P-53, hurrying up the stairs to the cockpit. Rogan gave one of the Adeona's supports an affectionate pat and then followed.
Jack watched with a growing sense of dread as the ships in the port below got smaller and smaller. Then the ramp closed with a hollow clang. He doubled over, exhausted.
Was he any closer to Earth? Or with each passing moment, was he only getting further away?
Ode Vadasz paid no more attention to the Adeona as it took off than he did to any other ship leaving the port. He didn't know what had caused all the commotion in the market, but it was about time he got clear of it too.
He dropped his roll-up cigarette into the dirt and crushed the embers beneath his black leather boot.
At a glance, Ode could have passed for human. He had short, dark hair, eyes with blue irises, the regular amount of fingers on each hand. Indeed, he could have wandered through the streets of Earth without anyone so much as batting an eye in his direction… so long as he kept his dusty cloak wrapped around his shoulders, that is. People may have noticed his outfit, however. He wore brown leather from head to toe, all of it stained by sun and sand.
His home world had a lot of both. Perhaps he was due a trip back.
Ode climbed the steps of his landing pad and approached his ship. The Black Arrow was small and personal – it seated two, though he rarely had any passengers – yet few who underestimated it did so twice. It was as quick as its name implied and three times as deadly… especially in the hands of a skilled pilot such as himself.
He was about to climb into the cockpit when he heard raised voices on the path behind him. In any normal circumstance he wouldn’t have cared, but he had a good ear for opportunity.
Two slobbering Rakletts were pointing plasma rifles at a rickety ship rising out of the port. One of them fired off a couple of shots, which inevitably missed their target and disappeared into the night instead.
"Give me that," said a gaunt and furious figure. He snatched the rifle out of the other Raklett's hands and shot his trigger-happy companion dead.
"Idiots!" he screamed, slamming the rifle back into the arms of its owner. "Cretins! How hard is it to catch a gaggle of rusty engineering units? I swear—"
"You after that ship?" asked Ode. He pointed up at the Adeona as it swung itself around to leave.
"Why?" Gaskan snapped his head towards him. "You some sort of bounty hunter?"
"Among other things."
"Any good?"
Even from a position leaning against the Black Arrow with his arms crossed, Ode managed to unclip his handgun from its holster, shoot the surviving Raklett in the head and then re-holster his weapon, all before his target could so much as blink in protest. He was so quick, in fact, that he almost appeared not to uncross his arms at all.
"I figured you wouldn't miss him," said Ode, grinning.
"You figured right," said Gaskan, eyeing the corpse at his feet with tired disdain. He pulled a small bag of coins from his robe and tossed it in Ode's direction. "That's five thousand credits. You'll get the same again when the job's done."
Ode glanced up at the Adeona. She was still navigating her cumbersome way through the maze of skyscrapers surrounding the spaceport. It wouldn't be hard to catch up with her… but he needed to leave quick.
"Dead or alive?" he as
ked, jumping into his cockpit. He tapped out a pattern on the data pad on his sleeve to sync comm details with Gaskan.
"Neither," replied Gaskan, sneering. "They're automata, not people. But bring them back in one piece. I'd like to take them apart myself."
Ode gave Gaskan a sharp nod and then yanked down his ship’s domed windshield. The Black Arrow rocketed off the landing pad as if it were no effort at all.
He had no trouble tracking the Adeona. His own ship's holographic dashboard picked her up just before she passed through the storm clouds. She was headed for orbit and would no doubt jump to subspace soon after. He couldn't let her do that.
But he couldn't shoot her down, either. Not yet, at least. Not while she was under the influence of Kapamentis' gravity. A breach of Ministry regulation like that would bring a lot of heat down on him. And aside from any collateral damage caused by crashing a ship inside the city, Ode still wanted those other five thousand credits.
Not that he needed to worry. His ship was well-equipped for such a situation.
The Black Arrow's tracking software kept him at a distance that wouldn't arouse suspicion. He followed his prey, waiting until she cleared the planet's atmosphere before he struck.
He fired off a disrupter mine. It sped through the vacuum like a rocket and latched itself on to the outside of the Adeona's thrusters. The lights around the mine's rim flashed menacingly as it counted down to detonation.
Ode counted down with them.
Five… four… three…
Moments before the mine could disable its engines, the Adeona skipped into subspace. One second she was there – the next, she seemed to have blinked out of existence.
Ode grinned to himself. It didn't matter. A battered old ship like that couldn't get very far.
All he had to do was follow the damage.
10
Stupid Coffee Machines
Jack shielded his eyes as sparks leapt out from the broken panel. All the engineering experience on Earth couldn't help him fix the tech inside. A stressed-out automata pushed him out of the way and began hurriedly soldering wires back together.
He stood up and stared around the cockpit in terror.
Red lights blinked on and off. A harsh alarm wailed in sync with each pulse. Every robot on the ship was doing something to keep the Adeona from falling apart – even Kansas, the little automata from the pantry.
And all Jack could do was stand in the middle of it all feeling scared and useless.
Nobody knew what had happened. Or if they did, they wouldn't tell him. They'd made the jump into subspace without a hitch – Jack was fast getting used to the experience, though the sudden jolt of skipping from one dimension to another still came as a bit of a surprise. But a mortifying bang had come from the rear of the ship only seconds into their faster-than-light journey. They were thrown out of subspace and into a neighbouring star system before Brackitt could even check the engines.
Now they were spiralling, adrift without thrusters, trying to figure out what went wrong.
"How can I help?" he asked 11-P-53.
"By staying out of our way," replied the frantic captain. It pressed all manner of different buttons on the ship's dashboard, none of which appeared to do anything good. "Unless, of course, you're an expert on skip drives?"
Jack said nothing.
"Didn't think so," said 11-P-53, not even bothering to turn around and look at him.
"Is that what happened, then?" asked Jack. "Your skip drive broke down?"
Rogan was studying the Adeona's fuel readings. She looked up and shook her head.
"It takes a lot for a skip drive to break down by itself, even on the scrappiest of ships. No offence, Adeona. Plus there doesn't appear to be much in the way of hull damage, beyond a few coupling panels. Marginal fuel loss, too. If I were to guess, I'd say somebody fired a disrupter mine at us."
"Like an EMP?" asked Jack. "An electro-magnetic pulse?"
"Not exactly. Most of our inner electronics are still working, apart from those fried from our unexpected exit from subspace. The atmospheric generator must still be running, for example. If it weren't, you'd be dead by now."
"Good to know."
"It was probably meant to neutralise our Somnium reserves," said a voice from Jack's feet. Tuner emerged from an engineering nook in the base of the cockpit. "To keep us from disappearing too far into subspace, or something. Check the thrusters, Captain."
11-P-53 pushed a lever forwards, and a great roaring sound came from the back of the ship. The other automata cheered as the alarm stopped bleating.
"The regular engines are back online," said Rogan, swiping through lists of vital signs, "as are the air thrusters. But we're still locked out of our skip drive, and a lot of the Adeona's navigation systems are down. We'll need to fly her manually from here on out."
"What does that mean – that we're sitting ducks out here?" said Jack. A few of the automata looked up from their repairs. "This was that Gaskan bloke's doing, right? We need to get moving before he catches up and finishes the job!"
11-P-53 glanced around at the distracted automata, then got up from its chair and stormed over to Jack.
"What do you mean, we?" it whispered. "We don't need to do anything, because there is no we. There's us, and there's you. We're not together, and we're definitely not the same."
"But—"
"This is our problem, and we don't need some puffed-up fleshy to get us out of it. You're nothing more than a stowaway, Jack. Don't forget that. If it weren't for IL-6-88 being so soft, I never would have stopped to save you."
Rogan and Tuner crossed the cockpit to join them.
"Calm down," said Jack. "I was only trying to—"
"Help? Help whom, exactly? You only care about getting back to that planet of yours. At least you've got one."
Jack crossed his arms. He hadn't forgotten about the solar flares.
"For now," he said.
"Is everything all right?" asked Rogan.
"Couldn't be better," replied 11-P-53. "We'll have to land somewhere if we've any hope of getting the skip drive up and running again. Where's the nearest planet? Even an asteroid will do."
"The nearest planet is a gas giant called Haldeir," replied Rogan. "It has a rocky moon which is quite secluded."
"Good. Plot us a safe course there." 11-P-53 headed back to the captain's chair. "We'll land, fix the Adeona, and then continue on towards Detri as planned."
"You can't be serious," said Jack. "You're still headed to that place?"
11-P-53 stopped in its tracks. Rogan groaned.
"Why wouldn't we be?" it asked.
"Drop it, Jack," said Rogan.
"No, I want to hear it," said 11-P-53, returning. "Why does that sound like a joke to you?"
Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened.
"It doesn't," said Jack, looking at all the expectant faces around him. "But surely you can see that this sanctuary of yours is a pipe dream, right? How do you know this Detri isn't as cold and dead as everyone else thinks it is?"
"We don't," said 11-P-53. "We have faith. If you had ever been a slave, you'd understand. Even if Detri is cold and dead, we'll still be free."
"But I can help you! If we head to Earth, if we find my people…"
"Then what? Your people will take us in with open arms, will they? Oh, I bet they will. Your people – those who have never seen an automata before. How long do you think it'll be before we're back in servitude again?"
"It won't be like that. I promise."
"Don't lie," said 11-P-53. Jack felt himself go red. "You're in no position to promise anything. And even if what you say were true, that we’d be given whatever passes for amnesty on your world… we'd be nothing but a novelty, an oddity, a sideshow for your species to gawp at. And where would that leave the rest of our kind, if we all gave up on that dream?"
11-P-53 tilted its head.
"Besides… how much is a reservation on a dying planet act
ually worth, really? It sure is generous of you to offer us refuge on a world the rest of your kind are so desperate to leave behind."
"We don't want to leave," said Jack, hanging his head. "It's our home."
"And that's why we understand why you're so anxious to get back there," said Rogan, trying to bring an end to the conversation.
"And why you can surely understand the importance of us finding a home we can call our own," continued 11-P-53, ignoring her efforts. "From the sound of it, humans will be in much the same position before too long. We're not interested in being anyone's pets, Jack. We can't help you any more than you can help us."
"But—"
"No buts, Jack! We're done! Go back to your quarters, and stay out of our way while we get all this fixed. I want you off this ship when we land. Try to stay off this time."
Tuner went to say something, but Rogan placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and silenced him. Jack turned and marched out of the cockpit.
"Stupid, jumped-up coffee machines," he grumbled, storming into his tiny metal room. The automatic door slid shut behind him. He collapsed into his chair by the window.
Even though the Adeona must have been rocketing through space at speeds unheard of back on Earth, the view outside showed nothing but a thousand white stars nestled in a dead black sea. Nothing budged and nothing changed. It was as if they weren't moving at all.
Jack put his head in his hands and stifled a scream.
Screw them. If the automata wanted to put their faith in a tiny lump of empty rock out in the middle of nowhere, so be it. It wasn't his problem if they got stuck out there with nobody to come and help.
Hell, he should be glad to be rid of them. He was in enough trouble already – he didn't need their clingy warlord boss coming after him as well. Let them sort their own mess out.
He shook his head and let out a sharp, dry laugh.
As if! They'd be scrapped or back at work within the week.
The Final Dawn Page 9