Message for the Dead

by Jason Anspach

  “And if I was king of the galaxy I’d sit on a throne of good looks.”

  Ravi’s mustache twitched. “I would have said cynicism.”

  Keel gave his navigator a withering look. “Would you have, Ravi?” He turned back to face the shock troopers. “The point is, you’re with me, and you’re fine.”

  “No,” said Exo. “The point is, you set us up.”

  Keel threw his hands out like he’d been cut off while waiting in line for a docking platform. “I bought insurance against what seemed to be extremely high odds that your little band of brothers would double-cross me.” He settled back into his seat and added, “And, spoiler alert, they did.”

  The ship floated closer to the blue dwarf that contained the Cybar ship.

  “They have accepted our landing request,” Ravi announced, “and I have the autopilot following a fixed path to the selected docking bay.”

  Keel folded his arms. “By the way, you can thank me any time for rescuing you from that shuttle and the idiots who got it blown up.”

  “Thanks, I guess.” Exo smiled, but not in an amused sort of way. If he had any hard feelings, he apparently wasn’t going to dwell on them. “Look, I appreciate how often you’re right about things like this. Always have. But don’t try to play me like that again.”

  Bombassa seemed more forgiving. He let out a sigh. “Yes. Thank you. It would seem you possessed a better understanding of the situation than we did. I did not expect such treatment.”

  Keel smiled and facetiously acted embarrassed. “Oh, don’t mention it.” He winked at Exo and said, “And Exo, the next time I have to trick you, I’ll tell you beforehand.”

  Exo smiled and shook his head. “You changed out here, man.”

  “Blame Owens. I do.”

  The Indelible VI pushed into the blue star, which washed the canopy with a beautiful panoply of burning gases, and Keel began to dole out smuggler’s wisdom.

  “You survive outside of the Legion by not trusting anybody. You guys were thinking like soldiers, so you didn’t see it. I was thinking like a paranoid smuggler—and I was right. I learned early on after I left Victory Squad that thinking like a soldier all the time was a good way to get yourself killed.”

  “Poetic,” Bombassa quipped.

  “That’s me.”

  Amid the swirling illusion of the “blue dwarf,” a massive capital ship came into view. Its sheer size and… alien build brought a silenced awe over those now seeing it for the first time.

  “Man…” Exo managed. “That thing’s just gonna let us fly right on board? It looks like it could shoot an entire fleet out of the stars all by itself.”

  Ravi nodded. “It is controlled by a Republic AI consortium that, in my estimation, has been compromised by the very Cybar technology with which it was designed. But our possession of Kael Maydoon’s bio-signature will initiate a boarding sequence beyond the control of this AI. It has to let us board. However… once we do, it will send an administrator bot to capture you.”

  “And we don’t want to be captured,” said Bombassa.

  “I would not recommend it.”

  Keel snorted and shook his head. “You think we’ll be able to get to the brig and get my crew out without having to fight off an army?”

  Ravi nodded again. “In my last visit, the Titan presence was severely restricted. I believe you will be assisted from within. Still, time is of the essence.”

  Looking back at the shock troopers, Keel said, “Glad I just have to perform a rescue instead of trying the hotwire the thing. That still your plan?”

  “I…” Bombassa began. “I was unable to reach my handler. However, I believe those who turned against us were Nether Ops spies. We will complete our duty to Goth Sullus.”

  Like hell you will, Keel thought to himself. Tyrus Rechs’s message was still fresh in his mind. Exo and Bombassa would either come around to his way of things, or this starship would be their final resting place. Keel hoped for the former.

  The Six moved steadily toward the Cybar docking bay. Keel rose from his seat and adjusted his gun belt. “Well, the three of you can stay here and talk until we land if you like. I’m going to go jock up and get ready to KTF.”

  “No,” Bombassa said, rising as well. “There has been enough talking. Now we act.”

  ***

  Keel, Exo, and Bombassa waited at the bottom of the Indelible VI’s ramp for the bot they knew was going to attempt to ensnare them.

  It was slow in arriving.

  So the soldiers looked around the massive docking bay of this once-hidden ship. It looked like most Republic capital ship bays they’d ever stood in, except for being completely empty. Ravi had told Keel that the ship that had brought Prisma had been ambushed and destroyed. That must have been in another bay… or the bots on board had done an amazing job of cleaning up. There wasn’t a blaster scorch anywhere to be seen.

  In fact, everything was swept clean and kept tidy. It felt regulation perfect—but lonely, too. Like they were the first to set foot on a ship that had drifted alone through space for centuries, with nothing on board but custodial bots continually buffing, shining, and dusting in a preprogrammed search for approval from masters who had died long before.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Exo muttered, giving voice to a feeling that Keel shared.

  “Good,” Bombassa said. “Use that. Stay alert, expect trouble.”

  “I do that even when I’m not creeped out,” Exo replied.

  A personnel-sized blast door opened, and out came a gleaming personal admin bot.

  “Looks like trouble is coming,” said Keel. “See this, Ravi?”

  “Yes, I see it. As I understand things, this is how the trap begins.”

  “Well, this time the tables are going to be turned. C’mon.”

  Keel stepped toward the bot, trusting Bombassa and Exo to follow him. He brought the party to a stop twenty meters from the craft, not quite to the halfway point between the ship and the personnel door.

  The bot came to a halt in front of them. “Hello. I am CAT37. I will escort you to a confirmation terminal. This way.”

  Bombassa stepped forward to initiate the plan he had cleared with Keel. “We are representatives of the Galactic Republic, not mere inspectors. The House of Reason has deemed that now is the time to activate this fleet. We are under orders to deliver it to Utopian.”

  The bot paused and looked at all three of the armored soldiers. “I confess that I certainly knew this day would come. However, you will still need to access the confirmation terminal. This way.”

  “Get many visitors?” Keel asked, casually following the bot.

  “Oh, no. No one has been here in a very long time.”

  “What about all the wreckage we saw outside?” Exo asked. “What about that?”

  CAT37’s servomotors locked and brought it to an abrupt halt. It turned to face the men. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that. I am just here for administrative duties and to provide humanoids with creature comforts, as you might say.” Its optical processor lights flashed. “However, I do speak with this vessel’s Defense Mind from time to time. Just to have someone to talk to. Custodial bots are all so dull. You may be interested to hear that there has been no shortage of pirates looking to make a tidy sum from salvaging a forgotten and quite lucrative capital ship left alone in the middle of nowhere.”

  The stinking bot is lying to us, thought Keel. Bots weren’t supposed to be able to do that, except for the Nether Ops models. But with Nether Ops, what wasn’t a lie?

  CAT37 continued. “I suspect if you saw ships, it was likely more of the same.”

  “Fair enough,” Keel said, motioning for the bot to continue on. “You were going to show us the confirmation terminal?”

  “Yes, of course.” CAT37 turned its back to the three-man delegation. “Right this way.”

  Keel looked from Bombassa to Exo, then unholstered his blaster, aimed it at the bot, and separated the
bot’s head from its metallic body with one squeeze of the trigger.

  CAT37 crumpled like a heap onto the deck.

  “Okay, Ravi, which way do we go?” Keel looked around. He expected to hear klaxons and sirens, but destroying the bot appeared to have triggered no alarms.

  Ravi was quick with an answer. “There is significant jamming at the moment. Nothing that I cannot overcome with time, but enough that the three of you should not allow yourselves to be separated. You will be unable to communicate with one another, unless it is through the ship.”

  “Okay, we’ll take that under advisement,” Keel said, looking at Bombassa and then Exo. “Wander off at your own peril, kids. So Ravi, which way do we go?”

  A schematic of the docking bay and the surrounding areas of the ship appeared on all the legionnaires’ HUDs, with a path indicated. “Follow this route,” Ravi said. “It is a straight shot from the docking bay to the detention block—perhaps this level was designed for a rapid transfer of prisoners.”

  “On it.” Keel moved through the docking bay with his rifle up, scanning for targets. Exo and Bombassa followed him, similarly alert. They reached the door Ravi had painted on their HUDs, which slid open without prompting.

  The trio hurried through and moved with a quiet purposefulness down a wide corridor. They moved from ceramic bulkhead to ceramic bulkhead, covering one another using small-unit tactics.

  Bombassa spotted the first hint that the corridor down which they traveled had been a place of trouble. “This area looks like it’s been scrubbed clean, but look.” He pointed up at a series of burnt black blaster bolt impacts that formed a dotted line about a meter above their heads. “Somebody was either firing at something very tall—probably one of those Titans Ravi told us about—or they were firing from farther down the corridor.”

  “Impacts look pretty deep.” Keel gave a fractional shake of his head. “It’s nice to know someone was shooting wildly at a thing that was about to kill them.”

  As the legionnaires continued forward, they saw no more blaster burns. Neither did they see any guards or sentries. Nothing to detract from the sense that they were raiding a ghost ship.

  And maybe that was all it was. Who knew whether Prisma. Leenah, or anyone was still alive?

  Keel shook that thought from his mind. Ravi must know they’re all right, or he wouldn’t have brought us here. The risk of being here was incalculably high—far too high for simply recovering corpses. Ravi would have computed those odds; would have told Keel it wasn’t worth risking his life for. But here they were. So Keel continued on in confidence. His navigator was many things, but wrong was rarely one of them. They would find at least one survivor. Probably Prisma.

  The girl was the one Ravi seemed most keen on recovering. There was something there. A connection. But then, it seemed Prisma had a connection with everyone. Everyone except for Keel.

  “I’m starting to feel like we got all dressed up for nothing,” Exo said. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  Ravi’s voice came in clearly over the comms. He must have overcome whatever jamming had been sent his way. “You are nearly at the detention block. I would very much like to accompany you, Captain, however, I do not think it would be wise for me to leave the ship. Its AI is not strong enough to protect itself.”

  “Its AI is nuts,” answered Keel. “Don’t worry about it, Ravi. Just make sure we’re headed to the right spot.”

  “You are,” Ravi confirmed. “You will first enter a guard control room. Several rows of cells emanate from it like spokes from a wheel. I am trying to locate cell numbers for you.”

  The door to the detention block swished open as they neared it, revealing the central guard area. A set of three stairs led up to a raised platform with a circular security desk. Standing at the desk, looking down at a holoscreen, was a sleek-looking bot. It was a standard humanoid size, but with an airstream-like head fixed with a single glowing blue optical receptor. Its appendages lacked weapons, making it look more like an admin bot that a war bot. But a blaster pistol was magnetically attached to its hip.

  In unison, the three legionnaires raised their blaster rifles. But in that instant it occurred to Keel that the guard had taken no notice of them. It merely clicked and whirred its fingers, swiping the console in front of it as if no one else were in the room.

  “Hold up,” Keel said, bringing his fist up and trusting in the discipline of his comrades.

  They held their fire. They’d all been through the same virtually endless close-quarters training. More than learning how to storm a room, they had learned how to distinguish hostile targets from benign. And each of them must have come to the same conclusion that, though armed, this bot wasn’t an immediate threat.

  Keel made a slow move to the bot’s side. Exo remained by the entry door, and Bombassa mirrored Keel’s movements toward the bot’s opposite side. All three men kept their rifles trained on the bot, so that if it should attempt something, they could destroy it in a field of converging fire.

  The robotic guard still took no notice of them.

  Keel spoke softly over his comm. “I’m going to get a closer look.”

  “Don’t touch it,” Bombassa warned.

  “Wasn’t planning on it. Just want to get a better view of whatever this thing is looking at.”

  With his rifle still pointed directly at the bot, Keel positioned himself to peek over its shoulder at its security console.

  The bot was cycling through several holo-feeds. Images flicked past, showing one holding cell after another. All of them were empty.

  Then the feed shifted to what looked like some sort of medical laboratory. The mutilated corpse of a man lay dead on the table. His legionnaire-like armor was spread carelessly about the floor. Keel gritted his teeth.

  The screen returned to the holding cells and continued to cycle. More empty cells, and then—

  Prisma.

  He had to resist the urge to call out for the bot to stay on that image. But he knew better.

  She sat with her legs tucked beneath her on the impervisteel floor. In front of her was some sort of small object, a marble or pebble. It was rolling back and forth across the ground, seemingly of its own accord.

  And then the image was gone. The feed moved on. After several more empty cells and empty corridors, Keel was about to move away. But then Leenah appeared. She was lying peacefully on her side on a bunk in a detention cell. Whether peacefully asleep or peacefully dead, Keel couldn’t tell.

  He really, truly, wanted her to be all right.

  Exo’s voice came over the comm. “What do you see, Wraith?

  Keel looked up, feeling like a spell had been broken. “This is the right place. For whatever reason, the bot’s just cycling through holo-feeds. But I’ve spotted two members of my crew. One of them for sure is alive. The other one… I think she’s alive, too.”

  “We go get them?” Bombassa asked, gesturing at the oblivious robot with his blaster rifle. “Perhaps this bot is merely programmed to mimic a humanoid guard. Its purpose could be to make this area of the ship feel more familiar to biologics.”

  “As in, it isn’t even sentient?” Exo said.

  Keel knew Exo was using the term in the limited capacity with which it was generally applied to droids. None of them were truly sentient; none were capable of making their own decisions independent of programming guidelines. Giving AI that much power was widely thought to be likely to initiate the downfall of civilization. But the most sophisticated bots possessed the illusion of free will—what passed for sentience in most circumstances.

  Keel backed away from the guard bot. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to leave this thing at our backs.”

  “What do you suggest?” Bombassa asked, moving around the security desk to stand by Keel, his blaster still pointed at the bot. “It may be programmed to trigger an alarm if interfered with.”

  Exo shifted from foot to foot. “We either dust the thing, or one of us can stay here an
d watch it. But I agree with Keel. No way we leave this thing at our backs.”

  Keel removed his hand from his rifle’s foregrip and extended it toward the bot. “Maybe there’s some kind of shutoff switch.”

  “Captain Keel, don’t do that!”

  The sudden warning came from an external comm. The voice was familiar.

  “Garret? Is that you?” Keel felt a flush of hope that the coder was alive. He’d taken a liking to the skinny, awkward kid.

  “Yeah! It’s me. I found my way into a control corridor when everyone started getting shot. Then I accessed the systems and dug in deep like a subspace tick.”

  Keel tried to speak, but the kid kept going.

  “I haven’t figured out how to release anyone from their cells yet. You have to do that manually, and I haven’t worked up the courage to try going where you are now. Where would we run to, anyway? Mainly I’m just keeping myself invisible. The Titans—those are the really big war bots—walk right by me and the others. So that’s good, because if I can figure out a way to get Leenah and Prisma free they can probably reach my hideout—”

  “Your ‘hideout’?” interrupted Keel. The kid was talking as though he were playing pirates in the back yard.

  “Yeah, that’s what I call where I am now. Nothing comes by here at all. So anyway, I thought I might’ve determined a way to get Leenah and Prisma out, but so far nothing has worked. I’ve started experimenting with the concept of strategic denial of—”

  “Garret! Save it for later, buddy.” Keel knew the kid could see him, since he had obviously seen him reaching for the bot, so he waved his blaster rifle around. “I’ve got a blaster. I can get them out.”

  “Well, um… that’s not entirely true.” There was a pause, as though Garret was waiting for permission to continue.

  Keel let his head fall. “And why is that?”

  Before Garret could answer, Bombassa hissed into his comm, “Who is this you are speaking to?”

  “A member of my crew. Real tech wizard. You’d like him, what with swearing loyalty to space wizards and all.”

  “Sorry,” Garret said. “Hang on… Okay, I’ve re-routed my voice to reach the secure comm on all of your helmets. I guess you guys are friends of Captain Keel’s. I’m Garret. Nice to meet you. Anyway, I’m getting carried away. I can tell you everything that I know so far, and maybe you can formulate a plan that will get them out with it. But I don’t think just opening the doors without a clear route of escape is a good idea. As best I can read from the systems, if those doors are opened by anyone other than one of the interrogators—the bots or the replicants, either one—the Titans will come out in force and swarm the entire prison center.”