Message for the Dead

by Jason Anspach

  Keel didn’t bother to ask what the code slicer meant by “replicant.” The word, like “Titan,” was self-explanatory. The bots on this ship certainly weren’t named abstractly. “Okay, so we’ll come to you and figure something out. They look unharmed.”

  “They’re fine, I think,” said Garret.

  “So where are you?”

  “Not far from you, actually.” A new map appeared on the legionnaires’ HUDs. “If you head down this corridor—it’s marked W-3 overhead—you’ll come to a maintenance hatch that’s partially open. Go inside and then walk aft along the guts of that corridor. Don’t take any of the forks, and you’ll get to the room that we’re all hiding in. More of a way station in a passage, actually. You see—”

  “Who is ‘we’?” Exo asked.

  Keel nodded approvingly at the question.

  “Well, there’s Skrizz, but he’s always off wandering. He should be back soon. And also parts of KRS-88… as much of him as I’ve been able to reassemble. And the only other is a legionnaire who came in with Ms. Broxin.”

  Keel wasn’t thrilled to learn that anyone on the Nether Ops team working with Andien Broxin was still mingled with his crew. They were the ones who had caused this trouble in the first place. “Okay. We’ll head your way. But tell that leej you’re with not to try anything funny if he wants to keep on living.”

  “I don’t think he would.”

  “On second thought, don’t tell him anything,” Keel said. “I don’t want him to even know we’re coming.” Keel motioned for Bombassa and Exo to move out. “We’re on our way now.”

  “Good.” There was obvious relief in Garret’s voice. “I was worried that one of the visitors to Prisma would drop in on you. Usually they come around now.”

  The kid might have led with that fact, Keel thought.

  He moved away from the security bot. It still scrolled through holo-feeds, oblivious to everything that had happened around it. It occurred to Keel that this, too, was probably thanks to Garret. That didn’t surprise Keel in the least. The kid had a real way with tech.

  Exo lead the trio along the pathway provided by the code slicer. He found the loose panel and pulled it aside. “This looks like it.”

  “I’ll go first,” Keel said, already stepping through.

  When they were all through, Exo pulled the access panel back into place.

  The men had to walk single-file down the narrow corridor. Tubes of conduit ran alongside them, occasionally feeding into wall-sized connector hubs with glittering status lights shining like stars in the sky.

  “Look down,” Keel said.

  A dry trail of blood ran along the floor. Up ahead, it turned off onto a side passage.

  “Should we follow it?” Bombassa asked.

  They reached the intersection where the blood trail diverged from the main passage. “Garret said not to go down any of the forking passageways,” Keel said, “but he may not know about this. Let’s follow it.”

  “Could be war bots…” Exo warned.

  “Bots don’t bleed.”

  They took the side passage. The way Keel saw it, they could always double back and find Garret later. Besides, ever since the code slicer had mentioned replicants, Keel had felt disinclined to fully trust him. If androids were involved, Keel could only trust the people he had come in with. There was no way of truly knowing whether the Garret he had spoken to was an android setting a trap for them.

  His stomach dropped as he realized the same applied to Leenah and Prisma. He could rescue them, only to discover that the real Leenah and Prisma were already dead and dumped into the ship’s incinerators.

  He would have to trust that that wasn’t the case.

  It occurred to him that he hadn’t heard from Ravi in a while. He hailed him on the comm but received no reply. Keel noiselessly informed the others, through legionnaire hand signals, that he’d lost communication with Indelibile VI.

  As the three men continued to follow the bloodstained tributary from the main access corridor, the side passage widened enough to allow Exo and Bombassa to walk side by side, Keel still in the lead.

  And then they found the source of the blood: the corpse of a moktaar. The monkey-like humanoid looked as though he’d been systematically butchered. Cuts of flesh were carved from his legs, and some of the strips continued all the way up to his abdomen.

  Bombassa leaned down to inspect the corpse. “He was butchered after his death. And it does not appear he died from a blaster wound.” The big shock trooper pointed at two massive puncture marks at the top of the unfortunate creature’s head. “This is a predator’s bite. Perhaps the machines take on evolutionary features of galactic carnivores for close-quarters battle.”

  Keel stared down at the butchered body. “Doesn’t explain why he was cut up into steaks.”

  “He part of your crew?” Exo asked.

  “No,” Keel said, shaking his head. “Never saw him before. Must’ve come in with Nether Ops.”

  Bombassa pointed farther down the corridor. “Do we keep going?”

  “I’m torn,” said Keel. “Garret might have some answers… but I don’t like the idea of leaving whatever killed that moktaar unaccounted for.”

  “I think we should turn back and meet up with this other legionnaire and your code slicer.”

  Keel didn’t have a better idea. “I guess this guy’s not going anywhere.”

  They went back the way they came and resumed the course on the map Garret had provided them. After a time, Keel’s visor identified a heat signature ahead, glowing from around a corner in the darkness. That could be Garret, or it could be someone else. If it was the legionnaire, there was a chance that he’d start shooting.

  Examining the map on his HUD, Keel identified a nearby side passage that appeared to loop back to this main corridor farther ahead. Using hand signals, he indicated the plan to Exo and Bombassa. He would take the side corridor, while they would move on ahead. They’d converge on the unknown party from opposite sides.

  The side tunnel was narrow and round like the inside of a tube, and Keel had to duck to keep from bumping his head, but it followed the path he’d expected, looping around back to the main access corridor. As he emerged from the tube, his bucket’s audio receptors picked up voices in mid conversation.

  “I don’t care who you say you are.” The voice speaking was unfamiliar. “Take any more steps in this direction and I’ll dust you.”

  “We come to rescue you and that’s how you react,” Exo shouted back. He was getting hot. “Nah, bro. That don’t work.”

  Bombassa offered a calmer answer. “This is hardly the way I expect a rescue party to be treated.”

  Keel peeked around a bend in the corridor and saw Garret, pressing himself into some sort of tech station alcove, attempting to make himself as small as possible. Just beyond Garret was the man who must be the legionnaire. He was seated, his bucket off and his armor partially missing. In his hand was a service blaster pointed at the bend in the passage beyond which Exo and Bombassa apparently stood. The guy was built like a hover tank and looked every bit a hardcore leej.

  “I’m in position,” Keel whispered into his secure comm. “You guys stay hidden behind that corner. Distract him, ask him his name.”

  “What’s your name?” Bombassa called out.

  The legionnaire steadied his grip. “Irrelevant. Now this is how we’re gonna do this.” He used the age-old total command diction every leej was taught in training. “You two are going to put your weapons down and slide them into the open where I can see them. Then you stick your hands out, and when I give the word, you’re gonna come out nice and slow. You do that, and I know you’re friendly and we can talk. You try anything else, you’re dead. How’s that sound?”

  Keel crept down the corridor while the legionnaire spoke, approaching him from behind. He passed Garret in a flash, and pressed the muzzle of his blaster rifle into the legionnaire’s head before the code slicer could even let out a surp
rised gasp.

  A whine sounded from Keel’s blaster rifle, indicating that the weapon was primed for a max discharge. “How about you drop your weapon? Or should I just go ahead and take your head off? Either way, this little game of back-and-forth ends.” The voice of Wraith transmitted through Keel’s bucket was clear, cold, and terrifying. “How does that sound?”

  The legionnaire slowly put down his pistol and raised his hands.

  07

  Bombassa and Exo cautiously aimed their weapons at their new prisoner.

  “So what?” the legionnaire asked, looking at the approaching shock troopers. “You all with that Black Fleet? Gotta admit, I was hoping you really were leejes.” He let out a resigned sigh. “Will you at least make it quick?”

  “We don’t have to make it anything at all,” Keel said as Exo came near and took away the man’s blaster. “Just had to make sure you weren’t a liability before we brought you along with Garret.”

  The legionnaire looked up at the skinny code slicer. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew these guys? At least let me know they were coming?”

  “Captain Keel told me not to.”

  The legionnaire trying to look back at Keel in his peripheral vision. “I take it you’re Captain Keel? Name’s Hutch.”

  Garret stepped out of his alcove and began a data dump of information. “When everything went crazy and the Cybar—that’s what the Titans call themselves—started shooting, Hutch helped me.” Garret pointed at the legionnaire as if there might be some doubt about whom he was speaking about. “I mean, he covered for me, shooting the sentries and crawlers while I was getting everything squared away inside the system. The crawlers—think robotic spiders—and all the other machines work for the ship’s AI mainframe, something called CRONUS, which is the ship’s AI but way beyond what you’d expect. Anyway, Hutch kept them at bay until I could keep the bots off of us for good. See, CRONUS doesn’t have total control of the tech—the fail-safes the House of Reason built in, like the bio-validations, are unreal. And with Prisma on board—she has the genetic passkey, which overrides what CRONUS can do. But see, and this is really interesting, if there’s a certain alarm that occurs high enough in the threat hierarchy, like a prisoner escape or an attack by another capital ship, CRONUS gets more control. So I can get around what he wants right now, but if you let Leenah and Prisma out, it probably changes and I’ll have to work to override, using Prisma as my passkey authorization to code real-time around whatever CRONUS attempts.”

  A silence fell over the group.

  “You done?” Keel asked. “Not just coming back up for more air?”

  Garret rubbed his arm nervously. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  Keel eyed the partially assembled frame of a badly damaged war bot off to one side. “Is that Prisma’s?”

  “Yeah. I was trying to put it back together. It’s actually quite an interesting—” Garret glanced up at Keel and cut himself off. “I could fill you in on what I learned about Nether Ops’s role in all this…?”

  “Yes, let’s cut to that,” Keel said. He pointed an accusing finger at Hutch. “You’re not Legion, because the Legion weren’t the ones who took my crew.”

  It wasn’t a question, but it was clearly an interrogation. Keel wanted to get to the bottom of what he already suspected. He wanted to hear whether this Hutch would give up his charade of being just another legionnaire and play it straight. If he didn’t… well, then Keel had little use for him.

  Hutch rolled his neck. “There’s some right and some wrong to what you’re saying.” He risked getting shot by slightly shifting his body to get a look at Keel. His eyes went wide in surprise, and then he quickly compressed them into uninterested squints and faced forward again. But he’d given his tell. He’d recognized Wraith. “I am Legion in an official capacity. I’m in the system, on the books. I just do jobs for the Carnivale.”

  “The Carnivale?” Bombassa said. “And what is that exactly? Because it cannot be what it sounds like.”

  “It’s one of the branches of Nether Ops,” Garret said. “Sort of the laughingstock of the community. If you follow the dark channels or can decrypt the agent-to-agent instant messaging used on the Republic’s government net, all the operators go on about how worthless…”

  Garret trailed off, withering under the heat of Hutch’s harsh gaze.

  “It’s like I said,” Hutch continued. “I’m on the books as Legion. But I’m always in transition, assigned to units that don’t quite exist. Nether Ops uses me and my team whenever they need a Legion-like team to handle a mission. This was one of those missions.”

  “Andien Broxin was with you,” Keel said.

  Hutch shrugged. “Sure. She was some hotshot operator that got transferred to the Carnivale.”

  “They call that the ‘kiss of death’ in the ops community,” piped in Garret.

  Hutch’s furrowed brow silenced the code slicer. “So anyway, she’s playing all naïve—probably didn’t trust my team—and we get sent to grab the little girl. Maydoon. Something about her being the way to control the fleet, like Beanpole said.“

  Hutch looked at the ground and picked his callused fingers. “Things went bad. Really bad, really fast. The worst I’ve ever seen—and I’ve seen lots. My guys are good. Dark Ops good—better, actually. The Titans chewed through us like nothin’. Literally ripped some of us apart and made me watch through my bucket, before it was destroyed.” He looked at Garret, and there was genuine gratitude in his eyes. “Little buddy here kept me from gettin’ dead. Or worse.”

  Bombassa started a conversation over their secure comms. “We cannot trust him. I have little tolerance for those who work with no accountability, whether points or these deep state special operators. In my experience, it all ends up the same. They amass the debt, and leave others to pay the bill. He will turn on us.”

  “Probably true,” Exo said. “But if things get as nasty as they’re warning us they might, another gun in the fight might be useful.”

  “I agree,” said Keel. “We can keep him ener-chained unless things get bad. We can probably trust him to at least fight on our side until we reach the ship. And if he doesn’t play nice, we leave him on the ship for the bots to find.”

  “You guys decide whether to kill me or not?” Hutch asked, no doubt fully aware that the men were speaking secretly through comms.

  “They won’t kill you, Hutch,” Garret assured him. The code slicer looked from Exo to Bombassa, then to Keel. “Captain, you won’t kill him, right?”

  “No,” Keel said, slinging his blaster rifle over his shoulder and retrieving a pair of ener-chains. “But we’re also not taking any chances with Nether Ops.”

  Hutch let his hands be bound in front of him without resisting, merely watching as Keel attached the binders in the crisscross pattern that prevented all but the most dexterous from slipping free. “Fine by me,” he said. “No shame in being taken in by Wraith.”

  In the spectral tones of his bucket, the sound of Wraith, Keel said, “If anything happened to my crew because of you, you might change your tune before we’re done.”

  “Um, should we wait for Skrizz?” Garret asked. “He kind of comes and goes, but he’s definitely still alive. I saw him maybe six hours ago. He’s actually been bringing us food. Mainly raw meat that he says he found in some kind of refrigeration unit. It’s always at room temperature by the time he brings it to us.”

  Exo laughed over the private comm. “Dude,” he said. “They’re eating the monkey man!”

  Keel made a face inside his bucket.

  Exo switched from comm to external audio to ask Garret, “So do you cook the meat? Or do you eat it raw? Because that’s pretty badass.”

  Exo laughed over the comm again as Garret’s face brightened up. Keel could tell that the code slicer was eager to explain. The kid seemed to have an irrepressible desire to let people know how he’d figured out the solution to a problem. Probably the result of some sort of search for approval. Mayb
e Mom and Dad hadn’t taken as good care of Garret as they might have. Maybe all that time as an outsider had left him wanting to show that he belonged.

  Whatever it was, something about the kid made Keel feel protective. He interrupted Exo’s mock moktaar noises. “Cut him some slack,” he said over private comm.

  “Oh, it wasn’t hard,” Garret explained, oblivious to the laugh Exo was having at his expense. He pulled open a workstation pane, exposing a complicated web of wiring. “So if you expose one of these black wires—you have to pull it out of the flex-conduit first—you’ll get a raw electrical current. Only it packs a punch. So I siphoned off the flow to other functions to get just the right amount of juice flowing to cook the steaks without burning them. They turned out pretty nice.”

  “Good job, kid,” Keel said. The way Garret beamed at the compliment made Keel feel suddenly old. “Now when can we expect Skrizz? I don’t want to leave the wobanki behind, but I will.”

  Garret closed the panel back up. “Well, uh, it’s like I said earlier. He comes and goes. Does a lot of exploring. I kind of think he’s trying to figure out a way to get Prisma out of her cell.”

  “It would seem we are about to beat him to it,” said Bombassa. “Can you give us a rundown of what hostile bots are on this ship?”

  “How much time ya got?” Hutch said, his face hard. “I’ve gone up against war bots in the past.” He nodded at Keel. “You know the type, don’tcha, Wraith?”

  Keel remained silent.

  “Sure you do. Some pirate or backwater warlord who thinks he’s a planetary king, maybe a drug dealer or Senate-appointed leej who starts believing in his own PR… they start hiring their own private militia. And then they get paranoid, thinking all those hired guns can just as easily be turned on them. So they spend the big money in the dark places, and they get the bots that no one’s supposed to have anymore. The big ones designed to wade through entire companies of Savage marines back in the day.”