“He says you’ll find out when you get there.”
“Ask him what kind of shipment.”
“Sir, I’m fairly certain he understands English.”
“Ask him anyway.”
“Yamma Bergoon gumbya bo yaga?” I said.
Bergoon threw his head back and laughed. “Gyah yamma gwam? Yom gubam yamma slumbuguya!”
“He says ‘what difference does it make? If you don’t do it, you will be—’”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Rex. “I get the idea.”
CHAPTER THREE
We were ordered to wait outside in the courtyard for the pilot. While we did, I considered making a run for it. I didn’t have any outstanding debts to Bergoon the Grebatt and I was becoming more convinced all the time that hanging out with Rex Nihilo was a death sentence. My programming prevents me from disobeying a direct order from my owner, but there was some wiggle room when my own safety was threatened. Besides, Rex hadn’t actually ordered me to stay with him, so there was nothing to stop me from fleeing. Other than the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere with no transportation and nowhere to go, that is. Gobarrah was a rough, primitive planet by Malarchian standards; dune thugs roved the wilderness and I wouldn’t last long as an unaccompanied robot in a population center. As much as I hated to admit it, I was safer sticking with Rex.
After a few minutes, Bergoon’s pilot—the scruffy man in the leather jacket—exited the building and approached us, an idiotic grin on his face. “Hey, there,” he said, holding out his hand to Rex. “I’m Rubio Montrose. I guess you’re my new crew. You cats up for an adventure?”
I said nothing. Rex stared coldly at the man.
“It’s cool,” Rubio laughed. “This is going to be a total milk run. When we’re done, I’ll drop you off anywhere you want. Maybe find a bar and get a few drinks if you guys are up to it. My treat. Sound copacetic?”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“In due time, my synthetic sister. In due time. Here’s the deal. Bergoon’s got a ship at the spaceport called the Modus Tollens. I don’t need you for anything until we land, so you guys can just chill on board while I do my pilot thing. Take a nap, have a drink, play some holographic space monster chess, whatever gets you to escape velocity, dig?”
Rex frowned. “So we land on this unspecified planet, we help you unload this unspecified cargo… and then what?”
“Then we head to the Ragulian sector, my man! Or wherever sounds good to you. Seriously, this run is going to be cake. Can’t believe I’m getting paid for this shiz. And you, friend,”—he slapped Rex on the shoulder, “—will be back in the good graces of our favorite amphibious Mafioso. Simple as falling into a gravity well. Follow me.” Rubio began walking toward a convertible hovercar about thirty meters away.
Rex and I traded glances. He shrugged and went after Rubio. I followed.
As we walked, Rex turned to me and asked quietly, “Did you say you could fly a spaceship, Sarah?” Rex asked after a moment.
“Sasha, sir. Yes, sir.” I decided this was not a good time to tell Rex that although I was capable of flying a spaceship, I was legally barred from doing so because of my propensity for shutting down at inopportune moments.
“You might need to.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t tell me you buy any of that stuff about us going out for drinks after this job is over.”
“Well… I suppose not, sir.”
“Me neither. Follow my lead, Sandy. I don’t want to get stranded on some godforsaken planet.”
“Besides this one, you mean?”
Rex shrugged. “Can’t be any worse.”
*****
It was much, much worse.
Rex’s plan had been to overpower Rubio Montrose and hijack the Modus Tollens, sell it along with whatever precious cargo it was carrying, buy another ship and get far away from Bergoon the Grebatt.
Unfortunately, we never had a chance. Two of Bergoon’s rifle-toting Woogit thugs greeted us as we boarded the ship.
“Sorry, dude and digital dudette,” said Rubio, holding up his hands. “Bergoon’s orders. Can’t risk a mutiny. Catch you on the flip side.”
The Woogits forced us into the cargo hold, which was empty except for a pallet stacked two meters high with shrink-wrapped plastic crates. Over the shrink-wrap were four thick nylon straps, one on each side, running vertically up the stack. The Woogits left, locking the cargo hold door behind them.
“I knew that twerp was going to shaft us,” Rex said. “Holographic space monster chess, my ass.” He approached the stack of crates. “Help me get this wrapping off, Sabrina.” He scratched vainly at the plastic.
“Why, sir?”
“Because there might be something in here we can use to escape, bolt-brain.”
That seemed unlikely to me, but it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. We tore a hole in the shrink wrap and ripped one of the crates open. Inside were dozens of small metal cans with generic-looking paper labels on them. Rex grabbed one of them and studied it.
“Creamed corn,” he said.
“Probably a fake label,” I said, taking the can from Rex. I used my can opener extension to remove the top, and then handed it back to him. Rex peered inside.
“Creamed corn,” he said, grimacing at the scent. He poured the contents onto the floor and we regarded the yellowish slop for a moment. It appeared to be nothing but creamed corn.
“Maybe the cans of creamed corn are hiding something else,” I offered.
Rex pulled a few more cans out, tossing them on the floor.
“Creamed corn, creamed corn, creamed corn.”
“Is it possible the creamed corn is the contraband?” I asked.
“On what kind of planet would creamed corn be illegal?”
I didn’t have an answer to that one.
The ship’s engines roared and we were thrown to the floor as the Modus Tollens lifted off. For some time we were pinned to the floor by the acceleration. Then there was a moment of weightlessness followed by the telltale spatial distortion effect caused by a hypergeometric jump. There was no telling where in the galaxy we were. We might have jumped ten light-years or ten thousand. The artificial gravity turned on and we floated back to the floor.
“What other tools have you got?” Rex asked, getting to his feet. “Anything you can use as a weapon?”
“I can’t even use a weapon as a weapon, sir. Much less a can opener.”
“Useless,” Rex grumbled. He picked up one of the cans, feeling its weight in his hand. “Well, this won’t be the first time I’ve fought my way out of a cargo hold using only creamed corn and my wits.”
Somehow I didn’t find this hard to believe.
The ship began to shudder as we entered an atmosphere. We were going to land. Soon I’d find out just what I’d gotten myself into.
“Okay,” said Rex. “Since you’re effectively useless in every way imaginable, your job is going to be to make a diversion when the Woogits open the cargo hold.”
“A diversion, sir?”
“You know, wave your arms. Beep and whistle.”
I waved my arms and gave a tentative whistle.
“You know, I’m actually starting to regret blowing up your weird little friend. I bet that guy could make a hell of a diversion.”
“Sadly, sir, you’re stuck with me.”
“Don’t remind me. All right, when we land, they’re going to…” Rex suddenly stopped, staring at the stack of boxes.
“Sir?” I said.
“Sasha, can you climb on top of those crates?”
“I think so, sir. Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Yes, sir.” I wedged my left foot into the shrink wrapping and put my fingertips on top of the boxes. I pulled myself up into a sitting position on top of the crates. “Now what, sir?”
“What’s that thing on top of the stack?” Rex asked.
“This, sir?” I patted an object secured to th
e stack with the four heavy straps. It was a squat cylinder made of hard black plastic, about the size of a car tire. It had a lid, but I was unable to pry it off. Lurking at the back of my mind was an idea about what the thing was for, but I didn’t dare access it for fear of shutting down and further cementing my status as worthless.
“Can you get it open?”
“No, sir,” I replied, inspecting the featureless lid. “It seems to be latched somehow.”
“Is there a lock? Some kind of handle?”
“No, sir. It would seem that it would have to be opened remotely, or automatically, either by a timer or some external event.”
“External event? Like what?”
“There’s no way to know, sir. Perhaps a change in temperature or air pressure, or proximity to—”
“Hold on, Samantha.”
“Sir?”
“Hold on!” Rex dived forward, shoving his fingers under one of the straps. As he did, the floor disappeared from beneath us. I managed to flatten myself against the cylindrical object, gripping tightly to its sides.
We fell.
Cold wind whistled past. Overhead, I saw a glint of light off the Modus Tollens as it receded into the ionosphere. Another ship zipped after it, firing its lazeguns. Then it too disappeared. Wherever we were, we were on our own.
And we were going to die as soon as the pallet struck the ground. Unless…
A parachute! That’s what the spare tire thing was.
I slid to the side just as the lid blasted off and the massive parachute unfurled. The chute caught the air and I was slammed against the top of the crates. Minutes passed, and I began to wonder—logic to the contrary—whether there was any ground beneath us. Then suddenly we were enveloped in a thick fog. Less than a minute later, our descent abruptly stopped. We landed unevenly and I rolled off the crates into cold, slimy muck. The parachute fell draped limply over one side of the crates. Groaning, I got to my feet and went around the stack to find Rex sitting in the sand, leaning flaccidly against the crates, his hand still stuck under the strap.
I pulled his hand out and propped him up in what seemed like a relatively comfortable sitting position. A green-tinged fog surrounded us. The muck disappeared into the fog in all directions.
“Sir,” I said, shaking Rex gently. “Sir, are you okay?”
“Mmmbfth,” Rex said, his eyes fluttering open. “Oh, Samantha! I had a terrible dream. We were stranded in the middle of a vast swamp with nothing but—” As he spoke, several dozen cans of creamed corn cascaded onto the ground, splashing him with mud. Rex closed his eyes and let out a groan.
“It’s all right, sir,” I said, climbing on top of the crates. “There must be a settlement or…” I peered into the fog, but could see nothing but muck. Occasionally a breeze would pick up, momentarily clearing the fog in one direction, but the muck seemed to continue to the horizon in all directions.
Rex shook his head wearily. “Bergoon never had any intention of getting us back off this planet.”
“But this doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Why expend the effort to get us here in the first place if he was just going to have Rubio dump the—” As I spoke, I became aware of a barely audible beeping sound coming from somewhere nearby. It seemed to be coming from the top of the stack of crates. I climbed back on top of the stack, which was now half-covered by the parachute. I found a latch for the parachute and pulled it. The rest of the parachute slid off the stack into the muck. Inside the now empty parachute compartment was a small rectangular device with a display screen on top of it. In time with the beeping, a red arrow blinked on the screen, pointing to my right.
“Sir,” I said, “I think I may have found something.”
“If it’s not a vodka martini, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“It seems to be a tracking device. Perhaps Bergoon set it to point where we’re supposed to take the shipment.”
“What if it is?” Rex snapped. “How are we supposed to get this stuff there?”
“We could just try taking the tracker and going in the direction it’s pointing.” I tried to pick the device up, but it seemed to be affixed in place. I could probably get the parachute compartment off if cut the straps holding it in place, but I got the feeling it wasn’t meant to be removed.
“I know how people like Bergoon think,” said Rex. “If we show up without the shipment, we’re as good as dead.”
“And if we show up with the shipment?”
Rex shrugged. “Fifty-fifty. But it’s a moot point. We can’t move the damn thing. I’m starting to think this all an elaborate joke.”
“Sending us to a strange planet with a shipment of creamed corn is a joke?” I asked. “I don’t think I get it.” I climbed down from the crates.
“Going to get cold when the sun goes down,” Rex said, staring at a vague greenish glow on the horizon. “Sorry, Starla. I think this is the end of the line for us. It’s nothing but creamed corn and hypothermia from here on out.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, cocking my head to look at the pallet. “Sir, what are those words on the side of the pallet?”
“Eh?” Rex asked, glancing behind him. The lettering was half-buried in the muck. “What difference does it make? It says ‘Shur-Lift Anti-Grav Pallet Company.’ Are you happy now? Is that the magical solution to our… hey, this is an anti-grav pallet!” He got onto his knees and scrambled around the pallet until he found a small control panel. He opened the panel cover and pressed a button. The pallet lifted out of the muck with an oddly satisfying sucking sound and hovered at a height of about five centimeters. Rex gave the stack of crates a shove and the pallet moved slightly.
“Ugh,” he said. “Still going to be a pain in the ass to move. And Bergoon’s contact is still probably going to kill us when we show up with a pallet of creamed corn. This is either a practical joke or Bergoon lost a bet.”
“At least we have a chance, though,” I said. “Come on, sir. I’ll help you push.”
We spent the next four hours pushing the stack of crates across the swamp. Rex was a bit stronger than I, but the exertion forced him to stop frequently to rest. I was concerned that Rex was going to get dehydrated, but he resisted my attempts to get him to attempt the obvious solution. Rex insisted some things were worse than death and that sucking the sweet, syrupy liquid out of a can of warm creamed corn was one of them.
Every twenty minutes or so I would climb on top of the stack of crates to make sure we were still heading the right direction. There was no way to know how close we were to Bergoon’s contact, or even if that’s where the tracking device was directing us. All we knew was that it was the best chance we had. The sun sank below the horizon and soon Rex was shivering despite the exertion. The cold wasn’t a problem for me, but Rex might have to keep pushing all night just to stave off hypothermia.
“If I ever get off this planet,” Rex gasped, “I’m going to strangle that Grebatt with my bare hands.”
At this point in our relationship I had not yet come to the realization that Rex Nihilo has absolutely no capacity for self-reflection, so I made the mistake of trying to get him to accept some responsibility for his predicament. “Sir,” I said, “how did you come to owe so much money to Bergoon in the first place?”
“I needed the money for a… business deal I was working on,” Rex said.
“I see. And the deal went bad somehow?”
“Went bad? Space, no. I made out…” He gasped for breath. “…like a bandit. You’re looking at the guy who sold… 400 MASHERs to Ubiqorp.”
The words meant nothing to me. “You did what to whom?”
Rex stopped pushing and stood with his arm resting against the crates. “Good grief, don’t you know anything?” He gasped. “MASHERs. Mostly Autonomous… Societal Harmony Enhancement Robots. I sold… 400 of them to Ubiqorp. You know, the space colonization company.”
“Oh,” I said. Now that he spelled it out, I did remember something about a line of security enfor
cement drones that had been rolled out by RoboDyne. Originally designed to replace human security guards, the MASHERs had the same problem as I did: they were too smart for their own good. There was no way the Malarchy was going to allow the existence of a privately-owned army of sentient security drones. RoboDyne had tried to reprogram the MASHERs to meet the requirements of GASP, but the last I knew, they hadn’t had any more success than my manufacturer had. They’d ended up installing thought arrestors similar to the one that caused my uncontrollable shutdowns. But as security drones that rebooted unpredictably turned out to be worse than useless, the project was scrapped.
“I thought all the RoboDyne bots had been melted to slag,” I said.
“Nope,” Rex replied. “I bribed the… RoboDyne engineer tasked with getting rid of them. Managed to save 400 units and sold them all to Ubiqorp.”
“Why would anyone buy security robots that might shut down in the middle of an emergency?”
“That’s the… genius part. I also bribed the engineer to… build me a device that could deactivate a thought arrestor.”
“Impossible,” I said. “Deactivating a GASP-approved thought arrestor overloads the main processor bus. It would fry the CPU.”
“True,” said Rex. “Which is why I also had the engineer build me a… knockoff thought arrestor that duplicated the functionality of the ThoughtStopper3000.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
Rex sighed in a theatrical display of impatience at my obtuseness. “I had the engineer provide me with a demo MASHER unit. Made him replace the standard GASP-approved ThoughtStopper3000 with a proprietary model that responded to a voice commands. I set up a… demonstration for the Ubiqorp executives, showing them that I could deactivate the thought arrestor with a code phrase.”
I was beginning to understand. “So the Ubiqorp executives, thinking you had figured out a way to shut down the GASP-approved thought arrestor, bought the 400 units, assuming that they would pass a GASP inspection.”
“And they would, too. My demo unit was the only one with the proprietary thought arrestor. Of course, the code phrase did nothing for the other 400 units. So they ended up with one unit that was fully sentient but technically illegal and… 400 units that would shut down at random. But hey, serves those corporate muckety-mucks right for trying to break the law, right?”
Out of the Soylent Planet (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) (Starship Grifters Book 0) Page 3