Out of the Soylent Planet (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) (Starship Grifters Book 0)

by Robert Kroese

  “Robots!” exclaimed Rex, throwing his hands in the air. “Completely helpless. Tell you what, you gentlemen wait here while I help Sasha find the champagne.”

  Rex grabbed my arm and began walking briskly toward the ship.

  “Sir,” I said. “I’m not sure I –”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” Rex snapped. “In about five seconds we’re going to make a run for it.”

  “Sir?” I asked.

  Behind me I heard Salmon Beret’s voice. “Hey, this container is empty!”

  “RUN!” Rex shouted.

  We ran.

  Lazegun blasts erupted around us as we flung ourselves into the cockpit of Serendipity.

  “Get us out of here!” Rex yelled.

  I skipped the preflight checklist and engaged the thrusters. Serendipity lifted off the ground and shot into the sky. Down below, the two men screamed profanities at us and continued to fire their lazepistols at the ship. That’s coming out of our deposit, I thought.

  “Those bastards took our guns!” Rex shouted.

  “Which bastards?” sir. “Salmon Brigade?”

  “No, you useless bag of lug nuts, the Trentinoans. Trentonians. Those jerks on Trentino. They must have unloaded our guns while we were distracted with the separatists. Scumbags! People like that give the black-market gun trade a bad name.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That makes sense.” That was actually pretty smart of them, I thought. I refrained from reminding Rex that we had stolen the guns from Gavin Larviton.

  We were nearing the outer edge of the atmosphere. “Where to this time, sir?” I had high hopes Rex had gotten fed up with Chicolini and would be ready to try his luck on some other backwater planet.

  “Just put her in orbit for a while,” said Rex. “After those Salmon Brigade thugs leave, I want to pick up our money.”

  “Sir?” I asked. “It’s not our money anymore. You agree to give it to Salmon Brigade.”

  “That’s when I thought we were also giving them the guns. The deal’s off now, thanks to those shifty Trentinonians.”

  I wasn’t sure how sound his logic was, but I didn’t argue.

  We spent the next several hours orbiting Chicolini. Rex got rip-roaring drunk, which is what he does whenever he has nothing scheduled for any block of time exceeding twenty minutes. Once he was on the verge of sobering up, we returned to the spaceport to pick up the container of Chicolinian hexapenny notes. The Salmon Brigade guys had left, so it looked like we were in the clear. We hadn’t yet told them which container the money was in, so hopefully it was still there.

  We were nearly to the container when two men turned a corner and stopped right in front of us, blocking our path. They resembled the Salmon Beret guys in neck thickness and overall demeanor, but they wore pinstriped suits and fedoras instead of fatigues: the unmistakable uniform of the Ursa Minor Mafia.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said Rex with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

  “We heard somebody’s been movin’ guns through this spaceport,” said one of the goons. “You don’t know nuthin’ about that, do you?”

  “Space, no!” exclaimed Rex. “Sasha and I are pacifists. I’ve never even touched a gun. We’re in the costume jewelry business. You guys need any cufflinks?”

  “We don’t need no cufflinks,” growled the other man.

  “Alright, then,” said Rex. “Well, we’ll keep an eye out for anybody trying to sell guns.”

  “Yeah, you do that,” said the first man, eying Rex suspiciously. After a moment, the two of them moved on.

  “Sir,” I whispered. “You neglected to mention to me that the Ursa Minor Mafia runs this port. They don’t take kindly to gun runners horning in on their territory.”

  “Relax, Sasha,” said Rex. “There’s no way they can connect us to the guns.”

  I wished I could be so sure. One more reason to get far away from Chicolini.

  We found the container and verified that it was still full of cash. Rex had one of the crane operators drop the container into Serendipity while I prepared for takeoff. Once our cargo was securely stowed, Rex joined me in the cockpit. Finally, we were going to get off this accursed planet.

  “Where to now, sir?”

  “Trentino,” said Rex.

  I spent the next five minutes banging my head against the control panel of the ship.

  “Sasha!” Rex finally yelled. “What in Space is wrong with you?”

  “Why, sir?” I pleaded. “Why are we going back to Trentino? We have the money. Let’s just get off this planet. PLEASE.”

  “Not a chance,” said Rex. “We’re going to trade the Trentinonians our pile of cash for a load of zontonium. They still don’t have any idea they’re sitting on a fortune in starship fuel. That stuff is worth, what, ten times its weight in Chicolinian hexapenny notes?”

  “More like a thousand by now, sir,” I said.

  Rex cackled with glee. “And to think, you wanted to just take the money and leave. Get this bucket of bolts to Trentino, Sasha.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  We flew back to Trentino. When we landed, we were surprised to find another small craft parked near the defunct EZ Mart. It bore a salmon-colored logo featuring the letters SB.

  “Uh-oh,” said Rex. The Salmon Brigade had beat us to Trentino.

  We hurried to Trentino City only to find Svetlana, Glenn and Cheekbones siting together at a table in the village square with Moustache and Salmon Beret. Every single one of them was carrying a lazepistol. Svetlana waved when she saw us.

  “Well, if it isn’t our intrepid pair of weapons merchants,” said Svetlana with a smile.

  “Yeah,” said Rex humorlessly. “I see you’ve made some new friends. Look, we’ve got a shipload of money to unload. It’s all yours if you let us fill up our ship with those worthless creek rocks.” Rex’s sales pitch was really slipping. I think he was as sick of this planet as I was.

  “Funny thing about those worthless rocks,” said Svetlana. “Evan and Kip were just telling us what zontonium ore looks like. They happen to have some contacts with the Andromeda Mining Company.”

  “Seriously?” said Rex. “Evan and Kip? Those are the worst paramilitary thug names I’ve ever heard. What are you guys even doing here? I thought you were trying to overthrow the Chicolini government.”

  “We’re having second thoughts about that,” said Moustache, whose real name was apparently either Evan or Kip. “We came here planning to take over Trentino and use it as a base of operations for our assault on Chicolini City, but this island has a lot of potential. The whole Chicolini government is going to collapse when the hexapenny bottoms out. Who wants to be in charge of cleaning up a mess like that? We’ve decided to move the whole organization to Trentino and start from scratch.”

  “We had our doubts at first,” said Svetlana. “But Evan and Kip were so nice, explaining the whole mix-up about the guns, and telling us about the zontonium ore. So you’ll understand that we’re going to have to turn down your generous offer. We’ve worked out a deal with Donny to help them get their settlement going in exchange for letting the mining company –”

  “Stop!” cried Rex. “Donny? Cheekbones’ name is Donny? I’m done here. Sasha, let’s get off this planet before I meet somebody named Lance and have to choke him to death with his own socks.”

  Rex turned and began stomping his way back to the spaceport. I hurried along beside him.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I know how you hate it when people work out their differences peacefully.”

  “Especially people with names like Kip and Donny,” grumbled Rex. “This whole planet is full of sissy-named weenies. Svetlana is the only real man of the lot.”

  As we approached the spaceport, another ship descended from the clouds, landing between us and Serendipity. Two men in pinstriped suits and fedoras got out and began walking toward us.

  “Oh geez,” said Rex. “It’s Tad and Kevin.”

  “Tad and Kevin?”
I asked, confused.

  “I’m extrapolating,” said Rex. “Follow my lead.”

  “Hey,” said the man on the left as they approached. “Didn’t we just –”

  “Thank Space you’re here!” exclaimed Rex. “We found your gun runners! This whole village is armed to the teeth. My robot and I came here to try to sell some jewelry to the locals, and we were appalled to find that the place is overrun with gun-toting hoodlums. I think those Salmon Brigade fellows are importing guns from offworld and storing them on this island until they can ship them to Chicolini City.”

  “We’ll see about that,” growled the man on the right. The two brushed past us toward Trentino City.

  “Sir, how long do you think that ruse is going to –”

  “I give it about thirty seconds,” said Rex. “Get us off this island before Tad and Kevin smelt us.”

  We hurried to the ship and climbed into the cockpit. I was about to start the preflight checklist when I noticed the two Ursa Minor goons had stopped walking toward Trentino City. One of them was gesturing our way. They had their hands on their lazepistols.

  “Just get us out of here, Sasha! Forget the damn checklist!”

  I skipped to the end of the checklist and hit the thrusters. We shot into the air as Tad and Kevin blasted the underside of the ship with their Lazepistols.

  “Alright,” said Rex. “Let’s get off this namby-pamby peace-loving planet. I don’t know what I was thinking trying to sell guns to these boneheads. But hey, at least we still have a shipload of money.”

  A shipload doesn’t buy what it used to, I thought, as a red warning light flashed on the control panel. It was the pressure sensor. We were losing air.

  “Sir,” I said. “We have a problem. There seems to be a leak in the hull. We’re going to have to land.”

  “Land?” cried Rex. “No, we can’t land. We need to get the hell off this planet.”

  Sure, now he wants to get off the planet.

  “Do you think you can hold your breath for the next twenty light-years?” I asked.

  Rex sighed. “OK, put us down somewhere we can repair the hull.”

  “It’ll have to be a spaceport. I can’t repair a hull breach in the field.”

  “Fine! Whatever!” snarled Rex.

  I set a course for Chicolini Spaceport. We could only hope that every group of people we had angered on Chicolini was now on the island of Trentino.

  We weren’t quite that lucky. The whole spaceport was crawling with cops. We didn’t know if they were looking for gun runners, mobsters, or Salmon Brigade partisans, but we didn’t particularly want to find out. Getting Serendipity repaired was going to be impossible under the circumstances. Our best bet was to stow away on another ship. In this endeavor, fortune was kinder: a luxury cruise ship called Agave Nectar had stopped at the Chicolini spaceport for some minor maintenance before continuing its voyage. Spaceport security was so busy assisting the local police in whatever it was they were doing that nobody seemed to be watching the Agave Nectar very closely. All we had to do was walk up the ramp and find a place to hide out until the ship disembarked.

  This plan was complicated by Rex’s unwillingness to leave behind the container full of Chicolinian hexapennies.

  “It’s a box full of money!” Rex exclaimed, as we sat crouched behind a pile of baggage, watching travelers well-heeled travelers walk up the ramp to the Agave Nectar.

  “Chicolinian money is worth even less than it was when we got to this planet yesterday, sir,” I said. “It’s certainly not worth risking our lives over.”

  “The box of money that I leave behind is the box of money you can bury me in,” announced Rex.

  While I wasted precious seconds trying to parse this statement, Rex found half a dozen large steamer trunks and begun dumping their contents onto the ground. “Come on, Sasha,” he said, dragging two of the trunks toward our container. “Help me fill these with money.”

  I sighed and went after him, taking two more of the trunks. Taking care to dodge the police, we made our way back to the container and filled the trunks with stacks of bills. When they were full, we dragged them back to the Agave Nectar and then returned to the container with the remaining two trunks.

  “Not all the way,” said Rex. “We’re going to hide inside the trunks. It’ll make it easier to get on the ship, and we won’t have to worry about getting separated from our money.”

  “Except for the 700 quintillion we’re leaving behind,” I reminded him.

  “We’ll have to come back for it,” said Rex. “This will get us by for now.”

  I wondered how long Rex thought a hundred quintillion Chicolinian hexapennies would last us. I still hadn’t had a chance to check the current exchange rates, but I knew there was no way it was going to cover the repairs on Serendipity, much less the rental fees. Hopefully we had enough to buy us a few meals on the Agave Nectar – assuming we didn’t get found out and tossed into the vacuum. “Spacing” freeloaders was technically against interstellar law, but some cruise lines had found a way around this law by killing stowaways with food poisoning before ejecting them from the ship.

  After Rex locked the container, we dragged the trunks back to the pile of luggage and climbed inside. As a robot, I don’t need air, and can remain motionless in a cramped space for as long as necessary. I understand it’s much more difficult for human – particularly a hyperactive, impatient human. The fact that Rex remained in his trunk for three hours without making a peep can only be attributed to his boundless love for hard currency.

  While I was ensconced, I tapped into the local Hypernet node and checked the exchange rate on the Chicolinian Hexapennies to Malarchian Standard Credits. It currently stood at a hundred quintillion to one, which meant we had just enough money to buy a club soda. At cruise ship prices, probably not even that. Also, the bills smelled like fish.

  We were loaded into the cargo hold of the Agave Nectar and a couple hours later, the ship took off. I heard a lazegun blast and a moment later my trunk opened. “Whoops,” said Rex, looking at the lazepistol in his hand. “I thought I had it set to torch mode.” What was left of his trunk lay in charred pieces on the floor.

  I climbed out of my trunk and looked around. We were in a large room surrounded by boxes and baggage. Rex lost no time opening several of the fancier looking suitcases and rooting through them to find a change of clothes. After seven tries, he found a suit that fit.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Very dapper, sir,” I replied. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Thought I’d see if could find a poker game. Gotta be some well-heeled types on a ship like this who are just aching to lose a few thousand credits.”

  “We don’t have any money, sir, except for these hexapennies, and I’m fairly certain a ship like this frowns on….”

  Rex was already breaking into more luggage. This time, it took him only three tries to find a strongbox full of cash. He cut it open with the lazepistol and stuffed several hundred credits in his pockets.

  “That ought to do it,” he said. “Let’s go make some money.” He climbed over a pile of suitcases toward the door.

  “Sir,” I said. “Perhaps you should leave the lazepistol here?”

  “Oh,” he said, regarding the gun. “Good point, Sasha.” He stashed the gun behind a suitcase and opened the door. “Let’s go find some suckers,” he said, and walked into the hall. I refrained from suggesting he locate a mirror. If Rex had any capacity for self-reflection at all, he’d have realized we were the suckers. We’d been taken advantage of by practically everyone we’d met on Chicolini, and all we had to show for it was six steamer trunks full of nearly worthless currency. If there was any silver lining to our circumstances, it was that our new enemies were mostly confined to Chicolini. The Ursa Minor mafia probably didn’t know who we were, and so far we seemed to have stayed off Gavin Larviton’s radar.

  We took the elevator to the casino floor, which was filled
with rich vacationers trying their luck at blackjack, roulette, craps, and other games of chance. Rex’s eyes lit up. Rich people trying to beat the house was one of the few sights more beautiful to him than people trying to kill each other with sticks.

  Rex slipped a twenty credit note to an attendant. “Any high-stakes games going on?” he asked.

  The attendant frowned. “There is one,” he said, “But it’s invitation only.”

  “How do you know I haven’t been invited?” Rex demanded. “You don’t even know who I am.”

  “Precisely,” said the attendant, with a sniff.

  “Look, pal,” said Rex. “You may not know my face, but I’m not the sort of guy you want to make enemies of, OK? Now what do you say you go find whoever is running this game and tell him Rex Nihilo is here.”

  The attendant shrugged and walked away.

  “Sir, do you think that was a good idea? What if the person in charge of the game doesn’t know you?”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t,” said Rex. “But he doesn’t have to. I just have to make him think he should know who I am.’’

  “I’m not sure I follow, sir,” I said.

  “Watch and learn, Sasha,” he said.

  After a few minutes, the attendant returned. Alongside him strode a balding man with thick, bushy eyebrows. He smiled when he saw Rex.

  “So you’re the infamous Rex Nihilo,” said the man. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. My name is Gavin Larviton.”

  RECORDING END GALACTIC STANDARD DATE 3013.04.29.04:47:13:00

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