Starbounders #2

by Adam Jay Epstein

“Tie them up,” Keel ordered the other robots. “And find someone who can perform an extraction. We need to know if they’re telling the truth.”

  Zachary and his fellow trainees lowered their weapons. Skold wouldn’t give himself up that easily, though. He aimed his sonic crossbow, but before he got off a single shot, four robots pounced, pinning every one of his limbs to the floor.

  The group was searched and had their warp gloves and weapons taken. Then they were led to a steel room with a slit in the wall no bigger than a four-by-six photograph. The robots departed, sealing the door shut behind them.

  “There’s no way we’re leaving here alive,” Zachary said. “They’re going to pick us clean for everything we know, and as soon as they realize no one’s coming for us, we’re done for. So are those suns.”

  He kicked the wall so hard that he could feel his toes starting to bruise, even through the hardened tip of his friction boot.

  “We wouldn’t even be here if you had just listened to me,” Ryic said. “But you think you’re better than all the other Starbounders at Indigo 8, including us. Madsen was right. You are arrogant.”

  Zachary was about to protest, to defend himself. But he couldn’t find the words. Partly because he knew his friend was right.

  “What I want to know is why every one of those robots was staring at a Kepler cartograph when we walked in there,” Quee said, changing the subject. “It looked like they were mapping every last galaxy in the outerverse. But if Hoff’s theory was right, there are only four suns that are vulnerable. Why would they be studying the solar systems of every other sun?”

  “He said this was just the beginning,” Ryic interjected. “Maybe they’re building a device capable of destroying larger suns.”

  Just then, the robotic voice of Commander Keel could be heard outside the window. “Operation Motherboard is a go.” Zachary peeked through the slit and saw that Keel was addressing the entirety of the cavernous room over an intercom. “Thanks to our unexpected visitors, I’ve decided to accelerate our plans. Whatever final preparations were underway will have to be made en route. Go to your ships and fly to your assigned folds. Then stand by for further instructions.”

  The Binary robots shut down their Kepler cartographs and readjusted to standing position. They began to file out of the room, flocking en masse through a darkened archway in a far corner, leaving just thirty or forty robots behind. Commander Keel departed with the others.

  “You think they’re going after another sun?” Kaylee asked.

  “Sounds that way to me,” Zachary replied.

  “But which one?” Skold asked.

  Zachary continued to stare out the slit, this time eyeing their pile of confiscated stuff twenty yards away. Several Binary robots stood close by.

  “I can see our warp gloves,” Zachary said. “Now, if I only had mine, I could get it. Ryic, can your arms stretch that far?”

  “I’m afraid that’s a little out of my range.”

  Zachary turned to Skold. “How about you? You manage to sneak anything in here that could help us?”

  “No, they stripped me clean. Even my utility compartment. Took everything but my carapace.”

  “That’s it,” Kaylee said. “You can climb right out that window and bring back one of our gloves.”

  “What?” Ryic asked. “He’s bigger than all of us.”

  “The real Skold,” Kaylee said.

  Skold appeared a little disgruntled by the idea. “I prefer not to show that side of myself. Kind of bad for my tough-guy image. But I guess I don’t have much choice.”

  “Mine’s the purple-and-green one,” Quee said. “Once I have my glove, I’ll be able to hack into the security panel on the wall. Assuming my aim has improved.”

  Skold waited until the robots stationed beside the pile had dispersed. Zachary could hear gears shifting inside the suit, then Skold’s chest cracked open and the two halves of his body split right down the middle, exposing the glass case where a black-and-orange newtlike creature sat. This was the real Skold. He looked just like his wife and kids, only somehow even cuter.

  Skold popped open the door of the glass case and scurried to the floor. Kaylee knelt down beside him.

  “Need a lift?” she asked.

  Skold sighed. Humiliated, he crawled up her arm and she deposited him on the ledge of the narrow opening. Skold easily slipped through and made the four-and-a-half-foot leap down to the other side. He landed on the floor of the cavernous room with a thud but picked himself back up.

  Without any of the remaining Binary robots seeing him, his tiny webbed feet ran all the way to the pile of weapons and he used his back to push Quee’s retracted purple-and-green warp glove across the room. It was nearly as big as he was, and if it weren’t such a dire situation, Zachary surely would have had a good laugh about it.

  Skold was able to roll the baseball-sized orb up to the wall just below the steel room’s window. Ryic reached through and stretched his arm down to the floor. He grabbed the glove and Skold and brought them both back into the cell.

  “Any of you speak of this in the future, so help me, I’ll hunt you down,” Skold said. But his words were infinitely less threatening, coming from something resembling a classroom pet.

  Skold darted into the glass case within the carapace and the exterior quickly locked back into place.

  Ryic handed Quee her retracted warp glove and she activated it.

  “Concentrate,” Zachary said. “Remember what I showed you. It’s just a soda can on a pile of rocks.”

  Quee gently spun her wrist, adjusted for distance, and opened a warp hole. She reached through and her hand came out the other side, directly in front of the security panel on the wall.

  “Yes!” Quee said excitedly.

  Using her cryptocard, she hacked the system, and after a moment Zachary heard a click inside the cell. Then the door slid open.

  As they exited, Zachary spied a pair of Binary robots escorting a genteel-looking off-planet creature toward the steel room. She carried a satchel over her shoulder with dozens of needles sticking out from it.

  “I think our extractor just arrived,” Kaylee said.

  Zachary surveyed the room. The remaining Binary robots were scattered at their desks, and then there were the two additional robots walking in their direction with the extractor. The group’s first priority was getting back their warp gloves and weapons, but the only way they could get to them was by walking right out into the open.

  “Let me handle this,” Quee whispered.

  She didn’t hesitate, ripping a hole in space. Her hand flew through to the other side and quickly rounded up the three remaining orbs.

  “Now you’re just showing off,” Zachary said.

  Quee struggled to get a grip, nearly bobbling one out of her palm. Once they were carefully balanced, she pulled them to her side. Zachary, Kaylee, and Ryic each grabbed theirs and slipped them on.

  Zachary looked out to see the Binary robots and the extractor were nearing; it would be only moments before they were spotted. There was no time to retrieve the other weapons.

  “We’ve got to follow Keel and that army,” Zachary said, gesturing to the darkened archway through which the Binary robots had departed.

  “Stop!” yelled out one of the Binary escorts to Zachary and his gang. It pulled out a photon cannon and aimed. The first blast must have been a warning shot, as it struck just at Zachary’s feet. He and the others sprinted for the archway as the deskbound robots turned, alerted to their presence by the cannon fire.

  Kaylee was opening warp holes and using her glove to knock equipment to the floor to slow their pursuers. Quee reached through another warp hole of her own, attempting to grab one of their confiscated sonic crossbows from the pile but only managing to retrieve an ionic dagger.

  Zachary, Skold, and Ryic were focused on getting to the archway, and once they did, Zachary saw where it led: a sloping tunnel stretching upward. The group began their ascent to the su
rface of 1001001, metal footsteps clanking behind them.

  “We cannot terminate you without a kill order,” one of the robots called. “But we will apprehend you by any means necessary.”

  A burst of photon fire struck the wall in front of the Starbounders, causing one of the support beams to snap. The ceiling above started to give way.

  “They’re trying to trap us!” Ryic shouted.

  A second round of fire tore into the tunnel wall, further destabilizing the load-carrying beams. Zachary and the others raced under the crumbling debris as the tunnel collapsed. Without a forceful tug from Kaylee, Quee would have been squashed beneath ten thousand pounds of steel. The robots must not have anticipated that the group would be fast enough to escape, because now their plan had backfired. The collapsed tunnel had created a barricade between the robots and their prey.

  Zachary exhaled. He could see the light shining in from outside. They were almost there.

  Boom! Behind them, the blockade of fallen metal exploded as the Binary robots punched through. It seemed that this pursuit was not over yet.

  Zachary and his companions reached the end of the tunnel and exited onto street level. They emerged in the courtyard of a derelict building that had been abandoned. Deep indentations in the ground and the footprints of scores of Binary robots made it clear that spacecraft had recently been parked here and the robots had boarded and departed on them. Zachary looked up and could see the glow of a hundred afterburners shooting toward a gizalith in the sky.

  “We can still catch up,” Kaylee said.

  “But how do we get back to our ship?” Zachary asked.

  “My internal compass is pointing that way.” Skold gestured to a gate at the other side of the courtyard.

  Zachary could hear the robots charging toward the foot of the tunnel. He and the others ran for the gate, sprinting across half a mile of cracked concrete.

  They kicked open the iron door and found themselves in a busy trading bazaar. Spare arms and legs hung from hooks as robots in various states of disrepair hobbled about examining them. Zachary, Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee pushed through the marketplace, following Skold as he snaked toward a less congested thoroughfare.

  Zachary looked over his shoulder to see the pursuing robots barreling their way into the bazaar and quickly scanning for their targets.

  The locals minded their own business and neither helped nor hindered either side of the developing confrontation.

  The robots were closing the gap between them. Zachary spied a bin of surplus metal craniums and started whipping them like dodgeballs at Commander Keel’s oncoming soldiers. It distracted them for a moment, long enough to allow the group to bolt out from the bazaar and take to the street.

  Skold’s internal compass had directed them well. In the distance, Zachary could see the giant golden obelisk the sledge was parked beside.

  “Out in the open we’ll never stand a chance to outrun them,” Ryic said.

  “Who said anything about running?” Kaylee replied.

  She was heading for the row of kiosks where the speedwheels dangled on hooks. Kaylee grabbed what looked like a barbell with wheels and a pair of snap-on in-line skates. She watched some of the other robots gearing up around her and copied them, snapping her left and right feet into the skates, then dropping her hands to the ground as if doing a push-up. As soon as both her hands were planted firmly on the barbell, she zipped off at an alarming speed.

  Zachary and the others were quick to follow, ripping speedwheels off the kiosk hooks.

  “You know these are meant only for robots, right?” Ryic asked.

  Zachary was immediately struck by how light the barbell felt, given how bulky it appeared. He tossed the foot skates to the ground and stepped into them. The automated latches gripped his friction boots. He leaned down, and as soon as the handwheels touched the surface of the quickway, he was propelled forward. Zachary didn’t have a moment to get used to the awkward position before he was immediately rocketing ahead.

  Zachary knew how to ride a bike or a skateboard. But this was nothing like either of them. For starters, his face was just inches from the ground, meaning that any stray object in his path could leave him with a broken nose or worse. Then there was the steering, which was controlled by subtle shifts of weight and body stance. As for braking, well, he hadn’t figured that out yet. Zachary just hoped he’d learn before he needed to come to a stop.

  Ryic, Quee, and Skold were coming up alongside him, each with varying degrees of success maneuvering their speedwheels. Skold seemed like he was programmed for it, and maybe it had something to do with his carapace. Quee was also getting along fine. Ryic, on the other hand, struggled. His flexible form didn’t appear well-attuned to this mode of travel, as his legs were stretching out behind him and nearly getting tangled into knots around even the slightest turns.

  Zachary just tried to keep pace with Kaylee, who was skating toward the obelisk, where hopefully their sledge was still waiting.

  “Right on our tail!” Skold shouted to the others.

  Zachary glanced back and spied several of the Binary soldiers chasing them on speedwheels of their own. Clearly they were more experienced, which allowed them to weave effortlessly through the throngs of pedestrians and other quickway travelers.

  Suddenly a kinetic blast struck Zachary’s right-hand wheel, sending him so off-balance, he nearly collided with a steel wall. He looked back to see that it had been fired from one of the soldier’s shoulder-mounted photon cannons.

  “Isn’t it a little risky to be firing at us like that without a kill order?” Zachary hollered back to the pursuing robot.

  “Yes, it would be,” the Binary soldier replied. “But the kill order was approved. Commander Keel has requested your termination.”

  It was hard enough to stay upright on the wheels without dodging enemy fire. Another burst of concentrated light seared a hole in the elbow of Zachary’s Starbounder jumpsuit. He tried to hug the ground even tighter to make himself as small a target as possible. The new position had the fortunate effect of speeding him up and bringing him side by side with Kaylee.

  “I like the torn jumpsuit look,” Kaylee remarked as she glanced in his direction. “Very rock star.”

  “You could have your own, if you’re not careful,” Zachary said as photon blasts zipped past them.

  Up ahead, he eyed a quickway tube that seemed to be going in the direction of the obelisk but had a giant holographic red warning symbol posted in front of it: a picture of a set of speedwheels with a line through it.

  “I’m sure there’s a reason we shouldn’t go in there,” Kaylee said.

  “With our luck, it’s probably filled with explosives and dehydras,” Zachary replied. They shared a smile and shifted their weights toward the tunnel.

  Zachary was the first to enter, shooting straight through the holographic warning sign. He was pleasantly surprised to find it empty and easy to traverse.

  “There’s nothing in here,” he called back.

  “Including the floor!” Kaylee shouted.

  Kaylee had spotted, even before Zachary, what lay before them: a long stretch of tube that was under construction. While the tops and side were built, the bottom was missing.

  There was no turning back now, though, so they did the only thing they could. They leaned hard to the left and rode right up onto the wall. Zachary was coasting at a ninety-degree angle over a giant gap that dropped thousands of feet downward. A few loose serendibite fell from his pocket, tumbling into the abyss below.

  Zachary peered over his shoulder and spied Quee, Skold, and Ryic making the same realization he and Kaylee had made moments before and adjusting their course accordingly. The first two Binary soldiers were chasing them, seemingly on autopilot, because they raced straight off the edge into the missing section of tunnel.

  “Zachary, watch out!” Kaylee shouted. He had been so busy looking behind him that he didn’t see what was coming up ahead. The wall from this p
ortion of the tunnel was absent. Kaylee was now jetting along the roof.

  Zachary spun upward. His speedwheels clung to the ceiling in a gravity-defying moment of exhilaration. He felt like he was going to throw up. Or was it down? He was losing all perspective on which way was which as he corkscrewed through the quickway tube.

  A second wave of Binary soldiers had entered the tunnel, and these seemed to be learning from the others’ mistakes, traversing the walls and ceiling just like Zachary and his gang.

  Zachary’s ears rattled as Quee’s front speedwheel exploded right beside him. Without the forward drive of the motorized transport, Quee was losing traction on the wall.

  “Help!” she screamed as her body slid toward the abyss.

  Zachary reached out an arm, which was tricky because it took two to steer properly, and grabbed her ankle. Quee pulled herself onto Zachary, laying her chest flat against his back.

  “Thanks,” Quee said into his ear.

  The tube dumped them back out onto the quickway, only the obelisk was much closer now. So close, in fact, that Zachary could see their sledge parked in the same spot beside it.

  It would have been a straight shot if it weren’t for the line of Binary robots standing with stun balls drawn.

  “Cease now,” one of them called out. “You are a danger to yourself and others. Organics are prohibited from using speedwheels.”

  Zachary blinked twice.

  * * *

  OBJECT:

  PATROBOT

  LOCAL AUTHORITIES OF THE BINARY COLONIES, PROGRAMMED BY THE IPDL. THIS ROBOTIC POLICE FORCE IS UNWAVERING IN PURSUIT OF LAW AND ORDER. AVOIDS USE OF DEADLY FORCE IN FAVOR OF DETAINMENT.

  * * *

  Zachary turned back to see how close the pursuing Binary soldiers were, but was surprised to find that there was no sign of them.

  “They’re gone,” Zachary said. “I don’t understand. What happened to them?”

  The others spun their heads for a look.

  “There’s a reason they’re headquartered a hundred feet underground,” Skold replied. “Obviously they want to stay off the patrobots’ radar.”