The Tin Soldiers (Final Dawn, Book 5)

by T W M Ashford

  “I’ll show you what an undesirable outcomes looks like if you don’t tell us what the other group’s mission is.”

  “Unknown. That information is not in my memory banks. I cannot know what I do not know.”

  “Is it bluffing?” asked Jack. “Does it have any sort of in-built system that stops it from betraying its owner, or something?”

  Silo shook his head.

  “That’s what those pirates wanted us to add – a way to reduce the LX-14s’ cognitive functions to their base combat systems alone. But the data cores are produced off-site. Not our field. We don’t tamper with them.”

  “But it could be lying to us, right?”

  Silo shrugged.

  “We could all be lying… but no. I don’t think these bolt-buckets have enough imagination for that.”

  “I say we space it,” said Klik, loud enough for the LX-14 to hear. “Stick it in the airlock and shoot it into a sun.”

  “We can’t keep it on the ship, that’s for sure.” Jack crossed his arms. “Especially when it’s being of no use to us. It’s not worth the risk.”

  “I am not a risk,” the LX-14 replied. “I have no directive that runs counter to your continued safety. Switching to default directive: self-preservation. How may I be of assistance?”

  “Tell us where the other units went,” said Rogan.

  “Unkno…” The LX-14 caught itself. Jack could practically hear the gears turning inside its head. “One moment, please. Searching memory banks for additional data.”

  They gave it a moment. Thinking didn’t come naturally to it, and it was clearly trying very hard.

  “This is pointless,” said Silo. “It knows nothing. Take me back to Negoti and—”

  “Two of those who brought me online also piloted the shuttle to Kagna One,” said the LX-14. “They did not say much. But as we followed the order to board the shuttle, one said to the other, ‘I hate Krolaks. Their habitats stink. Why can’t we go to Balua instead? I’ve always wanted to see the beaches.’” The LX-14 didn’t quote the cultists; it literally played a low-quality recording of them speaking. “And the other replied, ‘Not a vacation. Get in cabin.’ This information does not pertain to my directives, nor can an empirical link be established between the exchange of words and the directives of the other unit, but perhaps this will be of enough aid to your inquiries for you to not dismantle me.”

  “Balua?” Jack turned to Rogan. “You ever heard of it?”

  “I have,” she replied, though her expression only grew more confused. “It’s a coastal city on Queflia, the Qualian homeworld. That certainly matches the sketch on the document you found. The Qualians are an extremely peaceful and secluded people, though. I can’t imagine why this First Diakonos lot would…”

  The lenses of Rogan’s eyes grew wide.

  “Unless it is about automata rights after all,” she said. “The Qualians are one of the only species in the Ministerium who actively support the emancipation of automata. Attacking their homeworld with an LX-14 strike force…”

  “Their government would be forced to change its stance on automata,” said Tuner. “We’d lose their support in the chamber for sure.”

  “Maybe,” said Jack, shrugging, “but how does that connect with the attack on Kagna One? The Krolaks don’t seem like your biggest ally.”

  “No, you’re right.” Rogan folded her arms. “Out of all the major member species, they’re one of the most strongly against automata rights. I can’t see a link between the two targets at all.”

  “Does it matter?” said Tuner. “We’ve got to warn them!”

  “Won’t it have already happened by now?” Klik got up from the stairs and shuffled over to join them. “I don’t want to be a downer or anything, but the shuttle left the asteroid at the same time as the other one.”

  “Klik’s right,” sighed Jack. “Even if they’ve got further to go, they’ve had too much of a head start. We’d never catch up with it in time. All we can do is send a message to the Ministry and hope for the best.”

  “Not necessarily,” Silo reluctantly interjected. “Negoti shuttles can only travel via the old subspace highways. Cheaper. Saves the company money.”

  “That’s right,” said Tuner, hopping with excitement. “Remember Ceros? They sent all the harvested somnium crystals back along that route!”

  “They’ll have to come off the subspace highway and slowly traverse the lightning nebula.” Silo pointed towards the rear of the ship. “This ship has a better skip drive, yes? Take shortcuts. Maybe you can get to Queflia first. Maybe.”

  “How long would it take us to get there, Adi?” asked Rogan.

  “We should be able to get there a few hours before the shuttle, if my calculations are correct,” the Adeona replied. “But there are too many variables to say for sure.”

  “That’s not enough time for a proper evacuation,” said Tuner.

  “Don’t assume anyone there will listen to you, either,” said Dev. “Nobody on Kagna One did, and look what happened.”

  “What if we don’t need the Qualians to listen to us?” Rogan looked around the group uneasily. “What if we could stop the LX-14s from ever reaching Queflia at all?”

  Jack took a deep breath.

  “I’m not going to like this plan, am I?”

  “Hear me out. This lightning nebula Silo mentioned – it’s famously the reason why Queflia went centuries without being conquered, even without an army. You can’t skip through it, and it’s not exactly fun to navigate manually. But our skip drive is upgraded to go off-route, so to speak. We can fly right around the system and come at the nebula from the other side.”

  “So?”

  “So we can get ahead of the shuttle, then fly in from the other side to meet it! We can disable its thrusters, or shoot it down, or something. Whatever we need to do to stop more innocent people from getting killed.”

  “Flying into a lightning nebula does carry some risk,” said the Adeona, “but the shuttle itself won’t have any defence systems. It’ll be a fish in a barrel, as you humans put it. Your call, Captain.”

  Everyone stared at him expectantly.

  “Let’s put it to a vote,” Jack said. “Those in favour of going, raise your hand.”

  Rogan, Tuner and Klik were in. Adi confirmed her assent, too.

  “And those against?”

  Dev and Silo raised their hands.

  “I only suggested we fly around the nebula,” grunted the Ghuk, “not into it. Very different plan.”

  “It does sound quite dangerous,” said Dev.

  “I cannot raise my arms,” said the LX-14, “for I am defective.”

  “That’s four against two, and I’m not sure hitchhikers get a vote anyway. Prisoners definitely don’t.” Jack spoke to the ceiling as Silo grumbled past him. “Adi, set us a course for this lightning nebula in the Queflian system.”

  “I’ve already corrected our trajectory,” the Adeona replied. “Estimated time until arrival: three hours and twenty-four minutes. Everybody, please make yourselves comfortable.”

  Everyone filed out of the cargo bay towards the engine room, the cockpit or their quarters. Everyone save for Rogan, who sidled up to Jack.

  “You didn’t vote,” she said quietly. “Why?”

  “Didn’t I?” Jack smiled. “I voted to support my friends – my family – in any way I can, no matter what. You were right, Rogan. Sticking together is what counts. Having each other’s back is what counts. I voted to do whatever’s important to you.”

  Rogan nodded sagely.

  “You don’t know what a lightning nebula is, do you?”

  “Not a clue.”

  She smiled, patted him on the shoulder, and started walking in the direction of the cockpit.

  “You might want to grab some coffee or some shut-eye,” she called back to him from halfway up the stairs. “Either way, I think you’re going to need it.”

  19

  The Lightning Nebula
<
br />   The lightning nebula in the Queflian star system wasn’t technically a nebula. A real nebula is large enough to appear within constellations in the night sky – large enough to swallow whole systems and still have room for dessert, in fact. But although comparatively smaller, the dark, purple shadow that lurked just outside Queflia was formed from the same cloud of ionised gases as nebulae, most likely left behind following the botched formation of a planetary body billions of years earlier, and, for most people unfortunate enough to travel through it, this was more than enough to count.

  This was because it was also incredibly volatile.

  Jack watched through the windows of the Adeona’s cockpit as a pale-blue lightning bolt the size of a Kapamentis skyscraper crackled through the darkness. It was weird not to hear any thunder chasing after it, but they were too far out from the nebula’s gas cloud for any sound to travel. It was eerie, but Jack wasn’t sure the alternative was much better.

  He checked the small screen in the bottom corner of the window. It showed the planet of Queflia to the Adeona’s rear. The small, blue orb looked as utterly tranquil as it did oblivious of the strike force coming its way. He reckoned he had an idea where he and the crew were headed once this mess was over, at least. Hopefully the aliens down there knew how to make a cocktail.

  “Are we sure they haven’t left the nebula already?”

  He spun his chair around to look at Rogan, who was busy tapping away at the hologram table. She didn’t look up.

  “It’s possible, yes. Highly unlikely, though.”

  “I’m monitoring Balua for any outbound emergency broadcasts,” said Tuner, popping up from behind one of the terminals. “Nothing except the usual friendly chatter so far.”

  “Oh well.” Jack sighed and turned to face the nebula again. “That’s good, I suppose.”

  Klik plodded into the cockpit wearing her spacesuit and slumped into the co-pilot seat opposite Jack. She had her helmet tucked under her arm. The visor was mercifully clean of sick, he noticed. Adi had advised both of them to suit up in case the ship lost power and the atmospheric generator kicked the bucket. If, heaven forbid, she ruptured completely, the suits might even keep them alive long enough for help to arrive… presuming anyone dared head into the nebula after them, of course.

  “How are the others doing, Tuner?”

  “They weren’t too pleased when I told them we didn’t have any more suits,” Tuner replied. “I don’t know why Silo would think we’d carry spares that fit a Ghuk, anyway. I gave him and Dev some alcohol from the pantry and told them to seal themselves in the rec room.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a recipe for disaster at all,” Jack sighed, glancing across at Klik. She laughed.

  “I’m sure they will have a lot to talk about,” Tuner added, missing the sarcasm.

  “I’ve plotted a rough route through the nebula,” said Rogan. A three-dimensional map of the cloud beamed out from the table. “It’s the same one used by the traders a long time ago. Chances are that we’ll meet the Negoti shuttle coming the other way. With any luck, we won’t have to go too far in before we find them.”

  “And we can’t just wait out here for them to come out?” Klik asked. Jack grew hopeful, but then Rogan shook her head.

  “The nebula is still hundreds of thousands of kilometres in diameter. And once they’re out, they could skip right past us. We’ll have a much better chance of stopping them if we confront them somewhere where they can’t escape.”

  “I’ll be running scans the whole time,” said the Adeona, “just in case they’re risking a lesser-known path. Either way, we won’t miss them. Don’t worry, Jack. So long as you avoid the denser pockets, we’ll be fine.”

  Another flicker of lightning slashed through the shifting gas as if inviting Jack to try his luck. But it didn’t matter how scary the nebula looked; he had to trust Adi and Rogan. They knew infinitely more about interstellar dust clouds than he did, anyway.

  “All right, then. Everybody ready?”

  Rogan and Adi replied verbally; Tuner gave him a thumbs-up; Klik shrugged noncommittally. Dev and Silo were probably already too drunk to care.

  “Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath as he gripped the flight stick for dear life. “Here goes nothing.”

  As they drifted slowly through the beginning of the lightning nebula, Jack realised not just how massive it was, but how fine and disparate much of the gas was, too. Tunnels of near-vacuum as wide as the cultists’ asteroid crater wound through the denser pockets. It was nothing like as treacherous as having to navigate the inner chunks of the cracked planet, Ceros IV.

  So far.

  Because if there was one thing Jack knew about gasses, it was that they didn’t feel obliged to stick in just one place for very long.

  The further inside they flew, the darker the walls of their amorphous canyon became and the more frequently the lightning struck. Jack could make out the faint glow of fires burning deep inside the gas clouds, tearing through their fuel supply before quickly suffocating. And he could hear the thunder now. It was quiet and sluggish, almost more of a physical rumble than a sound, but it was there nonetheless. Each violent, blinding flash was followed only milliseconds later by the low, hungry rumble of a predator waiting amongst the long grass to strike.

  But it couldn’t get them, not so long as he kept to the NavMap guide arrows projected onto the dashboard windows.

  “How come we even have routes to follow?” he asked over his shoulder, his eyes still glued to the path in front. “The whole nebula’s a big lump of dust. Doesn’t it, you know… swirl and move about?”

  “Of course,” he heard Rogan reply. “Not in the timescales we operate on, though. The maps we’re using to navigate the nebula are from almost two-hundred and sixty years ago – long before the advent of free-roam skip drives. From the look of things, not much has changed here since.”

  “We’re still in a vacuum, remember,” said Tuner. “Well, almost. It’s not like there’s a breeze to blow all the gas about. It largely stays put unless an external force acts upon it. You know, like a ship, or an asteroid, or something. So don’t go blowing Adi’s thrusters about like a lunatic.”

  “Because that was right at the top of my intentions,” Jack replied, twitching the flight stick ever so slightly to the right. “Look at me. I’m soaring like a falcon over here.”

  Klik climbed up onto her seat so that she faced backwards into the cockpit.

  “Why in the galaxy would anybody ever choose to fly through this thing to begin with?” she asked. “There must have been an easier way.”

  “Not if you were coming from further inside the galaxy,” Rogan replied. “Queflia traded with the outer systems along this arm, but the only way to or from the inner systems was through the nebula. Well, they could have taken a really long way around using the old subspace highways, skipping from system to system, but not many ships back then could afford to use up that much somnium making the trip. The only ones willing to risk their lives for a sack of Queflian sea salt were smugglers and the most desperate of trading companies. It became quite the black market commodity for a while.”

  “Yeesh.” Klik sank back into her chair. “It’s just salt.”

  “Try telling that to the aristocracy of Kapamentis.”

  “Erm, guys?” Jack gestured vaguely out the cockpit windows. The augmented reality arrows had disappeared. “As grateful as I am for the history lesson, the tunnel seems to sort of branch off ahead. Which way am I supposed to be going?”

  “Fascinating.” Rogan consulted the NavMap on the hologram table. “You asked whether the dust clouds shift, and there you have it. Don’t worry,” she quickly added, “it’s just a simple cartographic error. You’re still following the starboard-side path through.”

  “My scans confirm that there’s no drastic change in structure ahead,” the Adeona said. “No sign of any incoming ships or other dense objects, either.”

  “Besides Jack,” Klik m
uttered under her breath with a smirk.

  “Very funny,” Jack sighed, drifting the ship over to the right.

  Jack brought the Adeona to a stop twenty-something minutes later. Everybody crowded around the dashboard windows.

  “Okay. Would somebody like to try and explain what happened here?”

  Half a dozen battlecruisers floated lifelessly in a cavernous pocket, their shattered flanks and fractured hulls only visible whenever lightning tore through the surrounding dust cloud. Their wreckage had formed a minefield of metal. Every now and again one of the electrical bolts would crackle out from the gas, strike one of the ships, and creep along its length like a neon vine.

  As usual, Rogan had the answer.

  “Remember how I told you the lightning nebula had kept Queflia safe from invaders for millennia?” She pointed at the nearest destroyer shell. “These ships are antiques. Five, maybe six-hundred years old. They’re too derelict for me to identify any specific models, let alone which species or empire they belonged to. Whoever they were, they didn’t have much luck.”

  “No, they didn’t.” Tuner peered over the dashboard. “I wonder what their relationship with the Qualians is like now. Probably best friends in the Ministry, I reckon.”

  “Okay, one little follow-up question.” Jack spun his chair around to face everyone else. “How the hell are we supposed to get through all that without the same thing happening to us?”

  From the look on her face, Klik shared Jack’s concern. But despite the evident threat posed by their surroundings, Rogan simply smiled at him as if the answer were obvious.

  “This is what happens when some bolt-brained despot orders an armada of battleships to fly through a lightning storm,” she replied. “I expect most of the smaller ships got through just fine. And besides, Adi’s a mining vessel. She’s used to navigating hazardous environments.”