The Cold Dead Earth (The Jolo Vargas Space Opera Series Book 3)

by J. D. Oppenheim

  George could hear cables snaking across the Argossy’s alacyte hull. Men grunting and yelling, one in particular, louder than the rest, supervised the whole affair. “Put a brace under the broken landing pad you stupid sots! Keep her in one piece. Knock off so much as a single heat shield and you’ll find yerself out on the ice waiting for the Queen to take you right back to worm hell.”

  “We in worm hell, Patty.”

  And this continued on for some time. George thought to wait until they had taken the ship wherever they were going to go, but what if where they were going was full of hostiles? There were three men outside and none of them knew he was there. Odds of a successful escape were high. He sneaked out of the hole and tapped on the hold console. The Argossy still had some battery power left but it was still a mystery why she wouldn’t spin up. George turned on the outside cameras and watched the men finish securing the ship to a giant mover.

  There were four men: the supervisor, two workers and a man standing off a bit with an energy rifle, which looked familiar. At this distance, George couldn’t be sure, but it looked like one of three Fed issue rifles from the Argossy’s weapons cache.

  George pulled out his energy blaster and suddenly it looked small and weak. But I am George, he thought. And they are but slow, dumb humans. He took a deep breath and straightened his jacket, because that’s what Jolo would have done.

  Then he went to the back hatch. It was still open at the top. He jumped, grabbed the edge and pulled himself up, and waited. The voices were on the other side, still arguing about how exactly to secure the nose of the Argossy. So George slid through the opening and dangled there ten meters or so off the ground, listening, watching.

  And satisfied that no one was underneath him ready to shoot him again, he let go and lightly touched down onto the metal grate surface of the mover. It had giant tank wheels underneath like ice harvesters and the whole thing looked to be a one-off made from junk parts.

  He jumped down onto the dirt and hid behind one of the giant wheels at the rear of the mover. He could see the Argossy above him through the metal grate floor.

  “I heard somethin’,” said one of the men.

  “Just yer imagination. Ain’t nobody inside the ship. They done been et by now.”

  George didn’t feel pain in his heart, but he felt something close to it. What would he do if the crew was gone? What would he tell Mr. Marco? An android who could not save his friends is no good to anyone. He wanted to feel sadness. But instead he felt what he could, namely urgency. And then a piece of good news.

  “Naw. Queen fed earlier on the dumbass, motormouth, Buster, and that pasty lookin’ piece of meat Mr. Hazuki kilt. So she ain’t gone feed agin ‘til the mornin’.”

  And now George was an android possessed. Urgency level: 9.84. Time for the offensive, he thought. “Hey, Patty, you are an ignorant, slow-witted dullard!” he yelled

  “What was that?” someone said. George, still underneath the mover, ran right to the front. He could hear loud voices again as the men ran to the back. He popped out in front and no one was there, so he ran away from the mover a bit into the shadows and then towards the rear again to get a good angle on the men.

  George was twice as fast and more quiet than any human so soon he found them at the rear staring up at the hatch.

  “Why’d you open the rear?” someone said.

  “I didn’t do it, Patty.” But Patty smacked him anyway. The man with the gun was there, too, out of position. George walked right towards them. He was perfectly situated. The man with the gun had his back to them.

  “I opened it,” said George. The man with the gun started to turn around. “Drop the rifle or you’ll regret it!” And the man dropped it. “Now throw it this way and don’t do anything stupid or something really bad will happen to you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Really bad, though your imaginations may be limited so you may not be capable of thinking of something really, really bad.” I’ve said too much, thought George. He wished there’d been time for Merthon to install the full set of colloquial speech patterns. Oh well.

  “I kin think of a lotta bad stuff,” said one of the men. “Like you an’ yer crew gettin’ et by the Queen bitch. She gonna love that fat one.” The men laughed. But George was done with them.

  “Time for you to die,” he said and aimed at Patty, the supervisor.

  But when he tried to pull the trigger nothing happened. That’s strange. The men just stood there with blank looks on their faces. George accessed his error.log file and there it was. The most recent entry.

  127.0.02.13 - merthon [10/10/2532:13:55:36 -0700] "SafeGuard /exec override XTYP/1.0" 270 2326

  Federation ship protocol. Merthon had been forced to install a safeguard so he couldn’t intentionally kill a human.

  One of the men was holding a long spanner to tighten down the winch cables. He raised it high and started to come down on George’s head.

  But the synth was too fast. In a flash, George snatched the spanner from the man’s hand and came down across his knees. The man cried out and fell into a clump on the ground. The man who was carrying the rifle made a move for it, but George shot him once in each leg. The other two stared at him, eyes big and scared.

  “Don’t shoot, Mister,” a skinny man said. Patty smacked him on the head.

  “Don’t talk to him,” snarled Patty.

  George shot Patty in the knee and the man fell to the ground screaming. Now there were three men rolling around on the dirt moaning and screaming and spitting curses at George.

  The skinny man’s crotch suddenly had a dark, wet spot and his breathing was fast and panicky.

  “You shot me,” said George. “You dragged my people off. Tell me where they are and I won’t shoot.”

  “Don’t talk, you coward,” wailed Patty again. So George shot him in the other leg. “If you talk we’ll go in the cage!”

  George grabbed the rifle and motioned for the man to walk to the front of the mover. They stood there under the nose of the Argossy.

  “Where are my people?”

  “The men are in the cage. The female is in the hotel.”

  “Female?”

  “Yeah. You know. One of them’s ain’t got a tool between they legs.”

  “Yes. I know that but why not woman?”

  The man did not respond.

  “How do you people survive here? The biological evidence suggests this planet cannot support even plant life, much less humans.”

  The man just stared at him, blankly.

  “Okay,” said George. “What do you eat?”

  The man reached into his pocket and produced a small bag. Inside was the same stuff that Koba had found right before Hazuki came. Hurley had eaten it.

  “This is not logical. Obviously there are some variables I have not considered. Is the black stuff the only source of food?”

  “It eats ok,” he said.

  George took a deep breath. “Okay. Take me to the cage. We’re going to set my people free.”

  “Cain’t do that,” said the man, wiping the wet spot with his hand.

  “Hide and watch,” said George, motioning with the small blaster for the man to walk. And he followed the man deeper into the large cavern.

  The Cage

  Jolo stared down into the massive, Argossy-sized hole where his ship had crash landed a week earlier. He was hoping it would be there. It seemed like years since he’d been in it. Since he’d seen Barth and the rest. Katy. The sides of the hole were wet and glistening but the hole was too deep to see all the way down. He threw a rock in and it hit bottom with a dull thud like it had found dirt, not the hull of his ship.

  “What’s at the bottom?” Jolo said to the tall boy named Korley, who was still clinging to the rifle with one bullet.

  “Mr. Hazuki and dem’s with more and better guns.”

  “Where’d they take the ship?”

  “Dey put it on da pile,” he said, grinning. “I show
you.”

  Thirty minutes later and Jolo was back in the room behind the bookstore. Greeley called it the Rat Hole.

  Korley and Jolo sat down in the center of the room and the boy pulled out a dirty plastic bag. “Y’ain’t never seen nuttin’ like dis. Shiny paper like magic.”

  Jolo watched as the boy reached into the bag and produced a small piece of paper. It said Welcome to the Altam-- Underground Mall and Convention Center at the top in script. The Altam part was cut off just after the “m”. There was a picture of a giant storefront with two big trees on either side. There were shiny colored metal boxes with wheels everywhere in front. Jolo guessed these were automobiles, human transport before space travel or even terrestrial hover craft.

  The boy unfolded the paper and on the other side was a map. He pointed to a black X that said Book Emporia. “Dat’s us.” He ran his finger down a main hall to the end and tapped his finger on the Kawasaki Grand Hotel. “Dat’s where dey keep the females. Dat’s where Oleman found us.” Near the hotel he pointed to several smaller shops: a place called Pizza Paco’s, and a small place called Genki Grille. “Dat’s the cage. Down one level. Used to be on the map but it tore off.”

  Jolo saved a snapshot of the map in his memory chip. “Where are the guns?” said Jolo.

  “You cain’t get ‘em. They down the street from here in a big building and you cain’t get ‘em. Go dere and die.”

  “How about the power? Where’s the power coming from? You can’t generate a gravity field big enough to suck down a freighter without a power source. Where they hiding it?”

  The boy just stared at him, then he carefully folded his map, placed it gingerly into the plastic bag and ran off to hide it.

  “I don’t know where the power comes from,” said Riley. “You, uh, feel it when they turn it on, though. Things get real, uh, floaty.”

  Jolo looked over at Greeley. The big man was asleep, but still not ready to go. He tossed and turned and moaned all day. Only waking to drink some water and yell at the boys. Jolo’s next move was going to be all alone.

  Korley came back. “Where you goin’?”

  “More guards at the hotel, huh?” said Jolo.

  The boy shook his head up and down.

  “Okay. Then we hit the cage first.”

  The boy shook his head side to side. “Cain’t do it.”

  “Then what do we do?” said Jolo.

  “Eat da black, stay low and live, Olemantwo.”

  “You’re a fool to go like this, Vargas,” said Riley. “There’s too many of the bastards.”

  Jolo smiled. “They haven’t gone up against me yet.”

  “Ain’t gone up against me neither,” said Greeley, his voice gravelly. He stood for a moment and rocked side to side, one hand on Betsy and the other reaching for something to hold on to. “Well, shite,” he said, and fell down. “Frakkin’ Earth. Shite idea.”

  Jolo helped him back to his spot and put Betsy next to him.

  “I ain’t goin’ either, and don’t take one of the boys and get them killed,” said Riley

  “What would you have me do?”

  “I don’t know. But not this. You’re just one man against a small army of idiots with guns.”

  “They’ve got my ship and my crew and I ain’t gonna stand here and do nothing. Cage. Then guns. Then get my pilot. Then go home.”

  Riley just stood there shaking his head.

  The boy led Jolo to the entrance of the cage. It was dark, but they stayed close to the shops on one side. Jolo tried to mark each one off on the map in his mind, but most were so covered in black dirt that it was hard to tell. But he could clearly see the word Paco and the -ille of Grille, even at a safe distance on the other side of the wide hallway. He looked at Korley and pointed back towards the book store. The boy nodded and crept back quietly staying in the shadows.

  Jolo waited for the boy to get clear. There were two guards in front with energy rifles. They were recent models, each with a small hole drilled into the stock with wires coming out that fed into a box taped to the side. They were overriding the lockout. Most Fed weapons had a bio lockout code that paired it with a specific solider or group of soldiers. It would only fire if you were a match to that weapon. Unless you could override it.

  It’s a difficult thing to walk up and shoot a man with no provocation. Jolo tried to think of the crew. Of the cage. Then he thought of Hazuki and his resolve grew. This would be easier if he had Greeley to distract them and then cover his rear in case he needed to retreat. Riley, the freighter jockey, had flat refused to come. Jolo didn’t mind though. The man was not a soldier.

  At a certain point he knew the best thing to do was turn off his brain and just go. The two guards looked similar to the men who’d attacked earlier: mismatched rags for clothes, skinny, and even at this distance he could see they were missing teeth. He stepped out of the shadows and walked casually towards the two skinny men.

  They didn’t notice him until he was well within Colt range.

  “How y’all doin’?” he said, smiling and waving with his left hand, his right gripping the Colt held close to his side. They turned to face him and he gave one sharp command: “Raise your weapon and die.”

  The man on the left brought up his weapon but never even got his hand near the trigger guard. Jolo fired once and his legs buckled and he fell to his knees, teetered there a moment then hit the dirt. A small dark hole in his forehead.

  The other man was frozen, his energy rifle pointed down at the earth. “If you want to live stay quiet, don’t try to call anyone. Now throw both weapons that way as far as you can,” said Jolo.

  “If I do that, Mr. Hazuki’ll kill me.”

  “Die now or die later. You choose.”

  The man pondered his situation a moment and then he made a bad decision. He started yelling, then turned an ran for the entrance.

  He didn’t make it.

  Jolo ran straight for the dead men, right under what remained of the Paco sign, then threw their weapons back into the dark cavern. Instantly he started to get worried. There was only one way in and out and he knew Hazuki was no idiot. There was a small, well-lit entrance area that had stainless steel walls like a kitchen, and small round holes in the wall with female ports he figured were old-style electrical connectors from long ago.

  Above a dirty counter was a picture of a man with a funny white hat and a smile. “Best pie’s in the Eastern Safe Zone” was written in cursive underneath. There was a hole in the wall in back dug straight into the earth. Jolo could just make out a torch, a flickering orange glow at the far end of the tunnel.

  This ain’t good, thought Jolo. But if the cage is here I’m going to find it. It’s on me now. If anyone’s alive I don’t want them to be eaten while I was sitting in a room with Greeley and the kids. For a split second he almost decided to stop and head to the top of the hotel and find Katy, guns blaring. But then a calmness overcame him. See what we see. Try to get the crew out of the cage, then get the guns, then get Katy. Riley said they wouldn’t hurt Katy.

  He jumped over the counter and stepped into the dark tunnel heading for the light at the end. With every step Jolo became a little more wired and tense. Or was it just fear, he wondered? Either way, it was foolish to enter like a mouse into a snake’s hole. He went slow and quiet, listening for anyone coming from behind to block his retreat.

  He made it to the torch with no incident and then had a decision: right or left. He went left because right might take him closer to the bookstore and the kids’ hideaway. The path used to be some kind of man made hallway. There were pipes running along the ceiling, long sections with missing sections here and there. Soon the piping ended and the hall turned into another dug out hole and with the dirt there came the bad smell again like before when the butcher was leading them to Hazuki. He shook his head. He’d been a fool to think the man would have taken them to the ship. Now I’m being a fool again, he thought.

  He heard a sharp cry and stopp
ed dead in his tracks and squatted down in the darkness. There was a hint of light coming from the single torch behind him at the turn and one further down, but he couldn’t see more than ten meters or so down the way.

  Another sharp cry, and then a scream, followed by men’s voices. Jolo’s heart was pounding and he took a deep breath, wiped the sweat from his trigger hand and gripped the wooden handle of the Colt.

  And then he heard a high pitched voice. “Baaarth!” It was Koba.

  Jolo jumped up and started running for the sounds. He made it to the second torch and turned right and suddenly he was standing next to a railing on the upper level staring down into a large room, as big as one of the freighter holds. The cage was on a lower level, just like Korley said. A gunboat could fit down there easily. In the dim light he could just make out a smooth floor below, colored walls with a giant ball hanging down. On the far wall there was a sign that said The Cage, in script. It was an old bar with a dance floor.

  The scream came again from the floor near one of the walls. And there along the wall were a series of cells. Hazuki’s men were dragging a man out of a cell.

  “Right on time!” came a voice from his right. Across the room on the second level, there was the man in the white jacket: Hazuki. He waved.

  Jolo’s heart was filled with anger, yet with it came a calmness and clarity. All the worrying and fretting from before was a waste of time. In an instant Jolo calculated the fastest way to get a shot. Instead of running around the second level along the railing, he jumped straight down onto the bottom level then jumped again straight up to Hazuki. He took out one of his men holding an old-style kinetic rifle on the ground, then another coming to support Hazuki on the second, all before anyone had a chance to react.

  The speed of Jolo’s attack caught Hazuki off guard. Jolo made it back up and over the railing on Hazuki’s side of the room and was about to take the man out but then an unexpected thing happened.

  Hazuki jumped free of the rail, flew twenty meters out over the big floor and grabbed the thick cable holding the mirror ball.