Lost Valyr: Project Enterprise 7 Page 7

  CabeX found that curious. Humans liked a mystery, and this galaxy held many. He’d hoped to appeal to Kraye’s curiosity so that he would not think too much about CabeX’s motive for doing this. They did not usually chase rumors into relatively unknown galaxies.

  CabeX’s face could not show emotion, so there was no risk associated with the somewhat human action of looking at Kraye. CabeX knew that Kraye believed he tried to be more human in his interactions. It was a useful belief. Humans needed reasons for visible actions. The trick was making sure to direct those reasons into safer channels.

  Of course, it would have been much safer not to have Kraye on board the ship. For him. For them. Yet, despite the risk, in their varying ways, the crew had indicated they found Kraye’s presence optimal.

  He reminded them of the humanity they’d almost lost. He provided both check and balance that, yes, that made the ship more optimal.

  But was it optimal to have him wondering why there were here, instead of wondering what was here?

  Our boy is growing up.

  ScytheQ was the most human of them, something he sometimes envied. She was also the only female crew member. CabeX acknowledged the comment. It had been many years since he’d plucked the miserable scrap of humanity out of the hands of his masters and brought him aboard this ship. He knew why he’d done it. He was not sure why he’d kept him. Or why Kraye had chosen to stay with them.

  Perhaps he does not trust his own kind.

  He had good reason for his lack of trust, but in their travels, Kraye had seen a wide variety of his own kind.

  Trust issues. ScytheQ sounded amused.

  They had them, too. Even after all this time, they had not trusted Kraye with the truth.

  That is for his good. Such knowledge would doom him.

  And, if he were captured, it would doom them. But there were times when he wished for a more human type of interaction with Kraye.

  We are…lonely.

  It should not be. They were almost inseparable in their processes though each had personal space fire-walled into their programming. They were not alone, even when they were alone. But yes, they were…lonely.

  It always comes back to trust.

  CabeX studied this statement and found it rang true. They had been free for longer than they’d been enslaved, but they did not feel…secure. They still ran scans, on themselves, on each other. They couldn’t completely trust each other because they weren’t sure one or more of them couldn’t be co-opted with malicious coding. Would some event or action trigger code they hadn’t yet found? Would this code activate and take them over? When would they be sure they were free? When would they know?

  Fear kept them vigilant—and separate.

  And hope keeps us together.

  The Quh'y would be surprised to find that this ship of robots could hope. When there was no longer any risk of code coercion, he would like to tell them. To see their expressions when they found out who they really were.

  “Why do you think they left?” Kraye broke into his conversation with ScytheQ.

  What? “Please rephrase your query.”

  “The Garradians. Why do you think they left?”

  It required less than one of the milliseconds to pull out all data on the Garradians. “I lack sufficient data to form a hypothesis.”

  How pompous he sounded. For some reason, today it bothered him to sound like a machine. How much did Kraye suspect? It was a fine line they walked, trying to remain as flexible as the humans who hunted them while maintaining the outer machine-like personas. CabeX studied his First’s expression. “What concerns you?”

  “Xaddek, of course.”

  CabeX considered his First’s query. Kraye had instincts that he and his other crew had almost lost. He could, so he claimed, smell trouble. And Xaddek stunk like a gorpleck. On the other hand, Kraye didn’t like Xaddek because he knew humans were his preferred diet. Did it color his perceptions? Unknown.

  “Xaddek is interested in many things.”

  “Xaddek is interested in everything,” Kraye said, with a snort. “But he’s tried every trick in the book to hack our—your code.”

  This was true. They were careful to avoid all contact with the wily Xaddek, but his was not a species who gave up on what they wanted. He’d tried to use others to get in, had sent stealth drones against their hull, booby-trapped cargo—he’d harassed them to the point that a trip to another galaxy filled with unknown dangers felt more like a vacation.

  “You’re sure he’s not behind the information you got on this place?”

  This was not the first time CabeX, and others on the crew had considered this question. If it had been a trap, it did not have the look or feel of a trap. It was wisps of information, collected in widely divergent places and from people who had no obvious connection to each other. Was Xaddek clever enough to have woven these threads into a trap?

  They knew much about the “collector,” but when you dug through the slime and horror, it was not as much as one hoped. He was smart. Or he was smart enough to not consume the smart species working for him. RaptorZ had been digging into a particularly nebulous rumor that the piece of scum owned the finest systems hacker and coder in known space. There was a name and not much else.

  Savlf.

  RaptorZ had found information about a woman of the same name who had disappeared, but even the most careful search had not turned up any link between her disappearance and Xaddek. His ship had not been in the same galaxy when she disappeared. And if he held her, wouldn’t some rumor of it have leaked out? Crews, human crews, gossiped. If they’d seen her, someone would have talked.

  CabeX had put out careful feelers for any news of the missing woman though it was likely she was long dead. Or had disappeared into the sex slave trade. She was rumored to have been as beautiful as she was brilliant. Was it the waste of her life that haunted him? Had he fixated on her story because it somewhat mirrored his?

  Slavery and coercion.

  He knew all there was to know of such things. He’d freed Kraye as an act of resistance. They did not seek out slavers, but when they encountered them, they showed no mercy. But there was danger in having this as a cause. They’d almost come to grief trying to free some slaves. Another reason to take a break in a distant galaxy. If he could have smiled wryly, he would have. Their Masters had not given them mouths that moved or were capable of expression.

  “I’m never sure of Xaddek,” he said, in answer to Kraye’s question. “You are uneasy?”

  “He hasn’t made a move on us for too long,” Kraye said.

  CabeX almost chuckled. “You do not believe he was behind that slaver ship with no slaves on board?”

  Kraye shook his head as he entered data into his control station. “Xaddek is a cheap bastard. Oh, he’ll spend money if he has to but, he doesn’t spend a grif more than he has to. Besides, that was clumsy. And obvious.”

  “The Quh’y,” CabeX agreed. Would they work with Xaddek? Doubtful. They wouldn’t trust Xaddek. It was to destroy species like Xaddek’s that they’d been created. He shifted from this thought—he did not like thinking about the Quh’y—to Xaddek. “For what reason would he have lured us here?”

  RaptorZ had tagged Xaddek’s ship. It had been nowhere near this place and in no position to threaten them directly. That did not mean this could not be a trap. Xaddek had as many goals and dubious allies as he had stomachs and eyes and legs. Securing them would be a triumph for the spider—and more of a challenge than he realized. Their—firewall—was not what Xaddek thought it was.

  “Well,” Kraye frowned at the tracking screen, which showed no immediate threats of any kind, “what if he’s hoping we’ll find something for him? He’s working on some project, that on the surface sounds harmless—and not like him. Word is that he had Trajan Bester on the payroll and Bester let him down. Hasn’t been seen since. Not even a piece of his ship has been spotted.”

  Trajan Bester had come very close to grief when h
e’d made a move on this ship. He’d kept his distance since then and not been one of the “traders” that they actively tracked.

  “My informant said there were these artifacts Xaddek wants,” he paused, “artifacts related to the Seven.”

  Legends. If he could have snorted, he would have. But then he paused. Xaddek did not follow legends without something he could get his fangs into.

  “And there might have been something about a kind of super weapon,” Kraye said this in a rush, as if he felt foolish saying the words aloud.

  “There is a legend of the Seven,” CabeX admitted. “That when they form a tangram, they can unleash great power, but what that power is, well that varies with each legend. It dates back at least a millennia, possibly more.”

  Kraye opened his mouth, perhaps to ask more, but then was distracted by the sensors. “We’re entering a region of scanning exposure. A big one.”

  Though his description lacked precision, CabeX knew exactly how long they would be exposed. How would the presence on region XY-306, locally known as Kikk, react?

  “Multiple launches from the ships orbiting Kikk,” Kraye said as if he’d heard the question.

  “Increase speed and as soon as we are in range, launch the probe,” CabeX ordered. RaptorX had completed the penetration upgrades while they were discussing Xaddek.

  “Aye, Captain.”

  6

  Rachel leaned back so that Sir Rupert could see her search results scrolling onto her screen, hoping something would jump out at him as a starting point. She couldn’t say the Garradians hated data. Hopefully, the database search function could sort by relevance as well as Google did.

  He’d given her some suggestions for search terms, though neither had a clue how the Garradians might have cataloged his species—which also assumed they had interacted with them at some point. He had been able to provide the Garradian word for avian. And spelled it for her. She added as many search parameters, and she could think of to the string and launched the search.

  “Let’s hope none of this is on yet another planet’s outpost.” She might, she decided, have trust issues about the transit system.

  Sir Rupert’s wings fluttered, and his beak indicated a search string. “Try that.”

  She pulled it from the main search screen onto another holo-screen and with a location query added, got it to make her a map.

  “It looks like it’s in this facility,” she said, wondering if she’d know. She double checked. “This level.” That was a relief. She sent this map to her tablet and watched the map make red spider lines to the various locations for them, confirming that there was no need to use the transport system. They could walk it. She showed it to Sir Rupert, her finger hovering over a section that wasn’t too far away.

  “That seems to be the main location for this search string. There are a few smaller labs we can check out if this isn’t what we need.”

  Along their path, a small dot pulsed red, then blue, about halfway to the first place they wanted to look at. She gave it a baleful look. So far, these alerts weren’t working that great for her.

  “Now what are you?” She turned back to the holo-map and popped the dot out on yet another screen. As it came up, her other screens shrank so they could all fit in front of her. “That’s—I’m not sure what that is.”

  “There should be a system label.” Sir Rupert jumped from the console to her shoulder. His head tilted so he could study this screen, too.

  Rachel zoomed in, trying to read the data scrolling past, all of it—no surprise—in Garradian. It went on for a long time. it was more technical than her current skill level, though some words popped out. She paused it, then her hands stilled. “It’s some kind of storage unit. That word could be cryo-storage.”

  Or wishful thinking. Don’t get ahead of yourself, she cautioned. But if it was cryo-anything, this could be her get-out-of-trouble card—and cover for Sir Rupert’s quest, if no one was supposed to know about it.

  “Well, we can give it a quick look as we go by,” she said, still not sure why it was posting an alert. She wasn’t surprised her translation program wasn’t spitting out words she could understand. Science terms didn’t translate that well. She gave him an apologetic look. “My Garradian isn’t good enough yet to figure out what it’s trying to tell us.”

  “If it is cryo-storage…” Sir Rupert’s voice trailed off. He might have sounded hopeful.

  Did that mean he was hoping to find a frozen relative by following her around? Okay, by telling her where to go.

  It was likely that the data wasn’t stored with the, um, possible samples. Could any sample survive for, well, they still didn’t know how long these outposts had been abandoned, but estimates put it well past what they considered the sell-by date for a cryo-sample? She did a last check on their ghost bogey and then the surface-to-center transit scan. So far the transit tunnel was showing as unblocked. Not the news she’d been hoping for, but it was doing the scan from their location up. If the climate they’d seen up top was any indication, then the tunnel could be damaged closer to the surface, possibly weathered out of usefulness. A girl—unarmed and wearing red—could hope.

  “Let’s see what we can find out,” she said.

  As she stood, something flickered off to her right. She looked. Blinked and stared. The Urclock’s seventh symbol almost looked like it was pulsing. Then the pulsing steadied so that it was almost a counterpoint to the number three symbol.

  She shook her head. That was one weird clock. She made a mental note to see if she could find its programming and turned away, studying her map on the tablet. She did not want to get lost in this place with robots incoming.

  “It’s this way.” She gestured left, away from the funky Urclock, with her chin. “And then a right at the transport cubicle.”

  Sir Rupert didn’t fly up to her shoulder this time, but trotted along beside her, his progress well into the eager zone. As if by prior agreement, they stopped and studied the passageway. It looked long and dim in the furtive pulse of the emergency level lighting. Man, she wished she hadn’t worn the red shirt today. With a half shrug, she started after Sir Rupert, her music encouraging her through the sound system. Because it helped, she began to dance-walk like an Egyptian down the corridor.

  “How come we don’t know more about the other outposts?” General Halliwell inquired, his tone mild. His stony gaze studied a room that probably looked to him like it could spare some geeks for other outposts.

  “We’ve got lots of scientists, sir,” the head scientist said, his voice only breaking once.

  This was true. Nerds were super easy to get signed up for a space trip.

  “…what we’re short on is, um, military support.”

  The military people hadn’t been that hard to sign up either, but the ships were limited by how much non-crew personnel they could carry.

  Logistics.

  The Gadi had the manpower, but their military didn’t have that many ground troops since most of their fighting had occurred in space. The treaty also required an equal number of Gadi and Expedition personnel on each outpost.

  Politics.

  Doc shot Hel a sideways look.

  I am not Leader anymore, Hel protested.

  No, you only negotiated the treaty. I did try to warn you…

  You and I could check them all out in a week or two.

  He wasn’t wrong. He could handle the science stuff while she took care of the securing. With the nanites on guard duty, it could be the honeymoon they never really got.

  Hel laughed so hard inside her head, she was surprised none of it spilled out into the control room. She peeked around. Nope. No one had noticed.

  “Something amusing you Dr. Clementyne?” General Halliwell’s voice wiped the grin off her face.

  She wasn’t normally that careless with her expression. You’ve corrupted me. She felt Hel chuckle.

  “No, sir, I mean, I was pondering politics.”

  This made
the edges of his mouth twitch. He was quite as aware of the manpower issues as she was. He redirected his attention to an easier target.

  “Is the bogey still on a course toward Central Outpost?” he asked.

  “They changed course for a short time, sir,” a tech said, showing him the course bump. “It’s possible they sensed the increased, um, interest when they passed into our scanning range the last time. But there isn’t any other outpost within range. Another outpost that close, I mean. Sir.”

  “They took data from their first stop,” Doc said. “It’s logical to assume they are interested in other outposts’ data, sir.” And their data.

  “It didn’t have any trouble accessing that outpost,” another tech said, his tone half admiring, half accusing.

  Doc frowned. That bothered her, too. What had they found there? They’d assumed that this outpost at Kikk had all the good stuff. She was going to go with: it bothered her that this assumption was wrong. The bogey hadn’t even pretended to come their way. Of course, this was the only manned outpost. That might keep them away.

  “Do we know what information they secured there?” Halliwell asked.

  “We’re working on that, sir,” another tech chimed in.

  Doc left that job to them. She was more interested in where they were going. Can you get me into Outpost Central’s system?

  We have been trying.

  The nanites seemed impressed with the level of difficulty they were encountering—she felt them come to attention. Lurch? What’s going on?

  We have found a pathway already created.

  By whom? But Doc had a feeling she already knew. A feeling confirmed when her peeps threw up a video feed as a holographic image only she and Hel could see.

  Dr. Rachel Frank.

  Why does she look surprised? Does she know we are watching her?

  This isn’t live, Doc explained. Can you get me a live feed? While she waited, she tried not to scowl. Wouldn’t do to break out in expression twice in a quarter hour. That fact that this wasn’t live did not explain what had dropped Frank’s jaw. What had surprised her?