Read Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series Online
Authors: Jasper T. Scott
Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series (12 page)
“Yes, ma’am,” the car replied.
Her car pulled over to the side of the road and glided to a stop. Catalina pulled open the door of her car and headed for the disabled garbage truck.
Chapter 19
B
en studied his companion while the garbage truck drove on to its next stop. The mutt’s shaggy brown and white fur was matted with dirt and sticky residues from digging through garbage. Ben’s olfactory sensor readings were off the charts with unpleasant odors.
“You need a bath, boy.”
The dog yawned, as if his smelliness were old news to him.
“What am I going to call you? I’m Ben by the way.”
The dog looked away.
“There’s no need to be rude.”
The dog lay down on the seat with his head between his paws and let loose a magnificent fart. Ben’s olfactory sensors went nuts.
“Hmmm,” Ben said, wrinkling his holographic nose. “Rudy. That’s what I’ll call you,” he said, patting the dog’s head.
After another five minutes of driving, the truck ground to a stop and Ben hopped out.
“Stay here, Rudy. I’ll be right back.”
As Ben loaded garbage into the back of his truck, he considered how simple yet satisfying his new life was. He had someone to care for who also cared for him—Rudy. A task to perform—garbage collection—and a place to rest and recharge—his truck. Life was simple, but complete. He missed his father, but he understood that the professor hadn’t sent him away because he didn’t want Ben around. He’d sent Ben away to protect him from his ignorant but well-meaning boss, Dorian Gray.
Perhaps I should have tried to reason with Mr. Gray,
Ben thought.
Ben placed another load of garbage into the machine and listened to the groaning and crunching sounds it made as it compacted the trash to make room for more.
Abruptly, the truck rocked with the muffled
boom
of an explosion, and it fell to the street with a resounding
bang.
Black smoke gushed out around the now dormant hover jets. Ben’s olfactory sensors detected a trickle of fuel leaking from the truck, and he suddenly realized the danger he was in. Panic gripped him, but it only served to sharpen his thinking. He ran back to the truck’s cabin and tore open the door. “Come on Rudy! We have to go!”
The dog sat up and barked. For a moment Ben thought the dog was barking at him. Then he noticed the heat signatures coming up behind him on his infrared sensors. The signatures were human. Ben switched to an optical view and saw that they were adolescent boys. One of them carried an old, dented aluminum bat. The other two carried thick metal pipes. They must have heard Rudy and thought they needed to break in to save him. Didn’t they see that the door was open already?
One of the pipes swung out and
clanged
across Ben’s back. He felt the dent as a quasi-painful jolt.
Rudy growled and backed further into the cabin.
Ben turned to address his attacker. “What are you doing? I am trying to rescue—”
Clang!
Another impact, this time across his chest. Ben steadied himself against the blow. Another pipe whistled toward him and made a meaty smack against the soft synthetic flesh of his hand as he caught it.
“Let it go, tin man! I’m warnin’ you!”
“Please stop. There has been some type of misunderstanding. I did not sabotage this vehicle, and I am trying to rescue my dog.”
“The fuck?” another one of the boys said. “Bots got pets now?” He peered through the billowing clouds of smoke to get a look into the cabin. “Shit!” the boy said. “It’s true! He’s got a fuckin’ stray in there!”
“You’re a real son of an abomination, ain’t ya?” the boy whose weapon he’d seized said. “What were you gonna do with it, you twisted fucker?”
“He’s Rudy. Don’t worry I would never harm him. I planned to find him something to eat, but please, we can talk later,” Ben said. “My truck is leaking fuel and gushing smoke. It may explode. We must get away before it does.”
With that, Ben lunged inside the vehicle. Rudy backed into the corner and growled at him, baring his teeth. Ben ignored the dog’s protests and grabbed him. The dog bit him on his wrist, eliciting another quasi-painful sensation. Ben cooed reassuringly in the dog’s ear even as its jaws turned and grappled for purchase on his throat. He withdrew from the cabin, sheltering the animal as the pipe-wielding boys beat him with renewed gusto.
He tried to warn them that they could injure Rudy, but they wouldn’t stop. Ben was confused and horrified by their behavior. Like Rudy, they must have irrationally decided that he was some kind of threat. Rudy squirmed, trying to break free, and Ben barely managed to protect him from an accidental blow to the head. Ben ran as fast as he could and set Rudy down at a safe distance from the truck. The dog bolted down the alley where Ben had been collecting trash. He watched in dismay. A moment ago he’d had everything. Life had been great. Now his truck was gone, and Rudy was gone.
Ben turned to face his attackers. He held up both hands as they approached. The boy leading the group stopped and held out his weapon, a dented aluminum baseball bat, like a sword with which he would impale Ben.
“Any last words, fucker?”
“I do not understand your need to involve copulation in everything you say,” Ben said, shaking his head. “Are you in desperate need of a female?”
“Holy fuck—” the boy declared, blinking in astonishment as he turned to the others. “Is it my imagination or did tin man just ask me if I’m horny?”
One of the boys laughed and the other one grinned. Ben became even more confused. Laughter was supposed to be associated with joy, not anger.
Ben smiled and allowed a laugh of his own to bubble out. He did not feel happy, but he thought it only polite to join in. All three boys turned to look at him with matching scowls.
“What are you laughin at, tin man?” the boy with the bat asked.
“I am laughing at my unintentionally humorous inquiry. It is polite to laugh when others are amused.”
“You know what would really amuse me?”
“I do not.”
“You. In pieces.”
Ben felt confused again. “There is no need to resort to violence. If you would explain to me what is provoking your current mental state, I may be able to help you.”
“No need to help me,” the boy with the bat said. “I can help myself.” He advanced on Ben once more, smacking his palm with his bat. The other two boys circled around, cornering Ben in the alley.
He watched them approach, still confused, and determined to make them understand their error. “Did Mr. Gray send you?” he asked, horror dawning.
“Mr. Grim Reaper sent me, tin man,” the boy with the bat said as he reared back for a two-handed swing.
Thunk!
The bat bounced off the back of Ben’s knee, causing a loss of function in one of the servos. “I am sorry to have offended you. I will go now,” he said as he turned and began limping down the alley. Maybe he would find Rudy?
“Not so fast, tin man!”
Thunk.
A pipe bounced off his other leg. No damage this time, but it was too late, Ben couldn’t run with his injured knee, and the boys chasing him were uninjured. They kept up easily, walking beside him and calling out insults.
“Rudy! Here boy!” Ben called out, hoping that if he ignored his attackers they would go away.
They didn’t. They chased him all the way down the alley, periodically hitting him as they went. Ben couldn’t understand what he’d done to anger them. He’d never met them before in his life. The alley came to a dead end. There was no way out. Despair welled up inside of him. He turned to face his attackers to reason with them once more. Another blow damaged his other knee, and he collapsed.
The blows kept coming until all of his other joints were damaged and he lay still. Ben felt helpless. Afraid. Hurt. His processor spun through endless, impotent loops of code, trying to find a way to talk his attackers out of their hatred. Nothing worked. Eventually he stopped trying to reason with them and watched in silence as they beat and dented his already disabled body. Then he noticed something curious: his attackers grew suddenly calm and happy. They slapped one another’s backs and cheered, complimenting each other with more profanity.
“Another fucker for the scrap heap!” the one with the bat said. “How many is that now? Fifteen?”
“Fourteen,” a second boy corrected.
“What’s going on in there!” a woman’s voice called out.
“Shit! Someone saw us!” the third boy whispered.
“She can’t see us from here you idiot,” the bat-wielder said.
“Well it’s a dead end! She’s gonna see us soon,” boy three replied.
“So we beat her ass, too.”
“Are you crazy? We kill bots, not people!”
“Hey! Did you hear me?” the woman said, her voice louder as she approached.
“Help!” Ben said, his voice distorted by a dented speaker grill.
“Fucker lives!” the boy with the bat roared, hitting him enthusiastically over the head.
“Get away from there!” the woman said.
“Let’s go! Over there! The fire escape!” the second boy said.
Ben watched on a hazy, glitching sensor display as all three boys clambered up a ladder to a nearby fire escape and raced up the stairs, their footsteps
clanging
on metal rungs as they went. They reached a pedestrian tunnel a few floors up and disappeared inside.
The woman who’d come to investigate went down on her haunches at Ben’s side. Her blue eyes were full of dismay as she gazed down on him. “Stupid kids don’t have anything better to do,” she muttered.
“Help me…” Ben said, his speaker crackling with distortion.
The woman’s features flashed with bewilderment. “Hey there,” she said in a kind voice.
“I am badly injured,” he said.
“Don’t you mean damaged?” she asked.
“I am losing vital fluids,” he added.
“Vital…”
“My batteries are leaking.”
“You’re losing power,” she clarified.
“Yes. I will power down soon. Please don’t leave me here. I will be scrapped and recycled if someone finds me like this. I am supposed to help people. I cannot help them if I am dead.”
“If you are
dead?
” the woman repeated as if she didn’t understand.
Ben frowned, despair setting in. “You are like the ones who did this to me. You hate me, too.”
The woman looked taken aback. “I don’t
hate
you, I just… never mind. You are one odd bot. That beating must have really scrambled your programming. Can you move?”
Ben tried to shake his head, but he couldn’t even do that. “I cannot.”
“You probably
will
be recycled then. I don’t see how anyone can repair this kind of damage.”
“I know someone who can,” Ben said, thinking of his father, Professor Arias. “Please h-h-help me.” Digital stutters were setting in. He didn’t have long.
“Is he your owner?”
Ben thought about that. There was no time to explain that the professor was more than that. “Y-yes.”
“I’ve heard of people leasing their bots out to make money, but garbage collection? I guess you weren’t good for much else, huh? All right, I’ll call him. Give me a name and comm number.”
“Professor Ari—i-i-i—” Ben’s voice gave way to a prolonged stutter as his power failed. His last thought was of a garbage truck like his picking him up and crushing him into a compact cube for delivery to the nearest recycling center.
Chapter 20
“W
e’re not going to make it, Admiral,” McAdams said.
Alexander stared hard at the tactical display hovering between his and McAdams’ chairs. Eight Solarian destroyers were racing in at eleven o’clock—dead ahead and thirty-five degrees to port—but that angle was getting smaller with every passing second. The
Adamantine’s
vector was almost perpendicular to that of the incoming enemy ships, so they wouldn’t spend more than a handful of seconds within laser range of each other, but they were outnumbered and the
Adamantine
was already badly damaged.
A few seconds might be all it takes,
Alexander realized.
“Enemy is launching missiles!” Lieutenant Frost announced from sensors.
“Cardinal! Get our hypervelocity cannons tracking!”
“Aye, sir.”
“Stone, launch fighters and drones and get them to help intercept those missiles.”
“Aye aye.”
“Fifteen minutes to extended ELR,” McAdams reported.
Alexander grimaced and shifted his attention to the incoming Alliance warships. There were two waves. The closest wave was coming up fast on an intercept course with the Solarian destroyers, heading them off the same way that they were heading off the
Adamantine.
Those ships would pass into and out of range with each other in a matter of seconds, too, but at least it would give the Solarians something to think about. Time to extended ELR for that wave was Twenty-seven minutes and twenty-three seconds.
The cavalry’s going to arrive long after we’ve already concluded our engagement with those destroyers.
A second wave of Alliance ships was busy decelerating behind the first to create a cordon. Behind that was a safe zone. If the
Adamantine
made it that far, the Solarians would have no choice but to turn back. Even if they could still catch up, they’d never punch through that cordon.
Alexander began nodding to himself.
We just have to survive for a few minutes.
“Lieutenant Frost, how long are we going to spend within laser range of those destroyers?”
“Twenty-two seconds, sir.”
“Cardinal, what kind of firepower are we up against?”
“Each of those destroyers has ten laser batteries, sir. We’re looking at twenty cannons more than what we were up against with the
Crimson Warrior.
”
Hypervelocity rounds streaked out from the
Adamantine
in bright golden lines, tracking enemy missiles across the void.
Thud, thud, thud…
Their encounter with the enemy dreadnought had peeled open more than thirty decks in the
Adamantine’s
nose and nearly detonated their remaining missiles in their launch tubes. They couldn’t afford to lose another thirty or forty decks—that would peel them open all the way to the bridge.
“Bishop, rotate us so that the
Crimson Warrior
is between us and the enemy and set the autopilot to keep that side facing them. If they want to shoot at us, they’ll have to shoot through their own ship first.”
“The autopilot, sir?”
“I’m evacuating the ship.” Turning to McAdams he said, “That includes you, Commander.”
McAdams stared at him, shock registering in her blue eyes. “What about
you,
sir?”
Alexander looked away. “Cardinal, fire all of our remaining missiles, target enemy ordnance.”
“We only have missiles with explosive warheads left, and they won’t get past the enemy’s laser-armed missile fragments, sir.”
“No, but they might draw some fire away from us. More importantly, we can’t afford to risk a lucky shot detonating one of our missiles while it’s still on board.”
“Aye, good point, sir.”
Turning back to McAdams, he said, “We might not survive this, Commander. You and I both know that. There’s no sense in all of us going down with the ship. We’re not going to be able to defeat the enemy. We just have to weather the assault, so there’s no need for us to be at our fighting best with a full complement of crew. I can transfer basic navigation, sensors, and engineering functions to my control station.”
“If there’s no need for us to be at our best, then the autopilot can handle things from here and you can come with us.”
“I can’t justify abandoning my post without a direct order from fleet command. Besides, any number of things could go wrong that will require someone on board to make adjustments.”
“Then I’m staying, too.”
“I gave you an order, Commander.”
“And I refused it. You can write me up for insubordination once we get to the safe zone.”
“Or I could have you cuffed and escorted off the bridge by marines.”
McAdams held his gaze for a long moment. “If that’s what you think is best, sir.”
Alexander scowled. “Fine. You win. Now sound the evacuation and get people out of their
G
-tanks while there’s still time.”
“We’re in position. Engines disengaged,” Bishop announced.
The evacuation alarm began screeching and red strobe lights started flashing.
Alexander nodded. “Cardinal, set all weapons to auto-fire on incoming enemy ordnance.”
“Aye sir.”
“Stone—your pilots have their orders. Make sure they know they’re on their own now.”
“They know, sir.”
“Then we’re ready. McAdams, pull the plug and switch us back from virtual to manual command.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alexander looked around the bridge. Myriad holo displays glowed bright blue and white; evacuation lights flashed red; the crew made frantic gestures at their screens, hurrying to wrap things up before they abandoned ship. Suddenly all of that vanished, replaced by an empty black void. A rhythmic
whooshing
sound brought him back—the sound of his liquid ventilator. Muffled alarms screeched, their pitch deepened by the inertial compensation emulsion in the flooded bridge. Alexander’s eyes snapped open, and a warm swirl of that emulsion blurred his view. The emulsion fell away from his eyes like a curtain, and Alexander watched it receding on all sides, leaving an expanding pocket of air in the center where atmosphere was being injected back into the bridge through a hollow column that had dropped down from the ceiling. With the engines off, they were in zero gravity, and the emulsion flowed in all directions at once, simultaneously pushed by the expanding pocket of air and pulled by vacuum hoses around the edges of the bridge.
The rest of the emulsion was sucked out, and the ship’s evacuation alarm came shrieking through the air in all its strident glory. Alexander hurried to remove his liquid ventilator and other life support tubes. He gagged as he withdrew the tracheal tube of the ventilator. Bridge control stations rose back out of recessed panels in the floor with a mixture of hydraulic and mechanical sounds. The safety harnesses that suspended the crew lowered them into their acceleration couches once more.
“Everyone to the escape pods!” Alexander roared as he unbuckled from one harness and into another.
The crew unbuckled from their submersion harnesses with a
clack
and
clatter,
and leapt straight up from their couches toward the elevators at the back of the bridge.
Alexander turned to look at McAdams and winced as a strobing red evacuation light flashed directly in his eyes. “You can turn off the evacuation alarm for the bridge.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
The flashing crimson lights disappeared, and the shrieking alarm grew silent.
“Thank you for staying.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, sir.”
Alexander nodded and looked away, out to the main holo display. Their view from the bow cameras was of empty space since they’d rotated the ship to keep the derelict dreadnought docked to the underside of the
Adamantine’s
hull between them and the Solarian destroyers.
Subtle vibrations shivered through the deck, accompanied by the muffled
thud, thud, thudding
of hypervelocity cannons firing at incoming missiles. Alexander transferred control of ship’s functions to his station, and his augmented reality lenses were crowded with a myriad of displays, one on top of the next. He minimized the less important ones, keeping the navigation and sensors in view.
“I’m passing engineering and weapons to you, Commander.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied as she toggled a tactical map between them. The holo display between their couches glowed to life. Time to extended effective laser range (ELR) with the enemy was down to just five minutes.
“I hope the crew has enough time to evacuate,” McAdams said.
Alexander nodded. “They still have to shoot through their own ship before they can get at us. Speaking of which…” Alexander summoned control of the comms and hailed the enemy on an open channel. “This is Admiral de Leon of the Alliance Battleship
Adamantine,
please be advised that the
Crimson Warrior’s
crew are all still aboard their ship, alive and well.”
Alexander waited, listening with the comms open for the Solarians’ reply. It came back to him just a few seconds later, audio only.
“Admiral
Lee-on
, this is Captain Solis. If what you say is true, then get me Captain Vrokovich on the comms.”
Alexander sighed. “Captain Solis, they are all currently locked inside their
G
-tanks and sedated. There’s no time for me to go and wake up the captain to prove that to you. Run a scan for human signatures on board the
Crimson Warrior,
and you’ll see that we’re telling the truth.”
“I’m afraid that’s not good enough. We have our orders. You can still surrender. Solis out.”
Alexander shut down the comms with a scowl. “So much for that.”
McAdams shook her head. “With or without proof, they wouldn’t have held their fire. They’ve been ordered to stop us at all costs, and depriving us of Solarian prisoners means we won’t be able to gain any intel from them.”
“They’d kill their own people just to keep them quiet?”
“Possibly. If they have a good excuse. Collateral damage and the possibility that their crew is already dead are pretty good excuses.”
A sudden jolt came through their acceleration couches and a muffled roar reached their ears.
“What was that?” Alexander asked.
The comms crackled with an answer, “
Adamantine,
this is Commander Helios of the fighter group. We’ve intercepted all the missiles, but two of them got by us and hit the derelict. Looks like the dreadnought’s still holding together, but there’s a big hole in its hull.”
“Admiral de Leon here, keep an eye out for more missiles, but keep your distance from us so you don’t get hit by shrapnel if things go to hell,” Alexander replied.
There was a brief pause from Commander Helios, and then he said, “You’ll be fine, sir. Hang in there.”
“We’ll do our best. De Leon out.”
McAdams spoke up, “We reach extended ELR in five, four, three, two…”
The tactical map lit up as dazzling emerald beams of light shot out, four from each of the enemy destroyers, all of them targeting the exact same spot on the
Adamantine
and her derelict shield.
“We’re taking fire!” McAdams warned as a simulated
sizzle
resonated through the air.
Alexander shook his head. “That’s impossible…” Then he realized why it wasn’t. “Those missiles must have punched a bigger hole than we thought. Where are they hitting us?”
More laser fire streaked out from the enemy ships, green and yellow this time as both extended range lasers and high intensity ones fired. The
Adamantine
was unable to fire back through the derelict. The weapons on that side were all deactivated because of the docking procedure, but even if they hadn’t been, the chances of one of them being located in the exact location of the hole in the
Crimson Warrior
were next to none.
“They’re shooting right above our heads, sir.”
Alexander’s eyes widened. Adrenaline surged through his blood stream, and he listened as the sizzling of lasers hitting their hull grew to an ominous roar. He snapped out of it a split second later. “Get your helmet on, Commander.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and both of them fumbled for the helmets clipped behind their headrests.
Alexander slipped his helmet over his head and heard his combat suit seal with a
hiss
. Every breath reverberated in his ears.
A bright orange glow appeared on the ceiling, like a flashlight shining through a blanket.
“Hold on!” he yelled through gritted teeth.
The ceiling burst open and the atmosphere whistled out in a violent rush, buffeting their combat suits and yanking them against their safety harnesses. More molten patches appeared below that hole as if by magic. Control stations evaporated and giant sections of the deck peeled away, revealing adjacent sections. Alexander felt a wash of radiant heat and watched as deadly, silvery globules of molten metal danced before his eyes like soap bubbles. It took Alexander a moment to realize what was happening. Enemy lasers were stabbing down, completely invisible to the naked eye in the now empty vacuum of the bridge. The ship’s combat computer wasn’t capable of rendering visuals beyond its holoscreens and Mindscape interfaces. The simulated roar of enemy fire remained, however, and it was deafening.