Transference Station (12 page)

‘We call them “cowboys”,’ said Leong. ‘One of the few things around here too small to want to bother us. The riders climb up trunks and shake them out for tree spiders, then their six-legged friends chew through the spider’s armour and share its entrails after a kill.’

‘Armour?’

‘Yeah, if you come under attack by something in the wild, not climbing up creepers to escape would be a top tip.’

Lana shook her head in disbelief and started to climb after Zeno. The android cycled open the door and disappeared inside, the mining boss and professor following fast below the soles of Lana’s boots. Aliens calls from the jungle depths chased after Lana, reminding her that inside the vehicle was going to be safer than out. Marginally safer. True to what Leong had said, the lights inside the cab weren’t working, but there was enough illumination from the heavily armoured curve of glass in front of the driver’s seat for her to make out the interior. Even easier for the android, whose vision extended into complete darkness as an integral part of his specification. Zeno moved down the back of the cab, control panels and built-in stools on either side for monitoring the gunnery up top. He located the control computer and broke open its console, pulling out sections of circuitry. After a quick manual inspection, he rolled up the sleeve on his ship suit and a section of golden skin rippled back, revealing a physical jack which he plugged into the truck’s systems. A look of concentration settled on Zeno’s face, and LEDs began to blink across the exposed machinery. He was powering the device from the miniature fusion plant inside his body.

‘
I’m
a machine.’

Leong shook his head. ‘No, you’re sentient, android. Our haulers don’t even come close. I’ve got chess software back on base with more personality than this tanker. This is a fucking low-level truck system we’re talking about here.’

‘High functioning enough to decide to commit suicide,’ insisted Zeno.

‘But that’s not possible,’ said Lana. ‘It’s not even
permitted
.’

‘No,’ said Zeno, sounding curious and oddly wistful at the same time. ‘No it isn’t.’

‘I think you’re the one with a programming fault, android,’ said Sebba. ‘What you found in the logs was merely a last-second burst of garbage from a dying and very limited AI. How do you explain the drained power on board? Let’s deal with the most likely scenario. There was an atmospheric surge that our weather forecasting didn’t predict. It must have knocked out some of the truck’s systems. Lento got out of her cab to attempt to fix the vehicle. Then a second larger surge killed the tanker and its weapons and locked her out of the protection of her own cabin.’ Sebba pointed to the river before her hand encompassed the thick walls of the jungle. ‘And how many species are there in the vicinity who would look on a stranded worker as a little variety in their usual diet?’

‘What if she tried to walk back to the base?’ asked Leong.

‘It’s a straight dirt track,’ said Sebba. ‘You might get dragged off it by one of the local beasts, but you tell me how you can get lost on this road? Thirty miles to the base from the river. I could walk that in a day. If her implant’s stopped broadcasting, it’s only because the body it was inserted into has been digested.’

‘She could be lying wounded out there,’ protested Leong.

‘Wounded for over a week? Eating bugs? You need to face up to reality. This is a highly unfortunate accident, I grant you, but everyone on the team signed on for danger money-plus.
This
is what it covers. Operations in the mountains are to resume immediately. I need an initial load to transport to DSD’s buyers… or the funding for our operation is going to evaporate like a rain puddle in dry season. If you want to keep on combing the badlands of Nambia; you can do it in your own time when you’re off-shift. I’ll even throw in the flight time fuel for free.’

‘Damn straight we’ll keep on with the search,’ snarled Leong.

‘I can assist you,’ said Lana. ‘The
Gravity Rose
has been laying down her satellite network ever since we put into orbit. We’ll have eyes in the sky, soon. We can run scans for fires, flares and messages scratched into the dirt… whatever it takes.’

‘You,’ said Sebba, ‘are going to be too busy lifting containers back to orbit to be distracted by this.’

Lana’s eyes narrowed. ‘Here’s how chain of command works on a starship, prof. Above me, there’s only God, and I don’t even answer to him… he’s strictly advisory only. Whatever you shovel dirt-side, I’ll ship up and out for Dollar-sign, because that’s the deal I would have shook on if DSD still had hands worth a damn to press the flesh. You even get to supply the jump co-ordinates, but that’s as near as it fucking comes to giving commands to my ship, my crew, or me. So, Mister Leong, my satellite net will be at your disposal, just as soon as its operational.’ Sebba looked as if she was going to argue further, but Lana raised a finger. ‘Or… as base head, Sebba, you can tell me to piss off, and I’ll unload for you, and when I return to the next Edge world that’s actually on the grid, I’ll drop an e-mail to DSD telling him to find another chump to ship out his untaxed, unregulated, environmentally unfriendly, black-market ores to his dodgy buyers. And maybe, if you’re real lucky, said chump’s ship will actually turn up in Abracadabra orbit to haul containers
before
your sentry tanks run out of ammo.’

‘I can see why DSD chose you,’ said Sebba before she turned to storm out of the cab and back towards her helicopter. ‘You’re not a starship captain… you’re a blackmailer.’

‘Whatever it takes,’ sighed Lana, watching the irritating blueblood flounce off. She felt a flush of relief at the woman’s departure. The mining chief mouthed a silent thank-you in her direction, and turned to follow, no doubt trying and placate his hopeless boss.

‘She had one thing right,’ said Zeno, shutting the panel on the vehicle’s computer core. ‘Satellite net or no, we ain’t going to find shit out there. That poor unfortunate mope of a driver’s long dead.’

‘Leave no crew behind,’ said Lana, dabbing at her sweating brow with the back of her sleeve, only a moment’s relief from the refrigerated fibres.

‘She ain’t our crew.’

‘Part of the mission, anyway, as long as we’re on contract to this fiasco.’

Zeno moved up towards the stretch of armoured glass at the front of the cab, staring out at the jungle and the baneful crimson sky. ‘Man, there’s nothing good going to come of being on this planet. Look at that wrong sky. A dying world under a dying star. The animals know it. The jungle knows it. Everything alive here knows it’s been born a couple of billion years after a righteous geological era. This place has evil in its bones – just waiting for the day a real supernova’s going to come and wipe the planet clean.’

Lana was shocked. The android was often cynical about things, but rarely this bleak. ‘You’re not terrified by a little tropical offworld bush, are you?’

‘Sure I am… another entry in humanity’s goddamn long list of gifts to me. The glorious joys of sentience.’ Zeno pointed back to the cab’s computer. ‘Even this rat-brained truck was smart enough to fry itself rather than stay driving around here. What’s that tell you?’

‘Shit,’ said Lana. ‘I guess that it’s business as usual for Fiveworlds Shipping.’

‘Well, we are where we are, skipper. File it under spilt milk.’

‘If only I hadn’t run into Pitor Skeeg back on the station. I think seeing him running a small flotilla… it made me jealous. Made me reckless. I would have taken any damned job DSD had to offer.’

‘You think Skeeg’s going major? He’s just a bagman for Hyperfast, now. The best move you ever made was dumping that janky flam artist.’

Maybe the only good move.
‘As long as it’s been, Pitor still knows how to get to me.’

Lana felt a chill as she emerged from the truck to climb down towards the waiting helicopter, blades beginning to rotate back into life, and it wasn’t just her suit’s thermostat reacting to the wall of heat outside. She’d brought the crew here, against all her best instincts. They were counting on her to keep Fiveworlds Shipping flying, and she’d made her usual level of good decision-making. Trusting Dollar-sign Dillard was never a smart move. If this had been any kind of cakewalk, the devious broker would’ve chartered his own vessel to fly in, rather than offering Lana a slice of the action.

Zeno swung out of the doorway, mounting the side of the truck. ‘You remember after you inherited the
Gravity Rose
and I agreed to crew for you, what I told you when we first walked onto the bridge?’

‘Act like the skipper, act as though you know what you’re doing,’ said Lana, ignoring the burning heat, ‘and everyone will work to make your commands come good.’

‘Damn straight. This is no time to start second-guessing your decisions. There’s a universe full of might-have-been out there; the
Rose
’s holds can only store a small percentage of it.’

Lana sighed as she made her way to the waiting helicopter. Zeno was right. But then, the android had a couple of millennia of right trailing behind him.
Maybe if I live as long, I’d be as wise – before the event as well as after.
‘Okay, here’s how it is. We’ll unload, hunker down behind the laser fence, wait for that old crone to dig out her first load, and then we’re sliding void away from this damn rock just as fast as Polter can plot a jump.’

‘Now that sounds like a plan.’

Lana stared back at the tanker, imagining the terror she would be feeling if she was posted missing, lying in the jungle, wounded and lost.
What the hell is so bad that it could scare a low-level truck A.I into erasing itself?
Yeah, another full shitty day of business as usual
.

She followed Zeno towards the helicopter, Leong dismounting from the cockpit; his face perplexed and even more worried than before. He was talking quickly into the helmet’s communicator, his hands gesturing urgently but superfluously at the person at the other end.

‘Disappeared? What the hell are you talking about?’ Zeno pulled out his phone, but the communicator just returned a long fizz of static. Polter’s satellite network obviously wasn’t in place yet.

‘I mean, he’s
totally
disappeared,’ said Leong. ‘Your skirl friend, he sent Mister Durk to check on a jammed cargo door on one of your shuttles. After a couple of minutes with no word of a fix, the lizard followed him over, but your man had vanished into thin air. We’ve searched every inch of the landing field and the base, but there’s no sign of him. None of the gates have been opened, plus, all your shuttles are still on the field. What’s the frequency of his transponder?’

‘He doesn’t have a transponder yet,’ said Lana, reeling in shock at the news and trying to fight down a rising sense of panic. ‘We use our ship implants, but Calder’s only just signed up as crew. He never had one put in! How the fuck can he have just vanished?’ Had Calder found some way to slip out of the base in search of the missing driver, despite all protestations to the contrary? He could be reckless, but surely even he wasn’t that stupid?

‘My tech’s checking the sentry guns’ logs, to see if something flew in and out over the fence that wasn’t tagged and tracked as a threat. I don’t see how that could be, though. Our sentries are trigger-happy at the best of times, they’d light up a flying squirrel if one tried to jump the perimeter.’

Lana was damned if she could see how that could be, either. Just like the mystery of a dead truck and its missing driver. She looked at Zeno, but for once the android’s normally expressive face was a mask that matched his artificial origins. He shook his head gently and patted the rifle slung across his shoulder.

‘Fly me back to the base. Now!’

***

Lights flickered back on across the ship’s bridge as the vessel’s systems shifted from its hyperspace setting and returned to normal space operating mode. The captain of the
Doubtful Quasar
, who went by the nickname of Steel-arm Bowen, looked down at his cyborg arm – fidgeting with a mechanical life of its own as his all-too human flesh adjusted to a new set of physics – and spat on the deck as he reached down to the side of the command chair and pulled out a hypo of oozing green pick-me-up to accelerate his body’s natural recovery processes. Outside the ship, the bloody red disc of Abracadabra’s sun winked at him through transparent armour, the world they were meant to be arriving at a small black disk silhouetted against the star’s light.