Deep magic second coll.., p.64
Deep Magic - Second Collection, page 64
part #2 of Deep Magic Collection Series
“Sharon!” sounded an excited voice from somewhere on his left. “They threw this away. Look at this? It’s still intact. Rubber on the tires even.”
“What is it, Don?” said a female voice, a very grandmotherly voice.
“Get over here! Look at this thing. They hurled a car out here. A perfectly good car.”
Alex was wrestling against his muscles, trying to turn his head again and see whatever it was that was talking, unable to fathom how it was speaking English and sounded so…human.
The noise of David Bowie’s Starman still screeched in his ears, but he tried to raise his voice over it. “My name is Alex Strong,” he said, the sound muffled.
Of course, using his real name made his AI torturer light up again. This time, there was air to carry its sound waves audibly.
“I’m sorry, I’ve lost connec—"
A blur of motion went in front of his mask, revealing an arm-like appendage made of pipes and wires and suddenly the black cylindrical device exploded, blasting shrapnel all over the passenger seat of the car and some into his space suit. Alex started to yell in fear and panic, loosing the only bodily function he had power to control.
“Why are you shooting off in the hanger, Don?” asked the grandmotherly voice. “That’s dangerous.”
Suddenly there was a furry white beast on the pock-marked seat next to him and a rabid, yapping, alien-like fluff of fur began ripping into the upholstery. Then it noticed him and attacked.
Alex felt teeth savaging the spacesuit of his right arm.
“Zuki, down! Down!” bellowed the man, lowering the firearm that had blasted the device. Thankfully, the David Bowie song had also stopped.
“It’s only a mannequin,” said the grandmotherly voice.
“It’s not! I heard it speak! Maybe it’s one of them.”
“Zuki, down,” said the woman patiently and the furball, which was oddly shaped like a misshapen peanut with a distended tail, finally relented.
The driver’s side door opened and Alex felt like his arm was being pulled out of socket. A shredding sound followed, but it did not come with pain. “What’s this? Velcro?” His left arm suddenly was down at his side, the blood flowing freely again. Merciful relief!
A big man leaned down, looking into his faceplate. He was human with a little shock of white hair, a receding chin, and a confused, befuddled look on his face. One arm was purely mechanical, with huge rivets and joints, and an array of appendages which included, Alex assumed, various eating utensils, including a spork. The man was big, his girth covered in various patterns of hide that resembled an alligator skin. His entire lower half was also mechanical.
The man’s other hand was normal and he tapped on the glass of the helmet with his dirt and grease-filled fingernail. “Hey. Someone in there?”
“My name is Alex Strong,” he said, fearful, his heart thumping with panic.
“You a robot?” asked the man.
“No, I’m strapped in here and I can’t move.”
The man gave a cynical look and turned his head. “You see that, Sharon? They’re throwing away people as well as the junk now. Sheez Louise.”
A woman approached the man, stroking the fluffy white ball they had called Zuki. She had shoulder-length hair, that was mostly silver and dark, reminding Alex of steel wool. She had a placid, thoughtful face, and a kind smile. “Poor man. Don, help him get out of those straps.”
“Well I don’t want him!” the man bellowed. He turned and twisted his robotic wrist and one of the implements came out that was a jagged dagger. He bent over Alex and began sawing through the shoulder straps that were pinning him to the seat. After he was done, he said, “I’ll just throw him out of the vault and be done with it. I want the car.”
Alex started to panic. “Please, sir, don’t throw me out into space.”
The little chin on the big man quivered as he chuckled. “Why not? If they threw you out here, there must have been a reason!”
“Don, be more friendly. Are you hungry, Mr. Strong? Don, take off his helmet. I want to see his face.”
“You want to feed him? We can’t feed him!” Don bellowed, waving the robotic hand in violent protest, but then he gripped the edge of the helmet, twisted it to the left and it popped off. Precious oxygen filled Alex’s lungs and he started panting. “I don’t want to miss the new reboot of Lost in Space on Netflix! Plus, you know how much these earthlings eat.”
“I think we can spare the food,” chided Sharon dismissively. “You need to lose weight anyway, Don. It’s bad for your heart.”
“If it’s so bad for my heart, then why did we come into orbit around this fifth circle world in the first place?”
“Let’s not argue, dear, in front of guests,” said Sharon. She snuggled against the strange pet and then smiled at Alex. “I think he’s a nice man.”
“How do we know he isn’t some…some murderer? He could kill us in our sleep!”
“Oh, Zuki won’t let him,” Sharon replied mildly. She put her frail little hand on the hood of the roadster. “Is it okay if we keep the car?”
* * *
Don and Sharon’s ship, Alex came to realize, reminded him of a mix between the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars and a potato shed he’d visited as a young man on his grandpa’s farm—except dirtier. It was a big round ring, but there was no pilot box hanging out on one side. The walls were grimy and lathered in grease, there were workbenches surrounding the room and there was an assortment of tools everywhere. On one of those benches, he recognized debris from a Chinese satellite that had been almost completely disassembled. There were racks on the walls containing a vast collection of NASA and Soviet-style parts. Don and Sharon had given him a change of clothes to replace his space suit, a hide-bound jacket similar to Don’s which Sharon said, under her breath, that he used to fit into when he was younger and before he’d lost an arm and both legs. That earned a scowl from Don and a litany of excuses. Alex was confused by the array of provisions that he found, but there were Chik-fil-A wrappers and pizza boxes aplenty, and Zuki snuffled amidst them, looking for discarded scraps.
Once he was released from the straps, Alex’s circulation had returned and he realized he was hungry. That was soon sated by a box of KFC, which included a warm biscuit, that Sharon withdrew from a small refrigerator-like storage unit. Except instead of keeping the food cold, it kept it piping hot. The meat was still steaming. The grease on the chicken tasted heavenly and he devoured it. Judging by his ravenous appetite, he estimated he’d been days without food.
“See!” Don exclaimed, tossing up his robotic arm before pointing the end at Alex. “He’ll eat everything in a week and we’ll have to make another run. Let me just dark blast him now!”
“You-you go back down to Earth?” Alex asked eagerly between mouthfuls, the news hitting him with a burst of hope.
“Of course we do,” Sharon said. “But not very often. Don kind of stands out.”
“Sharon, it’s not my fault a loader crushed my legs.”
Alex wiped his mouth. “But your names are American. You say you watch Netflix. Aren’t you from earth? Is this a space station?”
Don started to laugh, his belly shaking. “Now you’re insulting us? You think we’re from this fifth circle world? Are you kidding me? We’re here in orbit because we’re scavengers. We go through the atmospheric junk you gravity dwellers toss off the planet. There are dozens like us in orbit.”
“Dozens?” Alex asked, amazed.
“It’s a popular spot for those of us getting on in age but who still need a little income,” said Sharon with a smile. “And the satellites provide good entertainment.”
“Do you know how much a real roadster will fetch on the Quayzon?” Don chortled. “It probably still works. The radiation hasn’t even burned off the paint yet. Bet if we replace that heavy, inefficient lithium-cobalt power source with an anti-matter cell, it will really purr. I’ll plug her in and we’ll see.”
“Anti-matter cell?” Alex said, still marveling at what they were saying. “So you…and other scavengers…are in orbit around the planet? We have radars pointing into the sky from almost every angle of the globe.”
Don started to giggle, his eyes twinkling, then he snorted. “You’re from a fifth circle planet, Alex. It’s like…it’s like some kid screaming into a microphone. Can you hear me, ma? Can you hear me, dad?” He started to belly laugh. “No one takes your world seriously. You’re all nuts. Crackers.”
“How are we even having this conversation in English?” Alex asked.
“Oh, we learned it, dear,” said Sharon mildly. She pulled back her hair and he saw what looked like a cochlear device right about her ear.
“Seen one of ‘em before?” Don taunted. “You think it’s a hearing aid, like one you’d see on a screen? Ha! Do you even realize, Fifth Worlder, that part of your brain actually preventsyou from experiencing reality? This little cortex zapper turns that part off. Sharon and I learned your English in three days. Or was it four?”
“Five days,” said Sharon. “They really help us understand a world quickly.”
“You folks use computers to cheat and do calculations. We can do it in our heads. You didn’t know the mind could do that, I’ll bet.”
“Actually, I did know that,” Alex responded. He had two doctoral degrees.
“Saw it in a TED talk, didn’t ya?” Sharon smiled and wrinkled her nose at him prettily. “I like watching those.”
“I’m actually an interplanetary scientist,” Alex said.
“Pffuuhhh,” snorted Don. “As in your own solar system. A fifth circle solar system that spews out nothing but junk and debris. You know nothing about what’s out here, boy. Dark shields? Veil pulsars? The Terrestrial Empire? Helios Pirates? You probably don’t even know what Kokaubeams are.”
“Cocoa beans?” Alex asked. “You mean chocolate?”
Don started to snort through his nose.
“Kokaubeams are star clusters, dear,” Sharon said. “Governing stars.”
Alex had never heard that word in his life.
“Cocoa beans,” Don said laughing dismissively. “You don’t know a thing.”
Zuki growled at the comment, giving Alex a baleful look.
Don gave Alex a grim look. “This isn’t going to work. You’re too ignorant. Now that he’s eaten, let’s throw him out into vacuum and be done with it. Bye bye.”
“Don,” said Sharon with a frown. “Try to be nice. He’s lonely and clearly confused.”
“They catapulted him into space!” Don said. “I imagine so!”
Alex knew the best way to strike a deal was to appeal to another person’s ego. He was lonely and confused, but this was an opportunity to exploit. It might also be his only way back home.
“Maybe I could be of service,” Alex said, holding up his hands calmingly. “I could clean up in here. Arrange parts. I know a lot about these machines you’ve collected. I worked in NASA for years.”
Don’s brows lifted and he sniffed warily. “His amygdala is still raging. Fight or flight. Want to fight, Fifth Circle Worlder?” He twisted his wrist and the appendage rotated to the blaster. There was a dim humming noise that came from it.
“No!” Alex said, starting to cower.
“Don,” said Sharon scoldingly.
The wrist twisted again moving to the spork and he laughed. “These are brilliant. Probably the best invention of your race. Except for baseball. I love baseball.”
“He watches it for hours,” Sharon said.
“Can I watch it with you?” Alex asked gently. “I could clean, tidy things. Fetch you food. I won’t steal anything. If I’m not any use after today, you can…you kill me tomorrow.”
He thought about a movie from the ‘80s. Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.
Don scratched his throat with the spork, letting out a contented sigh. “I do have a bin of bolts that needs to be organized…”
“I would be happy to,” Alex said.
“He may be interesting to have a talk with after you’ve fallen asleep,” said Sharon hopefully.
Alex liked her better and better.
“We’ll give it a try. But just for a few rotations, mind you. Nothing serious. Don’t get your hopes up.” He gave Alex a menacing look as he jabbed the spork in the air.
* * *
Suddenly, a blue light flared from strobes along the ceiling. Alex had been working on board for a while, but he couldn’t be sure how long. Had it been a few days? Without the rising and setting of the sun, there was no meaningful way to track time and looking down as the African continent rotated past wasn’t helpful either. The strobes made Zuki start barking—at least, that was the closest sound Alex could relate it to. Both Don and Sharon, who had been sitting by a display screen watching the newest Star Wars movie—while Don had complained unrelentingly about its inaccuracies—suddenly lurched forward in their chairs, their eyes widened with alarm.
“What’s wrong?” Alex said, rag in hand, cleaning a grease spot under one of the rack tables.
“I forgot to disable the signal from the roadster after we hauled it in!” Don growled, struggling to rise from the cushions. “They found us. And they’ll want it back.” The spork he’d been using to eat mashed potatoes and gravy switched back to the blaster and an angry look twisted his face as ambled toward the cargo area where the car was.
Alex looked to Sharon worriedly. Zuki was yapping non-stop.
“A Helios Pirate,” she said.
Alex had no idea what that meant, but as he’d come to learn, much of their vocabulary was nonsensical to him. The entire floor jolted, as if something had struck the ship.
Don paused, looking up. “They’ve caught us in a grav clamp.”
Sharon had scooped up the white furball and looked genuinely worried. “Eject the car into space, Don.”
“I’m not giving up that roadster! It’s worth a fortune!” he bellowed. He raised his arm, which was now a weapon, and started clomping down the corridor again with an angry scowl. “If they want it, they’ll have to fight for it.”
“Don, dear,” Sharon said worriedly as she followed closely behind him. Alex joined her, feeling protective about this short gray-haired woman who had been the only thing between him and the cold void of space.
“If I can find the beacon on the roadster, can you get it off the ship?” he asked her as they hurried.
“Yes, that will be easy. But it could take some time to find the beacon.”
“I think I know where it is,” Alex said from behind Sharon. He hurried ahead and went to the roadster. He knew about all the parts in the space industry, including transmitters. There were some cables joining it to an anti-matter fuel cell, but otherwise it was right where it had been left after Alex was brought on board. He vaulted over the door and landed on the front seat. Don had positioned himself behind a large piece of equipment that looked like something out of a semiconductor factory.
“The cargo bay is opening. Get out of here!” Don bellowed at him. Sharon and Zuki stopped short of the entrance. Alex bent down, looking beneath the front assembly of the roadster.
There was a groaning sound as the bay doors were forced apart. Alex searched frantically, trying to find the tracker which was probably connected to a long-life battery that was designed to keep it pinging for decades.
A flash of blue light stung his eyes and he lifted up just enough to look over the steering wheel. The blast had come from Don’s weapon and he was shooting like mad into the gap opening wider and wider from the bay doors.
Don yelled in some language Alex couldn’t understand and then some violet pulses came in retaliation from the bay doors. One struck the equipment he hid behind and Alex watched it implode, surrounded in a vortex of energy that simply made it cease to exist. Don fired off a few more shots and hobbled over to another piece to hide behind.
In a panic, Alex ducked low again and then he saw the blinking light of the transmitter. He yanked it from the power supply, ripping it loose.
A groan came from Don as another blast hit his makeshift arm and it too vanished. Alex saw him stagger and fall, smacking face-down on the floor. Zuki appeared next to the fallen man, whimpering and yapping uncontrollably. The walls shuddered as an eight-foot-tall being wearing an armored suit lumbered into the bay, holding an enormous cannon in his arms. The strobe light from his helmet fixed on Don, who was prostrate on the floor, struggling to get back on his feet. The new man’s armor was smudged with grease and stained with ash. There were strange symbols painted on the shoulder. This was a one-sided fight. Alex worried about what would happen to Don and Sharon—and himself – and decided he needed to do something.
Pushing the start button of the roadster, Alex watched the dash light up. He knew it still worked and had that verified to Don earlier. There was only the hum of the electric motor, no noises from a combustion engine. He sat up, put it in drive and jammed his foot on the accelerator.
The pirate raised the cannon to fire on Don and Zuki. He noticed movement out of the corner of his eye but he couldn’t react in time as the roadster slammed into him. Physics was still physics in outer space. Mass times velocity equals force. The roadster struck the armored suit and sent it pivoting out of the airlock. Alex hit the brake to stop his momentum, but the roadster was too far gone. He’d left the gravity of the ship. Squeezing the steering wheel as panic engulfed him, he realized he was going to die. He would only last for seconds in the vacuum of space. He saw the armored pirate pinwheeling in space, protected from the icy realm by his suit, but not quite defenseless. In one hand, he still gripped the cannon. The roadster’s wheels had left the bay, and Alex sucked in what was probably his last breath. He felt the weightlessness overwhelm him and started rising from his seat as he gripped the steering wheel harder. There was no maniacal laughter this time, just the immense quiet and solitude of the vast, colossal universe.
