Bastion Saturn (30 page)

A device the size of an eight ball silently dropped from the belly of the ship and took up the present orbit around Pan.

They sat back and watched the eight ball’s point of view on the holo screen as their ship followed the landing lights that led down into a square-cut opening in the surface of the moon.

Caleb licked his teeth. “I wonder if they have dental services.”

The landing zone utilized a strong magnet to bring the ship down and hold it fast as it came in for the final approach. With a thunk, the
Diamond Girl
’s skids adhered to the landing pad. Jennifer asked Caleb, “If we need to blast off, will a magnetized landing platform let us?”

“Good question.” He spoke to the ship. “Diamond, honey? Are we able to lift off despite being parked on this platform with the magnets on?”

The ship replied, “The gravity well on Pan is insufficient enough so that my launch thrusters can escape the magnetic hold.”

“OK, what about the
Phoebe
?”

“The specifications of the shuttle you call Phoebe allows for such an escape as well.”

Caleb turned to Jennifer. “Happy?”

The
Diamond Girl
continued, “However, the maintenance level of the
Phoebe
shuttle indicates that damage would result from such an effort.”

“Catastrophic damage?”

“Unknown, but not unlikely.”

Caleb had the
Diamond Girl
run a sweep of the landing zone. With the eight ball floating above mixed with the scanners built into the ship, the Diamond Girl had the ability to pick up the presence of certain weapons as well as discern the heat signatures of the human activity beyond the walls. There didn’t appear to be any hostile force. In fact, the area seemed to be mostly empty. A lone tracked robot rolled out on the platform and a polite text crossed their windshield requesting access for the small machine. Once onboard, the robot proceeded to scan.

While they waited, Caleb gave the go ahead for Saanvi and Natalie to land. He and Jennifer watched as the
Phoebe
touched down hard, the vibration of it gently shaking them in their seats. Saanvi popped up on their screen. “Boy, the autopilot or something on this bucket is in need of adjustment.”

Natalie popped up as well with a wince on her face. “So does my spine. Thank God they are offering up that spa.”

As the Princess Belle held herself undetected in a stationary orbit above Pan, Spruck and Bert watched both of her companion ships land and receive docking tunnels.

Spruck looked at Bert and said, “What you think?”

“I . . . think that I feel appreciation for you asking me what I think.”

“Come again?”

“Forgive me. Despite my knowledge base that informs me that there are many nuances to human communications, I am often accused of taking questions literally. I am endeavoring to answer your question. Since technically I don’t think, but rather compute, I feel appreciation for you equating my computational skills with thinking.”

“Really?” Spruck made a buzzer sound followed by, “Fail! You just told me that you’ve been reprogramed to feel like a human. Why the robot talk?”

“Yes, sir. Spruck. You’re of course correct. I’m feeling insecure. As to the situation at hand, our friends seem to have safely landed. Until we hear from Mr. Day, there is not much to think.”

Caleb’s face popped up in the holo display. “All good here. Come on in. Land on the same dock we are on. They’ll run a sniffer around to make sure you’re not carrying explosives. As you can imagine, they had some serious issues with the
Diamond Girl
. I had to agree to letting them remove the master key.”

“Really? You went for that?”

“Yeah. Shoving all my chips into the pot. Anyway. Get your asses down here. Bert, I need you to stay with the ships. I want you on the dock itself so you can keep an eye on everything. Their maintenance guys are going to swap out Phoebe’s shocks. Make sure that’s all they do.”

“Yes, sir. I choose to agree with you.”

Caleb said, “Huh?” Then to Spruck, “What’s he talking about?”

“That news I told you he had.”

Caleb waved his hand in front of his face like he was dismissing a fly. “OK, no time for that now. Judging by this docking platform, this place is lux. We’re finally going to get a little vaycay.”

“Sweet. Be down in half an hour or so.” Spruck turned off the cloaking and called out to the Pan flight controllers, offering up his ship’s controls to be guided in on their end.

Their magnetic boots held their feet to the elevator floor well enough. Natalie and Saanvi had opted for the chairs and seatbelt for the ride, but Jennifer wanted to stand at the window and take in the full effect. Caleb had wanted to sit strapped in as well, but changed his mind as he watched Jennifer step in a
kerthumping
way to the window. The sight of the woman’s figure never seemed to stop filling his mouth with saliva, and he unstrapped himself to stand next to her and take in what felt like a romantic view. He hated magnetic boots for their awkwardness, but they would need them as the thin gravity disappeared between the moon and the hotel high above. Unless one was traveling in a ship, it was simply uncouth to float around in zero grav in mixed company.

Caleb touched the communicator that rested on his right ear. “We’re heading up, Spruck. You all good?”

Spruck’s voice filled his ear. “I’m headed for the elevators, too. I landed with a good view of nearly the whole dock, so I told Bert he could sit in my cockpit. He might as well be comfortable while he waits.”

“You are a robot fetishist, you know?”

“Dude. I got to have a long talk with that robot. Something happened on Phoebe. Not just to the people.”

“Really? What?”

“He wanted to tell you himself, but I’ll fill you in while we’re sipping cocktails.”

A mechanical voice informed them that the elevator was departing. A fan below the elevator floor began blowing. Like a slow moving dart in a blowgun, the elevator capsule moved up and away from the little moon. Somehow, the view was even more sublime than the ones from their ships. The massive colorful planet took up the entire left side and a multi-lunar-alignment let them see snowy Enceladus, geysers of icy vapor shooting up from her surface standing out against the huge orange ball that was Titan beyond. Far out to the right, at the edge of the rings was Pandora, the home of Wang Fat industries, harbinger of all of their troubles. The ice and dust of the rings filled the rest of the image like the grooves in a celestial vinyl LP that slowly shifted as the elevator moved upward. An uneasy feeling filled all of their guts as Pan’s gravity dissipated. Natalie took note of the zero-grav sickness bag nestled in the seat next to her and felt vexed at feeling queasy in the elevator versus the constant lack of gravity when they were flying.

Caleb told himself that it was spontaneous that he had put his arm around Jennifer’s shoulders. The view was almost overwhelming after all. She had briefly stiffened with the contact but relaxed, giving him a smile, allowing him to leave his arm there without returning the gesture. Saanvi and Natalie looked at each other with a couple of eye rolls and gently shook their heads.

The elevator said, “We are now approaching the hotel hub where you will exit. The elevator to the lobby level is straight ahead. Please exercise caution as you move between elevators as you will remain in a near-zero gravity condition.”

A fan blowing the elevator from above slowly brought it to a halt within the tube. The doors however, did not open. Rather, the upper fan began to blow harder, pushing the elevator back down. Caleb said to the elevator, “Um, Hello? We didn’t get off!” There was no response. “Hey there, the doors didn’t open!”

The elevator continued in reverse. Caleb tapped his ear piece and called out to Spruck, getting nothing in return. “Bert, you read me?”

The elevator picked up speed and plunged past the surface with the view suddenly shifting to a concrete shaft and then blackness, the window reflecting the growing panic on their faces.

“Yes, sir,” said Bert.

“We seem to be heading into the moon itself. I can’t reach Spruck.” He waited for a response. “Bert? Bert?” Nothing.

The elevator slowed and came to a stop. The door opened revealing four men dressed in the antilaser assault uniforms of the Wang Fat security forces. Further down the hall, they could just spot Spruck being escorted away by two more.

The security men aimed McMaster nerve disruptors into the elevator cab. One spoke. “Please step out with your fingers laced behind your heads.”

Spruck called from down the hall, “Caleb, fight! It’s our only chance!” and he thrust an elbow into the armored ribs of the man to his right, then lashed out for the man’s disruptor, struggling, yanking back and forth. The man to his left calmly stepped back and fired point blank at the back of Spruck’s head. Spruck let out a piercing scream while his body stood rigid, then he collapsed to the ground.

During the distraction, Caleb repeatedly hit the door-close button on the elevator. It remained stubbornly open. The man in charge lifted the visor on his helmet and stared hard into Caleb’s eyes. “Nothing personal.” He pulled the trigger. Caleb also screamed, standing rigid before collapsing to the floor.

Jennifer, Saanvi, and Natalie instinctively reached for him and then stood stock still as the man said, “Out! Now!” They did as they were told.

Bert didn’t know what to do. Clearly something had gone wrong. He was unable to reach any of his friends. Friends. For the first time in his existence, a smile crossed his lips that wasn’t based on an assessment of humor in a room.

He stepped out of the
Belle
and stood on the landing platform between the three ships. The gargantuan planet filled most of the void above him. For the moment anyway, it seemed his presence was ignored by whatever security measures existed. A quick calculation of the odds of that remaining so pushed him into a deep quandary: Abandon the ships in order to preserve himself to better assist his fellows or stay as ordered so that nothing might become of their only known means of departure? Because staying likely meant his being compromised in some form, he chose the former and walked briskly toward an access ladder that led up to the surface twenty meters above. From there, he chose to lay down and peer over the lip of the landing crater to see what might happen next. He knew his friends were meant to go up to the hotel, but that seemed highly unlikely now. No hotel would want unpleasantness to unfold on the premises, which meant that his group had likely been taken to the service tunnels below.
What to do?

Bert the machine had always had a human nearby to give it its next task. It wasn’t programmed to self motivate, though it could recognize a problem and suggest a solution. Its only time without human direction had been at the lab on Phoebe after the mass suicide. Without a human to tell it what to do, it had set itself on a partial sleep mode and waited. Now, here it was, suddenly conscious of being conscious. His conversation with Spruck had awoken in him an idea that he was, until that moment, free to think. In fact, he was free to be free. There was no actual anything that bound him to his mates. His owners were dead, and the basic rules of salvage seemed to place him in Caleb’s and Jennifer’s sphere of ownership, but his basic programing, which had attached him to them was just that, programming. There was no contract, no record that would hold up in the Saturn Communal Courts; particularly given the likely outlaw nature of these companions. He had joined them by default. Well, default was just a state of being. It wasn’t necessarily a permanent one. In fact, default by its very nature suggested the choice to make changes.

The thought briefly occurred to him that he could simply walk away. He could volunteer his services to this hotel for instance. It was an extraordinary leap in his understanding of his place in the universe. Whoever had sent that nano pathogen that had killed the scientists on Phoebe had given him an unquantifiable gift.

The airlock door below him opened and two space-suited figures emerged. There was no mistaking the weapons they bore. Bert searched within himself as to whether he was still constrained from harming a human being. To his surprise, he was unable to find a whiff of the code that forbade such an action.
When had that happened? Was it only now, as he searched to discover it that it had been erased?
He searched his entire history, going back every second to before the nano incident on Phoebe and noted no change in his perception of the ultimate commandment being deleted. When he thought of doing something harmful to the people below, he didn’t meet any obstacle. The fact that he could even formulate the thought itself was remarkable. The voice of one of the men popped up in his communication processor, speaking in Mandarin, “Here, Bert. Come out come out wherever you are?”

Bert quickly slid back from the lip. One of the men had been holding out a bot scanner. The device was used for finding machines that had fallen into sleep mode without enough of a charge to wake up. It could just as well find a robot that was hiding. Not that any robot would ever hide or have reason to hide. Except . . . Bert had been hiding.

“Where are you, bot?” barked the other man in Mandarin as well.

“Step out where we can see you,” said the first. “Now!”

Bert pushed himself up to his hands and knees while keeping his head back from the lip. He could hear them talk to each other on the open frequency.

“Must be in one of the ships.”

“The command to come out would have penetrated any ship.”

“Perhaps a dead power pack.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps it doesn’t like the look of these disruptors.”

When Bert grabbed the lip and heaved himself down, he of course knew that in the vacuum of space his approach would be silent. He nevertheless failed to calculate the sunlight bouncing off Saturn and streaming down into the landing area. As he descended, he cast a shadow on the floor below. Both men lifted their heads in surprise a half a second before he impacted with them.