Cybership Read online

  Jon stared at the arbiter, wondering at the man’s sanity, why the policeman would concoct such a wild idea.

  The bot began coming at them again, the end of the laser torch flickering on and off with color. It seemed as if something had short-circuited the torch. Otherwise, it would have beamed them by now.

  “Get us out of here,” the arbiter screamed in a high-pitched voice. “It’s trying to kill me. It’s already killed several of the crew.”

  The bot stiffened the laser-torch arm as if it meant to use the useless torch as a lance. The other two arms made ready to grab them as the robot neared.

  At the last second, Jon sidestepped fast like an old-time matador, dragging the arbiter with him, but like a lead cape.

  The GSB agent screamed as one of the pincers tore a sleeve and the flesh beneath it from his forearm.

  The robot braked, seeming to learn from its previous mistake. Yet, that seemed too incredible to be true. Maybe someone was piloting the bot with a remote-control unit.

  Jon kept hold of the arbiter, took two steps, squatted and grabbed the pistol off the floor.

  “It’s turning around,” the arbiter screamed. “Run! Don’t let it hurt me.”

  Jon waited for the bot or remote controller to gain its bearings and charge them once more. When the robot did, he dodged like before. Then, he began running the other way. He clasped the arbiter one-armed against his side, staggering down the corridor.

  “Run faster!” the arbiter wailed. “It’s gaining on us.”

  -4-

  Jon glanced back. The arbiter was right. The bot’s multi-treads whirred. That moved the repair unit faster than seemed normal.

  Jon already felt beat. His thighs quivered from exhaustion. While he’d gained some initial separation from the bot, it now remorselessly closed the distance between them.

  “Run harder!” the arbiter screamed.

  Jon debated dropping the secret policeman. He wasn’t sure if that was honorable or not, though. The man was his enemy. Yet, dropping him for the robot to kill seemed inhuman. Still, his left arm shook from the strain. The—

  The arbiter screamed his highest-pitched wail so far. The little man slipped within Jon’s grasp. With manic strength, the arbiter clutched Jon’s torso.

  “Don’t let me go,” the arbiter sobbed. “Please, please, don’t drop me.”

  Jon saw spots of blood on the floor behind them. What was left of the arbiter’s left sleeve was soaked with blood where the bot had torn his flesh.

  They turned a corner in the corridor. Ahead was a closed hatch.

  Jon put on an extra burst of speed. “Listen,” he wheezed. “Are you listening?”

  “Yes, yes,” the arbiter said.

  “If I drop you, I don’t have the strength to lift you up again. Can you open the hatch?”

  “I can, I can.”

  Jon almost tripped as he reached the hatch, his feet tangling. He twisted, shoving the arbiter forward, slamming the little policeman against the hatch.

  The arbiter groaned in pain.

  Jon saw the bot wheel around the corner. The optical sensors swiveled and focused on them. The bot had slowed to take the corner. Now, it churned its treads faster again.

  The wobbly, half-standing arbiter sobbed with effort. “It’s locked. The hatch is locked.”

  “Don’t you have an override code?”

  “Yes, yes, I do. Lift me higher so I can reach it.”

  Jon tightened his one-armed hold, sucked down air and heaved the little policeman higher.

  The arbiter stared at the override unit.

  “Well?” Jon snarled.

  “I can’t remember the code.”

  “Then I’m dropping you.”

  “No, no, let me think. I have it.”

  The arbiter’s spidery fingers tapped the override unit. Something in the hatch clicked.

  “I have it,” the arbiter shouted triumphantly.

  Jon judged the bot. It was close. He stepped away from the hatch just the same. That allowed the arbiter to open it in their direction. This hatch was different and heavier than the earlier one. This was a main hatch that separated sections of the ship.

  “Hurry,” the arbiter cried. “Hurl me through and close the hatch.”

  Jon had kept watch of the bot. The pincers thrust at him. He swiveled away, desperate to keep out of the machine’s grasp. One of the steel pincers brushed his naked flesh. That caused Jon to flinch away with greater speed. The laser torch thrust, the tip striking the arbiter’s side.

  The little policeman gasped, and his hold around Jon’s torso slipped.

  Jon reversed course—he’d moved away from the hatch to pull the bot away from it. Now, Jon ran for the hatch, lunging through to the other side. As he did, a robot pincer gripped the arbiter’s bloody arm. The skeletal arm yanked, and Jon lost hold of him.

  “Help me!” the arbiter screamed. “Help! Help, it has me.”

  Jon grabbed the policeman’s other arm with the idea of yanking the arbiter to him. The bot maneuvered its second set of pincers. They latched onto the same arm it already gripped with the first.

  “No!” the arbiter screamed. “Save me. You did this to—”

  The bot backed up and yanked the arbiter out of Jon’s weaker human grip.

  Jon watched, his heart hammering from overexertion. The arbiter stared at him with stark features twisted into a mask of agony. It was like seeing a man in the jaws of a crusher seconds before the machine pulped him. The arbiter screamed as one set of pincers crushed a hand. Jon heard the bones snapping like brittle graphite. The other set of pincers released its hold. The twin prongs widened fully, clamping onto the arbiter’s head.

  “Help me!” the arbiter wailed.

  This was such a surreal moment. It didn’t make any kind of sense. The bot began to squeeze the arbiter’s head. The man’s howl was too much for Jon.

  Jon aimed his pistol and fired. The “toy” bullets struck near the bot’s main optical sensor. It was a small target, but the distance was minimal. The targeting of the optics was purely by chance—better to aim at something than aim at nothing. It was more of a gut reaction to shoot the monster than a belief that he could actually hurt it.

  Just the same, the main optical lens shattered as a bullet struck it. The machine’s reaction to that seemed off—given that it had turned murderous. There was still a good possibility that it was being controlled by a remote-operator. The pincers squeezing the arbiter’s head opened. The other set of pincers that had crushed his hand bones also widened.

  With a thump, the arbiter collapsed onto the deck-plates in front of the machine. The secret policeman curled into a weeping miserable bundle, cradling his broken hand.

  The repair bot’s treads whirred as it repositioned its body. A secondary optical device focused on Jon.

  Still in the surreal moment, the mercenary retargeted and fired once more. Tiny clicks emanated from the pistol. It was out of bullets.

  The robot clanked toward the mercenary, one of the multi-treads rolling over the arbiter’s ankle and foot that lay in the way. The arbiter howled anew.

  Jon grabbed an edge of the hatch and began swinging it shut. A robot pincer grabbed something on the other side and forced the hatch open, ripping the edge out of Jon’s fingers.

  Jon turned and staggered away. The robot churned through the opening after him.

  As Jon ran, he noticed a curl of smoke from the barrel of the gun. Had he really just fired a gun at a repair bot that seemed bent on murdering him and the arbiter?

  Jon glanced back. The bot was gaining on him again.

  He might have screamed like the arbiter a few moments ago. The surreal feeling had departed now, replaced with a sense of dread, of horror, in the pit of Jon’s stomach. A remorseless machine was chasing him in what seemed to be an empty spaceship. After running him down, it would crush his skull and leave him for dead.

  Finally, the hard core of Jon’s personality reasserte
d itself. As it did, he remembered things. It felt as if he’d spent a lifetime running away. Before he’d joined the Black Anvil Regiment, he’d been a stainless steel rat on Titan. He’d survived a hardscrabble existence. Hell, he had a feeling that he’d flourished back then. So what if a repair robot chased him? That was nothing compared to his early life.

  He obviously couldn’t overpower the robot with his muscles. He had to outwit it or its controller. Unfortunately, his stamina was almost gone.

  “Right,” he said, realizing that he had a plan.

  Jon stopped and turned, wheezing as he regarded the charging bot. His chest heaved from the exertion as sweat slicked his clammy skin. He was probably dehydrated from the cryo sleep. He needed water. He needed rest, and he needed some damn clothes and explanations about what was going on.

  Squinting at the attacking machine, Jon knew it had learned from his previous dodges. He needed a new tactic.

  Jon hurled the gun at the machine. The pistol struck the robot and clattered onto the deck-plates. At the same time, Jon stepped to the right.

  The machine held to the middle of the corridor, refusing to take the bait.

  Jon charged. The bot widened its skeletal pincer arms as if to embrace him. The useless laser torch held steady like a battering ram. The robot refused to give him space to dodge—or so it surely thought in its cunning computer core.

  With a roar, Jon jumped as hard as he could. It wasn’t much in his current state, but it allowed him enough height so his right foot landed on top of the robot. He pushed off as he might from a fire hydrant, leaping over the robot.

  The top of his head scraped the ceiling. Then Jon landed back on the deck-plates with a stagger, almost tripped, but managed to keep his feet. He panted as he ran back for the hatch. He pumped his arms, trying to run faster.

  Behind him, the robot reversed course.

  Soon, Jon sped through the hatch. The arbiter had dragged himself to a bulkhead, leaning against it as he cradled his broken hand in his bloody lap.

  Jon shut the hatch, looking for a way to lock it. As he looked, something hard and heavy clanged against the hatch. Jon leaped back with a start.

  “You brought it back,” the arbiter whined.

  Jon stared at the bloody secret policeman.

  A second loud clang reactivated Jon’s survival instincts. The robot was trying to batter its way through. He went to the arbiter, who shrank away from him. Grabbing the policeman by the lapels, Jon hoisted the arbiter to his feet.

  “I can’t use my right ankle and foot,” the arbiter said in a pleading tone.

  “You’d better start hopping then,” Jon told him. He put the secret policeman’s good arm over his shoulder and took off, forcing the arbiter to hop like mad beside him.

  The two of them picked up speed, as Jon tried to get as much separation from the killing bot as he could.

  -5-

  “No, no,” the arbiter whined. “Don’t put me there, anywhere but there.”

  Jon and the arbiter stood inside a “med”, or medical center. The smaller man still had an arm around Jon’s shoulders as he perched on his good foot.

  The med center was smaller than the cryo chamber, but it was large enough for several man-sized tubes. The tubes contained automated medical stations with sensors, mechanical arms and other operative machinery.

  “You’re hurt,” Jon wheezed.

  “I know what I am. But don’t you understand? The computers can think now. They hate us. The med tube will kill me if you put me in there.”

  Jon stared blankly at the little policeman. He’d been replaying what had happened. It seemed obvious now. Someone had remote-controlled the robot. Anything else was too silly to believe.

  “I’ll watch you,” Jon said, “make sure you’re okay.”

  “No!”

  The longer they’d moved alone in the spaceship, the eerier it felt. The longer they had moved alone, the more determined Jon had become to keep the arbiter alive. Jon didn’t like the idea of being all alone in space. However, if they were alone, it meant he didn’t have to fear any GSB backup for the secret policeman.

  Jon moved to the nearest med station. The arbiter tried to struggle. Jon slammed the secret policeman against the tube. He shrugged the arbiter’s arm off his shoulders and used both hands to grab the policeman by the lapels.

  “You don’t understand,” the arbiter wept. “The computers hate us.”

  Jon was finding it harder to focus. He’d moved too fast for too long since coming out of cryogenic sleep. He’d been on the verge of fainting for the past few minutes. His eyesight had begun to blur, and his mental acuity had slipped. He didn’t trust the arbiter, though, so he kept his growing debility to himself.

  The clangs from the repair bot battering the hatch had dwindled. Apparently, its controller wasn’t smart enough to open the hatch.

  “Lay down,” Jon whispered.

  “Why are you killing me like this? I don’t understand.”

  “Lay down,” Jon said, louder than before.

  The arbiter winced with fear. He’d become afraid of Jon, but he didn’t obey the mercenary.

  Jon couldn’t take it anymore. He slammed an elbow against the arbiter’s face, stunning him. Grunting, Jon picked up the little policeman and laid him in the open tube. Then, he went to the controls. Every mercenary worth his salt learned how to use one of these.

  Jon paused, staring at the med tube. Could it really have intelligence like the arbiter suggested? Could it hate humans? That was inconceivable. Yet…was he dooming the arbiter to a painful death if he did this?

  Jon tapped the controls, activating the medical unit.

  Lights came on inside the tube. The med sensors began to scan the arbiter, diagnosing him.

  Jon felt himself slipping away. He could fall unconscious any moment if he wasn’t careful. He pushed off the tube, staggering to a standing position. He picked up a hand-sized medikit, slapping it against his hip. It beeped, and a few second later tiny needles stabbed him, injecting him with something.

  He waited. Soon, the fuzziness in his mind began to retreat. The feeling he would keel over any second dissipated.

  His stomach rumbled afterward. He was ravenous. He began searching for something to eat. Soon, he uncovered several protein bars. He tore open the first wrapper. The bar was chewy and raspberry flavored. He demolished that bar and started on the second one. By that time, he had uncovered some water packets, guzzling several. He even found a wardrobe, putting on a medical officer’s shirt and pants and a spare pair of shoes.

  He felt more human afterward.

  There was nothing in the way of weapons. He found a comm station, sat at it and debated with himself. No. He would wait to announce himself. He wanted a few answers first.

  As the med station verbally requested that the arbiter put his broken hand on a med plate, Jon cogitated concerning his plight and persona.

  The arbiter was awake enough to comply with the request. It didn’t seem as if the med tube possessed any hostility toward the little policeman.

  Jon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He knew that he was a mercenary born under a dome on the Saturn moon of Titan. In his youth, he’d been a stainless steel rat, whatever that was. His first name was Jon. His second name was…H something. H… H… Hawkins!

  “I’m Jon Hawkins from the New London Dome,” he said.

  Saying that unclogged more of his memories.

  He remembered what a stainless steel rat was. He’d been a thief, a gang member, a runner, a scout and later an enforcer. The first several levels in the New London Dome housed the upper class. He’d grown up in the corridors and tunnels of the lower levels. His uncle had worked in the rackets, leaving the man little time to look after his scrawny nephew. None of the sex shops had grabbed him, though. He could thank his uncle for that. Soon, though, the young stainless steel rat spent all his time in the corridors with his friends.

  The one thing his early existence was
n’t was lawless. The lower tunnel gang had strict rules. Break the rules and one would endure beatings. Jon had received his share and then some. It took him years before he realized his problem. He spoke his mind too freely, and he was smarter than most of his mates. Being scrawny hadn’t helped, either.

  The gang robbed, sold drugs and fought other gangs for territory. Finally, Jon landed before a judge because he had broken the wrong man’s bones. He’d been an enforcer at the time, and that’s what enforcers did. The man had worked for the dome police, however, which meant the dome police-teams had come down to the lower levels and hunted him in earnest, dragging him before the New London Judge Advocate.

  The cops had done that for a reason. By New London law, only the Judge Advocate could impose the death penalty. And he did.

  The good luck for Jon was a lingering economic depression that still ran throughout the entire Saturn Gravitational System. One of the mercenary outfits had a recruiting sergeant in New London at the time. The sergeant asked to see the death row inmates.

  The sergeant had been a squat, old man with only one good eye. He hadn’t sat down to interview Jon, but entered his holding cell, walked up to him and punched Jon in the stomach. Jon had roared off the floor and attacked the old bugger. Five times the sergeant knocked him down. Five times, after his head stopped ringing, Jon got up and launched himself at the old man.

  The last time, the sergeant put Jon in a submission hold. Then the old man had shouted at the watching guard, “He’ll do. I’ll buy him.”

  Jon entered the Black Anvil Regiment later that evening. Colonel William Graham commanded the mercenary regiment.

  Jon had learned the new rules fast, fitting in as soon as he realized the regiment was his new gang. There was one difference, though. Colonel Graham. Graham wasn’t anything like the other mercenary colonels. He had class as well as keen military talents. He seemed to care for his soldiers, and he hunted among his regiment for those with ability.

  Graham must have seen something in scrawny Jon Hawkins despite the chip on his shoulder. The colonel made sure the sergeant of Jon’s platoon forced books on him, and sent him later to the chaplain for tests on what he read.