Project Starfighter (3 page)

Chris returned his attention to the
road ahead, just in case the once-clear route had suddenly become
blocked further up. He was coming up to a long bridge that was
crossing the Atlas Gorge. A sign told him that it was still eight
miles to the city.

“Send a message to The Doc,” he
commanded his phone. “Doc, it’s Chris Bainfield. I’m coming
into Tira. We need to meet, ASAP. Your life is in danger. WEAPCO are
sending bots to look for you. I’m coming to get you. I need you to
tell me where you’re staying, but be careful who else you trust.”

Chris almost swallowed his tongue as
he glanced once more into the rear view mirror. Having destroyed the
diner and eliminated all the members of the Resistance around it, the
drone and the war bots were now coming after him. Hell, and they were
moving fast.

“Send,” Chris told the phone.

“Sending message,” his phone
said.

Chris thumbed the accelerator
desperately, hoping to somehow coax more speed out of the hover. It
was of no use, and he was barely halfway over the bridge when the
drone and the bots were on him. Swerving across the three lanes,
Chris looked for a gap in the central reservation that would allow
him to cross to the other side, and make the bots’ job of killing
him that much harder. He thought he could hear the drone telling him
to pull over and get out of the vehicle. He ignored the voice, seeing
the break in the divider he had been looking for. The bots’ cannons
opened up and caught the hover at the very moment that Chris swung it
through the gap.

The hover spun, and Chris’ world
became a blur as the vehicle struck the dividing concrete barrier,
flipped up, and began tumbling lengthways over it. There was another
bright flash and an explosion as a second bolt caught the hover. It
corrected the hover’s motion just long enough for Chris to see the
vehicle crash through the lightweight barriers at the sides of the
bridge, its momentum slowing greatly as it did so.

There the vehicle teetered for a few
seconds before it tipped over the edge, tumbled down into the gorge,
hit the ground, and exploded.

C
hris
was certain that jumping from falling vehicles was something that
only action heroes in films ever did. Those actors certainly made it
look a great deal easier than it was in real life. Looking down over
the edge of the platform again, Chris couldn’t see either the bots
or the drone. They had followed after the hover as it had fallen into
the gorge and hit the ground far below, descending to inspect the
wreckage and check to see if he had somehow survived. They had swept
for a time, their forms mostly concealed behind the curtain of thick,
black smoke that billowed up from the remains of the vehicle. When
they found no body in the wreckage, Chris hoped that the machines
would simply reason that he had been incinerated in the explosion,
clothes, flesh, bone and all.

Reason. There was something that
Chris was certain that WEAPCO’s drones and bots weren’t actually
capable of. The god-like AI machines that apparently worked and
possibly ran the core of the Corporation’s business came close from
what he understood. Yet, if that were true, he could not understand
why they permitted such suffering and only extended the benefits of
WEAPCO’s achievements to a select few within the Corporation
itself? Chris had always believed that an advanced being, artificial
or not, would have made war a thing of the past and found a way to
bring equality to all. Something about WEAPCO didn’t add up.

But such philosophical
contemplations would have to wait until later. Right now, Chris
needed to get to Tira and find a way to reach Sid before it was too
late. And given his present state, it was likely that WEAPCO’s
machines might well beat him to the man.

Chris tried to stand again, starting
with his left leg, before gingerly putting weight on his right. The
pain was strong and instant, so he lowered himself back down,
swearing under his breath.

The jump from the falling hover as
it had tipped over the edge of the bridge had saved his life, Chris
somehow managing to gain enough momentum to carry him the extra few
feet he needed to land on one of the suspended platforms beneath. It
had come at a cost, however – the distance he had fallen having
been far greater than he had anticipated.

There was little doubt in his mind
that his right foot was broken. It was aching terribly, even without
him putting pressure on it. Still, better his foot than his leg, and
better that than losing his life. Returning to the road above would
be slow going, especially as he needed to climb a ladder.

Still no sign of the bots or the
drone. They must have moved on without him noticing. At last
confident that they were long gone, Chris turned his phone back on.
He had switched it off the moment he had landed on the platform, sure
that the signal from the device would allow the machines to track
him. The phone’s screen was cracked in several places from where he
had dropped it, but it was still usable. No messages from Sid. Chris
depressed the frontal button to activate the voice command system.

“Call The Doc,” he instructed
the phone.

“Sorry, there is no network
coverage,” the phone reported. “I cannot complete your request at
this time. Please move to a more open area or try again later.”

Damn. Was something blocking the
signal? Or had the impact broken something key to the phone’s
transmission systems? He power cycled the device, checked the
settings as best he could, and tried again. The results were the
same.

“Show me a map of my location,”
he told it.

“Sorry, there is no network
coverage. I cannot complete your request at this time. Please mov—”

Chris cancelled the request. He
would just have to use the regular mapping system, without any
location tracking assistance. Maybe for the best, he thought.

He struggled to his feet, limping
over to the ladder. It was quite a long way to the top, and with his
right foot in its current condition, he would have to hop up the
rungs one at a time. Putting weight on his right foot to allow him to
go quicker simply wasn’t going to happen. This could take a while.

~

After
what felt like an age of climbing, Chris pulled himself onto the side
of the bridge. He rested there for a time, seeing the damage to the
barrier where he had originally burst through and gone over the edge,
as well as the blackened marks on the road itself from where the bots
had attacked him.

He couldn’t rest there for long,
he had wasted too much time already. The sun had set and it was
growing dark. Eight miles to the city, the sign had said. Uninjured,
that was a distance he might have been able to run in about an hour.
Walking, perhaps just under two. In his present state, could he do it
in four, even? It could take a lot longer.

Chris had heard the occasional
vehicle passing over the bridge as he had hauled himself up the
ladder, and had hoped that, seeing the wreckage, a driver might have
stopped to check on what had happened. But none had. If he was lucky,
someone driving by might see him now as he hobbled towards the city
and offer him a lift. Though he could end up having to walk the
entire way.

And what if the bots, able just this
once to reason that he had given them the slip, came back looking for
him, and ended his crusade there and then? Chris gritted his teeth
against both the pain and that thought. Not if he could help it, they
wouldn’t.

~

After
hobbling the first mile or so, Chris was fortunate enough to flag
down a car heading towards Tira. It wasn’t the first that had
passed him, but this one had been the only one that had stopped. The
driver was an older woman, somewhere in her early fifties. She looked
over the uniform he wore, appraising it carefully.

“You with that resistance
movement?” she asked.

“Yes,” Chris admitted.

The woman sat silently behind the
wheel for a time, then nodded to the passenger door. “Alright, get
in.”

Chris did so, detecting from her
tone that she would do him this one favour only, and that he should
not talk or ask any questions. His phone jingled in his pocket as the
car made the journey towards Tira. Messages from Sid.

I’m staying at the
Watergardens, Flat 617. What’s happening? Where are you?
the
first asked.

Chris, are you okay?
the next
had said, timestamped around fifteen minutes later.

Chris, if you’re still alive,
get back to me
, the last read. That had been sent nearly two
hours ago.

Chris tapped out a response, telling
Sid what had happened and that he would be arriving shortly. The
woman eyed him suspiciously as he did so, and so Chris kept the task
brief, pocketing the phone once he was done. They shortly arrived in
the city proper, the woman pulling off the main road and into a side
street.

“There you go,” she said,
unlocking the door and prompting Chris to get out.

Chris noted that they hadn’t come
as far into the city as he would have liked. “Could you ...” he
began, but the woman only shook her head. She clearly didn’t want
to be seen with him. “Okay, thank you,” he said, as he awkwardly
got out of the vehicle.

“Good luck,” the woman said,
before driving off. Her words rang hollow, her voice conveying
something more like pity for a man on a fool’s errand rather than
encouragement for one on a hero’s journey.

Chris studied his surroundings. This
wasn’t a nice part of town. It was where the lower dregs of society
tended to gravitate. The junkies, the dealers, the drug-addicted sex
workers, and those with little left to live for. He had walked
through this area a number of times in the past, often quickly, to
get away from it as soon as possible. Slowed by his broken foot, he
would be seeing a great deal more of it than usual. He began hobbling
through the filthy streets, ragged newspapers and sticky substances
clinging to his shoes as he went.

“Spare some change?” a
heavily-bearded man, lying inside a sleeping bag, asked.

Chris ignored him, stumbling on. He
had no money on him, and little of value other than his phone. Men
and women leered at him as he passed them, trying to get his
attention. He tried not to draw attention to his injury, in case it
should flag him an easy target for a mugging. But then again, maybe
the limping was actually helping him to blend in a little more.

“Hey. Hey!”

Chris glanced around, thinking that
the voice was addressing him. It wasn’t, but he sought a place to
hide, nevertheless. The voice belonged to another vagrant, who was
attempting to get the attention of two men. They were tall, dressed
in red and black robes, with hoods pulled over their heads. One
carried a bag over his shoulder, filled with what Chris knew were
recruitment scrolls, distributed to the chosen – very nearly
anybody, it seemed – to encourage them to become a part of the
growing movement. These men were members of the Immortal League.
Cultists. They looked around at the vagrant.

“I want to join,” the vagrant
said as the cultists approached. “He’s just come back, right?
Mal’s returned.”

The two cultists took a few moments
to appraise the man. “You have fallen upon hard times, brother?”
one asked. “This world and its people has rejected you?”

The drifter nodded. “I used to be
an office manager, working for—”

“Used to be.” The other cultist
cut him off. “Your old life no longer matters. You will be lost and
wander no more. Mal has shown the path to Heaven, a path that he will
soon lead us upon. Read this, and be enlightened.” He took one of
the scrolls from the bag he carried and handed it to the man.

“Thank you! Thank you, sir!” the
drifter responded excitedly, grubby hands almost snatching the
manuscript from the cultist.

“Brother,” the first cultist
said. “We go now to continue to spread the news of Mal’s return.
We will return to collect you soon. Wait for us.” The two cultists
turned away and continued their unhurried prowl for new recruits, the
vagrant sitting down in the grime to focus on reading the scroll.

Chris moved from the scene as
quickly as he could. He didn’t want to get involved in any of this.
To his mind, the Immortal League were just as bad as WEAPCO. Perhaps
worse. WEAPCO were, after all, predictable. Mal, less so.

The Watergardens. Chris knew where
that was; he had passed it regularly on the way to his job in the
kitchens of Leonardo’s Italian Restaurant. Sid’s current
residence was just a short walk from where Chris himself lived. Had
Sid been there the whole time? It amused Chris that the anonymous
underground tech wizard might have been close by all along. Most
likely, Chris had passed him on the streets on a fair number of
occasions.

Leaving the seedier part of the
city, Chris moved out into the bright lights of what passed for
Tira’s main entertainment hub. A great number of people were there,
all milling around, looking for places to eat and drink. The
offerings weren’t as grand as they might have been. Much of the
city was underdeveloped, as was common with many of the planets and
star systems outside of Sol. Here, the shack-like and pop-up food
stalls greatly outnumbered the traditional brick-built restaurants.
The only buildings that projected any sort of grandeur were the
WEAPCO offices, always to be found somewhere in the major cities.
They were tall neon needles, reaching skyward and projecting light
beams in all directions. Just like the one that dominated the sky
above Chris’ head right now.

Chris had been fortunate to get his
job at Leonardo’s, he knew. Most others had little choice but to
work for the Corporation, directly or indirectly. In the vast
majority of cases that meant restrictions and quotas on what ordinary
people were allowed to sell, whether it be livestock, raw materials,
or minerals. WEAPCO’s percentages were huge, as were their tax
rates for the ‘protection’ they offered. Strangely, this didn’t
apply to food or water. But then, Chris had been told, what good are
slaves if they’re too weak to work. Break them, but don’t kill
them.