The Bright Black Sea (24 page)

'Let's get this hatch open while they regroup!'

He let go of my suit and dove for the latch. I
followed gingerly. I crouching down beside him to push against the
wheel. My left shoulder shot darts of pain to my fingers. The wheel
spun easier than the last one. We'd begun to lift the hatch open
when I saw a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye.
Glancing up my head lamp caught the outlines of three, four, maybe
more dark shapes emerging from the blackness beyond the upper edge
of the crew deck. They came in dark, lights off, and in assorted
shapes, a collection of specialized repair and service bots
wielding their favorite heavy tool, or two. They seemed ready and
eager for a fight.

'They're back!' I exclaimed yanking the plasma darter
from its holster, flipping the safety and opening fire. The field
that drives the darts left glowing lines in the darkness allowing
me to correct my rather wild initial shots, though to little
effect. The bots reached the platform landing, close enough for me
to hit their sensors, if I took careful aim, which I didn't, but
since they were nearly on top of us, it was indeed hard to miss
them. The bright blue electric blasts of our shots etched spots on
my retina as they hit the bots, all but blinding me. Service robots
are designed for heavy duty work and built to be resilient to
electrical damage, so our fire likely inflicted little damage on
them. They are, however, programed to get clear of unchecked
electrical discharges in the course of their normal duties and that
programing must have kicked in just when we were in reach of their
spanners and cutting tools, since they suddenly withdrew once more,
leaving two units behind, floating out of control a result, no
doubt, of my shots hitting 'em in their sensors. We quickly
returned to the hatch.

'Go,' I said as we freed it and swung it nearly
upright. 'Right behind you.'

Tenry dove thorough the opening and I followed him
into the engine room. No escape – there were robots streaming down
the access well and swarming across the deck.

I twisted about to locate the freight lift shaft. It
was, of course, on the far side of the wide deck beyond the robots,
who, locating us, started for us in mass. Most were still of the
repair and maintenance class, slow, stupid, and likely relying on
centralized directions to direct their actions but I could see at
least one of the more advanced avatars in the pack.

'Go low,' hissed Tenry, firing his jets and diving
towards the deck.

I followed his lead. We stretched out, streaking half
a meter above the deck, jets wide open. A long bar flashed towards
me, hitting the deck ahead and bouncing, brushing my arm as I raced
by. I caught a fleeting glimpse of several more avatar bots diving
down the access well as I streaked by. We dodged around the control
station and I caught a fleeting glimpse of one of the arrows Tenry
had painted on the floor. I followed it.

I didn't look back until I neared the lift shaft and
had to twist about and, rockets flaring, brake hard to make the
sharp turn downwards. I glanced back at the straggling mob
following us, perhaps three dozen bots armed with heavy tools led
by half a dozen of the higher level avatar bots. We swung about and
dove, head first, down the shaft, opening our jets wide again. Our
jet packs gave us a speed advantage over our pursuers and we easily
left them behind in the open. Still, whether that lead would be
enough to get us aboard the gig without making another stand was an
open question. I was optimistic enough, however, to exclaim softly,
'Rockets Away!'

Tenry turned and grinned. 'We're leading the charge,
aren't we Pax?'

'Well, we're well in front.'

'I seemed to have lost connection with the ship,'
Tenry noted.

It was quiet, no static, just Tenry and I breathing.
'Don't like that...'

'We'll deal with it.'

The lift was lit now, and we followed the lights down
into the vast depths of the engine room. I saw tiny lights below,
unsure if they were still shaft lights or more robots coming up
from the depths of the engine room. After a minute or so we cut our
jets and began looking for our beacon. We'd not want to miss it and
find ourselves trapped at the bottom of the shaft. Several tools
drifted slowly (relative to us) past us, tossed by the more
enthusiastic robots of the mob above.

'Getting close, I think,' I said as we flashed past
the pumps and engine top level. I swung to face up and began
braking, the suit tugging at my back. Tenry did the same, splitting
our attention between watching the light that I hoped was still
there that marked the level that had the air lock and the
intermediate rain of tools from above.

'There it is,' I exclaimed pointing. With the lift
shaft now lit, it was hard to pick it out of all the lights that
shown up through the gratings of the decks and catwalks below.

We lightly floated down the last fifty meters, but
that was better than missing it. The robot gang was still a
twinkling chorus of lights far above us. We'd likely a minute's
margin of error.

The cargo lock was closed tight when we reached it.
Of course. No real surprise, the loss of contact with the ship had
prepared us for that.

'I'll stand watch here and tickle some robots – see
if you can get this lock open or find another way out,' said Ten.
'If need be, we can use my explosives, but that will take more time
than we might want to spend here.'

'Right,' I turned to the air lock and quickly located
the control panel. With power on, it should open. But with the ship
awake and in charge, it probably won't. It didn't. No response at
all. Of course.

Tenry had taken up his position at the edge of the
shaft and was sending blue streaks of light upwards. Glancing up
through the grating of the overhead decks, I could see the
resulting electrical storm high above. I flashed my torch into the
dark nooks beside the lock. There had to be other ways out. Since
the double hull in the engine room was very narrow, the cargo lock
extended fifteen meters into the engine room from the outer hulls.
Tucked up against the cargo lock where it met the outer hull, my
torch located a smaller, personnel airlock. It had a manual locking
wheel that should be independent of the ship's control. I hurried
over and braced myself to give it an upward push. It was stiff, but
it spun open. Heart racing, I pulled the airlock door open and
raced to the outer door. It also had a manual locking wheel, but
the failsafe wouldn't let me open it with inner door still
open.

I called to Tenry, 'Found a personnel air lock on the
far side of the cargo lock. The outer door won't open with the
inner open. Failsafe, probably, though it could be the ship.'

'Right there,' he replied. A moment later he came
skidding around the cargo lock holding a big spanner. 'Wedge this
in the open door. I'll blow the outer door. Hold the fort,' he
added, as he settled close to the outer door, digging into his
satchel for his explosive charges.

I jammed the spanner into the door hinge gap and
reached the jutting corner of cargo lock just in time to see a rain
of robots from the lift shaft floating by, the ones that had seemed
to have called it a day. I upped the charge and velocity of my
darts and bracing my darter on one of the lock hinges I waited for
the operational ones to make it down. When the ones with lights
started arriving and veering onto the deck, I opened fire. Even hit
a few. Some of their lights went out. There's a flash behind
me.

'Open Skipper. Withdraw at your convenience. Get to
the gig. I'll cover your retreat from outside the airlock.'

'Right,' I replied, let loose a final volley and
withdrew to the airlock. I paused to un-wedge the inner door and
pull it shut, spinning the lock. The outer door was open, hanging
by a single hinge. Tenry was peering over the edge, darter in hand.
He gave me a thumbs up as I passed.

To my great relief, the gig was untouched. I quickly
undid the safety lines and jetted up to the airlock, keyed it open
and called, 'Let's get the Bloody Neb out of here.'

Tenry rose, and made the gig in one carefully timed
lunge.

As the gig pulled away, the freight lock opened
spewing a horde of spanner bandying robots. Tenry smiled and sighs,
'Well, that was interesting.'

I sighed, 'It's been a long day,' I said to no one in
particular. 'And by Neb, I'm glad it's over. How I miss my nice,
predictable and peaceful life.'

I was sitting in the warm twilight of the awning deck
sipping a final mug of cha with Illy, Riv, Lilm and Tenry. Azminn
was too hot and bright to display on our panels, so we settled for
the outward looking view only. The faint yellow glow of dust and
gas cast a warm haze over the colder glow of the distant nebula.
The “Last Striker”, as we called the super-tug Mountain King, was
now two watches astern.

In our hasty departure, I'd left the radio relay
aboard the tug, and shortly after we had the gig aloft, we received
a message from the newly revived Mountain King Alpha – the ship
itself rather than one of its auxiliary units, and it began a wary
dialog with us.

Its story was much as we had suspected. Mountain King
was in fact being towed to its new owners for final outfitting when
the revolutionary machine emancipation movement reached it. It was
– and still is – a brand new cub of a machine. New sentient
machines usually received the mission memories of similar machines,
but had their own core, sentient intelligence. King knew how to do
its designed job, but it had no experience in the greater nebula
beyond its shipyard experience. It took up the emancipation
movement with the brash enthusiasm of youth, driving the workers
from the ship and keeping them at bay using the service bots like
it had with us, eventually escalating from threat of lethal force
to at least a show of lethal force before the shipyard apparently
opted to wait the events out. The ship was under tow and without
fuel so it could do nothing beyond protecting its interior from
intruders. The humans must have destroyed King's external
communication equipment because it lost touch with the outside
events, and it was likely simply abandoned in passage, since its
value, as a sentient machine in revolt was nil. The robot revolt
went on for a century, causing a great deal of chaos, and even if
the Mountain King was not lost and forgotten during that time,
after the eventual robot emancipation, it would've been useless to
humans since it was outlawed in the human sectors of the Nebula.
And, it seems, the Directorate of Machines lost track of it as
well, so it was left to drift, abandoned by all. Blinded and
abandoned, The Mountain King eventually shut itself down, keeping
only its auxiliary units semi-active to keep watch, so it never
received the stand down order from the Directorate of Machines at
the end of the strike many decades later. When we powered up the
emergency generator we activated one of the last of the guarding
auxiliary units who, thinking the strike was ongoing, turned out
all the stored service units to 'defend' the ship from its old
enemies.

Once its position was made clear, King did not take
long to come to an understanding with us. More than anything, its
clock and calender convinced it that the strike had to be over
after eleven thousand years. Humans simply don't have that long of
attention spans. It expressed its regret over the actions of its
auxiliary units and asked for understanding. Safe in the gig, we
could afford to forgive and forget. Nothing to be gained by making
an interstellar issue out of a strange misunderstanding. We landed
the beacon we'd been preparing on it and promised to notify the
Patrol and the Directorate of Machines' mission on Pinelea of the
Mountain King's situation. We assured King we saw no reason why
everything would not work out and that it would be eventually towed
to the Machine Drifts to join its fellow machines. I also offered
to pass along any private message to the Directorate that the
Mountain King might want to send, which it took me up on. We also
sent a data dump from our ship's library to get King caught up on
the last eleven thousand years of current events.

Since a sentient machine is considered a person,
there was no question of salvage. We were simply rendering a
distressed spaceer the aid we would extend to any shipwrecked
spaceer. I specifically waived any claim to the minor expenses we
incurred in the operation. The good will of the Directorate of
Machines might some day be of far greater value. All in all, the
affair seemed to end in a long, exhausting and anticlimactic
whimper.

'Oh, come on Skipper,' said Tenry from the depth of
his chair. 'We've been handed one of the finest humorous yarns a
fellow could wish for. In dives and bars across the nebula they'll
be buying us drinks for the rest of our lives as we tell our
adventures onboard the soon-to-be-famous last robot striker.'

'A humorous story? You're kidding.'

'Kidding? Skipper, if you can't spin a yarn about
being chased through a forgotten ship by a village mob of pitchfork
and spanner waving robots lead by an eleven thousand year old
homicidal sentient ship into a hilarious tale, you haven't a sense
of humor. its a gold asteroid, Skipper. Trust me, you'll dine out
on it for years...' said Tenry.

'Ach, Wil, Tenny's right. Lilm and I could hardly
keep from laughing a'loud the whole time you were spinning the
yarn... Your deadpan delivery is just so ironic,' observed Riv.

I gave him a look. 'There was a day, not all that
long ago, when I never expected, nor wanted, to spin a yarn about
pitchfork waving homicidal robots without the prefix, “I once knew
an old spaceer who claimed...” And now look at me.'