Space Relics (Galactic Archaeology Book 1) (2 page)

“What now?” Rick asked. They couldn’t chase after him aboard one of the shuttles; they’d only manage to reach a couple of nearby bases.

“Richard…” Amy’s voice was tense and regretful.

What?
A bad feeling ran down Rick’s spine. He looked around, but none of the workers had decided to attack him.

On the floor, a few feet away, Lucas was on his knees, holding his stomach with both hands. Blood gurgled out of a large wound in his stomach. He looked up with an apologetic expression.

Why did people want to say sorry after they were shot? Damn it; they weren’t supposed to feel bad for being hit!

Rick walked over to him. Lucas stank of iron, and his eyes were looking straight at death. He was scared to die. His chances were slim.

“Richard, I—” Amy began.

“Shut up and bring that shuttle down here,” Rick said. “He needs medical aid right now.”

“I don’t have my tools or my systems.” The transport shuttle didn’t approach them. She was paralyzed, incapable of deciding. Not a good time for a computer to learn about regret.

“Well sew him up with a robotic arm,” Rick said. “Just do something, but do it right now.”

Damn, damn, damn!

Out of all the possible outcomes, Amy’s improvisation had ended up hurting someone. Rick wouldn’t have minded being hurt, but he was used to it. Lucas had never left his library; he was too soft to survive a wound like that without surgery.

And they didn’t even have any anesthetics. It was going to be a long day.

Amy used the shuttle’s robotic arm to sew Lucas up while her hologram stared at the scene and tapped her foot on the floor. Even though she was a robot and she wasn’t supposed to have any feelings, she was concerned for Lucas. The wound had been deep enough to cut through his organs. If she’d been a few minutes late, he could’ve died. Now, he slept peacefully as if nothing had happened.

“This is all I can do,” Amy said. She turned around and avoided looking straight at Rick. She spoke as if she were annoyed, as if it had all been Rick’s fault.

“If you hadn’t shot the guy, he wouldn’t have shot us either,” Rick said.

“Oh, so now it’s my fault!” Amy scoffed and started pacing around the shuttle. “What do you think would’ve happened if I’d let Lord Baylor run away? The workers would be dead, you’d be dead, and I’d probably be dead, too. Or at least disconnected. Lord Baylor was after that silly rock, and for some reason he didn’t want to share it with you. Do you think he’d have broken his word if this weren’t serious?” Her black hair fell over her eyes and she shook her head violently to get rid of it. That wasn’t the time for hair problems.

Sometimes, Amy acted like an annoyed ex, and she treated Rick accordingly. Sometimes, Rick forgot that he’d never had any kind of relationship with her. It was weird, but they felt like an old couple. Only that she was always trying to wear the pants in the relationship.

And that wasn’t the right time to dispute Rick’s leadership. Without Lord Baylor’s payment, they wouldn’t be able to pay even the cheapest of nurses for Lucas. And they were going to lose the ship if they didn’t find a way to pay for it. Lord Baylor’s treason had come in the worst moment, just like all treasons do.

“We could’ve thought of something,” Rick said. “The guy wasn’t going to kill everyone straight away, or the workers would’ve scattered. He needed time to gather us up, take us somewhere where the blood would be easy to clean, and start shooting. You know how that works; he’d have been distracted for a moment, and I would’ve jumped in to stop him.”

“And now you’re Superman?” Amy said. “He was twice your size, Richard. You could’ve tried something, but you’re nothing more than a bug on those people’s shoes. You may have been a smuggler for a couple of weeks, but you aren’t a mob leader. And you were a fairly bad smuggler, if you ask me.”

A bad smuggler? Rick had been able to take motherboards to the anti-technological colonies, and he’d even sold milk in the vegan starbases. Granted, he’d had to sell those supplies below cost, but he’d become one of the top suppliers!

Okay, maybe it sounded pathetic in retrospect. He’d never been able to kill anyone in action, not even any animals.

But that didn’t mean that he was going to acknowledge defeat. Not before Amy. “Look, I know you were trying to do the right thing,” he started. She nodded energetically and folded her arms, expecting him to stoop low and hail her as a goddess. It wasn’t going to happen. “But I’m the captain here, and you can’t jump in and start making decisions without my approval. I didn’t want you to do anything stupid because the risks outweighed the prize, and now we’re as poor as before, and Lucas is going to spend a while in hospital.”

She shook her head in disdain and curled her upper lip. She wasn’t going to accept that her choice wasn’t the best alternative.
Rage incoming
. “I’ve hit Lord Baylor’s engines and disabled his warping mechanisms, and he’s going to need to repair them. Where do you think he’ll stop, huh? He’s going to go to the nearest port. I don’t know about you, Richard, but
my impulsive decision
may give us the chance to get back at him. But of course, I’m only a dumb machine without feelings…” She sniffled a fake sob, like she always did whenever she wanted to manipulate Rick into doing something. She was good; really good.

And she was right, and that made her even more hateful. They couldn’t let their money run away without trying to get it back. Rick’s banks were going to stop giving him credit unless he paid his bills soon, and he wasn’t going to pay anything unless he got paid first.

“Don’t start acting wounded with me,” Rick said.

A smile flashed on her face and she raised her eyebrows excitedly. “Does that mean that we’re going to hunt Lord Baylor down?”

“Turn on the engines,” Rick said. “We’re on a hunt. On the hunt for an aristocrat.”

Amy squeaked in excitement and her hologram took a seat beside Rick. She added holographic seatbelts to give the impression of being made of flesh and blood. Whoever had coded her had definitely been too lonely. She was far too real to be useful aboard a ship.

“A transport shuttle is no ship for a military confrontation, Richard.” Amy hadn’t shut up in the whole time they’d been aboard the transport shuttle. “Are you aware of the Argonaut’s weapons systems?”

Yes, Rick was aware of the Argonaut’s superior firepower, her superior speed, and the risks of facing her without a proper plan. And Amy had reminded him of the risks incessantly. Yes, they could die, but they’d die anyway if Rick’s loan sharks realized that he couldn’t pay them back. The concept of modern banking had evolved throughout the years, and bankers could become very
persuasive
whenever someone’s payments came late. Persuasive in the sense of breaking people’s knees and chopping their ears off to mark them as debtors for the rest of their lives. Rick would rather keep his body untouched.

“Why do you keep ignoring me?” Amy insisted. “This shuttle isn’t good enough for you to fly, and I don’t have my systems here. What do you expect us to do once we catch up with Lord Baylor? He’ll crush you before you can even hail his ship.”

It was never a good idea to confront a member of the nobility. The laws protected them, and if that wasn’t enough, most people were afraid of their power and their influence. If Lord Baylor decided to annihilate someone, it was a good idea to run. But Rick had a natural skill for getting in trouble, and he wasn’t going to skip the chance to do so.

“I was planning to ask him nicely,” Rick said sarcastically. “He might decide to give the ship back and pay us.”

“That is highly unlikely, Richard,” Amy said matter-of-factly. She was just like one of those nerdy people who attended the Academy and never knew anything about the real world. Sarcasm sometimes flew over her head without her noticing. “You do have a back-up plan, don’t you?”

“Well, I was thinking of going through the justice systems.” Rick looked away from her to hide his grin. His ship was gone, his money was gone, and Lucas was wounded, but at least he could enjoy the trip. “The cops will help us get my ship back and sentence Lord Baylor to a long stay in jail for robbery, assault, and taking part in a murder attempt.”

“With the current levels of corruption in the government?” Amy stared at him and blinked incredulously. “It’s unlikely that any judges would consider going against a lord, and you’re a former smuggler. Do you think that your word weighs as much as theirs? Even if you gathered up all the workers in the expedition, no judge would ever find him guilty.”

“Hmm…” Rick acted as though he were thinking. “Let’s go ahead and steal the Argonaut back from him, shall we?”

“He’ll be expecting us,” Amy said flatly.

“He won’t be expecting what he’ll find.” Rick’s cocky words came out of his mouth almost automatically; the consequence of years of acting as though he knew what he was doing.

“Bluffing?”

“Yeah, but I’ll think of something.” Rick had enough time to improvise a plan to get the Argonaut back. Lord Baylor had had to dock somewhere nearby, and there were only two planets with adequate installations. That gave Rick the advantage of knowing where to look for his ship. And besides, the nobility were inbred and dumb. How difficult could it be to outsmart just one of them?

“You’ll end up dead one of these days,” Amy said.

“Thanks for your trust in my abilities.”

“It isn’t about trust, it’s about chances of success. You’re more skilled than many non-genetically modified humans, but that still places you at a disadvantage if you want to fight the world.”

“Does that mean that you won’t help me in this mission?”

“Who’s said anything about avoiding trouble? I’m only stating your chances; you should be aware of them in order to make an informed choice. Otherwise, if you’re killed and I end up being resold, they’ll accuse me of not informing you of the kind of idiot you are. This is purely a self-preservation instinct. I wouldn’t like to have my hard drives formatted and my personality altered.”

“You’re such a romantic, Amy,” Rick said.

Ahead of them, the Java port appeared on the screens. It had been a relatively short trip, and it was time for them to face their fates. Lord Baylor would have landed there, and he wouldn’t expect an unarmed archaeologist and a sassy artificial intelligence to attempt anything.

Lord Baylor was in for a surprise.

Modern ports had nothing to do with old orbiting junkyards. Scientists had invented the terraforming revolution and several other tricks, and it had changed everything people knew about space ports. Instead of metallic boxes orbiting around planets, they were now nice and comfortable buildings on solid ground. The weather and air purity were sometimes bad for human health, but nobody stayed there for long if they could avoid it. The mechanics and other residents would’ve died of other causes anyway if they’d stayed on Earth, so the space ports weren’t harming anyone. Or at least that was the official version.

Lord Baylor had taken the Argonaut and several of his huge gorillas to the port’s main hangar. He wanted to get his ship fixed as soon as possible to get a proper appraisal for his magical stone.

The situation wasn’t too difficult: a fat and old lord talked to a mechanic, and several of his gorillas patrolled the area. Rick had seen worse. At least this time he had a weapon. Even if it didn’t work, it was intimidating. He only had to get inside, steal the Argonaut, and ask Amy to join him using the transport shuttle’s autopilot mode. It would’ve been way easier if she’d been one of those transferrable programs, but she wanted to act human, so she never left her CPU. That implied physically carrying her in order to change ships; one of Amy’s peculiarities.

“Your heart rate is too high, Richard,” Amy said through the intercom. “Some adrenaline can enhance your instincts, but you’re far too nervous to do anything properly. It is unwise to attack a group of men unless you have a clear advantage. Are you sure that this is a good idea?”

“Can you be more pessimistic, or is this your maximum?” Rick whispered. He was half a mile away from the port, but he didn’t want any long-range microphones to hear him and get him killed. Amy didn’t care about those mundane details; she was, after all, an immortal being.

“Why do humans always ask rhetorical questions whenever they’re out of arguments?” she said. “You know that I’m right, yet you don’t want to acknowledge it. In many circumstances, it would be a reasonable cause to strip command from you.”

“One: you’d need to be the second officer to do so, and two: computers can’t decide when a human is unfit to command.” What the hell was he saying? He was arguing with a can about his rights as a captain, when smugglers and other vermin didn’t follow the Laws of Space. “We aren’t even in the Navy. Why don’t you keep quiet and let me decide how to get our ship back?”

Ugh
. Amy could sometimes act like a little, annoying child. She was stubborn, irritating, and way smarter than most people. A recipe for disaster.

“Oh, so now you’re a racist bigot and you consider computers inferior.” Amy tried to sound annoyed, but she was messing with his brain, just like she liked to do whenever she had the chance.
Torture the human
was one of her favorite games.

“Informing a computer about her status and her duty to serve her captain isn’t racism,” he said. She’d done it again: making him argue against his will. That woman was impossible, and she was way worse than working with a heartbroken ex. Rick took a deep breath. He was on a mission; it wasn’t the time to lose his patience.

“A captain, huh? Have you noticed that captains need to captain a ship to be called captains? The last time I checked, you’d lost yours with all my stuff in it. Your current ship is a transport shuttle, and that doesn’t qualify you for the rank of commander, of master, or even of lieutenant.” Rick couldn’t see her, but she was definitely grinning when she blabbered those words. And the worst thing was that she was rather funny. Rick couldn’t smile at her sass, though, or he wouldn’t get rid of it.

“Okay, I’m a common sailor,” Rick said. “Now would you mind helping me get the Argonaut back?”

“You aren’t technically a—”

“Amy!”

“Okay, okay.” She giggled on the other side of the intercom. She was learning to act more and more human, but she was turning into an annoying kind of human who enjoyed irritating others. A fairly dangerous pastime. She cleared her throat and hacked into the port’s wireless webcams to see through their eyes.

Images of the area appeared on Rick’s glasses. Lord Baylor talked with a mechanic and gestured broadly. The mechanic stooped down low to show his lower rank, but he rubbed his hands with greed. From his small and round head and short nose, he was originally from the outer rim of the Coalition, one of the few who’d managed to escape totalitarianism. He’d probably bribed and coerced his way out of Earth; nobody who played by the rules ever managed to get anywhere if they were from the Coalition.

Amy turned on the long-range microphones and hacked into fridges, fax machines, security cameras, and the classic intelligent devices that nobody ever bothered to secure. Some people enjoyed fruitful careers by hacking into those devices and stealing rich fools’ banking details, but not many rich fools remained rich for long. For now, Rick only needed to hear what they said.

“You’re robbing me,” Lord Baylor said with his deep and loud voice. The sound was way too loud and buzzed in Rick’s ear. Amy fixed the volume and apologized.

“This ship needs many repairs, my lord.” The mechanic walked around the Argonaut and glanced at Lord Baylor to measure his reactions. He was doing the dance to make sure that he got the highest price that the lord would agree to pay. “If you hadn’t had your…
accident
, she’d have failed within a year. I’m doing you a favor, you see? You’d have had to pay more for the same repairs if she’d broken on a different planet.” He marked the word
accident
but made no comments about it. In certain worlds, people never fought or killed each other; everything was a matter of chance and
accidents
were frequent.

The men continued bartering, unaware that Rick was watching them.

Rick only needed to run towards them, get rid of both of them, take the keys to the Argonaut, and run. If things got nasty, he could always use Lord Baylor as a hostage. Easy as pie, right?

Amy cleared her throat exaggeratedly to call his attention.

“If you have anything to say,” Rick told Amy through the intercom, “say it now, because I’m jumping into action.”

“Are you sure about this, Richard?” Amy said. “The odds aren’t in your favor.”

“It isn’t as if I have much choice,” Rick said. “If he catches me, I’ll end up working in the mines on an abandoned planet with a hostile climate. If I don’t try, I’ll end up broke, and broke people end up in the mines for one reason or another. It doesn’t make a difference.”

“There’s a high incidence of disappearances amongst Lord Baylor’s colleagues. I’d even say that it’s too frequent to be based on chance alone.”

“Are you telling me that he gets rid of the people he doesn’t like? Why didn’t you say this sooner?”

“I did tell you,” Amy said with that annoying know-it-all voice of hers. “Why do you think that I was against working with him?”

“You’re against drinking, flying too quickly, and skydiving, and you get mad at me whenever I suggest disconnecting the autopilot. How could I know that this suggestion made sense?”

“Those objections are founded! Drinking affects your neurons and slows down your thought processes, flying too quickly makes it more likely to make a lethal mistake, and skydiving is far riskier than living a normal life. And do you think that the autopilot is there for decoration purposes? Humans can’t think quickly enough when they’re aboard a fighter at full speed. Your instincts are inadequate, and that’s why engineers have added navigation computers to your ships.”

Rick didn’t like to risk his life, but relying on engineers who considered themselves infallible wasn’t a good idea. They made mistakes, messed things up more often than not, and they always ended up killing people like Rick. It wasn’t about not trusting technology, but about not trusting cheap and untested technology. Rick preferred to rely on his skills and to do everything the way it had been done for generations. If his great grandparents had survived the time of manually controlled airplanes and spaceships, why was it risky for anyone to stick to that lifestyle?

“In fact,” she continued, “those risks are far more unjustified than this one. Right now, you don’t have many other options, but you
do
have a choice when you board a fighter.”

“Awesome,” Rick said, “if this is as risky as flying a fighter, I’ll captain the Argonaut before dinner.”

“I haven’t said that it was less risky, Richard.” She spoke slowly and paused in every word to make it clear that he was nothing but an imperfect human being. “Lord Baylor has never been accused of killing his colleagues, but he is wealthy enough to bribe a jury. Even if we record everything, he’d be able to walk out of danger without any consequences. Lucas is wounded and receiving treatment, and you are one man. They’re probably a dozen, even more. Unless you let me take the shuttle to the hangar and shoot at them, you don’t stand many chances of getting out of there alive and free.”

“Thanks for the motivation,” Rick said, “but I’ll test my chances. I wouldn’t get anything done if I was as pessimistic as you are. The world isn’t doomed, and the whole justice system isn’t corrupt. If I’m killed, let’s hope that Lord Baylor will spend at least a month in jail.”

“The world is corrupt, Richard.” She paused like whenever she disagreed with something. “And the sentence for murdering someone isn’t a month of imprisonment; it is a life term, or at least 20 years if there’s a mitigating factor.”

One of those days, Rick was going to have to explain to Amy that not everything had to be taken literally.

He took a deep breath. Time to act. “I have my gun. He won’t expect me.”

“Your gun is broken, Richard.” Amy’s words were tinted with nervousness. “It will be ineffective if you try to shoot at someone.”

“Yes, but they don’t know,” Rick said. And besides, if he had to take his gun out, stunning one or two of Lord Baylor’s gorillas was going to be the least of his problems. He needed to be quick and to keep out of trouble.

If he started shooting, he was going to end up with the whole port shooting at him. He would’ve been happy with so much action if he’d had a lighter dinner, but he didn’t want to risk getting an indigestion like Lucas’. Stomach-related problems were always unpleasant.