Pirates of Saturn (The Saturn Series Book 2) Read online

  Caleb yelled at Jada, “You! What the hell have you done!”

  Jada put her hands on her hips and smiled. “Yo be even more handsome when yo’s angry.”

  The sexist compliment momentarily undid Caleb’s fragile ego. His mouth attempted to work out further invective, but stumbled.

  Jada went on. “We ain’t been proper introduced. My name be Jada. Jada Temple.” She gestured toward Chicharron. “And this here well-dressed fellow be my… our, chosen leader, Pablo.”

  Pablo, dressed in a sports jacket and slacks with an open collar button down, offered a slight bow. His accent was from East Los Angeles, and bore the nasal tone of Cheech Marin, a stoner comedian from one-hundred-years before. “Chicharron, Pablo Chicharron at your service. Welcome to our hide-out. We appreciate your visiting and apologize for the misunderstanding regarding Jada’s initial assault on you and your friends.”

  Caleb blurted, “Dude, what did you squirt into our necks?”

  “Ah. A simple tracker antidote, my friend. Can’t be too safe these days, you know? We’ve found that the scanners for blood born nano tracking devices miss their mark occasionally. Better to kill ‘em all outright. Right?”

  Jennifer said incredulously, “What makes you think we’ve got tracking devices in us? And isn’t chicharron fried pig skin?”

  “Si, me apellido es a fine Mexican dish. To answer your first question, you did say you called the cops. And anyway it’s standard. And you found your friends, right?”

  Caleb spoke through gritted teeth. “This is Saturn. People’s bodies are sacred. You can kill a man, but you got no right to inject something into him against his will. That’s a rule we all swore to.”

  Jada turned to Pablo and jokingly mumbled, “I don’t think he be likin' it when he find out about the thing with the thing in the thing, if you knows what I’s sayin'.”

  Pablo smiled. “Nope, he won’t.” He said to Caleb, “Listen, my friend. No hard feelings. The only rules we swear to are the rules we make for ourselves. In this club, we believe in democracy. Democracy for ourselves. You want to join our club, you get your tracker nanos killed.” To Silvio and Candy, he said, “Unstrap them.”

  The robots removed the head restraints as the cuffs retracted from around Caleb and Jennifer’s wrists and ankles.

  “Join your club?” asked Jennifer, while rubbing her wrists.

  Pablo looked at Jada and pointed a thumb at Saanvi. “Thought this one was sposed to explain.”

  Saanvi said, “I haven’t had time to explain your offer yet.”

  Pablo waved her off. “I got it.” He stepped toward Caleb and offered his hand. Caleb reluctantly took it and Pablo held it firmly. “Occasionally we come across folks like you and your friends. Your doctor friend here is on probation. The other two are joiners. Joiners get the benefits of being part of something awesome. Losers get to walk the plank.” He said this with genuine joviality. “Really. We’ve got a plank!” Then his voice grew quiet and menacing, and his East LA accent drifted into something more American Mid-Western. “That said, don’t mistake my generally gregarious nature for either kindness or mercy.” He released Caleb’s hand.

  INITIATION

  SAANVI WAS DISMISSED with Silvio and Candy. As she retreated with Dr. Lee to another room, Saanvi glanced back at her friends, her eyes betraying neither sorrow nor warning. They were blank, neutral, almost like she wasn’t actually inhabiting her body.

  Pablo filled the void by clapping his hands twice. “So, Jada has arranged for an important guest visit to our roving home, and I must attend to the arrangements. For now, she will give you some orientation, then I will meet you all later at the plank. There we can decide together whether you stay or go.”

  Boyce and Jyme stood aside as the Star Trek style door swished open and Jyme followed Pablo out. Boyce stepped closer to Jada.

  Jada, with T still standing over her shoulder said to Caleb and Jennifer, “Lucky bitches. Pablo be likin' you.”

  Caleb looked skeptical. “What makes you say that?”

  “In the past… Well, wit me for instance, we be havin' this little chat whiles already standin' at the plank.” She smiled at the memory. “My how things change. Anyway, Mr. Boyce here be givin' you the tour.” She turned on her heal and paused without looking back at them. “It shouldn’t need sayin', but I be sayin' it anyways. Stupid actions leads to stupid deaths. Listen yo asses to Mr. Boyce and learn.”

  Jennifer said, “What about Natalie and Spruck? When can we see them?”

  “They be on they own orientation. Soon enough I spect.”

  “And Hee Sook? Our robot companion?”

  Jada glanced at T. “Same. Soon enough.” She left through the door followed by T892.

  Boyce waved for them to follow him in the opposite direction of Jada’s exit. “This way. Follow me. Oh, and I got an eye in the back of my head so don’t be stupid.” He tapped a small dot of glass that broke through the hair on the back of his head. “Implant.”

  The Island’s hallways were little different from most mined-out space rocks. Like everything else Homo sapient, Saturn’s space colonists weren’t immune to imaginary caste systems. Only the wealthiest of moon-dwellers bothered to hide the bare rock, pipes, and cables that gave rise to the term Sewer Dweller or more commonly, Dweller. From almost day one on the Moon and on Mars, the elites in their fancy high-end fabricated housing referred to everyone else as Dwellers. Now, unless you lived on Titan or Soul, most pioneers were referred to as such. In the Saturn System, Dweller had been redefined from a derisive name to one of honor. Only the very heartiest of colonists made successful lives in such conditions. Most embraced their maison merdique with gusto.

  As they walked the halls, they passed various residents garbed in everything from industrial overalls to beach shorts and bikinis. Caleb and Jennifer were universally greeted with friendly hellos and howdy-do’s, all in English, many of them accented. Like the bulk of humanity, their skin tones were primarily shades of brown, and almond-shaped eyes were more common than not. The color blue was mostly a parental choice of genetic engineering rather than the evermore rare inherited DNA. Caleb and Jennifer, being paler than most, heard the derisive term ghost more than a few times after passing people. It was a common enough description, generally spoken without malice, but neither appreciated the title.

  Boyce was saying, “Unless we’re on a mission, everyone does pretty much what they want. We all got jobs of course, but they get done as done needs doing. We meet once a week to agree on what got done and what still needs doing. Nobody’s a slacker. If you get called out as a slacker there’s always extra sewage treatment duty. We all gotta do it, but slackin’ gets you more.” He stopped at a large sealable door marked FAB LAB. “We’re still minin’ this rock. It’s got tons of base elements and metals to work with.” He turned to a scanner and said, “Open” The door recognized him and did so. “I don’t pretend to know half of how it works, but it’s mostly automated, anyway.”

  Inside was a room manned by one human and three industrial androids. It was otherwise a din of 3-D printers, laser cutters, smelters, ovens, and materials recycling machines among many others. Boyce waved at a man who sported a short thick beard. He was tall, maybe 188 centimeters, and skinny; really skinny; like 74 kilos skinny. “Hey, Max.”

  Max lifted his AR glasses and nodded at Boyce. “Mr. Boyce.”

  “Max Malone, this is Mr. Caleb Day and Ms. Jenny Boyce.”

  “Jennifer,” corrected Jennifer.

  “Another Boyce, eh?” said Max. “How we gonna solve that?”

  Boyce looked pained by the simple problem. “I’m Boyce, she’s Jenny.”

  “Jennifer,” corrected Jennifer again. She would have said more, but the sight of the skinny man’s body warping and snapping back like the others had, shook her. The oddity lasted for only half a second. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, saying, “It can’t be a trick of the light.”

  “What can’t?” asked Cale
b.

  “I keep seeing—“

  Boyce interrupted, “Max here is our mad scientist. You think of it, he can make it.”

  “With the right feed stock,” said Max. “I got a long list of basics to keep an eye out for on the next raid.”

  Boyce met this with silence. Caleb and Jennifer looked at the two men waiting for more. Max finally said, “What? What I say?’

  Boyce said, “Uh, not sure we’re supposed to talk about shop yet.”

  Caleb chuckled at the two. “Seriously? What’s to hide? You guys are pirates. You want to know if we want to be pirates too. Not that you’re giving us much choice.”

  There was a long pregnant pause until Max said, “Freebooters. We prefer the term, freebooters.” He slid his glasses back down. “Back to it. Maybe I see you again, maybe I don’t.” He turned back to the machine he was working with.

  Boyce said, “Uh, so you can imagine that we have a separate sterile facility for food fabrication. Better than the amino blocks for ship printers. We actually grow a lot.”

  They continued on their tour. Boyce showed off the assorted dining options as well as a model for the small private quarters available to each individual. It was like being shown a timeshare resort, which was exactly what Caleb imagined as they reached a pair of azure blue glass-looking doors.

  “Everybody gets their vitamin D,” said Boyce as the door opened to the sights and sounds of a tropical beach paradise. The sky and the horizonline of the water were projections, but the sand and the wavelets were real. So were the palm trees. Jennifer put her hand on one and rubbed the bark in amazement.

  Boyce said, “I know, right? We have the best arborist. These babies came from real coconuts. Some Richie Rich actually hauled real coconuts out here. Was one of the best things we ever found. The Island here is almost half ice, so water is never a problem. We get to eat real coconuts.”

  There were several people lounging around, others playing volleyball. A tiki bar was crowded with drinkers being served by a bright white male robot wearing a straw hat at a jaunty angle. The drinkers were all swaying to calypso music.

  Caleb said dreamily, “OK. I’m in.”

  Jennifer pointed, “Spruck! Nat!”

  Their friends were at the bar dressed in bathing suits and laughing with some others. They didn’t seem to hear her over the music and the artificial sound of waves and tropical birds.

  Caleb said, “Guys!” He started toward them, when the music abruptly stopped and the false sunlight switched to harsh overall light. More lights blinked red. A klaxon blared, and a recorded voice said, “Battle Stations! Battle Stations,” over and over.

  The crowd quickly ran toward a building labeled showers, Spruck and Natalie among them. Boyce grabbed Caleb by the arm. “Come with me.”

  Caleb yanked his arm away and kept marching toward the shower building. The robot bartender stepped out menacingly from the bar to block his path.

  Boyce uncharacteristically barked out like a drill sergeant, “Turn around, recruit, I have to get to my assigned defensive point and you two are with me.”

  Caleb turned around quickly and pushed Boyce in the chest. “I want to speak to my friends!”

  The robot grabbed Caleb roughly by the back of the neck.

  Jennifer yelled out, “Hey!”

  Boyce calmed his tone. “It’s a battle station call. Either you follow me now or I let Klaus here break your neck. You remember Klaus from the ring?”

  Caleb’s eyes darted back and forth trying to pick up the bot in his peripheral vision. Jennifer took Caleb’s hand. “He’s right. We’ll catch up with them later.”

  In The Island’s hypersleep room, Pablo and Jada stood looking at a monitor that displayed the alternate reality that Caleb and Jennifer were experiencing. Behind them lay the two captives in separate pods, their faces serenely showing none of the intensity of the moment.

  Jada said, “I’s surprised. Expected more resistance from her, I did.”

  Pablo, dropping the East LA accent he reserved for groups replied, “Same personality issues as the doctor. Bet you five-hundred she planks out. The guy, on the other hand, is a straight up narcissist. He’ll be easy.” He pointed at Boyce on the screen. “Who wrote the script for this knucklehead? He’s never been that smart.” In his mind, Pablo asked for the time. An Alt Reality clock projected on his retina. “I show Dima’s arrival in just over two hours.”

  Jada nodded. “I gots the same alert.” She touched the pod that held Caleb. “Plenty of time to be playin' this one out.”

  Pablo changed the image on the screen to one showing the outerspace in front of The Island. At the edge of the scan was a group of six ships. “Don’t like that he brought a flotilla.”

  “Wouldn’t yo, meeting up with a buncha cutthroats?”

  Pablo smiled. The smile turned deadly, and his East LA accent returned. “We’ve placed all our faith in you, mi hermanita. We have never exposed ourselves to anyone that we didn’t plan to recruit or kill.”

  Jada responded with a skeptical smile. “Pablo, little bro, yo knows yo is ten years my junior at least.” She pointed at the approaching flotilla. “I remind you that Schafer be in complete agreement on this. Instead of diggin’ for scraps round that giant ass hell planet we call home, we work with this guy and we be gettin' to sleep amongs the riches.”

  “So you say. But if you’re wrong…” He let the rhetorical nature of the statement hang.

  Jada’s face remained serious. “You don’t like what he gots to say, flotilla or no, you can kill him.”

  Pablo’s Mid-Western accent came back. “Fair enough. Back to the new recruits.” He switched the screen to the simulation. Caleb and Jennifer were jogging behind Boyce, making their way to his action station.

  Caleb was pissed and confused and feeling jerked around. He hated being jerked around. He was following this ass because he had no other plan, and none was presenting itself. And what was up with Spruck and Natalie? Was this place so great that they just went all in? It sure looked that way. Hell, they looked amazing in those bathing suits, which was weird. Natalie had long ago gone full augmentation, so that made sense, but Spruck? Spruck was a lump as far as Caleb was concerned. Sure the guy was thin, but he had a potbelly and he always looked his actual age. Where’d the pot belly go? He glanced at Jennifer, who looked as frustrated as he felt. And why the battle stations? Who’s coming? The other humans they were passing looked like they had places to go, but their faces were missing something. They didn’t look afraid or full of urgency. He said to Boyce, “Who’s attacking you?”

  Boyce shrugged, “How do I know?”

  “Well, who do you think is attacking you?”

  “Us,” said Boyce. “You’re with us now, remember? Who’s attacking us?”

  “Dude, whatever. Do you—we get attacked a lot?”

  Boyce ran without responding and barged through a door labeled MUNITIONS, USE EXTREME CAUTION. Inside was a space filled with racks of projectile ammunition. A system of conveyors and robotic arms were poised to deliver whatever was needed to the weapons systems on the surface. Boyce said, “It’s fully automated, but I stand by in case of a malfunction.” He paused, then said with emphasis, “A malfunction could compromise our defenses.”

  Caleb said, “OK, so what do we do?”

  “You standby with me.” Boyce pointed at a locker next to the door. “There’re hand weapons in there if we get breached, but hopefully that won’t happen.”

  The rumble of firing surface weapons echoed through the chamber. Caleb and Jennifer could feel it in their bones. Caleb said, “You’ve been breached before?”

  “Nope. Haven’t ever been in a firefight neither. We’re usually the ones doin’ the shooting.”

  The East LA version of Pablo’s voice came over the PA system. “Hello my fellow confederates. We are under assault from a significant force of police. They have overwhelmed our drone squadron already. We can expect to be breached at any moment.�
��

  “Well, shit,” said Boyce.

  Jennifer stared at Caleb with incredulity in her eyes. The look said it all. There was no way Monty sent a squad ship, much less the entire cavalry. She muttered, “Something doesn’t add up.”

  Boyce marched over to the small arms locker and opened it. Half a dozen nerve disruptors were strapped in a line. Below that were old-fashioned percussion weapons—mini assault rifles. He ignored the disruptors, handing the lead-throwing tools to the surprised plebes instead. “No fear of blasting a hole in the shell down here. We’re under thirty meters of rock. You can blaze away.”

  For Caleb, the weight felt wrong. He’d handled guns, ones just like these, while training to become a cop. He pulled the magazine and pushed on the top bullet, making sure it was full. It was. He sniffed it.

  “What?” asked Boyce.

  “Just checking the load,” said Caleb as he slipped the mag back into the rifle.

  A bang echoed through the room, shaking small rocks from the ceiling. A conveyor carrying large caliber bullets up through the roof surged into action, then jerked to a stop. A computer voice repeated, “Fault, Fault, Fault.”

  Boyce said, “That’s why we’re here.” He jogged over to the machine to analyze it, leaving his back to the other two.

  Caleb whispered to Jennifer, “Can’t smell the gun oil. This whole room should smell like lubricant. Sorta smells like chocolate instead.”

  Jennifer sniffed and nodded in surprised agreement. “Yeah, it does.”

  “There’s no way they tell us the cops are here, and that guy hands us guns and turns his back on us. Something’s not right.”

  Jennifer nodded slightly. “It’s not just that. I keep seeing people bend like they’re holograms getting hit with interference. And Saanvi. That wasn’t the Saanvi I know.”