In the back of the room was a giant metal crusher that could turn a small hover craft into one compact box, a few meters square, ready for transport to a recycler. Jolo and Marco would feed large pieces of stolen boats into the mouth up top and then at the bottom a perfectly square cube would pop out that was no longer a traceable ship, just metal scrap to be sold. They called the metal cubes plugs.
Merthon picked up a bit of curved alacyte off the dusty floor and tossed it into the big machine and the grinder shredded it, the tiny bits of metal falling in a hopper. Once enough metal accumulated the crusher would smash it together.
Merthon heard the little hover bot heading his way and looked up. The ceilings must be twenty meters high, he thought. The bot hummed along, zig zagging between large pieces of fuselage hanging from the rafters and the large solar illuminators that would pull light from the outside as soon as it was day.
The little bot stopped right over his head and disappeared behind a large piece of yellow metal, some piece of ship he couldn’t identify. The bot popped out the other side and came around again then dropped down to his level.
“Did you find her?” said Merthon to his little water tank bot.
“Yes. Hanging from a metal beam between the sheet metal directly above.”
“Good work.”
Merthon stared straight up, arching his back, nearly losing his balance, but the long metal pieces blocked his view of the synth. The bot could take him up, he knew. Oh, don’t be a fool, he thought. No, that is Jamis talking. He looked around. It’d be best to get Greeley. No, he thought. Its my little mess and I’m going to clean it up and figure this thing out. They’ve got enough to do topside, and besides, she’s out of power anyway. She can’t hurt anyone.
Merthon was never much of a fighter, Jamis always said his heroics would be performed in a lab. But he steeled his nerves, and slung the heavy rifle over his shoulder. “Take me to her,” he commanded, and he grabbed the hand strap under the little hover bot and suddenly he was lifted up into the air.
He looked down and there were his clunky boots dangling beneath him and the mouth of the crusher directly under, its wide open mouth ready to catch him and grind him up and smash him into a tight little cube. Why had she chosen this spot, he wondered. Then when he got close to the ceiling he knew. She’d wrapped her bad arm around one of the support beams and was hanging there. Just above her was an illuminator, and once daylight came, she’d start recharging.
The little bot took him face to face with his creation, and he couldn’t help but marvel at his and Jamis’s work. She truly was beautiful: a strong, yet delicate jawline; soft, round eyes; and a small mouth with full lips.
He realized he was never going to be able to get her down by himself. She used the last of her battery capacity to get here and she was heavier than she appeared. The bot wouldn’t hold both of them. He’d need to find Greeley.
He reached out his hand and touched the curve of her cheek. “I’m sorry you were taken from me,” he said. It was still dead quiet and dark in the storage area and he hung there for moment longer.
Suddenly her eyes popped open and she grabbed his neck with her good hand. She clamped down and no air went into his lungs. He thrashed around in a panic, trying to break free, his body desperate to suck in some oxygen. But her hand was like a vice and he grew more frantic by the second. He made one last effort to tear away from her and he lost his grip on the bot and he started to fall. Her nails tore into his neck as she finally lost her grip on him and all he could see was the shiny rectangular mouth of the crusher getting bigger and bigger.
Right before he hit the teeth of the grinder something flashed before his eyes and had him by the arm and he was hovering again, but this time over the floor a few feet off the ground. It was Silana, with a smile on her face. She set him down and he wobbled a little then sat down and she stood over him, hands on hips, the bot just overhead.
“You are out of power,” said Merthon.
“No. I rigged the monitor,” she said. “But I am low. 16% and dropping.”
“Why did you save me?”
“Others will die. The creator must live.”
“What others?”
She did not respond. Merthon still had the gun and he swung it around and pointed it at her head. “Now I’ve got you. Shut down now and I won’t shoot. And you’ll be spared.”
“I am unimportant,” she said. Merthon slowly stood up, the gun still trained on her pretty face. “It’d be best not to fight,” she said. “The illuminators have a small shaft which leads straight to the surface. I finally connected to the source.”
The Vellosian swallowed hard. “The BG?”
She smiled. “They are coming.”
Merthon imagined shiny black Cruisers in deep space turning, making calculations, all plotting a course straight for the dusty old rock, his dusty old rock, right down on top of Marco’s hideaway. “I’ve got to warn everyone.” Merthon thought to fire
