“You don’t want to know. Smerth.”
“The problem?” Amye’s not sure she wants to know.
“This isn’t going to be healthy,” Doug assures her.
Amye draws her blaster and touches the commlink on her watch again. “JC, where the smerth are you!?”
Joe detects the smell of hydraulic oil in the air. “Something made of metal stirs.”
“Security droids.” Amye recognizes the sound. She grabs Doug by the arm, shoving him at the panel. “Override the security droids.”
“If I knew what each of these symbols on the keys meant.” Doug punches several more keys.
“Don’t make it worse, Doug,” Amye orders.
Hauser draws his weapon.
Metal rumbles echo from above.
All of them uniformly raise their weapons while lowering their center mass closer to the floor.
Ceiling tiles creak open. Pivot-mounted cannons lower.
“They are slow moving from lack of use and proper maintenance. We should be able to clean house,” Amye says with confidence, taking careful aim with her blaster. She squeezes the trigger. The blue beam of hot plasma burns through the air like a bolt of lightning, smashing a cannon.
Hauser shatters another. Joe slices through power cables and metal gears, disabling a third. Doug’s weapon melts some internal part of his cannon.
“In those battle suits they never heard the cannons.” Joe draws a cotton cloth over his blade.
“Who were they?”
Hauser releases the spent shell. “Scavengers.”
Doug disconnects the control pad from the wall panel. He jerks the computer panel built into the arm of a dead scavenger’s suit. Tossing both on the floor, he fires. The pieces melt into a slag chunk. “We detected the scavengers’ distress call.”
“If they’re dead, then I claim this ship as salvage.” Hauser holsters his weapon.
A battlebot, lumbering, squawks toward them on two legs.
Amye blasts the vacuum tubes encased in the domed housing unit for a head.
The smoking metal hunk crashes backward before it can fire its twin cannons.
“Interesting—high-quality microchip circuitry,” Doug remarks as he fishes around the brain cavity of the battlebot.
“What? I don’t know if I want any more of your expertise,” Amye says.
“You smerth’n should. I yanked out high quality circuitry from the computer system.” Doug hold up a fluted glass tube, “This divisive automaton still uses tubes.”
“Tubes?” Joe sounds puzzled.
“Tubes, like old lightbulbs. They also used them for years in old televisions from Reynard’s home world.”
“That Osirian bar on Sulera still uses them in their nostalgic display,” Amye adds. “This primitive tech’s not advanced enough to run a space ship. “Tubes require immense room and cooling devices.”
“Might explain this ship’s mammoth size,” Hauser questions.
“To utilize primitive tech in a deep spacecraft reeks of desperation,” Amye adds.
“Why such a distinct difference in tech levels?” Joe asks.
“That’s what I want to know,” Doug ponders.
“Simple—the construction of this craft took a few generations. They must have kept building, not upgrading the older technology as they went,” Amye speculates.
“Why not just wait until they had the technology to build a ship correctly?” Hauser asks.
“That one’s easy, smerth. They needed to leave their planet before the technology was available.”
Amye touches her commlink. “Athena?”
Scott’s voice fills their ears. “Something’s blocking your visual.”
“Now they answer,” Doug says.
“Some communications expert you are.” Amye tosses him some radio tubes.
Doug scowls.
“Just activate the transporter,” Amye instructs. “The distress signal was from scavengers.”
“Transport’s not possible. Some kind of interference with the heavy shielding. It has taken us this long to break through it. Something highly valuable must be protected onboard,” Scott suggests.
“I doubt it. Whoever built this ship had limited technology.”
“Disappointing. I need time to adjust the transporter. Navigation recalculation remains spotty.”
“The extra hull material was to make up for an inability to create space-age shields against radiation. Transport!” Amye demands.
Scott’s delay in reply leads Amye to believe the transmission jammed again.
JC’s voice comes through the commlink. “The transporter shorted. Scott’s repairing it.”
“Just get it fixed,” Amye stews.
The beep of the transmission ending flares from Amye’s watch.
“You didn’t tell him about—”
“Scott’s got a bit of a one-focus mind when his penis isn’t functioning as a divining rod. You want him working on the transporter or tearing this ship apart?”
“Amye’s logic is correct,” Joe supports her supposition.
“Let’s just find another way to get off this rust bucket. As soon as the navigation computer clears the jump coordinates, we need to be on our way.” Amye’s gait down the corridor quickens.
“SOMEHOW, DROPPING TO my knees and screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘God damn you all to hell!’ seems fitting.”
“You speak so strangely,” Eymaxin chides.
“You would too if you just had a Heston moment.” Reynard inches his grip on the reins, keeping his mount under control so close to the cliff edge.
In the valley below a medieval city stretches to the banks of a snaking mile-wide river. The structures are constructed of concrete or manufactured materials next to log and thatch buildings. Buildings surrounded by wooden scaffolding in an attempt to rebuild them with wood or primitively carved stone on foundations of what used to be an industrious city. The mixture of such conflicting building styles provides little amazement compared to the edifice erected next to the water.
Reynard recognizes the tall age-tarnished stainless steel pillar even with the top snapped off some one hundred feet in the air. A building he saw first on television and then in person at age ten. The remains of a monument dedicated to those who settled the western half of his home nation—the St. Louis Arch.
“Doug would appreciate the reference. He seems to know more about life in the 20th century than I do.” Any of the crew’s insight on this twisted menagerie from Earth and the historical warriors might provide a means to defeat the Sandmen.
“A city of witches—Harrowing. It was once a great city of the Nologies, but now it is home to wizards,” Haldon Sy says.
Reynard adjusts his eyepiece in order to view the city. “How do they sustain themselves?” Wizards patrol battlements of stone. Tapering azure crystals on pikes create a
