Chapter Thirty-Six

Glik was having a great time. He was at the back of Kirk’s new landspeeder, enjoying the wind in his hair and horns as they shot across one of the city’s longer stretches of road.

The landspeeder was one sexy vehicle. All sleek curves and a purring repulsorlift engine under the long hood at the front. The best part, of course, was that it was a Gotal-made craft. Designed on Antar Four, built right here on Antar Five. No electric whine, none of that weird static. It was perfection, mechanised proof that the Gotal didn’t need the Republic shoving their mass-produced crap down their throats.

He’d seen the news reports. Half the goods they were getting were made by Republic slaves on some backwater. Antar couldn’t break away from the Republic fast enough, at least in his opinion.

“So,” Kirk said over the rush of wind. He leaned back, glancing at his friends for just a moment as he delivered the punchline. “What rancor? All I see here are some bantha!”

Glik chuckled. He’d heard it before. Twice, even, but Moktor hadn’t and he roared with laughter, slapping his knee as they went.

There was a flash of something red, and Glik started to turn towards it.

Then everything when horribly wrong.

He saw things only in flashes, and it was hard to tell those apart.

Kirk flying out of the back of the speeder.

The chair in front of him crashing into his face.

The entire world spun, over and over again.

He heard a scream over the high-pitched whine of a repulsor engine dying off.

Then it was over.

Glik hissed as the aches and pains caught up to his senses. He was in a much darker space, the landspeeder on its side next to a duracrete wall. Bits of stone littered the ground next to scraggly patches of grass and dirt.

“Wha?” he tried to ask.

“Statement: Two out of four survivors. Acceptable.”

Grik felt someone grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt and shifted as he was pulled out of the speeder. Help! Someone was helping them.

He groaned again, the world turning black for a moment.

When he came to what had to be only a moment later, he was... in a sewer? A large tunnel that stank of faeces. His back was pressed to a wall, and next to him was Moktor. “What?”

“Salutations: Hello, you decrepit sacks of flesh. I have questions for you, and you will answer them in an expeditious fashion.”

“Who are you?” Moktor asked.

“Query: Who is the leader of your cell in the Roshu Sune?”

Glik’s blood went cold, and he started to sit up, but not before Moktor kicked out at the dark thing hovering above them. “I’m not telling you anything! Who are you? Some Republican asshole?”

“Statement: That was not an answer.”

A dull orange arm shot out of the dark, the mechanical hand on the end of it spread out. It plunged into Moktor’s face. One of the fingers pressed into the Moktor’s eye with a squelch, like a berry being stepped on,the other fingers gripping tightly onto his face as he screamed and writhed.

“Repetition: Who is the leader of your cell in the Roshu Sune?”

Glik started to breathe harder and faster, despite the stink. Moktor just screamed obscenities.

“Observation: I am not hearing an answer.” The hand started to spin with a mechanical whine that was soon drowned out by Moktor emptying his lungs.

Glik could barely hear his thoughts as two glowing eyes turned with the suddenness that only a machine could have to face right towards him.

“Query: Perhaps the spare will be more willing to divulge what I need to know?”

***

HK47 was satisfied. He exited a fresher room, his armoured chassis cleaned of the offal and bits of organics that had clung to him during his interrogation. In a little under four standard hours he had discovered the leaders of two cells and had started to create a hierarchy map of the Roshu Sune.

It was somewhat inefficient work, but he was working under some constraints. Notably, ensuring that all the interrogatee’s deaths seemed like natural accidents.

So far he had expended one round from a blaster pistol. His main expenditure had been time. He intended to get this little jaunt over with so that he could return to his master’s side. She was occasionally dull, the way organics were, but for the most part she made up for it by providing him with new and interesting things to see and chaos to enjoy.

So many strange ideas about how the universe worked. Entirely wrong, but close enough that she occasionally stumbled blindly into brilliance.

HK47 found a taxi next to one of the quieter streets and flagged it down with the appropriate gestures. He embarked on it, reassured the droid pilot that the things that he was carrying that looked a lot like weapons to the droid’s scanners were in fact anything but, then ordered the taxi over to the location of the next Roshu Sune emplacement.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The ride was a little slow, likely owing to the traffic block around the scene of the accident he had caused, but they did eventually manage to drive deeper into the city while HK47 assessed all of his armaments.

“We have arrived,” a pleasant gotal voice said from the droid mounted at the front of the landspeeder taxi.

HK47 took note of the cost for the trip, weighed it against the value of a blaster pack for his cheapest-to-use blaster, then weighed the credit value against the value of the enjoyment he would receive from shooting the droid.

It was more efficient to merely pay the droid.

He shot it anyway.

This cell of the Roshu Sune was, according to what he’d discovered, one of their busiest, and also likely one of the highest ranked cells on the planet if the organisation followed the typical patterns that organic cell-based groups tended to use.

The area was mostly industrial, with large factory complexes set next to each other, occasionally interspersed with warehouses like the one he was standing before.

The warehouse complex was made of three large buildings set around a central courtyard with enough room for a few larger hover platforms and trucks to place themselves for packing and transportation.

HK47 scanned the front of the lot. He didn’t have a long time to stand there. Someone would notice him eventually, and a lone droid might be somewhat suspicious.

There were three young gotal loitering in the shade of one of the warehouses, two male, one female. They were passing a death stick between them, the smoke of it trailing up and past them. A large hover truck had just recently come to a stop at the central loading gate of the facility, the vehicle’s engine was giving off warmth still, though it was slowly cooling down.

HK47 ran through six-hundred simulations of what a frontal assault on the warehouse would look like before he dismissed the idea. The risks were too great, with only a ninety-six percent chance of total success.

The main issue was that he had to keep some members of the leadership here alive in order to interrogate them. It was always so much more difficult to keep the meatbags from expiring.

He ran through a thousand more plans in the time it would take an organic to blink, then with a shift of his posture, he started walking towards the three gotal loitering on the outskirts of the facility.

“Introductions: I am CB89 Cyborg-human repair assistant,” he said in the nasally, tone-deaf voice of a lower-grade droid.

The gotal youth looked up with red-rimmed eyes and confused, placid expressions. “What?” one of them asked.

Judging by the way they stood in relation to each other, the slightly higher quality of his clothes, and the proximity of the female gotal to his side, this one was what passed for this small group’s leader.

“Introductions: I am CB89 Cyborg-human repair assistant. I was sent by Fancorp Antar to repair a ventilation system within warehouse 4558-B,” HK47 said.

“Oh,” the Gotal said. He took a long pull from the death stick, then passed it on. “Well, that’s here, but I don’t remember anyone mentioning you.”

“Specification: I have a priority mission that requires that I enter this warehouse in order to ascertain the condition of the ventilation system within.”

“Hey, droid, isn’t that a rifle?” the other male asked.

HK47 traced the trajectory of the gotal’s finger towards the E5 Blaster Carbine held against HK47’s lower back. “Negation: That is a hydrospanner.”

“Oh,” the gotal said. “Alright.”

“Yeah, I guess you can go on in,” the leader of the small group said. He patted the other male on the knee. “Lead him in, will you? Bring him to the boss, or whatever.”

“Man, you just want to be out here alone with her.”

There was some chuckling and posturing and other useless wastes of time before HK47 was finally led into the warehouse via a side entrance by the second male.

The moment they were in the building and HK had scanned the area to ensure there were no onlookers, he clamped a hand around the gotal’s neck, twisted to the side to break the spinal cord, and waited the appropriate amount of time for the blood to stop flowing into the male’s brain.

The body was disposed of in an industrial-sized trash receptacle.

HK47 took note of the pride he felt at his own accomplishments, filed it for later review, then charged his blasters.

There was always more work to be done.

What joy!

***