A Space Walker in Town
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Miles struck and struck again, bathing his work leather gloves in red. And then he struck once more before falling on his bottom, exhausted.
“This one’s definitely givin’ up…” he said as he removed his protective mask and slid it on his forehead. With his wrist, he wiped the tip of his sweaty nose. In front of him, a patch of glue fluttered in the slightest gravity. “Throw me the other cyano, Jonas—the clear one. Besides bein’ completely dry, this Jovian glue just turned the front of my ship into a crime scene.”
Rounding the windshield, a tall robot mechanic in denim overalls came to sit next to him on the Forlorn’s beak. His micro-pistons hissed as he uncapped the new super-glue injector with his five-knuckled fingers. The resin briskly heated by the built-in thermocouple, he handed it to Miles before tossing the nozzle away beyond the Plexiglas doors.
“I told you so, Mr. Jim,” Jonas croaked as he started scraping the remaining dried paste which formed small pills on the edges of the fresh seal the man was trying to apply. “This Belter brand isn’t suitable for FKM. Bless is the Matrix it didn’t melt it… That would have been a shame. Such a beautiful new seal.”
“I know. Should have listened to you…” Miles apologized, putting his elastomeric facepiece back on. He then continued through the muffling filters: “Can you press on the corners while I spread some on the center? Unless we need you somewhere else, of course.”
The robot nodded and complied. “I could surely give you a hand, Mr. Jim. After all, you saved the city and got hurt in the process.”
Miles let out a laugh as he squeezed the plunger of the applicator with all his might. For the fight against Calamity Grace he hadn’t done much. Only the burn on his left cheek could testify to his meager involvement. But to call it an injury…
“A real shame about Lady Carnegie…” continued the robot. Raising the first of his hands, he made room for the injector drooling a milky fluid with a strong chemical smell.
Under his protective gear, Miles raised an eyebrow over the toxic fumes of the glue. “Without her, you and the other androids are free. Legally speakin’.” He coughed. The faulty filters on the respirator had to be almost as dangerous as the vapors.
Jonas looked him straight in the eye, and his photoreceptors flickered under the airlock’s blue ceiling lights. “Free? Free, Mr. Jim? A dead master doesn’t make you a free robot. We’re bound to Old Dodge because there is nothing for us beyond this moon. An AI marauding through the Deep Rings doesn’t survive very long. We’re far from Mars and the Technos.”
“Leave Plasticland.”
“I thought of that, mister. We all did.”
Miles gradually joined his mechanical assistant, carefully applying the last of the glue dots. The robot then ran a spongy roller along the windshield frame, particularly insisting on the corner where the previous FKM had worn away prematurely. When he was finished, the new sealant had fused perfectly with both the armored glass and the hull. All that was left to do was to perform a leak test. The Forlorn Hope would be soon ready to take off.
“Efficiently carried out, my friend…” Miles heaved, removing his respirator which left red marks framing his scarred face. He put it on the old radio-cassette player he turned on. Marty Robbins welcomed Jonas’ acknowledgment.
Miles stretched and waved to a drone flying back and forth in the hangar. The little robot circled his head and dropped a glass bottle of Pepsi Max into his hands. After tucking it in the back pocket of his jeans, Miles spun to Jonas busy applying the broad test box around the windshield. “If you could ever leave. Where will you go?”
The pump emitted a whirring sound as Jonas tapped on the computer keyboard. The robot leant against the metal case covered with colorful Cronian oil brand stickers. The hydraulics behind his right knee cap squeaked. Stroking his iron chin, he thought. “Titan, probably… AIs have been free there for a few years unlike the rest of the Rings.”
“Titan, huh? Neo-Babylon or Outrage City are definitely places to be.”
“But the big cities around Shangri-La are known to be very dangerous.”
“I reckon it’s true.”
Restraining one of the tremulous pipes linked to the test bench against the hull, Miles thought of Fate. He hadn’t spoken to her since the deadly shooting that had taken place two days before. While he had stayed on the Forlorn Hope to repair her with Andrew and Jonas, the runaway had gone to the underground city. Down there, in the satellite’s guts, she was apparently helping the old organic and mechanic inhabitants restart the crucial protein farms; and heal the wounded.
“Sealed, Mr. Jim,” Jonas responded as the control diodes lit up green.
“Perfect. Please, ask Andrew to schedule the takeoff for later this evenin’ after refuelin’ the tank with Blue. Goin’ to pack some jam for breakfast. No more worm jelly—it may be pure protein, it remains awful.”
“Are you in a hurry to leave?”
Miles rose and turned his head as the question came from Kumo Raïda below. As the Forlorn pilot approached the ledge of his ship, he saw the samurai sitting on an oil drum. In his arms slept the irascible red duck. With the bench test gurgling, Miles hadn’t heard them arrive.
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“This corral reeks of blood, gunpowder and maggot juice gone wrong.” After thanking Jonas, Miles climbed down the foldout ladder hanging from the hull. “Keep the annoying prick if you want.”
Raïda slid to the ground and set the snoozing duck down on the can. “This little oni needs peace. The problem is you, not him.”
“No kiddin’…”
Landing near the rōnin, Miles pulled the Pepsi from the back pocket of his jeans to quench his thirst. The bottle dragged his steel marble from Enceladus. The ball bounced off the corrugated sheets carpeting the floor. Following a ridge, it audibly cruised against the samurai’s geta shoes.
The bounty hunter bent down to pick it up. “What is this strange trinket?” he asked as he rolled it between his fingers.
“Something I found on Saturn II. A yakuza from Neo-Babylon got pinned in a brasserie. These things were all over the floor—bathed in red and white cyborg blood. Hence the odd shade.”
“Amusing anecdote,” Raïda chuckled as he closed his palm over the pink marble. “It is a pachinko ball.”
“Pachinko-what?” asked Miles through his bottle.
“A steel marble from a pachinko machine—an old gambling game from before the Second World War. I never played it because I hated it. Those balls going off in all directions with a hellish crash… that illusion of control when everything is chaos—and in the end, you ought to lose. Kind of like our lives. Don’t you think so?”
“Mine is now just a straight flat line…” Miles reacted before throwing the soda bottle in the large drain under the turbines. “You’re philosophizing a little too much about this marble. Cursed knick-knack, not less.”
“Cursed, uh? Are you in trouble? Does it have anything to do with your girlfriend surgically deadening two military-grade androids without breaking a sweat?” Miles’s feeble heart clenched. Nothing ever escaped Kumo Raïda’s notice. “Does she know who you are? It is quite rare to see people yelling at you like that. You, the greatest of all time.”
“Kuiper’s fringes are their own circuit, apparently. She never heard of the King. Can you believe that?”
The samurai laughed, waking up the duck who squinted at them.
“Stay out of this, Raïda…” Miles chided him. “Y—You…” But the last words were lost in a coughing fit barely covered by the music rising from the boombox on the ship’s nose.
“What about this?” asked the hunter, handing him an embroidered handkerchief. “Does she know about this too?”
Miles wiped away the dark blood that flowed from his nose and mouth. “Damned toxic glue.”
“My poor and pathetic fellow…” Raïda sighed, not letting on any pity. “The only organ they left unscathed is finally failing you now? What a never-ending tragedy…”
Grabbing the samurai by the lapel, Miles dragged his face closer as the duck quacked. His vision was blurry, and a ringing in his ears made his head spin. “You swim like a shark in the same bloody water I did. One day, they’ll do the same thing to you, blind fool!” he managed to declare despite the nausea.
Still smiling, the samurai effortlessly freed himself.
A ding ended the heated conversation. On the other side of the hangar, the doors of an elevator opened, revealing Fate. Raïda followed Miles’ hesitant gaze as he lingered on the woman, and brought his free hand to his guard as the other still held the steel marble. Somehow, Miles was convinced the samurai knew everything about the girl and her big iron.
“Not a word, you heard me?” he snapped.
“Or else?”
Fate reached the two men, as Miles snatched the pachinko ball out of Raïda’s palm. “Can we take off?” she coldly asked as she dropped a large Boréal Expos duffel bag at her feet, and crossed her arms. “At once.”
“You’re comin’ with me after all?” the pilot wondered as he handed the handkerchief back to Raïda, having taken care to fold it up to hide the blood.
“The honorable rōnin flies in an antique one-seater Oda. You have the only working transport ship in the hangar. I am not happy about it, but if you are heading for Titan, I would like the ride you promised. I will pay you.”
“Titan?” the bounty hunter responded, looking at Miles with amusement. “Alas, you will not be able to get to Titan.”
Fate uncrossed her arms to place her gloved hands on her hips. “Dōshite?”
Worried, Miles saw Raïda turned to her, his fingers still anchored on his swordgun. The pilot asked: “Why’s that?”
The samurai took his hand off his weapon and raised his white bushy eyebrows. “Saturn VI appeared to be quite stormy. Haven’t you heard? Titan is under a serious blockade orchestrated by the Techno-Marine. Ringern separatists have attacked the local military garrison near Neo-Babylon. They even set fire to a dockside cruiser dispatched to protect some new intraweb nodes: the Sumter.”
“Bad news. Gonna start a war with the Martians…” Miles said.
“I think so, indeed. With the Technos screening every arrival from the inner moons, you do not stand a chance of getting through—let alone without…” He pointed with his chin to the gloved hand Fate quickly hid by reflex in her leather jacket pocket.
“Where to go then?” she asked.
“Nouvelle Patrie is an option,” Raïda said. “Well, New Patrie now. Since they have cut ties with the Red Planet.”
Miles pondered, thinking of Fate’s ambitions. “My birth world’s home to the largest port on Saturn’s orbit besides Shangri-La… It could work.”
“Let’s move, then!” she uttered.
“Dynamite Woman on top of that,” Raïda joked. The chuckling samurai then wished Miles good luck as his domineering hitchhiker had already headed for the cell controls to move the ladder below the airlock. “Do not forget Napoléon.”
“Quack!” violently reacted the red-feathered duck.