Chapter 35 Sem
“Good to see you survived the swim, blue man,” Maximus said once the old man caught his breath.
His cough seemed to have worsened overnight.
Pneumonia vs. emphysema was my differential diagnosis.
Both conditions could be easily treated in civilization but were decidedly deadly in this abominable basement.
“Barely,” I managed after my own coughing spell, my lungs still raw and burning. “Mal should show any minute now, unless Gol sends someone else or demands to get the clean linens himself.”
“That pretentious prick won’t come,” Maximus assured me. “He hates it down here. Says it stinks like pig shit.”
I commiserated. It did stink like pig shit. “Are you ready to tell me what’s about to happen? Why you need Mal?”
With narrowed, watery eyes, Maximus studied me for several uncomfortable seconds.
I suddenly understood how a misfiring ignition coil he was deciding how to repair might feel.
At length, he said, “You know everything you need to know, Doctor. When the gen-1 gets here, your job is to keep Lars and the other bootlickers occupied until you hear the signal.”
“Which is?” I still wasn’t thrilled with his ambiguity, but my exhaustion outweighed any desire to press him further. Especially when he started coughing again.
Eventually, he held up a shaky finger. “Don’t worry. You won’t be able to miss it.”
I had one hour before my shift at the pumps started, and I couldn’t risk any suspicion by showing up late. Pacing my cell, I waited for the telltale bird whistle from Maximus signaling that Mal had arrived. I only hoped the old man still had the lung capacity left to get it out.
To keep my mind from spiraling, I thought of Elanie.
Not of her face or her lips or her body—well, not only those things.
I thought of her laughter. Her soft, breathy laugh when Grover did something ridiculous.
Her barked “ha!” when I caught her off guard with a well-timed joke.
But the type of laughter I thought of most, closing my eyes and trying as hard as I could to remember every detail, was her unbridled, tears-streaming belly laugh when I really got her rolling.
Like the time I’d impersonated the Ignisar’s crewmembers to entertain her in the cave.
When I’d done Sunny, calling Elanie “darling” as I walked around on my tiptoes with Sunny’s exaggerated hip swish.
While I bemoaned how insufferable Martian movie stars were and how there was never any good shopping on the ship, Elanie had laughed so hard she’d literally fallen over.
That was the laugh I missed the most. Saints, what I wouldn’t give to hear it again now.
Instead I heard—
Whoo-whit.
My heart skidded to a stop at Maximus’s signal.
When it remembered how to beat again, I slid from my cell, carrying an armful of dirty clothes clutched against my chest. On the way to the laundry, I passed a Vorpol sitting on his bunk, his single long-toed foot propped on a chair while he clipped his toenails.
When I nodded at him, he only grunted, a bit of nail flinging into the air with his next clip.
Scurrying down the tunnel, I rounded the corner to the laundry. Knocking—three fast, two slow—I waited, my nerves jangling so hard I could practically hear them.
The door creaked open, Maximus’s beady eyes peering through, “What? Are you waiting for an invitation?”
Biting down on my retort, I stepped inside. And then my jaw dropped. “What in the worlds is going on here?”
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back panel removed, his internal wiring, circuitry, and hydraulics on full display, Mal said, “Hello, Dr. Semson. Please forgive my”—he winced down at his exposed back—“nudity.”
Maximus coughed, then groaned as he sat on the floor behind Mal. He picked up a screwdriver and pointed it at me. “Take a seat, blue man.”
“What are you doing?” I asked, sitting beside them.
Ignoring me, Maximus poked at a wire. “Does that hurt?”
“It does not,” Mal replied.
“Good.” Pulling the wire free, Maximus stripped the protective coating off with his teeth, then twisted it together with another wire.
“Did you know, Dr. Semson, that gen-1 bionics were the only generation designed specifically for the military? Many of them are still used in that capacity, although that is highly classified information.”
I watched in awe as the master mechanic’s hands flew nimbly over Mal’s circuits. “I thought gen-1s had mostly been decommissioned. Or recommissioned, apparently.”
“Most were, this is true. But many gen-1s are collected, hoarded, hidden in the basements of the mega-rich, collecting dust in cargo holds of Imperion warships. There are rumors that an entire battalion of gen-1s was stolen by Kravaxian raiders during the Asteroid Belt Wars.” Maximus raised a cryptic brow. “Never to be seen again.”
“Why?” I asked while the nano-optic lights surrounding Mal’s spinal column blinked white, green, blue.
Maximus twisted another set of wires together, and the lights flared bright red.
“Ooh.” Mal shuddered. “That tickles.”
“Sorry.” Maximus patted Mal’s shoulder. “We’re almost done.”
“Done with what?” I asked, my annoyance blooming. I didn’t know how much time we had before Gol expected Mal back with the clean laundry, but I doubted it was enough for…whatever this was.
“Gol disabled most of Mal’s more unique functions years ago.” Maximus reached deep inside Mal’s body cavity, cursing as he searched around. “But he didn’t destroy them, the swell-headed, short-sighted fool.”
“What functions?” I turned back to the door, expecting Gol’s thundering footsteps at any moment, wondering how badly being squeezed to death by huge green arms would hurt.
“Ha ha!” Maximus’s cackle echoed off the washing machines. “There she is.” His wrist flicked and twisted, and a deep, humming buzz filled the room before falling away to rumble as a low, droning purr.
“Oh, my.” There was a digital tremble in Mal’s voice. “That feels very strange.”
Fed up, I grabbed Maximus’s shoulders and turned him toward me. “What is going on? What did you do to him?”
When Maximus opened his mouth, I thought maybe, maybe he’d finally fill me in. Then he sighed and said, “There are some truths we are not ready to accept.” He squeezed my shoulder. “This may be one of them.”
I threw my hands into the air. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
Maximus grunted, struggling to pick up Mal’s backplate. “Quit your insufferable whining and help me. This is a heavy bastard.”
Grabbing the plate, I held it in place while Maximus secured it, covering up Saints knew what he’d just activated inside the gen-1.
“Maximus, you have to tell me what’s going on.”
“Stars, man! You’re as persistent as a ghostfly. Fine, fine.” He flung out his hand. “But help me up first.”
I took his hand and slid my other arm around his hunched back, feeling each one of his ribs under his shirt as I helped him to his feet.
Then I watched for long, agonizing seconds while he carefully brushed off his pants, then stretched out his back with a lengthy, strained groan.
When he was done, he stood in place, arms at his sides, silent.
Until he blurted out, “What are you staring at?”
If not for my neck, my head would have popped clean off. “You have got to be kidding. I’m waiting for you to tell me—”
“Oh, that’s right.” Tapping his temple, he admitted, “It’s not what it used to be up here.” He pulled out his worn, wooden stool and sat on it, his joints creaking and lungs rattling. “Brace yourself, Portisan. But Thura, despite Gol’s insistence, was actually my idea.”
“It was?” Mal asked, his yellow eyes expanding. “He did not tell me this.”
I only stood there, mouth hanging open.
Rolling his eyes at my shocked expression, Maximus said, “I met Ralph Golgunda four decades ago on the bigger planet of the Aquilines.”
“Ralph?” I asked, incredulous. “His name is Ralph?”
Maximus scoffed. “Your name is Sem. Do you really think Sem Semson is any better than Ralph?”
I closed my eyes and ground out, “My name isn’t… Sem is a nickname. My first name is—”
“Don’t care,” Maximus cut in. “Gol was my second-in-command during my tenure maintaining House Lysero’s Royal fleet, with the help of several hundred other bionics on our crew.
We all worked together for years, sunup to sundown.
We grew close, like family. Until one of our own was accused of sabotaging the queen’s personal aircraft.
Of course, it wasn’t sabotage. It was only fatigue.
A simple mistake. Not surprising with the hours the bionics on my crew were forced to put in.
Regardless, and without anything resembling an investigation, let alone a trial, the Royal Aquilinian Guard fed her into an incinerator. ”
“Saints below,” I whispered.
“The other bionics were irate. Gol and I tried to warn them. We begged them to remain calm. But they didn’t listen.
They banded together in a revolt, refusing to work until justice was served.
” He closed his eyes as a wall of pain and regret shoved into me.
“They were all decommissioned. Every last one. Except for Gol.”
“I’m sorry,” I said uselessly.
“I wasn’t.” Maximus’s pain shifted into sharply flaring rage.
“I had no time to be sorry, because I was furious. I’d spent most of my career working with bionics, watching them wear themselves to their wires, watching them sacrifice every bit of autonomy they’d been tricked into believing they had.
And then I watched my entire crew die. Something had to change.
It was a question I’d been asking myself for some time: What if there was a place where bionics could be free?
Somewhere hidden from LunaCorp’s all-seeing eye?
From Imperion’s iron-clad rule and draconian policies? ”
“Thura,” Mal supplied. “You were trying to help us.” His head ticked, turned toward the door.
“We were trying to help,” Maximus corrected.
“Gol and I. And we succeeded, for a while. Until Gol decided he wanted a bigger reach, more power, more control. Until he lost his way. Soon, instead of wanting to liberate bionics, he became obsessed with a singular desire to punish organics, to seek revenge, to turn the tables and lead a new generation of bionics to rule the stars. He was committed, ruthless, and willing to do things I never imagined…” He scrubbed his hand over his face.
“What happened?” I asked.
“What always happens in a power struggle. One of us won, and the other wound up down here, shoveling pig shit.”
Mal’s ear twitched, his eyes narrowing on the door.
“Gol will never stop,” Maximus warned. “He will continue to lure bionics here and imprison any organics who happen to show up with them. Soon, he will start training Thurans to fight. He will build an army.” When he looked at Mal, a cold, bleak despair spread out from him like cracks over a frozen lake.
“No matter what it costs everyone around him.” He coughed again, then cleared the rattle from his throat.
“It’s time. It’s time to put an end to his reign before it’s too late. ”
“How?” I asked, but Maximus had already struggled back to his feet, motioning for Mal to join him.
“All right, friend,” Maximus said calmly, almost tenderly. “It’s time for you to head back up. You know what to do.”
“Yes, I do.” Mal stood and turned toward the door, his shoulders following suit. “I will. But”—his hydraulics whirred as he started walking—“do you hear that noise?”
I stood still, listening. “I hear the pipes clanging.”
“I hear the pigs snorting,” Maximus added with a shrug.
“No. There is something else.”
I’d never heard this tone from Mal before, sudden and harsh.
“This is not the pigs or the pipes.” He took another step toward the door. “It is so loud. It is deafening. How do you not hear it?”
“Time to get back up there, Mal,” I said, watching the gen-1’s expression harden into stone, the yellow light shining from his eyes intensifying, turning amber, orange. And then, so quickly I couldn’t get out of the way, Mal charged, shoving me into the wall as he barreled through the door.
“This is because of whatever you did inside him, isn’t it?” I hissed while Maximus and I hustled to keep up with the titanium tower of fury marching down the tunnel in front of us. “Did you twist the wrong screw or something?”
Maximus’s glare was withering. “I didn’t twist the wrong anything. I don’t make mistakes. This is something else entirely.” His sorrow pushed on my shoulders. “And terrible timing, at that.”
My stomach sank, then dropped as we followed Mal through a left turn, then a right, and another left. As I realized where he was going. Because I heard it now too, the low, resonant humming I’d heard the day I followed Lars to the pumps.
“What is in that maintenance closet?” I demanded. “What’s he about to find?”
“Maintenance closet? Lars tell you that?” He stopped, turning to point a finger at me. “You know, for an educated man, you’re exceptionally dense.”
I gritted my teeth, taking the old man’s elbow and guiding him down the tunnel. The humming intensified until it vibrated through my ribs. “Is it the satellite array or something?”
“Stars above!” Maximus cried. “How did you get through med school? Who in the worlds would put a satellite array underground?”
I frowned, fighting another pout. “I’ve heard of it. Or read about it, maybe.”
“Where? In your favorite sci-fi novel? No, my na?ve little friend, the satellite arrays are not underground. They’re hidden five kilometers northeast of Thura. Gol thinks they’re impenetrable, that numbskull. As if I wouldn’t have left myself a back door.”
I yanked Maximus down the tunnel as footsteps approached. Reaching out with my empathy, I picked up on a vibe of dull irritation mixed with a weird horniness: Lars and Mina, looking for me.
“Saints!” I hissed. “I’m supposed to be at the pumps.”
Disentangling his elbow from my grip, Maximus hissed, “Then you’d best get to work. I’ll take care of Mal.” His wink did nothing to set me at ease. “This will all be over before you know it.”
“Are you sure?” I peered over Maximus’s shoulder at the door to the not-maintenance closet. Mal had opened a panel on his wrist and was industriously using some tool that had emerged to pick the lock. “He seems distraught.”
When I looked at Maximus again, he was distraught too, his face as white as a sheet while he clenched his chest.
I grasped his shoulders, holding him up. “Are you seriously having a heart attack right now—”
“Well, well, well.” The deep chuckle behind me sent my stomach through the ground. “What have we here?”
Warmth crept up the back of my neck, cinnamon and vanilla flooding my senses. And as I slowly turned around, I knew it was my own heart I needed to worry about.