Pilgrim (10 page)

Her heart thrummed like a caged bird. She
saw her chance to escape and didn’t waste any time. Nova sprinted
for the edge of the circle where only the woman with long nails was
moving in. Her arm was thrown over her eyes, shielding them.

Nova sprinted for the woman, who didn’t see
her until it was too late, and rammed her shoulder into the woman’s
body. Sprinting, she made it clear of the attackers and headed
straight for the next door, leading up to the gym.

She raced past the gym equipment and through
the dining room, pelted through the sleeping quarters, and breathed
a sigh of relief when the sounds of pursuit faded behind her. She
stopped long enough after the sleeping quarters to hoist the door
up and let it slam shut, cutting off the lower rooms.

She raced out into the sunlight, whirled
around, and pulled her gun out, hoping that it had cooled down
enough for a few more shots. Every muscle in her body was tensed.
She stared into the darkness of the ship, waiting for the creatures
to come pouring out. There was only darkness. She waited for a full
minute but there was no hint of the creatures in the room
beyond.

She rested her hands on her knees, breathing
hard. Clanging and moans floated up from the bowels of the
spaceship. The creatures howled. It created a haunting melody on
the winds of the rainforest but they didn’t come into the
sunlight.

Nova glanced up at the bright sun and let
her gun drop to her side. If her small glowball was enough to hurt
them, there wasn’t much chance of them coming out during the day.
She counted it a small blessing.

“Cal, I could really do with some help right
about now,” she said, pleading for any kind of answer. All she got
was silence. “Damned robot!”

She stood straight and the sweat on her
forehead evaporated in the rainforest air. She let out a long
breath and looked around.

“Cal, seriously this isn’t a joke. Respond,
you useless robot.”

She waited, but there was nothing.

She glanced at her overheated gun and
lowered it into the holster at her waist. Hopefully if she needed
it again it would have cooled down. She began the long trek back to
Crusader and the tribe of villagers.

“Should have traded that stupid labourbot in
when I had the chance.”

The sun was already sinking towards
nightfall and the secondary sun wouldn’t rise for hours yet. The
last thing she wanted was to be trapped in the haunted forest when
night came.

“Corpses, zombies, slugs. No sign of the
warp converter, and I didn’t even get a new depth detector. Bloody
planet was a waste of time.”

She trudged through the trees.

Something brushed against her hair.

“What the—”

She whipped her hand up to her head and
swiped across her temple. Something fell to the ground with a wet
splat.

“You can’t be serious,” she said, staring
down at the slug.

It crawled along the leafy ground at an
agonising pace, moving away from Nova with all the speed of
continental drift.

“Bad choice,” she said, slamming her foot
down on the creature with all the anger and frustration balled up
inside her.

The slug burst under the sole of her boot
with a satisfying pop. Some of Nova’s rage dissipated as she felt
the thing squish into the ground. She lifted her shoe. The leaves
and surrounding dirt were covered with red. The blood dripped from
the bottom of her boot. She felt a grim kind of satisfaction, as if
she’d taken revenge for being scared half to death by the
cave-dwellers.

She wiped her foot on some clean leaves and
then inspected every inch of herself for more slugs, including her
hair and clothes. She even pulled everything out of her bag and
turned it inside out.

Only then, with the medical equipment,
sample vials and emergency supplies spread out on the ground, was
she happy that no more slugs were crawling over her.

She kept walking until she got to the creek.
She stopped there for a few moments to look down at the corpse with
fresh eyes. She couldn’t be a creature from the caves because her
eyes were too small. Was she a victim of them? Maybe, there were no
visible wounds though.

Nova looked back up at the waterfall. The
broken bones suggested the body had fallen down from further
upstream. Another glance at the setting sun told her that she
didn’t have time to investigate it now. Plus, she had to get the
sample back to Cal for analysis. She’d never heard of slugs living
in people’s ears before, but stranger things had happened.

She hurried through the darkening forest and
made it to the edge of the trees just as the last ray of sunlight
disappeared. The glowing ball at her waist lit her way back across
the open plain to Crusader. The ship cast an imposing silhouette
against the setting sun.

***

Nova closed her eyes as the door slid shut
behind her. Pain pounded through her head with the stress of the
day. When she finally did lift her lids, her eyes shot open at what
she saw.

“Cal!” she cried as she ran across the floor
of the storage room. Cal lay on his side on the metal floor. Lights
flashed across his body in a random, nonsensical pattern. One of
his panels had come loose, leaving a trail of screws scattered
across the engine room floor.

She knelt down by Cal and pulled his
spherical body onto her lap. There was no response from the robot.
She glanced around the storage bay. Had someone gotten inside and
damaged Cal? The children?

Her heart beat painfully in her chest as she
looked down at her best friend.

“Crusader, is there anyone else on board
aside from me?” she said, her voice shaky.

“Confirm one human and one Class Four
Labourbot on board,” Crusader said through the intercom.

Nova let out a sigh. No one else was inside.
She opened Cal’s side panel where a series of readouts flashed
erratically. Nova typed into the small interface and began a full
diagnostic. After only a few moments, a single continuous beep
emerged from Cal. Then his systems went dead.

“Oh no no no!” she cried. She got to her
feet with Cal clutched tightly in her hands and stepped to the
small workbench. Cords snaked out of the walls, which she plugged
into Cal’s side.

“Crusader, ensure maximum digital shields. I
need you to do a full diagnostic scan on Cal, but don’t you dare
compromise yourself,” she called out. Her voice echoed around the
crowded room.

“Confirmed,” Crusader’s voice replied.

She held Cal in place while her eyes moved
over him. Aside from the panel which had fallen off there was no
sign of external damage. Nothing could have gotten into Crusader,
the door was sealed shut, so what had gotten into Cal?

It was only then that Nova remembered the
strange conversation she’d had with Cal just that morning. He’d
forgotten what she told him to do. It didn’t make any sense.

She lifted her eyes from Cal’s body and
glanced around the storage bay. She was shocked to see black marks
on the walls. Cal had obviously fired his laser at some point
during the day. The marks were scattered across each of the walls
as if the robot had been floating in mid-air, spinning in circles
and firing off his gun. She stroked his metal surface with her
hand.

Her foot tapped on the ground as she waited
for Crusader to finish the diagnostic. Painful tears stung the
corners of her eyes as she gazed at Cal, but she refused to let
them fall. He had been her best friend ever since she left her
homeworld and yet there was nothing she could do for him. The
thought of losing him made her want to punch her fist through a
nearby wall. She could always reload the Class Four Labourbot
interface but it wouldn’t be him.

“Scan complete,” Crusader’s voice said over
the intercom.

“Well? What’s wrong with him?” she said.

“He seems to have been infected with a
virus,” Crusader replied.

“Where did he get that from?” she asked.

Computer viruses had been all but wiped out
a hundred years ago. Now they were only targeted towards political
corporations or banks, not tiny labourbots.

“He has been scanning the Cloud and also
uploading material. The evidence would suggest that he has come
into contact with a contaminated portion,” Crusader replied.

“Well, can you get a patch please?” she said
through gritted teeth.

Her throat stung with her held back tears
and made her voice croak. Her head pounded with a building pressure
that pushed against the backs of her eyes. If Cal’s circuits were
fried not only would she lose a good friend, but she’d also have to
come up with the money to buy a new labourbot.

Crusader was silent for a few moments as she
scanned the Cloud for a suitable patch.

“Applying patch initially to ship’s
computers before creating a direct link with the infected system,”
Crusader said.

Nova nodded and waved her hands for the ship
to hurry up.

“Uploading patch to infected system,”
Crusader said.

Nova watched with baited breath as Cal’s
systems remained dead. There were no lights or sound emanating from
the robot.

“Crusader, nothing is ha—”

Beep-beep.

The noise came from Cal’s internal core. His
base systems had restarted and he was entering reboot mode.

Nova groaned and let her head fall onto the
bench. She wrapped her hands over her head and let her shoulders
relax as she swallowed the lump in her throat. The catch in her
breath faded away and she blinked away the tears from the corners
of her eyes.

As the seconds rolled by, more lights
flashed on Cal’s control panel. The whirring of his internal motor
increased until he sat himself upright on the service bench.

Nova lifted her hand from the robot and let
it fall to her side. She stayed that way, watching the robot as one
by one, his systems came back online. It wasn’t until Cal lifted
fully from the service desk and came to rest by Nova’s side that
all of the worry left her.

“What are you doing?” Cal asked as he
observed Nova standing in the middle of the service room.

“You had a virus,” she said, turning to face
the robot. She kept an eye on his lower compartment where his laser
pistol was concealed, concerned that it might go off at any
second.

“Internal memories show no recollection of
such an event,” Cal replied.

“Well, check Crusader’s video feed if you
want, but you did. It’s been hours since you were first infected,”
Nova said, trudging from the storage bay to the comfort of her
pilot’s chair.

She could hear Cal’s internal processors
working away as he accessed Crusader’s video bank.

“That is most unusual,” Cal said.

“Tell me about it. Do you know where you
could have got the virus?”

“Past browsing history gives no clear
indication,” Cal replied.

Nova breathed a mixed sigh of frustration
and relief. The last thing she needed right now was for Cal to be
destroyed by a virus.

A thought began to crawl its way into Nova’s
brain, not unlike the slugs with their slime trails.

***

“Cal, I need you to analyse a couple of
samples,” she said, pulling the two glass vials from her bag.

The mushroom still glowed, although its
shine was mostly masked by Crusader’s internal lights. The slug, on
the other hand, was curled at the bottom of the tube, apparently on
the verge of death. It had dried out and shrivelled since Nova had
scooped it up, losing almost half its body size.

“What am I looking for?” Cal asked.

“I want to know what they are. They were
accompanied by some other creatures I’ve never seen before. They
looked like a human sub-species but they were feral and
violent.”

“I’ll see what the Cloud has to say,” said
Cal.

“Good, let me know as soon as you find
anything. And make sure you keep that stuff contained; we don’t
know what it could do. And I swear, if I wake up to a slug crawling
into my ear, you’ll wish that virus had wiped your systems.”

She wandered off and left Cal with the
vials. She went straight for the command chair and slumped down
into the well-worn seat. She threw her legs up onto the control
desk and leant backwards in her chair.

“Crusader, get me Tanguin,” she said.

Moments later the familiar face
appeared.

“Hey Tanguin,” she said.

“What’s up?” Tanguin said. “How’s the outer
planets?”

“Worse than expected,” Nova said with a
sigh.

Tanguin had straight black hair that ended
above her chin. Her eyes were light blue, almost white, like her
skin which was unnaturally pale. Her eyes sparkled as she looked at
Nova through her own computer monitor. She was sitting cross-legged
on her bed at The Jagged Maw.

Tanguin was one of Nova’s few friends. She
was an Un-Connected from Xenon. The planet was made up entirely of
servers and human-sized pods. The population lived in a perpetual
virtual reality, completely unaware of the rest of the universe
expanding around them. Or at least they had until the servers went
down and the Connected became the Un-Connected. For most of them,
the blunt slap of reality was too much and they committed suicide.
Tanguin was one of the few who soldiered through. She eventually
made her way to The Jagged Maw and quickly found her place amongst
the hunters. Her exceptional skill with computers was always in
high demand.

“What’s the problem?” Tanguin asked.

“More weird creatures than I expected,” Nova
said.

“Ooh, sounds intriguing,” Tanguin said.

Nova snorted. “It gets worse. My engine’s
down.”

“What?”

“Yep, I’m stranded on some back planet
called Taive.”

“Do you want me to send Aart or someone
out?”