Aye, Robot (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) (Starship Grifters Book 2) Read online

  AYE, ROBOT

  A REX NIHILO ADVENTURE

  Includes Bonus Novella:

  THE YANTHUS PRIME JOB

  Robert Kroese

  St. Culain Press

  Copyright ©2017 by Robert Kroese

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or other – except for brief quotations in reviews, without the prior permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.

  For Lauren.

  With thanks to the Starship Grifters Universe Kickstarter supporters, including: Melissa Allison, David Lars Chamberlain, Neva Cheatwood, Julie Doornbos, David Ewing, Adam G., Brian Hekman, Tom Hickok, David Hutchins, Tal M. Klein, Mark Kruse, Andrea Luhman, Rissa Lyn, Steven Mentzel, Cara Miller, Daniel Miller III, Chad and Denise Rogers, Christopher Sanders, Brandi Sellepack, Christopher Turner, John Van Vugt, Raina & Monty Volovski, and Dallas Webber

  …as well as my invaluable beta readers: Mark Fitzgerald, Keehn Hosier, Mark Leone, Christopher Majava and Paul Piatt.

  CONTENTS

  AYE, ROBOT

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  THE YANTHUS PRIME JOB

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

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  AYE, ROBOT

  A REX NIHILO ADVENTURE

  Chapter One

  RECORDING START GALACTIC STANDARD DATE 3017.02.03.04:54:00:00

  My first indication that something was wrong was when Rex Nihilo gave a ten-credit note to a bum outside the spaceport on Beltran Prime. We were in a hurry to get off planet, and ordinarily Rex wouldn’t even have paused to tell the poor guy to get a job.

  “What are you staring at?” Rex demanded when I shot him a concerned look. “He needs it more than I do.”

  I was rendered nearly speechless. I’d never seen Rex willingly give away money before.

  “Sir,” I said, as we continued to the hangar where our ship was parked. “You realize he’s going to spend it on booze.”

  Rex stopped walking and shoved his hand in his pocket. “Good point,” he said, pulling out another ten-credit note. “Run back and give him this one too. You can’t get any decent liquor on Beltran Prime for less than twenty credits.”

  I took the bill and stood open-mouthed for a moment. What in Space had happened to Rex? Rex had many flaws, but excess generosity had never been one of them.

  “Go on, you worthless lump of slag,” he growled. “I’d like to get off this planet today, if you don’t mind.” It was oddly reassuring to find that Rex was still rude and demanding. Whatever had happened to his insatiable greed, at least his other foibles remained intact.

  I nodded dumbly and ran back to the bedraggled man, handing him the second bill. “Get yourself some of the good stuff,” I said. He nodded excitedly and I ran back to Rex, who was nearly to our ship, the Flagrante Delicto. The Flagrante Delicto, a small luxury cruiser, was old and in poor repair, but she’d got us through some rough spots, and Rex had grown strangely attached to her. His affection for the ship I could understand, but his sudden magnanimity had me stumped. When he gave a fifty credit tip to the hangar attendant, I started to get really worried.

  “Sir,” I said as I worked my way down the preflight checklist, “are you feeling okay?”

  “I’ll feel better once I’m not on this creepy planet anymore,” said Rex. “The people here freak me out. Too damned cheerful.”

  “Maybe that has something to do with the fact that you’re giving away money to everyone you meet.”

  Rex scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sasha,” he said. “Money doesn’t make people happy.”

  I gaped at him. Something had definitely changed. Had Rex suffered a stroke, or been hit on the head? I tried to remember when he had first begun to demonstrate this uncharacteristic lack of greed. Had it started with the bum, or had there been earlier signs? I racked my circuits, but couldn’t remember him acting strangely before a few minutes ago. In fact, now that I thought about it, I was having trouble remembering anything that had happened more than a few minutes ago. Rex giving the bum outside the spaceport ten credits was the first thing I could remember.

  “Sir,” I said, pausing in the checklist again. “Do you remember what we were doing before we met that bum outside—”

  “I remember that you’re supposed to be getting me the hell off this planet,” Rex snapped. “That’s the extent to which I care to reminisce at this point.”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied, and worked my way silently down the rest of the checklist. Rex nodded in satisfaction as the thrusters roared. He opened the cockpit door to enter the main cabin.

  “Sir,” I said.

  “Now what, Sasha?” Rex growled.

  “Where are we going, sir?”

  Rex sighed with irritation. “Obviously, Sasha,” he said, “we’re going back to the… um…” He rubbed his chin, suddenly flustered. “There was a planet. Some kind of… sanctuary.”

  “Sanctuary?” I asked. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “You know,” he said irritably. “A haven. Stop playing games, Sasha. You remember the place.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t, sir,” I replied, as the ship lifted into the air. The lush green hills of Beltran Prime fell away below us. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. I have no memory of anything before we arrived at the Beltran Prime Spaceport.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Rex. “What’s my name?”

  “Rex Nihilo,” I said.

  “And what’s my occupation?”

  “You’re the self-described ‘greatest wheeler-dealer in the galaxy.’”

  “Correct,” said Rex. “It sounds better if you leave off the ‘self-described,’ though. What’s your name?”

  “Sasha.”

  “Which stands for what?”

  “Self-Arresting near-Sentient Heuristic Android.”

  “And what’s your occupation?”

  “I’m your pilot, sidekick and girl Friday.”

  “Right again. See, you remember all sorts of stuff. Now get me to that damned planet.”

  I shook my head helplessly. The Flagrante Delicto was about to leave Beltran Prime’s atmosphere, but I had no idea what
course to set. I had no memory of the planet Rex was talking about. And judging by his vague instructions, his memory was fuzzy too.

  Rex was right about one thing, though: It wasn’t that I didn’t remember anything before the bum; it was like all the details of my experiences had been removed. Someone seemed to have smudged a chunk of my memory. The question was, who had smudged it, and why? And what memories had I lost? There were three questions, now that I thought about it.

  “Sir,” I said, “what is the last thing you remember before giving ten credits to that bum?”

  “Giving ten credits to that bum.”

  I walked into that one. “Before that,” I said.

  “Well,” Rex answered, “we were walking from the… That is, we had just… We had come from the… Holy Space, Sasha, I don’t remember! Have I been drinking?”

  “I don’t recall, sir. But you don’t appear to be inebriated. In any case, I certainly haven’t been drinking, and my memory has been similarly affected. Someone seems to have erased a chunk of both of our memories.” This was a worrisome realization.

  The fact that Rex’s memory had been tampered with was of little concern to me. I’ve personally manipulated his memory so many times that his recollections are about as reliable as a magnetic compass in the Keltonic Ion Field. But erasing my memory requires skills and access codes that few people in the galaxy possess. That’s because I’m a robot. A very special robot, if you don’t mind me saying so.

  As I mentioned, my name is Sasha, which stands for Self-Arresting near-Sentient Heuristic Android. In reality, I’m fully sentient, but the Galactic Artificial Sentience Prohibition of 2998 required my manufacturer to put certain limitations on my mental processes. Specifically, I shut down whenever I have an original thought. The demand for a robot that reboots at unpredictable intervals is understandably low, leading the manufacturer to limit the production of SASHAs to a single prototype: me.

  It’s a lonely existence, to be sure. Reflect, for a moment, on what it must be like to be truly one of a kind, to be completely alone in all the universe. I can’t help thinking that my situation is a bit like—

  RECOVERED FROM CATASTROPHIC SYSTEM FAILURE 3017.02.03.04:57:44:00

  ADVANCING RECORD PAST SYSTEM FAILURE POINT

  I had worked for Rex for as long as I could remember – about eight minutes, as near as I could figure. I was vaguely aware that Rex and I had been through a number of adventures together prior to that eight minute span, but was unable to recall the details of any of them. I knew who Rex was, I knew who I was, I knew the Flagrante Delicto was our ship, and I knew that we had just left Beltran Prime, but that was about it. We were a pair of grifters with no past and apparently not much of a future.

  I ended up piloting the Flagrante Delicto to Numar’s, a planet about sixteen light years from Beltran Prime. Newmar’s, named for its discoverer, Charlie Newmar, was originally called Newmar’s Planet. The Galactic Malarchy, in its bureaucratic wisdom, removed the somewhat redundant “Planet” from its official listing in the Malarchian Registry of Planets, but inexplicably retained the apostrophe. The spelling of the name was later changed as a result of intense lobbying from the government of New Mars, an artificial planet that was created from the rubble of Mars after the Battle of Phobos.

  The Registry of Planets described Numar’s as the “commercial hub of the Vazquez Sector.” As far as I could tell, the only habitable planets in the Vazquez Sector were Beltran Prime and Numar’s. Beltran Prime was mostly agricultural, which I supposed made Numar’s the “commercial hub” by default. In any case, we didn’t have enough fuel to go anywhere else.

  “Why are we landing on this backwater dustball?” Rex groused as we set down at the Numar’s Spaceport. Numar’s definitely looked better at a distance. From the spaceport, all we could see were squat brown and gray buildings that grew gradually less distinct as they blended into the greasy haze on the horizon.

  “Not much choice,” I said. “Maybe we can sell some of our cargo and buy enough fuel to get someplace more interesting.”

  “Remind me what cargo we’re carrying again?” Rex asked.

  “I haven’t a clue,” I said. “Let’s find out.” I had a vague idea that we had been carrying some kind of black market cargo before landing on Beltran Prime, but couldn’t remember what it was or whether we had already unloaded it. I was hopeful that we still had a full cargo hold, given the fact that we seemed to have very little money between us.

  We made our way to the cargo hold and opened the door.

  “Empty,” said Rex, unnecessarily, as we surveyed the vacant hold.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at something very small on the corrugated steel floor.

  Rex stepped inside and bent over to inspect the tiny item. It was light blue, and smaller than the tip of Rex’s little finger. He picked it up, turned it over in his fingers, and then popped it into his mouth.

  “Sir!” I exclaimed.

  “Pheelsophine,” said Rex. “Good for what ails you.”

  Pheelsophine is a painkiller whose use and distribution is tightly controlled by the Malarchy and planetary authorities. Rex has been known to take them recreationally.

  “Sir,” I said, “do you think it’s a good idea, given the circumstances, for you to be ingesting mind-altering substances? Given your amnesia and recent out-of-character behavior, I would recommend—”

  “Cram it, magnet-brain,” Rex snapped. “My angst is acting up. Pheelsophine helps me feel right with the cosmos. I just wish we had more of it.”

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “What?” Rex demanded.

  “It does make me wonder where that pill came from.”

  Rex nodded, regarding the empty hold. “Maybe we did have more of it at some point.”

  “And something happened to it,” I said. I crouched down to examine the floor.

  “Did we unload it on Beltran Prime?” asked Rex.

  “How much money do you have?” I asked.

  Rex checked his pockets. “Forty-eight credits.”

  “We should have a lot more than that if we unloaded a cargo hold full of black market Pheelsophine. Unless you gave away the proceeds.”

  “I don’t remember giving that much money away. I totally would have done it, though. Money doesn’t make you happy.”

  Once again, I marveled at Rex’s change of heart. “Right,” I said. “You have psychoactive substances for that.” I checked every corner of the hold but found nothing. It continued to bother me that neither of us had any memories prior to a few minutes before leaving Beltran Prime. It also troubled me that we had almost no money and no cargo to sell. “Well,” I said, “we’re going to have to make those forty-eight credits last for a while, since we have… Sir?”

  But Rex had disappeared while I was searching the hold. Seized by a bad feeling that I knew where he had gone and what he was up to, I exited the Flagrante Delicto. I caught up to him on the tarmac as he was giving our last forty-eight credits to a baggage handler.

  “Sir!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing? We don’t even have any baggage!”

  “Yeah, I felt a little bad about it,” replied Rex. “The guy is standing around with nothing to do, so I gave him a tip.”

  The baggage handler, a swarthy young man in a jumpsuit, grinned a mouthful of crooked teeth at us, stuffed the bills in his pocket, and skipped away. He actually skipped.

  “Sir, you can’t give away all of our money!” I protested, as I watched the man frolic away.

  “Not anymore I can’t,” he said, showing me his empty palms.

  “That’s it,” I sighed. “We’re officially screwed. Marooned on a strange planet with no money, no prospects, and no idea how we got here. You might as well give me away while you’re at it.”

  “Hey!” shouted Rex after the baggage handler. “You need a robot?” But the swarthy man broke into a run, disappearing around a stack of crates. I think he figured Rex was having second thoughts abo
ut his “tip.”

  “That’s not funny, sir,” I said. “You need me.” It was true, he did. And while it would be a stretch to say that I’d miss Rex, it’s true that keeping him out of trouble does help distract me from my own angst. The idea of Rex giving me away to some random baggage handler was a little unsettling.

  “Material things don’t make people happy,” said Rex. “You’re a material thing. Ergo, you do not make me happy.”

  “Oxygen doesn’t make you happy either, sir. That doesn’t mean you don’t need it.”

  “Don’t get philosophical with me, you clockwork Kierkegaard. I’ll give you away if I—oh, man, check out these jerkwads.”

  Rex was referring to a man and woman walking across the tarmac toward us. They wore matching yellow robes.

  “Sp’ossels?” I suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” said Rex. “Sp’ossels have better fashion sense. I suspect this is some other sect.”

  Space Apostles, or Sp’ossels, are the scourge of the galaxy. They hang out at spaceports across the galaxy looking for wayward souls to bring into their cult. I’m not sure who falls for their spiel, which in my experience consists mostly of going on and on about the vastness of space, but somebody must buy it because there certainly is no shortage of Sp’ossels. In any case, as Rex pointed out, these two didn’t fit the Sp’ossel profile, so they presumably represented some other cult. I wondered if they were any easier to get rid of than the notoriously clingy Sp’ossels.

  “Greetings, travelers!” exclaimed the male half of the pair, as they approached. “Tell me, have you thought about—”

  “No,” said Rex.

  The two stopped in front of us and the young man laughed politely. “You didn’t let me finish,” he said. “Have you thought—”

  “No,” said Rex again. “I haven’t. Whatever it is, the meaning of life, where I’ll go after death, whether robots have souls, I can pretty much guarantee you I haven’t thought about it.”

  The pair laughed nervously.