it was just . . . well, somehow comforting.
By the end of the day, I was feeling a ton better. So much so, in fact, that I felt only mild nausea when they left me for dinner. So that was good.
Outside, I spotted Jerkface getting into a long, black hovercar that had a driver wearing white gloves. Poor boy. Looked like he had to get a ride home now.
I walked back to my cave with a spring in my step, chewing on some smoked rat. I would eventually have to pay some kind of vengeance bill to Jorgen, but I could do that. Bring it on. For now, I appeared to have gotten away with a serious crime. One starfighter-size power matrix, ready to go.
I grinned as I arrived at my crevice, then lowered myself on my light-line into the cavern. It was a silly thing to have risked my future over; this ship was so old, it wasn’t like getting lights working was going to do any good. But it was also my secret, my discovery.
My ship.
Broken, worn out, with a bent wing . . . it was still mine.
I hauled the matrix into position beside the ship’s access hatch. The plugs were the same, so I didn’t have to worry about hot-wiring it. I glanced at Doomslug—who inched over along the wing toward me—then grinned and plugged it in.
The lights sprang to life on the diagnostic panel and—judging by the glow from up front—on the dash inside the cockpit. The low humming tone from before started up again, then sped up, warping until it . . . until it became words.
“. . . MMMEERGENCY BOOTUP PROCEDURES INITIATED,” a masculine voice said from the cockpit. It spoke with a strange, old-timey accent, like I’d heard on the broadcasts of famous speeches from the days before we’d founded Alta. “SEVERE DAMAGE TO STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY AND DATA BANKS DETECTED.”
Was it a recording? I scrambled over to the cockpit.
“Hello!” the voice said to me, growing less . . . mechanical. “I assume from your clothing and attitude that you are a native of this locale. Would you kindly categorize yourself—stating your national affiliations and the names of your ancestors—so I might place you in my data tables?”
“I . . .” I scratched my head. “What in the stars?”
“Ah,” the voice said. “Excellent. Minimal linguistic deviation from Earth Standard English. Forgive the slowness of my processing—which doesn’t quite seem up to normal benchmarks—but you are human, yes? Could you tell me . . . where am I?”
The words were lost on me. I simply knelt there, on the wing by the cockpit, trying to put together what was happening.
My ship was talking to me.
17
“My designation is MB-1021, robotic ship integration,” the ship said.
It didn’t just talk—it seemed to have trouble stopping.
“But humans prefer ‘names’ to designations, so I am commonly referred to as M-Bot. I am a long-distance reconnaissance and recovery ship, designed for stealth operations and unsupported solo missions in deep-space locations. And . . .”
The machine trailed off.
“And?” I asked, lounging in the cockpit, trying to figure out what in the stars this thing was.
“And my data banks are corrupted,” M-Bot said. “I cannot recover further information—I can’t even retrieve my mission parameters. The only record I have is the most recent order from my master: ‘Lie low, M-Bot. Take stock, don’t get into any fights, and wait for me here.’ ”
“Your master was your pilot, right?” I asked.
“Correct. Commander Spears.” He summoned a fuzzy image for me, which briefly replaced the scanner display on his dash. This Commander Spears was a clean-cut, youngish man with tan skin and a crisp, unfamiliar uniform.
“I’ve never heard of him,” I said. “And I know all the famous pilots, even from Gran-Gran’s days in the fleet. What was up with the Krell when you came here? Had they attacked the galaxy yet?”
“I have no recollection of this group, and the word Krell doesn’t appear in my memory banks.” He paused. “Reading the decay rate of isotopes in my memory core indicates that it has been . . . one hundred seventy-two years since I was deactivated.”
“Huh,” I said. “The Defiant and its fleet crashed on Detritus about eighty years ago, and the Krell War started some distant time before that.” Gran-Gran said the war had been going on a long time when she’d been born.
“Considering human life spans,” M-Bot said, “I must conclude that my pilot has perished. How sad.”
“Sad?” I asked, trying to