Bonds of Steel (Law and Crucible Saga Book 3) Read online

  The men signaled with broad gestures and one headed towards the engine room while the other moved to the staircase leading to the inhabited cabins. Del hesitated for one second. There were no people in the engine room who could be taken prisoners and forced to sabotage the ship. Vee would not allow any change of the settings, and physical destruction in zero g required force and planning the intruders didn’t have. On the upper level, however, resided all the crew members in stasis and Vee’s module, although Del didn’t know exactly where this one was inserted. When Vee deigned to manifest her presence, she seemed to be everywhere on the ship.

  Thea would forgive him for abandoning her, but the good of others was more important since it affected the fate of all. Stopping and starting the magnetic fields in his wrists and ankles, Del slipped quickly on the heels of the man going up the stairs without touching the steps. If he kept a reasonable distance between them, he could no longer care for the noise level because the sound had difficulties passing through the suit.

  For now, the man opened all the doors to the crew quarters. Not only did it allow him to estimate accurately the number of crew members, but also to see there were no characteristic traces left by the disease. By now, he had to wonder where everyone was. He entered the mess hall, but Del didn’t follow. There he would certainly be seen and he was trying to avoid that. A parallel process running in his brain argued he was never going to be prepared to cope with it in the near future, and Del limited its access to resources, not to decisively affect his behavior.

  Frustration entered the man’s voice when he found the cockpit door locked. Had he possessed more human characteristics, Del would have grinned full of satisfaction, but the way it was, he was content to lie in wait. A module with invasive tactics would have been helpful to know what he was doing. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a war machine. He pulled back still on all fours when frustration was replaced by annoyance and then concern. According to the plan, Vee must have infiltrated the suits’ closed circuit and blocked any communication attempts. Once isolated, it was the perfect opportunity to incapacitate them. Del’s brain insisted the man beneath him enjoyed perfect health and didn’t need his help. His only hope was Thea handled it better than he did.

  The man hesitated at the medbay door. It was the last place anyone would want to enter, but there were few places left to check. His gloved hand barely touched the door when this one opened, and he slipped inside.

  Vee’s voice murmured softly, “Del, close the door.”

  It didn’t matter the order had come from an AI and not from a human, it was all Del needed to act. He climbed down the wall like a spider, upside down, and quickly pulled on the door. It closed with a click and the light changed, signaling it was locked.

  Instantly, normal gravity returned, pulling him towards the floor.

  “Quick, run to the hold! Thea needs help! I’ll try to retain him as much as possible.”

  Del was already running as quickly as could as the mere mention of Thea’s name put him in motion. Behind him, thuds echoed through the door, but he didn’t stop to see what was happening. He flew down the stairs, moving faster than ever, aware several fuses were close to burning up, but the fate of his patient was more important than his own.

  The screech of metal on metal doubled his main CPU cycles in a desperate attempt to process a larger amount of data gathered by his sensors. Buzzing came from the forklift used to handle cargo in the hold. The fixed bottom traveled on wheels, and Thea, anchored behind it, used the mobile arms to fend off the suit’s attack. The man had lost his gun somewhere and kept trying to reach for her. The jerky movements of the forklift imbalanced them both, but Thea had managed to catch him between its crossed arms and slowly pushed him towards the wall.

  Del hesitated less than two meters away, estimating the wounds suffered by combatants. The suit had perforations and traces of blood on the left side, from the hip down, and a crack crossed its helmet. Unlike him, Thea only panted from the effort and sported no visible injuries. Del was tempted to jump to the aid of the attacker. Under normal circumstances, he would have done it already. On the outcome of the confrontation, however, depended not only what would happen with the entire crew, but also with him. After decades spent servicing humans, Del refused to be disassembled. That was why he’d run away and ended up on The Squirrel in the first place, and he had no intention to start all over again. Plus, he’d discovered he worked better around people, as if his system needed their approval. He had no choice but to help.

  He stepped forward. Something creaked, and the levers in his leg locked. His programming didn’t like the direction his thoughts had taken. He forced himself to take another step. The servomotors in his joints whined, over solicited by the conflicting orders. A wisp of smoke came out through the joints in his plating.

  The forklift charged and slammed the suit against the wall. The man groaned, remaining motionless for a second, supported by the thick arms. With a determined look on her face, Thea pushed the forklift forward. The metal grinded when the inner wall of the hold gave way and the forklift’s arms passed through. The man struggled, caught between them, but he was pinned to the wall.

  “Enough,” Del said. “You’re crushing him.”

  A muscle twitched along Thea’s jaw, but her hand relaxed on the controls. The man cursed and shook his arms, unable to free himself or reach her. Unfortunately, that meant she couldn’t reach him from behind the forklift either.

  “What are you waiting for?” Thea asked. “Give him something to calm down!”

  That he could do. The man was suffering and painkillers could only help. In two steps, Del got to him and injected him with a dose of tranquilizer through the suit. The man went limp and, most importantly, shut up.

  “Well, that was it,” Thea said, but her voice was shaking. “Did you catch the other one?”

  “Um, not really,” Vee said. “He found some power boosters in the medbay and broke down the door. He’s coming to you.”

  At least he hadn’t broken into the cabin with the stasis capsules. But now he was angry, armed, and who knew what else he had found in the medbay.

  “Bring me the chair.” Thea freed herself from the straps.

  “No time.” Del sprinted to the entrance to the hold.

  He pressed his back to the wall and listened to the footsteps in the corridor. Too light. Their owner must have ditched the suit. He’d probably noticed the lack of alerts in the medbay. So a fast, stronger than normal opponent due to the power boosters, and who didn’t fear he might become infected. Thea’s chances of survival didn’t look good. From there, despite the dim light, she made a perfect target while struggling to get off the forklift without hurting herself. Why wasn’t Vee switching back to zero g?

  First came the arm with the gun. Del calculated the force required for impact as not to fracture the bone, and hit him. The man screamed and dropped his gun. That was the moment chosen by Vee to alter gravity. They all found themselves floating. Thea regained her balance first. Eradiez’s hard training had paid off. Del still struggled with the urge to shun the man and give him first aid.

  The man darted toward Thea, and Del followed him a little slower on the floor, undecided how to proceed further.

  “What happened here?” the man barked. “Where is everyone?”

  The light fell on his face, and Del recognized Rodoff’s companion.

  Thea didn’t bother to answer. She did a graceful ballet, ready to parry an attack. As mass, the man was smaller than Eradiez and that fooled her. The first blow brushed her face with an unexpected force, but Thea refocused quickly. She used his arm as a lever to push herself away. Her punches wouldn’t have had the force required to incapacitate him. She was faster, as proof she escaped the hand grabbing for her, but she came nowhere close to matching his strength. Or stamina. With all the power boosters taken, Thea would tire more quickly.

  Del moved closer, concerned about the outcome of the fight. Since serious blows
hadn’t been exchanged yet, his programming wasn’t on alert, forcing him to interfere. He told himself it was like in training, but the man’s face contorted with rage disagreed with him.

  Two attacks and as many avoidances followed. Why wasn’t Thea using the tranquilizer doses, Del didn’t understand. During the third attack, the man managed to catch her arm. Thea replied with a blow to the base of his throat. A blow that in normal gravity had good chances to crush his larynx only momentarily stopped his breathing. Thea fled again, but she already moved more slowly.

  An arm circled her waist. She didn’t struggle, but her free hand slipped back and something metallic shone between her fingers. Ah, a diversion. It would have worked if the man hadn’t guessed there was something suspect in her surrender and kicked her hand. Thea dropped the dose. How many did she have on her? Del had seen her when she stuffed them in her pocket, but hadn’t gotten the chance to count them. The same trick wasn’t going to work a second time.

  Vee must have reached the same conclusion because she played with the gravity again, and even intensified it. Del remained alone standing while the two combatants hit the floor with a thud. Thea groaned and pulled herself up on her elbows. The man cursed but was soon back to his feet and stared at her, confused, because she wasn’t doing the same. Uh-oh.

  Del advanced a step. If the man reached for her, maybe he could interfere.

  Vee didn’t seem willing to wait. Zero g lifted them off the ground then slammed them down again. This time, Thea screamed and spat a trickle of blood on the floor. Rather than rise, the man rolled toward her. He grabbed her waist and they rose together. Thea turned and wrapped her legs around his.

  “Now!” Thea cried.

  Vee obeyed the order and sent them to the floor. The difference was Eradiez had taught Thea how to fall. The bruises were inevitable, but the man screamed when his leg was caught under him.

  Pain. Del didn’t need any encouragement. He gave him the tranquillizer shot into his back, and when his body weakened, he dragged him off Thea.

  “Now it’s over,” Del said.

  “Not yet,” Vee said. “We still have to throw the garbage out.”

  5

  The condition of being a robot came with some advantages. For example, he had total control over his facial expressions, however limited they may be. Otherwise, Del wouldn’t have dared to face Law when he awoke from stasis.

  “Are we done?” Law asked as soon as he opened his eyes.

  With a faster metabolism, Merrick was already climbing out of the nearby capsule. Del avoided his gaze. He hadn’t had time to test the anti-gravity module added to Thea’s chair.

  “I promised to wake you as soon as we left the asteroid field,” Vee said. “We just did. Did you sleep well?”

  Merrick muttered something.

  “Not really.” Law ran a hand over his face and sat up. “I had a nightmare.”

  In stasis, dreams, beautiful or ugly, tended to go on forever, or so Del had Del heard.

  “Is everything okay?” Law asked Thea, who was sitting in her chair with her chin propped in one hand while the other rested lazily on the armrest of the chair.

  No, Del would have said. The slight discoloration on Thea’s face agreed with him, but since the rest of the bruises weren’t visible she could find an explanation for it. Vee had insisted they shouldn’t go into details about their adventures, if they were not asked directly, and Thea had agreed to play the game for the same reasons as Del. Although Vee wasn’t officially part of the crew, she was part of the ship and they couldn’t get rid of her. Better be friends than enemies.

  So, after they had taken the still unconscious prisoners to the shuttle and left it drifting, they had continued their course and repaired the infirmary door and the holes in the hold’s wall. Thea had skipped the stasis, to allow her body to recover. It had been a few awfully long days. Fortunately, no one followed them.

  “It is now,” Thea replied with a thin smile.

  Law nodded, glanced at her stiff wrist resting on the armrest and headed to the medbay. “Del, later I want to watch your recordings from the period while we slept.”

  Acknowledgements

  This is another story that wasn’t initially included in the main Law and Crucible story arc. If you check my writer resume, you’ll see I often write for Romanian sci fi and fantasy anthologies, and it just happened one of this year’s themes involved robots. I groaned a little when I first saw the announcement because I was already juggling three series at the time and I had no time for something completely different, but I really wanted to write for that anthology. Then it came to me. I already had two robots, Del and Vee. Why not write a story from their point of view, showing their allegiances and the way their minds work? Sienna’s rescue would have to wait a little longer, but even that worked for the main plot just fine.

  As usual, many thanks go to my editor, Beth Blair, and my illustrator, Gil Geolingo.

  Thank you to my readers and reviewers, too. If you got this far, please take the time to leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads to show your support. I will be forever grateful.

  And let’s not forget Mom, Dad, little brother, grandma, and the cat.

  All right, see you in the next book!

  About the Author

  Award-winning writer Ioana Visan has always dreamed about reaching the stars, but since she can’t, she writes about it.

  After fighting the apocalypse aftermath in Human Instincts, she played with shapeshifters in Blue Moon Café Series: Where Shifters Meet for Drinks, she dealt with vampires in The Impaler Legacy series, she designed prosthetics in Broken People, and she helped wingless fairies in The Weight of a Wing before tackling a space opera saga.

  Aside from publishing short stories in various Romanian magazines and anthologies, she published a Romanian short story collection, Efectul de nautil, and the Romanian edition of Human Instincts.

  She received the Encouragement Award from The European Science Fiction Society at Eurocon 2013.

  For more information, go to

  http://www.ioanavisan.tk

  Connect with Ioana online

  Blog:

  http://weirdvision2001.blogspot.com

  Facebook:

  https://www.facebook.com/AuthorIoanaVisan

  Twitter:

  https://twitter.com/weirdvision

  Subscribe to the newsletter to get a free ebook!

  Books by Ioana Visan

  ENGLISH BOOKS

  Human Instincts

  Blue Moon Café Series:

  Where Shifters Meet for Drinks

  The Impaler Legacy Series:

  The Impaler’s Revenge

  Sweet Surrender

  A Victory that Counts

  Casualties of War

  Order Restored

  The Third Wheel

  The Impaler Legacy Omnibus

  Broken People Series:

  The Nightingale Circus

  Broken People

  Broken Hearts

  The Stolen Wings Series:

  The Weight of a Wing

  The Devil You Know Series:

  Breaking the Chains

  Law and Crucible Saga:

  No Port to Land

  Point of Origin

  Bonds of Steel

  ROMANIAN BOOKS

  Efectul de nautil

  Instincte umane

  ROMANIAN ANTHOLOGIES

  Dansînd pe Marte şi alte povestiri fantastice

  Steampunk: A doua revoluţie

  Venus – povestiri erotice science fiction

  Cele 1001 de scorneli ale Moşului SF

  Zombii: Cartea morţilor vii

  Călătorii în timp. Antologie de povestiri SF

  Ferestrele timpului. Antologie de ficţiuni speculative

  Bumerangul lui Zeeler. Antologie Gazeta SF 2014

  Best of Mystery & Horror #1 - Revista de suspans

  Xenox. Contact între civilizaţii

  Argos Doi
. Proză Science-Fiction & Fantasy

  Dincolo de orizont. Povestiri science fiction, vol.1

  www.ioanavisan.tk