Alien Bounty by William C Dietz

Author:William C Dietz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 1990-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

McCade spent the first part of the trip locked up in a small storage compartment with a broken-down maintenance bot. McCade ignored the robot at first, but eventually the loneliness wore him down, and he tried to make conversation.

"Hi there. What's a nice robot like you doing in a place like this?"

There was a whir of servos as the robot turned its bulbous head. "I have a defective logic board. I am awaiting repair."

McCade nodded sympathetically. "That's a tough break. Say, you're a maintenance bot, aren't you?"

"That is correct."

"Well, if you're a maintenance bot, and you need maintenance, why not fix yourself?"

Time passed during which the robot made no reply. Finally, just as McCade was about to drift off to sleep, the robot spoke.

"I apologize for my delayed response. At first I couldn't understand why you would ask me such a question. Then I realized that you were stored in here for the same reason I was. When did your logic board burn out?"

McCade smiled in spite of himself. "I think it was the moment when I allowed Swanson-Pierce to rescue me from Molaria."

"Oh," the robot replied, and lapsed into silence.

Time passed and eventually, after much boot-licking, McCade was allowed to perform menial chores under the watchful eye of his owner.

His owner was an up-and-coming young pirate who went by the name of Ace, but was actually named Harold, and who lived in fear that his friends might discover his terrible secret.

But it wasn't Ace's friends who discovered the secret, it was McCade. There he was, cleaning up the pirate's filthy cabin, when he came across a stash of letters. They all started out with "Dear Harold," and were signed, "Love, Mommy."

Thus armed McCade blackmailed his owner into some extra food and the occasional cigar. When you're a slave the small comforts mean a lot.

Meanwhile, Ace took very little interest in McCade's past, accepting his lies with bored indifference, eager to sell him and drink up the profits.

This attitude suited McCade to a T, so he made himself the model slave, always cooperative and eager to please.

This strategy worked so well that after a while the crew began to take him for granted and allowed him a certain amount of freedom.

As a result he was in the control room as the ship approached the first weapons platform. The weapons platforms were located approximately one light out from the Rock and constituted its first line of defense. They were heavily armed, completely automated, and capable of identifying friendly ships via a code printed into each vessel's atomic structure. If you had the code, you could pass; if not, boom!

McCade knew that much from past experience. What he didn't know, and wanted to find out, was whether the pirates had added anything new since then.

So McCade was swabbing the deck when the DE came into range of the nearest weapons platform. Never mind the fact that robots normally swabbed the deck. The pirates never asked any questions as long as he did something menial.

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