Knights of Saturn (Void Dragon Hunters Book 5) by Felix R. Savage

Author:Felix R. Savage [Savage, Felix R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: space dragons science fiction space opera
Publisher: Knights Hill Publishing
Published: 2018-05-06T18:30:00+00:00

10

How fast can an 80-ton truck drive from Korea to Thailand?

Answer: not very goddamn fast.

How fast can an 80-ton truck be driven from Korea to Thailand?

Answer: let’s find out.

I spend all of our first day on the road hacking the self-driving algorithm, basically destroying it, which is not as easy as merely switching it off, as it controls every part of the truck’s engine. I remember I thought about offering to fix these algos for Mr. and Mrs. Moon. This isn’t what I was picturing. But I get it done, basically reverting the trucks to manual control, all safety overrides disabled.

Then we drive.

2,000+ kilometers.

Overtaking, redlining the engines, risking blind curves on the steep grades of the Chinese border country.

We don’t stop.

Sara, Patrick, and Jamie trade shifts in the driver’s seats, one of them napping while the other two drive. I can’t take a shift, because I don’t know how to drive manual. Oh sure, I can sit in the driver’s seat of a car. Anyone can do that. But I never had any reason to learn about shifting gears, applying brakes, indicating, all that fun stuff—unlike Sara, a trucker’s daughter, or Patrick, who was driving snowmobiles through the woods at the age of ten, or Jamie, who apparently knows how to do everything.

I hate my brother more every time I see his face. He’s cheerful and peppy. He even jokes around with the Laotian border guards who confiscate half of our canned goods.

Patrick’s silent, his eyes hooded, his mouth permanently attached to a squeeze-pack of something caffeinated from the automated truck stops where we pull in for restroom breaks. I can tell he’s got the doom-and-glooms, but he can’t think about it properly. I couldn’t either, the first time it happened to me. Now, it’s all I can think about. I have another new phone, a cheapo model from a truck-stop vending machine. I bought it with Granny Moon’s phone, which she lent to Sara for the journey. But it is useless: I can’t get through to Francie, Bolt, or anyone in Bangkok. I call them over and over and over, first annoying Sara, and then frightening her.

The satellite mapping app reassures me for a while. Bangkok Spaceport looks normal. I can even see the Sticky Surprise sitting on the tarmac. But then I notice the same damn ships taking off today as yesterday, the same maintenance guys gathering in the same spot for a vape break. This footage is old. They’ve looped it.

The last time they did that was when an Offense ship crash-landed in the Netherlands.

News channels. Social media. Nothing about Bangkok. And I mean nothing. It’s like the city no longer exists.

*

On a sunny afternoon three days after we set out from Busan, we come to the cloverleaf of Yothin and Rangsit Roads, where you exit for the spaceport. The suburbs roundabout look OK. But there’s very little traffic on the highway, and a gray haze on the horizon. Police barriers block off the exit.

“Sorry, sir, no throughfare.

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