By David C. Daoust
Forgetting all about his recent problems, all his woes and worries, including the sickness that currently plagued not only his lungs, but most of his remaining family and crew, and despite all the recent deaths, Craiden walked up the ramp with a hop in his step.
Entering the Crawler’s hold, he carelessly tossed the blowtorch on a bench and noticed the massive bot sitting lifeless in the corner.
“What’s this?” Craiden called to one of his crew, “No one felt like getting Vincent geared up?”
The crewman just shrugged as he continued to shift random objects within the hold, in an effort to make room for the cargo.
Craiden wasn’t too worried about the empty bot though. He was in too good of a mood after finding out what lie within the belly of that ship. May as well been pure gold in his mind. It was a load off, even worries he didn’t know he had, seemed to float away, off his shoulders. He took the metal steps two at a time as he climbed up onto the catwalks that hung over the Crawlers hold, his foot falls ringing out in rhythm with his mood.
As he rounded into a corridor, he came across the small toy hovering before him, a hover-bot named Vincent.
“Oy?” Craiden addressed the small toy; addressed it in a way he hadn’t in longer than he could remember- cheerfully, “Don’t feel like working today?”
“I was just headed down…” the bot began hesitantly.
Despite the small plastic frame he was currently loaded into, Vincent was actually an old mining bot. His real body was fairly huge. Its design was never intended to roam such narrow corridors as those found within the massive Crawler. Craiden’s father came up with the idea of getting the small child’s toy to house Vincent while aboard.
Hover-bots were fairly common toys throughout the Onion. Usually, they had only very basic programs imbedded within, just enough to be interesting for a child to play with. Bots of Vincent’s grade were expensive, toy-bots though were cheap, and swapping out the programming was easy as changing the data-sphere.
“It’s your mother,” the bot started, his voice, rough and gravelly, was stern despite the literally expressionless form he inhabited, “She’s just not the same since Junior died…”
The mention of his parents made the hop in his step, sink into his stomach somehow. While his mother Mari survived, one of the only women aboard to last long enough to reach the port, Craiden’s father, Chuck, was among those lost to the infection; Vincent was the only one to call him Junior.
Vincent had been in the family for years, from back when Craiden’s grandfather worked the resource planets’ mines. It was his grandfather that finally got fed up with the Core, cashed in everything he owned and pooled all his life’s savings to buy his family the Sand Crawler… and the one way trip to Twin Crown. All to start a new life free of the Core’s influence. It was also Craiden’s Grandfather who rescued Vincent from the mines; aka stole him from his previous employer.
“She’s not taking her meds,” the bot stated.
The weight of all those worries returned in an instant. It didn’t matter if he had all the gold in the Onion if she didn’t take her share of the meds. He took the bot’s concerns seriously, though didn’t go into detail.
“I’ll talk to her,” Craiden said simply, then changed subjects, “Get one of the boys to gear you up, ‘mighty big load wait’n in that mech-ship ‘cross the way.”
Without so much as a response, the bot whooshed past, headed to the hold.
The thoughts of his sick mother letting herself drown in that black mucus, soured Craiden’s mood as he continued up into the cockpit of the Crawler. His home was a grim place these days, he felt foolish for forgetting it. Forgot it all at the sight of more money no less! He wondered what the real infection was.
The cockpit held two pilots up front, his cousins Charles and Ratchet were currently manning the stations. They peered out over the long curved window that gave a view of the sands directly below, and all the way to the horizon. The setup also afforded a third station, at the rear of the cockpit, facing a wall full of monitors, for a tech to deal with net and radio transmissions. Craiden’s Uncle Raymond currently manned this station.
Craiden came here directly to check what was going out over the net. If any alert was transmitted in response to his infiltration of the abandoned starship, needless to say, the whole crew could be in hot water.
“Anything?” Craiden asked his Uncle at the rear of the cockpit.
“Nothing concerning that ship… though,” the man answered grimly, the dark look that crossed his face told them all something was up, “I think you may want to see this for yourself.”
Raymond’s sons left their seats to huddle around the screen as their father called up what had him so upset.
“This has been looping over all channels for the past few minutes,” Raymond explained briefly as he gestured to the small monitor as the feed began.
“My name, is Dr. Dakota Sun,” the small image of a frantic blond haired woman said from what seemed to be a racing land-speeder through the dusty roads of Grady. “I am broadcasting this message in the hopes of alerting the people of Twin Crown of the deplorable acts of the Otomo Corporation! I don’t know how to say this… Black Lung is a lie! The first outbreak happened on Dori 5, caused by a nanite spill. I created the meds to stabilize the infection until we found the cure! Otomo Corp profited off the medications…” she seemed to be completely without words for a moment and then said simply, “they repeated the accident here… entirely for profit!”
The camera suddenly flipped away from the woman, as bullets rang out over head, leaving several holes in their wake. Buildings streaked past as the land speeder continued to race through the port town.The camera caught the image of several black corporate land-speeders, with armed security hanging out the sides, clearly trying to end the broadcast in any way possible. The camera flipped back as the woman framed herself in its lens.
“I repeat Black Lung is a lie! It is an intentional infection,” the woman yelled into the camera, “This is not a prank! Otomo Corp needs to answer for their crimes!”
The image suddenly went black and his uncle closed the window just as the message began to repeat.
No one said anything. No one had to. That black look that crossed Raymond’s face when he first mentioned the message, was now mirrored on everyone in the room.
Craiden’s blood no longer boiled with hate, it was ice cold with resolve. He could not separate, in his mind, the corporation from the town. The implications of a cure didn’t register either.
He’d just so happened to come across the means that very day.
Grady was going to pay.
