Pixel Bits

The ship was fully repaired (the hull needing by far the most crafting materials), and Silas was ready for his first quest. In the airlock, the matter manipulator lifted him off his feet and held him in place, the room depressurizing to a near-vacuum. Metal teeth parted before the abandoned Arrakis outpost.

White flood lights activated, unveiling a metal mushroom not larger than a football stadium. A ring of opaque windows were spaced evenly on the cap above what Silas deduced to be four spacecraft hangars extruding from the cap's underside. A set of three antennae extended from the stalk. Its hull was chromatic though not so glossy. A section of the cap was dented; cracks spread from an impact point—a good sign.

But Silas asked, "are you absolutely sure this is abandoned?"

Tracey answered, "We would've been attacked by now. Their outposts and mega structures are always cloaked."

He thought: I guess that makes sense with the Elraeed's non-intervention laws.

She nodded. "Are you ready?"

"It's now or never."

Ingenuity floated toward a hanger. Lasers converged, intensified, and meticulously cut a doorway big enough for one Human of Silas' stature. Immediately, he was guided into the darkness with a cable connected to his shoulder. The hold on his body released, but he was still floating. No artificial gravity. His gloved thumb flicked the switch on his flash light. The hangar was empty.

Tracey's face fuzzed with static and blur for a moment. "Good call on the fiber optic line. It's primitive, but it works well."

"It was just a suggestion." He had helped install miles of cabling on Smith Space Force base. Fun stuff.

"I'm only saying you could be a lot more than a low-skill laborer. Your brain is more than capable."

"Capable is one thing. Want is another."

She didn't have anything to say to that, or didn't want to say anything.

He focused on the mission at hand, propelling forward on his toes, shivering. The exosuit's heating module activated as his skips lengthened. This was easier than one would assume, easier than swimming. A kid could do this. He came to a closed door large enough for someone a foot taller than him. A row of sealed hatches lined the wall. One was highlighted, a label typed.

**Crafting Material Hatch

His chuckles quickly died down. "Do you know that for a fact or just guessing?"

Tracey's eyebrow arched. "What else could they be?"

Fair enough. He pressed his hand against a glass plate next to the door. A small blue light flickered to life. "Are you hacking it?"

"Like how it's portrayed in movies?" she teased.

"Yeah, getting any pop-ups? How quickly are you typing?"

"Quite." Her personality was developing. She now spoke with individualized nuanced facial expressions. The inflections and cadences in her voice were good, but a subtle though noticeable robotic rhythm was still there. Would she be perfect soon? Or would she be a mockery of biological life?

"Done," she said, and the door slid open.

Silas' heart missed a beat, because down the corridor waited a humanoid figure. His right arm reflexively rose as though stabbing a saber.

Just a robot.

Two legs, two arms, six fingers hovered mid air. Deactivated. A bulbous head with a single eye was watching. A red line encased its body of brushed gray metal and black plastic. Tracey typed a readout.

**Arrakis Worker Android Model 23145

**Health: 100%

**Power Level: 0

Silas let go of hot air. "You've seen these before?"

"There is a file on them in my data banks. They are standard-issue for simple manual labor. It's unlikely this outpost has any life support capability."

That explained the lack of an airlock. "Want to take this guy back to the ship?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't we?"

"The Argenci don't have anything better?"

She squinted in thought, and was abruptly saddened. "I thought I knew, but apparently I don't."

"Sorry I asked." Silas steeled himself and palmed down the left-hand wall, careful to not bump the droid as he shuffled past. The corridor split into three. The left and right paths curved forward, all the windows blackened. A flight of steps rose at the end of the center path. No other doors were present.

At the stop of the stairs, Silas beheld an empty chamber with a gaping hole at the center. He slowly approached the rim, noting sealed crafting material hatches on the walls and floors, and gazed down a bottomless shaft. Stars twinkled in front of his boots. And over his head, the dome was partially caved in above the entrance which he had floated through. Four entrances aligned to each hangar. No doubt, this had been one big refinery or factory.

"Nice." He whistled.

Tracey wasn't as impressed. "There should be a bridge back down the stairs to the left."

He turned with a twisting kick, toed to back to the stairs, then scooted around the droid, nearly touching its fingers. He swore its eye lit up with a dark shade of blue for a millisecond.

Then the fiber optic cable caught. Its eye lit up, flashing wildly. Arms without elbows curled upward.

Silas had back-pedaled five steps. He was ready to grapple and punch and kick, but violence wasn't necessary. The droid was in a daze. It looked to be short circuiting with its right-arm fingers twitching at its faltering eye that remained lit for only a few more seconds. Deactivated again.

"Scary," Tracey chuckled.

Head shaking, Silas wasted no more time and palmed down the corridor. At three dozen yards was another other hangar dock, and halfway to the next, an offshoot lead to double-doors. He put his hand on the glass plate. Blue lights flashed ten times. The door slid open.

On the floor laid another worker droid, but Silas was now expecting surprises. He sneered at its cyclops eye, jumped over, and shone light on a silvery ball (the size of his fist) atop a podium. Under blackened windows, tactile buttons were asking to be pressed. He refrained from stupid business, and he guessed those three rectangular ports were for removable data sticks.

Tracey said, "This outpost is very old. At least half a million years."

He promptly asked, "How do you know?"

"That's a steering sphere. Stuff like it hasn't been used before they advanced to telepathic tech—around half a million years ago." She exhaled. "We're wasting time. Want to go? Your call."

"You don't want to take over this place?"

"It's far too cumbersome, and it doesn't even have its own gravity drive. We can build something better soon enough. Trust me, this heap of common metal is worthless."

And Silas did unwisely trust her. But was trusting her unwise? She had only helped him so far, shown understanding, and been more patient than anyone had ever been with him. She could have ditched him on Planet C after consuming Ingenuity, but she hadn't. He made up his mind—she was on his side. The good, ethical side.

"Okay. I trust you." Silas prodded the downed droid with his boot, and seeing it did not wake, he hauled its two-hundred pounds mass by its armpits, which was easy in this zero-gravity zero-friction environment. The smallest of forces he exerted produced a ramping acceleration. Before he knew it, he was wrangling the other droid along with the journey while it feebly protested.

After a group decontamination, Silas couldn't hold in a yawn. He stripped off the exosuit, let Tracey take care of it, and took a good long shower. This time, the temperature was just right to his liking. Warm but not hot. His sore tendons loosened. Aches and remaining worries about nothing much at all washed away. Eventually, he toweled off and crashed for the night, the figurative night.

Quest complete. Successful. No injuries or losses.

* * *

Rocking vibrations shook Silas out of shallow sleep. Groaning, he jumped out of bed, and the exosuit's skull helmet landed on his head.

"Interceptors," Tracey said, her expression stern and unafraid. "They have a warp disruptor."

On the star chart, five dots in a line formation were sweeping in from the left. Ingenuity turned a sharp right, missed a wave of projectiles by fractions of an inch, then swerved back left as five more dots appeared from the right. The sensor range was still at thirty light-minutes.

Silas growled, "What happened to the mk-2 sensor?"

"We're lacking certain rare metals. Call them exotic metals."

The storage panel updated while she helped him back into the suit.

**Storage

**Common Metals (45.57)

**Rare Metals (0.21)

**Rare Metalloids (0.98)

**Exotic Metals (0.01)

**Carbon (38.81)

**Silicon (32.54)

**Gold (0.42)

**He-3 Reactor

**Arrakis Worker Android Model 23145 (2)

Ingenuity bounced back and forth within a hail of projectiles. A recipe was shown.

**Crafting Recipe: Mk-2 Sensor Upgrade

**An upgraded sensor that light scouting ships often use

**Power Usage: 6.4

**Range: 300 light-minutes

**Requires: Mk-1 Sensor, 1 silicon, 2 gold, 0.5 rare metals, 0.5 exotic metals

The diagram was a rotating hexagonal sphere with an antennae on each of its twenty or so faces. Silas dismissed the recipe with a nod, stood with his feet apart as the hull ate 2% damage to its right side, a glancing blow. These bullet projectiles were faster though less damaging than the bombs, smaller.

One interceptor's dot was in a red circle—the warp disruptor.

It was do or die, and Silas didn't hesitate to take control. Manual override was engaged with a warning sound effect and a scowl from Tracey. The star chart filled the visor. At his thought, Ingenuity double-backed in an erratic corkscrew maneuver toward that disrupting interceptor, dodging every bullet except for two that brought the hull down to 87%. 85%. 81%. His teeth rattled with each hit.

"Silas," Tracey warned.

He pushed forward. Two inches.

An interceptor spat a larger bullet flying at twice the speed. The bullet exploded in concentric circles. 10% was knocked off the hull's health bar, the back section once again destroyed and sealed off. Vibrations nearly knocked him off his feet, his pulse racing at a thousand beats a minute behind his eyes, hot adrenaline pumping through his flesh and soul. He hadn't ever felt so alive!

The same interceptor spat another exploding bullet, but Silas was ready this time around. Ingenuity dropped vertically, looped around an asteroid, and accelerated forward at multiples of light speed—straight for the little bugger. One inch away.

Half an inch.

The plasma cannon's star-shaped reticle appeared.

"Fire!" Tracey shouted just as he gave the mental order.

Ingenuity's triangle marker spat a square. It hit dead-center, taking out the interceptor in a firework of pixel bits.

Silas cheered at the top of his lungs, but the dogfight was not done yet. He evaded a bullet wave with a figure-eight maneuver, corkscrewed back toward the disrupting interceptor at top speed while threading the needle through dozens of asteroids and another hail of bullets in unreal reaction times. He didn't know how he was doing it. He simple was.

He was a natural. All those space shooter games had paid off, and Tracey, his gorgeous Tracey, was utterly speechless.

Ingenuity was less than a quarter of an inch from the disruptor. Time seemingly dilated, the reticle fading in.

Fire, Silas ordered.

A square was spat. Pixel bits annihilated the circled interceptor.

A lock icon next to the gravity drive's icon disappeared, and warp speed was engaged, but not before a sonic speed projectile was shot from outside the sensor's range. Silas' reaction was a millisecond too slow. Ingenuity's front section took the hit.

Noise, heat, and a burning metallic acidic smell were nothing compared to the pain. Pain on his skull. Pain on his chest. His arms. He couldn't feel his abdomen or legs. He wheezed his last breath, his heart failing along with the visor's augmented reality.

Good game. Decent life. It had been fun.