Chapter 10

Lobo darted to the rear wall, away from the railing. The aliens had all stopped to look at the malfunctioning robot. He jogged behind them with quiet steps.

They’re so quiet, he thought. Shouldn’t they be shouting in surprise? Asking each other what’s going on? Yelling for help? What’s wrong with them?

He crouched in a corner. An Orionan rolled by on some kind of strange motorized scooter. The deck of the scooter was narrow in the front and wide in the back, and the back was lined with metallic canisters. Then Lobo noticed the scooter was floating a couple of inches above the station floor.

I wish I had a hover scooter. Score another one for alien tech.

After the scooter passed he hurried to the next wing. When he glanced back, he could see the aliens had forgotten the distraction and were moving on. Spec was gone too. He didn’t see what had happened to her.

That little robot was brave, he thought. But there’s no way to help her without walking into a nest of aliens, so I’d better focus on rescuing my crew right now.

He continued down the hallway, darting from post to post. This area didn’t seem to have a lot of traffic, and it also didn’t seem to be a high-security place like the room he’d trashed earlier. But Spec had told him that at least one of his companions was here, so he was sure he’d run into guards sooner or later.

He came to a gate, which was locked. He pulled the master key from his pocket and waved it. The device made a low humming noise and hissed open. He stepped sideways and peered around the edge. Straight ahead were two guards watching the open gate. They jabbered at each other in their alien language.

They’re wondering why the gate opened, he guessed. One of them walked over, stepped through the gate, and looked down the hall, but didn’t look his way. The alien walked back in and the gate hissed closed.

It’s no use opening the door if I can’t get in without being seen, Lobo thought. He put the device back in his pocket. He heard a rumbling behind him and turned. Another alien was rolling up on a delivery scooter. Fortunately the alien was looking back at the crates loaded on the scooter’s deck, or Lobo would have been seen and disanimated.

That’s right. Spec said this was the storage facility.

The gate hissed open again. The doors opened, and the alien guards waved the scooter in. Lobo had the five seconds he needed to slip inside and hide. He crouched behind a stack of crates and looked around.

Past the guards were towers of crates. Each crate had about twenty sides, like the dice in old role-playing games.

I wonder if they need to guard supplies from other aliens. They seem so well-behaved.

To lift the boxes and stack them onto a tower, the alien on the scooter used a device that had a long bar with a handle on one end and a ring on the other. It looked like the old metal detectors Lobo had once seen in a history lecture.

Lobo tested one of the crates he was hiding behind. He could barely budge it. But the alien was heaving the same-sized crates around easily.

That tool must create a low gravity field around an object so it can be moved. Score a hundred points for alien tech.

The alien finished storing the crates, hung the wand on a rack, and cruised away.

The two guards were patrolling the front of the room, weaving in and out of the crates. And that was the guards he could see—there could be others he couldn’t. Lobo reached for a biscuit, thinking he would take out another light, but when he looked up he saw the lights in this room were tucked into the ceiling and protected by thick glass. Instead he climbed a shorter tower of crates. From there he leaped to a higher one, grasping the edge with his fingertips and scrambling up. The guards didn’t notice. He reached a third tower by leaping to the side and climbing a post.

From there he could see the entire room. It was shaped like a pentagon, with four walls and the fifth side open to the hallway. There were doors in three of the four walls.

There’s a human in at least one of those rooms, he thought. But which one?

None of the doors would be easy to get to. One of the guards always seemed to be watching every door. When one turned away from a door, another started marching toward it.

As he scanned the room, Lobo realized the wand’s rack was out of sight of the guards. He leaped to the top of another tower, then another. He was as close as he could get to the gravity wand, but it was too far to jump. He would have to drop to the floor and would surely be seen. He glanced up and noticed a dangling chain between him and the tower.

That’s good luck, he said to himself. No—not luck. Design. I’m in a game, and they have to give me a way to win. I’m so into this game that I forget I’m playing one.

He leaped for the chain, grasped it, and swung over to the post. Still dangling from the chain, he grabbed the wand from its hook and used his feet to kick off the wall and swing back to the crates.

Once he was safely out of sight, he inspected the wand. There was a button on the barrel. He aimed it and pressed the button with his thumb. A tower several feet away shifted. Lobo swung the wand sideways, and the tower’s top crate crashed to the floor.

One of the guards paused and said something in alien language. The other guards came to investigate. Lobo leaped to another tower, then scrambled down. He saw a clear path between the towers of crates and one of the doors. He ran over, tucking the gravity wand under his elbow so he could grab his master key and wave it at the door.

The room was the size and shape of the cell he’d been kept in, but there were no humans here. He groaned. Come on. Seriously?

Behind a high, narrow table was a wall panel. He opened it and saw a column of switches. I wonder what these do. Only one way to find out.

Lobo went down the row and flipped every switch. The room went black, but he ran his hand down the panel to find and flip more switches until he’d hit them all. He heard more alien voices from the room outside.

He crept out of the room into absolute blackness. Then he made his way along the wall toward the next door. He crashed into an alien, but simply shoved it out of the way.

Can’t stun me in the dark, Snake-face.

He found the next room and entered.

“Anyone in here?” he asked the darkness.

“What’s going on?” came a woman’s voice. “Who’s there?”

A human! “It’s me, Lobo—er, Solo_Lobo,” he said. “Come on, we have to hurry.”

“Do I need to remind you who’s the leader of this unit?” the woman answered sternly.

Jalea. He remembered the woman from the prologue. She’s my commander. But she’s an NPC. I don’t really have to take orders from her, just keep her from getting killed.

“Sorry, Commander, but we really are in a hurry,” he said. “Once they get the lights back on we’re screwed.” He turned back to the door when a light shone in his face. He squinted against it and saw Spec aiming a beam at him.

His eyes focused in the harsh light a bit more, and he could see slight differences in this robot. No. Not Spec. A robot that looks like Spec.

A panel opened on its front and a laser blaster emerged.