Tin Man, Part 2 Of 4
10 Sep 2020JB Threepwood
I returned the next day to Chubby's workshop, to carry on repairing the robot skull I'd bought off a black market swindler named Diego.Originally I was under the impression it was a medical android who's AI chip I could link to my ship's console, to have as a companion and to help with any medical incidents I might find myself in. It turned out it was from a domestic android. You could still talk with it but there's not much call for those domestic subroutines to be built into a ship.
Luckily the head was intact, the diagnostic machine showed no damage to the rest of it's processors so there was no reason it wouldn't be able to operate as a fully functioning android... if I could get it a body.
The domestic robot would've originally had a fancy-ass tungsten and polycarbonate body but there was nothing like that in Chubby's warehouse. I scraped around and eventually found a headless security 'bot in a room that was full of old crap and abandoned parts. One of the other lads had blown it's head off and stashed it's body aboard his ship whilst he was trying to slip out of a station unnoticed.
The thought of the young prospect, starting off his career as a smuggler, brought up memories of my later days with my old gang... Rapa Bao Blue Boys. After being trained up by Rorke as a support fighter I went on to fly my own ship, working as a fence, smuggling pirated goods into black markets. Rorke and our other pirate fighters would get marks to ditch their cargo then a few of us would scoop it up and jump to neighbouring systems to cash it in.
I had been flying in a small wing. It was just me and a girl named Lex. We were both in our own Keelbacks, stripped down and kitted out for speed.
We'd been friends for a long time, both of us had been groomed into the gang from a young age, both of us from the same city, both of us with no family left to disappoint. Bit by bit, mission by mission, Lex and I became closer. We'd often smuggle goods far out from the Rapa Bao system to get a good price then rent a room and hook up. I was young then, I thought it was love... maybe it was.
Things were getting worse in Rapa Bao and our gang boss was becoming more and more deranged. Eventually Lex and I had decided to take a stash from the gang and run away together. I remember my nerves being on edge as I waited at a small outpost outside of the Rapa Bao system. I sat and waited for hours...checking every ship that pulled up to the outpost to see if it was her.
"She ain't coming, kid," said a gruff voice behind me as I stood in the diner, looking through the large window at the ships passing. I turned around to be greeted by Rorke and a couple of other pirates from the gang. Obviously they'd tracked me down in an unmarked ship.
At the time I'd assumed they'd caught Lex and killed her, I later found out that she'd set me up as the thief and kept the money for herself. I stood in the diner, feeling like the arse had completely fallen out of my world, looking down the barrels of the pirates guns.
Rorke, the man who'd taught me everything, the guy who I'd looked up to as a replacement for the dad I never knew, pointed his pistol at me. "Told you not to get too close to people, kid," Rorke stated, looking through me like I was a stranger.
Then all went black.
It turned out they shot up the whole diner as a message to anyone else trying to take money from The Rapa Bao Blue Boys.
If you can call it luck, a clerical error confused my injured body with that of a hauler that had got mixed up in the massacre. I still feel bad at times that his remains had been incinerated as mine whilst I lay in a medibay, using up his limited health insurance. I'd lost an eye, half an arm, a lung, a kidney and was riddled with holes... but it was a small price to pay to be free of the gang. I just needed to get myself fixed up.
I turned my attention back to the robot lying on the worktop. I soldered some of the damaged connectors in the neck of the damaged security 'bot so I could connect the metal skull properly.
Hopefully this 'droid would be a co-pilot I could trust.