Zombie Road , Simpson, A. [best authors to read TXT] 📗

were thousands of years old but extremely well preserved. He ran them under a scanner, scrutinized them with a magnifying lens and slowly examined each piece again. Jessie got bored and wandered off to check out the uniforms and other gear.

“Where did you get these?” he finally asked Maddy as she patiently waited.

“Legal salvage.” She said. “We found a naval ship.”

“But how?” the man asked, perplexed. “All that are known to exist have been found, the rest were destroyed during the war and any that hadn’t been completely obliterated have been lost in the void for eons. No one goes out there.”

“We did.” Jessie said in his badly accented universal. “Are you interested in any of them?”

“Yes.” He said. “But their value would be a bit higher if we knew the name of the ship. Collectors like to know the history of their artifacts.”

“The Madroleeka.” Jessie said and the man pursed his thin lips.

“I’ll have to do a bit of research.” He said and laid their items back on the counter.

He pondered for a moment, his long fingers stroking his cheeks as he looked back and forth between the two. “I can give you two hundred credits for these.” He said and indicated everything except the coins.

“For those, I have to contact someone. A collector I know may be interested. Are there anymore?”

“Only a few.” Jessie said, knowing enough not to flood the market and drive down the price.

The man nodded and waited. He seemed to be expecting something from them.

“We’ve just arrived in system, we don’t have a credit chip.” Maddy said “Can you issue one?”

“There will be a charge for it.” He said, turned to a machine that may have been a cash register then handed her a small piece of plastic, much like a credit card. One hundred ninety credits showed on the readout.

“Where did you come from?” he asked. “I’ve never seen ones such as yourself.”

“Colony ship.” Maddy said and the man nodded. Some had been in route for millennia and it explained much. All contact had been lost with them after the war and the colonists would have kept traveling, most of them in hibernation pods, until they reached their destination and built the jump gate.

“When can we expect an answer about the coins?” Jessie asked as he casually scooped them up and dropped them into his pocket.

The man winced to see such rarities treated so callously. These two really had no idea the value of their find. An intact Federation naval ship from the first age. It would be filled with things of untold value. If the AI were still viable, a man could be set for life. There were stories and tales of their power although most of it was too fantastical to believe. The ancients had harnessed the power of the gods and it had destroyed them. The technology was long lost but even if traces of the AI were intact there were data hackers that could probably figure out how to recreate it. If someone had even a microscopic sample, he could name his price. He could buy his own world.

“I should have an answer in a few hours.” He said. “Which sector did you say you came from?”

Jessie ignored the question. “We’ll be back in a while, then. Thanks.”

The man considered for long moments everything they’d said and everything he’d gleaned from the scanners at the door. He had some very valuable items in his shop and the scanners detected hidden life forms, tiny thieves hidden under coats that would rob a man while he was distracted with the customer. It had only detected one life form when the pair went through them. He hadn’t thought much of it, the machine wasn’t infallible but he paid close attention when they left. Their claim of being on a colony ship was a good story. It was a rare thing in this day and age but not unheard of. It could be used to explain a lot of unusual things about them but it couldn’t explain how they knew the name of the 1st Federation Battleship. Very little was known about the inner workings of the world killers, only ancient bits of hulls had been found. If the legends were true, the ships were never named. No markings on the outside, no labels on the inside. The AI was born and given a name and when she entered the ship, she became a part of it. She ran the engines, the mapping, the battle stations, the life support and everything else. She WAS the ship, without her nothing functioned. It was said she could take any form, become any tool, speak any language and every ship had a different personality. There was no way they could have known the name of the ship unless they found a functioning AI and he was pretty sure he’d just witnessed one. She was almost perfect; he never would have suspected if the sensors hadn’t alerted him. He considered the risks he was thinking about taking. If the tales were true her intelligence was unmatched, her speed was impossible and if he failed, she would know who was responsible. His life would be measured in minutes.

But if he succeeded…

If he succeeded, he would make the Queen of the Outer Reaches seem like a money-grubbing peasant. He could buy whole solar systems and immortality to enjoy it.

The human was inconsequential, he didn’t know where he came from or how he got here, he could be shoveled into the organic matter processors for all he cared. He would have to be very, very careful. She was too dangerous to attempt capture on the port, it would have to be in space where they would have a slight advantage.

Jessie and Maddy went back upstairs and wandered the avenue, blending in with the tourists, the freighter crews and the locals. They were different but so was everyone else and most people didn’t look twice at them. The streets were