The Tin Soldiers (Final Dawn, Book 5)

  The Tin Soldiers

  Final Dawn ✺ Book Five

  T.W.M. Ashford

  Copyright © 2021 by T.W.M. Ashford

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Any characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Tom Ashford

  Dark Star Panorama

  The Dark Star Panorama is a shared universe of sci-fi stories in which Final Dawn is the first series.

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  Contents

  1. Hard Times

  2. No Junk Mail

  3. Monzeich

  4. Cyclone Manufacturing

  5. [Zero] Days Without an Accident

  6. The Archimandrite

  7. Foreign Contaminants

  8. Make it Last

  9. The Pit-Stop

  10. The Crackle of Roots

  11. Rock Bottom

  12. The Best Lead We’ve Got

  13. Kagna One, Krolak Outpost

  14. Crunchy Pancrustaceans

  15. The Very Foreign Diplomat

  16. March of the Clockwork Soldiers

  17. Murder Made Mechanical

  18. Default Directives

  19. The Lightning Nebula

  20. Ungodly Monolith, Unholy Alliance

  21. The Dark Acolytes

  22. The Fire Cleanses

  23. It All Comes Crumbling Down

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  1

  Hard Times

  Twin suns kissed the craggy plains that formed a crusty shell around the sixth moon of Ka’heet. Sea birds with six-metre wingspans circled overhead. There was an oceanic saltiness to the fine rain. Grey boulders and damp moss stretched for as far as the eye could see.

  Jack Bishop kind of liked it. It reminded him of Wales.

  “I don’t see why I need to keep the safety on.”

  Klik was gripping one of the UEC rifles left over from their New Eden incursion as if worried Jack might take it away from her. Which he was seriously considering doing, if she didn’t start listening to him properly.

  “Because I don’t want you accidentally shooting your own foot off,” Jack replied. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere and you don’t want the automata operating on you, believe me.”

  She grumbled under her breath and nodded at the line of empty bottles and ration tins a couple dozen metres away from them. Jack had precariously balanced a number of them on top of some old supply crates. One had already toppled over of its own accord.

  “You won’t make me keep it on when I’m shooting at them, will you?” she sighed. “Honestly, I thought this was going to be fun.”

  Jack bit his lip and said nothing. He’d thought this would be fun, too. Perhaps they ought to have just stayed in their quarters after all.

  Almost a full Earth-year (for all that mattered anymore) had passed since Jack and the rest of the crew on the Adeona discovered the last remnants of humanity orbiting New Eden. Which meant it had also been a year since Jack had blocked their colonisation effort in order to protect the indigenous species living there, introduced the admiral of the Final Dawn to a Grand Minister from the Ministerium of Cultured Planets, and found out he had a daughter who was now a marine approximately the same age as him.

  As the Adeona put it at the time, things had been particularly emotionally turbulent for Jack as of late. So they’d left humanity behind and come out to the secluded moons of Ka’heet, where the battered Adeona could get fixed up at the sentient shipyards and Jack could get some much needed time off.

  It was nice. It was quiet.

  At least until Klik started shooting, anyway.

  “All right,” he said, nodding coyly. “Take aim at the targets. Then you can take the safety off.”

  Klik grinned and raised her rifle to point at the bottles and cans. Her insectoid thumb snapped the safety catch off before Jack could say, “Careful not to lose a toe.” He smiled and shook his head. Her enthusiasm was contagious.

  “Now, take your time.” He peered through her sights over her shoulder. “This isn’t a race. You’ll be a lot quicker if your shots actually hit their targets—”

  “Than if I miss and give my targets a chance to shoot at me,” Klik recited. “Yeah, I get it. Where’d you learn all this stuff, anyway?”

  “I told you I trained to be a pilot, right? The academy was part of the Royal Air Force—”

  “Royal what now?”

  “Erm… sort of like the Mansa armada, but less advanced and just for the island I was from. Military, is what I guess I’m trying to say. So they gave us firearm lessons, too. Not that I ever had to fire one in anger before I came across the Rakletts, mind you. God, I don’t miss them.”

  “Uh huh. Can I shoot now?”

  Jack rolled his eyes.

  “Remember what I told you. This galaxy is a dangerous place. If we ever run into another spot of trouble, I don’t want you getting shot or cut open by a bloody spear again.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes, that is a yes.”

  Much to Jack’s surprise, Klik didn’t immediately launch into a volley of wayward rifle rounds. She took a deep breath, kept her rifle steady, and then breathed out slowly. When she was finally ready, she squeezed the trigger.

  Jack winced as her first shot missed the bottles and disappeared towards the craggy hills in the misty distance. Klik swore in Krettelian before composing herself and trying again. This time the leftmost bottle exploded in a shower of green glass.

  “Nice one!” Jack clapped her on the shoulder. She looked up at him and beamed. “Keep going. See if you can get the—”

  “What’s happening?” yelled a small figure hurrying down the Adeona’s loading ramp behind them. “Who’s shooting? Is it that Drygg again? I told him that carburettor was faulty when I sold it to him!”

  “False alarm,” said Jack, waving him over. “Hey, buddy. Looking good!”

  Prior to having his original chassis crushed by a falling statue whilst trying to escape Krett, Tuner had been quite a small automata – a few feet tall with a video-cassette shaped head and a body like a bedside cabinet with legs. To save him, Rogan had transplanted his data core into the shell of a much larger automata designed for war. But the novelty of having a giant plasma cannon for an arm had soon worn off. He wanted his old body back.

  It took them quite a few trips to various dumping grounds across the system before they found a chassis that matched his original model, and a hell of a lot of trial-and-error engineering from both Tuner and Rogan to make it work… but the little guy was finally back to his old self.

  Give or take a few dents.

  “Thanks,” said Tuner, waddling up the pebbled path to the rocky outcrop on which they stood. “Gave myself a proper polish this morning. Still got a few stiff bolts I’d like Rogan to take a look at, though. She back yet?”

  “Haven’t seen her all day. Hold on a sec.” Jack peered through the drizzle. “Somebody’s coming. I’m guessing it’s her.”

  “Unless it’s that Drygg,” Tuner said, shifting his weight from one metal foot to the other. />
  “That was months ago and on a totally different moon, Tuner.”

  “Yeah, but you know what the Drygg are like. There’s nothing they enjoy more than holding a grudge. Except mining, maybe.”

  “And mining equipment that actually works,” Jack added, raising an eyebrow.

  Tuner’s fidgeting grew worse.

  Jack squinted harder. It was difficult to make out more than a dark silhouette amongst the rocks and patchy grassland, even on a day when the sky wasn’t threatening to regurgitate half the nearby sea over their heads. But he recognised the way the figure’s hover-bike kicked up stones in its wake and smiled.

  “It’s Rogan, all right. Let’s go help her unload.”

  “But… target practice…” Klik desperately switched her gaze between Jack and the rifle in her hand. “Eurgh. Fine.”

  She laid the gun down against the rocks and hurried after them.

  The hover-bike drifted to a stop not far from the Adeona’s open loading ramp, its miniature ion thrusters pushing a small wave of pebbles to one side. Rogan deactivated the bike and climbed off just as Jack and Tuner reached her. A large bundle of boxes and cloth sacks were strapped onto the vehicle’s back.

  “How’d it go?” Jack asked. “Any better than last time?”

  Rogan wore a ragged, brown cloak over her chrome body. It wasn’t to protect her from rusting in the rain – she was designed better than that, as were most automata – but rather for anonymity. She pulled her hood down and shook her head.

  “We might need to start thinking about a new place to stay,” she replied. “Pirates are hitting the regular trade routes and making deliveries next to impossible. I got everything we needed this time, but stock is running short. If it carries on like this for much longer, I worry things will start getting nasty.”

  Jack nodded. The Adeona was parked out in the middle of nowhere, so the nearest outpost was almost a hundred miles away. Each week, he or Rogan would take the bike and gather supplies – food and hygiene products for Jack and Klik, fuel and spare parts for the ship. But the galaxy seemed to be getting rougher by the minute. A fight had broken out over imported yak milk the last time he visited. The townsfolk would continue to turn on each other as times got more desperate… but not before they turned on their weird, out-of-town neighbours first.

  “Where else would we go?” asked Klik. “Kapamentis?”

  “As if we could afford the long-stay parking charges,” said Tuner.

  “We’ll think of something,” said Jack, casually undoing the hover-bike’s straps. “There’s a whole galaxy of planets to choose from. They can’t all be falling on hard times.”

  “Not yet,” said Rogan, catching one of the boxes before it could tumble off the bike and into the dirt. “But the web of trade is a delicate thing. Every planet in the Ministerium is going to feel the threads tugging sooner or later.”

  Jack turned to Tuner and Klik, the latter of whom was poking through the new supplies in search of fruit-flavoured sweets Rogan had almost certainly not been able to procure.

  “Would you guys mind getting the bike back up the ramp?” he asked. “Make sure you secure it to the cargo bay properly this time. The last thing Adi needs is an old, busted-up relic crashing about inside of her.”

  “She lets you on board,” grumbled Klik.

  “Good one.”

  Tuner and Klik pushed the bike up into the Adeona; floating as it did, there was barely any resistance. They’d found the old thing with half its parts missing and mushrooms growing out of its engine during one of their trips to the dump in search of a new chassis for Tuner. It would have been a shame to let it go to waste, apparently.

  When the others were safely out of earshot, Jack turned back to Rogan.

  “How bad are things getting?” he asked.

  “Bad.” Her eyes, though mechanical, glistened with concern. “It’s not just the pirates and raiders causing trouble. The Enola Ji and the Enola Ju have suddenly reignited a vicious territorial dispute after centuries of peaceful truce. There are uprisings all across the Globula nebula. And the Qetho Zsar have started occupying old salt mines that don’t belong to them. I don’t know what’s got into everyone all of a sudden, but the longer this mess goes on, the more civilisations are going to get roped into it.”

  Jack shook his head.

  “Humanity sure chose a great time to join the galactic community, didn’t it?”

  “Tell me about it. In all my years, I’ve never seen the galaxy as volatile as this. Still, at least most of your kind are out of harm’s way down on Ennakis.”

  “Out of harm’s way?” Jack scoffed. “Have you seen the bugs humanity’s up against?”

  “Yes, well.” Rogan crossed her arms. “I was trying to be optimistic. I’m sure Ginger’s fine. Better that than a war with the Qetho Zsar.”

  “If you say so.” Jack sighed. The rain was picking up, and he guessed he ought to start tidying up the tins and bottles he set up for target practice. “Well, at least we’re not involved for once. Let’s just find another backwater planet where we can keep our heads down. I’m sure everything will sort itself out eventually.”

  “Yes, total cosmic annihilation does tend to solve most people’s problems. Or remove them from the equation, at least.”

  “Eh?”

  “Never mind.” Rogan glanced up at the dark clouds overhead. “The weather’s getting worse. We’d better get inside.”

  Jack nodded and made his way back to the rifle Klik had left resting against the rocks. He swung its leathery strap over his shoulder and reached for the empty bottle closest to him.

  It toppled over and rolled out of reach.

  Damn wind. He left it to clatter off into the wilderness and went to grab the can next to it.

  This, too, blew out of Jack’s grasp.

  And then he heard it – not the thunder of storm clouds, but of thrusters.

  Frustrated, he shielded his eyes from the rain with his hand and peered up at the ship descending towards their craggy patch of nowhere. Rogan, Tuner and Klik came hurrying down the Adeona’s ramp to join him. Klik had another leftover UEC rifle clutched in her hands.

  “Stand down,” Jack shouted, loosening his grip on his own gun. “These lot aren’t a threat to anyone.”

  There was no mistaking whose shuttle it was – the dents and rust were as much a trademark as the faded insignia painted across one of the vehicle’s sides.

  The Ministerium of Cultured Planets had come to pay them a visit.

  “So much for keeping our heads down,” Rogan yelled to Jack over the rumble of the shuttle’s engines.

  “What do you think they want?” asked Tuner.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said through gritted teeth. “But if they’ve come to us, it can’t be anything good.”

  2

  No Junk Mail

  The twin wings of the clunky rust-bucket folded back on themselves as it slowly came in to land. Jack’s shirt rippled around his chest. The windswept rain stung his eyes. The shuttle grunted and groaned as its weight settled on its ancient landing gear. Steam rose from the hot thrusters at its rear, and a loading ramp – much shorter and narrower than the Adeona’s – chugged open at its front.

  A bulky silhouette appeared in the doorway.

  “Who goes there?” asked Rogan, stepping forward. “Nobody from the Ministry told us to expect a visit. State your business.”

  “They want to take me back to Paryx,” Jack heard Klik mutter behind him.

  “Nobody’s taking you anywhere,” he whispered over his shoulder. “Slavery is illegal on Ka’heet and its moons, remember? Local Mansa law carries no weight here.”

  The figure didn’t move.

  “Hello?” said Tuner, waving up at the figure from the bottom of the ramp. “What’s happening? Are you stuck?”

  “Keep your screws tight, for goodness sake,” said the figure, suddenly hobbling down the ramp towards them. “I had to make sure I wouldn’t
tarnish coming out here first.”

  The emissary finally emerged from the shadow of the overhanging cockpit, revealing the long and unassuming black cloak customarily worn by all members of the Ministerium. Beneath its folds, his limbs chugged and wheezed like the pistons of an old steam train. A pair of eyes like submarine periscopes poked out from the top of his square, metal head.

  Jack’s mouth turned up at the corners.

  An automata minister. Huh. Now this was a first.

  “Kay-13!” said Rogan, breaking into a smile. “What a lovely surprise. You should have told us you were coming.”

  “Yes, that’s what my little associate said,” the minister replied. His voice came from a round, grated speaker in the centre of his head. “But we’re on quite a tight schedule, I’m afraid. By the time the message would have got here, we…”

  The old automata paused, then stomped his blocky foot on the bottom of the shuttle’s ramp.

  “What’s the hold up, small fry?” he called up into the ship. “These are your friends, aren’t they?”

  “Sorry, whose friends are we?” asked Tuner, tilting his head. “I wasn’t aware we had any.”

  A tiny, cylindrical robot no bigger than a home speaker came whizzing out from the shuttle’s bay on a pair of chunky, weathered tank treads. He rattled down the ramp and skidded to a clumsy stop in the moss. Somebody had spray painted the bulk of his chassis black, presumably because he was either too small for a Ministry cloak or too likely to get one caught under his wheels.