"You have the information in your memory banks, right?"
Selenium is asking questions, but doesn't really expect an answer from Ru44. Her android companion, who actually does everything on board the pirate spaceship, The Pink Pilferer.
"It is just like in Earth's past history, living out here like we do."
Ru44 is piloting The Pink Pilferer, as Selenium babbles on the subject of the old wild west she has just read about. How on the frontier, justice was dueled out by a majority rule. A mob rule. When there where few and far between Peace Officers in the outlying Territories. Just like it is in the outlying coordinates of the Solar System.
When Transporters, a name given to the crews of the ships hauling good and services, back and forth, between mining colonies, come across a Pirate ship past the last authorized governing body of the planet Mars, they quickly become judge, jury, and executioner.
Telling the Pirate that he will have to, "walk the plank." And in today's terms, that means standing in an airlock, while the crew watches you get sucked out into outer space once they open the airlock's doors.
Half of the Transporters flying around the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and the asteroid belt, from one time or another were Pirates themselves. But, because miners become so rich, seemingly overnight, they give jobs to the most skilled and affluent Pirates. Diminishing the need to hire programed military androids.
The cost alone, of having an armed and ready militia of androids, purchased from the companies holding the monopolies on the planets of Earth and Mars, would cost you at least five years of profits. If any maintenance is needed, or if the androids needed to be reloaded or rearmed, you can add another two years of profit to the total. Paying a Pirate Crew double of what they would get after hijacking a ship and selling its goods to your competitors, is still only one year of profit, instead of seven years of having a robot army.
Besides, after hiring a Pirate Crew, there are that many less out there hijacking ships.
Selenium was the exception to the rule though. After her parents were killed by a bunch of greedy miners, over a dispute of an asteroid claim, she swore vengeance to all miners for her retribution.
She inherited Ru44 from her parents. Once a military bot, he became companion, caretaker, and protector of Selenium while she was growing up.
He was upgraded, early on, with all the programed emotions that was allowable by law, at the time of purchase. Deprogrammed, supposedly, of all his military capabilities when he was sold to Selenium's parents. Except her father, Roentgen, secretly paid the seller a exorbitant amount of bitcoin to keep his programming intact. He knew he wouldn't be available, at all times, to protect his little girl.
When the miners, who killed Selenium's parents came looking for her, they met with an equally gruesome death. Trying to steal the asteroid, and covering it up by killing the witnesses, cost them their lives. But not their kinfolk lives. And who are the other miners in this area outer space going to believe? A twelve year old girl, who claims her parents were killed first, or the kinfolk of the twenty-six dismembered miners, ripped apart by one ex-military android, and owned by the little girl.
Selenium is twenty-three now. Every-bit as angry, as the day she turned thirteen. Traveling from Uranus, all the way to Earth, and everywhere in-between, without ever getting caught.
No one has ever found out who the fence is who purchases the hijacked spacecraft filled with goods and services, but there have been a lot of falsely accused criminal types, who have spent time in jail, until Selenium hijacks another spacecraft and it seemingly disappears. Never to be seen again or of its cargo.
She is not the evil person the media would have everyone believe. She has always captured the crew alive, with some minor injuries to the fools who believe they can outsmart her, and secretly dumps them off on some asteroid with a homing beacon and enough oxygen to survive until rescued.
There have been military bots setup on some asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, but without knowing her next move, the odds of calculating which rock she will strand her captives on, out of the millions of rocks in the belt, is like winning the lottery, when there still was a lottery.
"Can you imagine? People were allowed to carry guns, in public places, just like we do now." Selenium says excitedly. She is reading the history of the wild west on a viewing screen in the ships piloting module. She confiscated the program from the spacecraft Orion. A Transporter ship she and Ru44 hijacked just weeks before.
She could have easily downloaded the information from the S.S.I. or Solar-System-Internet. But everybody knows that the governing bodies of One World Earth and the governing body of Free Mars, monitor every computer, tablet, eye-wear, headgear, body implanted computer vision-wear, and mind implanted phone service, to the extent that their daily lives are fitted on a memory chip so investigators have records of any possible past, present, or future transgressions you have, are, or might commit. The only true free people of the human race are the miners living away from the grid. If Selenium tried to access the S.S.I., her location in the Solar System would light up every law enforcement agency computer screen from Earth to Mars, and every miner turned bounty hunter from the asteroid belt and beyond.
No, Selenium is smart enough to know, and has been at this long enough, not to make such a simple mistake. Her only choice is to download all of the computer files from a hijacked ship she has taken, check for programmed viruses that might disable her on board computers or send out a beacon of her local, and see what the latest news and reading material some of the more intelligent Transporters have.
She knows that it is dated material, but feels that old news, is better than no news at all.
"Selen." Says Ru44. The nickname Selenium asked him to say, when she was just nine years old. "There is a cargo ship, which seems to be heading in the direction, if my calculations are correct, to the moon Triton, circling Neptune."
Selenium knows that Ru44 has never been wrong with his calculations, but still asks, "Have you double checked your findings?"
"I did a diagnostic of myself right after I calculated their course and found that I am functioning at one-hundred percent efficiency, so I could not have possibly made a mistake in my original calculations." Ru44 replies.
"But there is nothing out there." Says Selen to Ru44. "What possibly, could they be hauling, that would be so important, that they would travel all the way to Neptune?" She pauses for the moment, searching her mind for ideas. "All waste material is sent hurling into the Sun for disposal. Everything else is recycled till the based elements can't be recycled anymore. Are they looking for water? There is a lot of water ice on Neptune, but I cannot see the profit in that."
Ru44 interrupts her train of thought and says, "You are missing the obvious Selen. Remember Earth history, when they believed there were nine planets? Where is the dwarf planet Pluto located in?"
"The Kuiper Belt," she screams. "Someone is finally going to start mining out in the Kuiper Belt."
Ru44 continues, "I imagine they are setting up a based station on Triton, and possibly Pluto itself." He waits a second for her to speak, but she doesn't. So he goes on to say, "Even with today's propulsion systems, it could take up to a year before any cargo could reach Mars for processioning. The profit returns, after the cost of mining out there, will be minimal at first, unless Mars or Earth Space Agencies have made a breakthrough on wormhole technology. If so, we will be out of business."
"So why don't we take that ship, heading to the outer solar system, and find out what is really going on." Says a smiling Selenium.
"I thought you might see it that way." Says Ru44.
"There will possibly be Military Androids onboard Ru. Do you think you can take control of their ship?"
All Ru44 does, is looks at Selenium, and smiles. The most awkward, and frightening smile any human has seen from a Robot.
"It will be my pleasure Selen." Ru44 tells her confidently. Then integrates himself into the Pink Pilferer's navigation system and armaments, to do battle with the unsuspecting mining cargo ship.
This is,
Will Right More If Someone Leaves A Comment Asking For More,
Jim Hauenstein,
And,
"It's better to swim in the sea below, than to swing in the air and feed the crow," says jolly Ned Teach of Bristol.
- Benjamin Franklin -
- Benjamin Franklin -
That is my story and I am sticking to it!
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