Read Online The Garbage Chronicles by Brian Herbert - Free Book Online

“Finally.”
    “I was tired,” Wizzy said, studying the humanoids with his yellow cat’s eye. Wizzy glowed red, calling upon his data banks. “Davis Droids,” he said. “I warned you about this place. Nurinium here.”
    “What the hell is nurinium?” Javik asked.
    “An element sprinkled around the universe by magicians,” Wizzy said. “It gives inanimate objects life.”
    Javik shook his head. “Don’t believe a word of it,” he said, to Evans.
    Thud! Barump! The creatures pummeled the ship with extra intensity. The windshield flexed again.
    “Show me some of your wondrous powers, Wizzy,” Javik said sarcastically. “Or would you rather sleep?”
    “Well!” Wizzy huffed. “I’m not perfect? I told you that. And I am only nineteen hours, fifty-six minutes old!”
    “All right, all right,” Javik said. “Any idea why the engines won’t start?”
    Wizzy’s cat’s eye slanted toward Javik. “Creatures in the exhaust tubes,” he replied, glowing red again. “Tubes are plugged.”
    “How the hell could they do that, with the ship going in excess of three hundred thousand kilometers per hour?”
    Wizzy laughed, rocking for a moment on the dashboard. He glowed red-orange this time, although his eye remained yellow. “From your energy waves, and those of the ship, I see precisely what happened: One of the ship’s E-cells was consumed sixteen minutes ago. There was a delay in switching to a new fuel cell—”
    “Shit,” Javik said. “And that shut off the engines. I could have solved it easily. Hell, Mother should have—”
    “But you were preoccupied,” Wizzy said, “and didn’t realize the ship had stopped. It shut down in a very bad place.”
    “Never heard of a Mother failing before,” Evans said gloom-ily.
    Javik glared at her. “Thanks for the analysis,” he said. “Both of you. Now what?”
    “Something plugging the exhaust tubes,” Mother reported. “Manual correction required.”
    Thump! Kathud! The pummeling continued.
    “You’re the captain,” Wizzy said.
    “Don’t be rude,” Evans said to Wizzy.
    ‘The word is insubordinate,” Javik said. He waved his gun at the humanoids. They paid him no heed.
    Disconsolate, Javik stared down at the deck. Wearily, he set his pistol on his lap. The headache was subsiding. He sighed at the small relief of that.
    An aft hatch clanked open.
    “They’re getting in!” Evans shouted.
    Javik looked aft. A creature floated in, then fell to the cabin floor in the pseudo-gravity of the ship.
    Evans rolled aft. She skirted the creature, which lay on the deck in apparent disorientation. Gasping in rarefied air over the hatch, she slammed it shut. Then she mento-spun the locking device while creatures in Blanquie’s sleeping compartment thumped against the underside of the deck.
    “I’m mento-holding it locked,” Evans said. “They’re trying to force it open again.” She heard the ship’s oxygen system hum loudly, replenishing the air supply.
    Smelling the odor of decaying flesh, Javik studied the creature that had entered the cabin. It was male, wearing a torn Earth T-shirt and blue jeans. An electroplated purple badge was attached to the shirt, dangling next to a rip that exposed a black “P.F.” stamp on the chest. Seeing a deep gash on the face, Javik decided this must have been the cause of death. The creature staggered to its feet, waving its arms wildly as it took a step toward Javik. Then it took another step, hesitating and unsteady, like someone who was either afraid or not practiced in walking.
    It’s not dead now, Javik thought. He aimed and fired the gun.
    There was a pistol crack and a flash of orange. The laser bullet missed, ricocheting around the cabin and whistling by Evans’s ear. She dropped to the deck, continuing to mento-hold the hatch-locking mechanism.
    A volley of subsequent shots from the automatic weapon were on target, tearing gaping, bloody holes in the creature’s flesh. It continued to stumble