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I took a rocket from my pocket and tossed it in the air. It immediately took flight and headed for the nearest large heat signature. I heard a siren come nearly overhead followed by an explosion and no more siren. Fiery debris landed around me, which was nice since it was a bit chilly out.
I leaned over to speak into the com on my left shoulder. “Come pick me up, Dip.”
“I’ve noticed a correlation between increased traffic on police channels of communications and your wanting to be picked up. In the future, should I just assume that…”
“Just pick me up, Dip! And make it a quick exit.”
The sirens seemed to have slowed in their pursuit, but I didn’t know how long they’d stay smart. Luckily, my ship was fast and got to me in seconds, temporarily slowing to allow me to grab on to the side before it lifted up again. I didn’t waste any time getting into the cockpit and strapping in.
“Where are we going?”
“Up, Dip! Up!”
I never liked AI. Maybe because I can’t hurt it.
It started getting noisy.
“Are they shooting at me?” I asked as I looked at the rearview screen. You’d think me blowing up one of their vehicles would make them more wary, but some sentients just never learn.
I hit The Button. I never cared much for ship-to-ship battles, so I looked over tons of data on likely patterns in airborne fights and wrote a macro for the ship’s weapons systems and connected the activation of that macro to a big button on the ship’s console. Then I painted the button red because that seemed like the color for such a button.
There were some explosions behind me and then silence, but I had also reach space, and space is always silent.
“You are now wanted for murder on 1,418 planets,” Dip informed me, “Am I correct in saying that is quite a lot of planets, Rico?”
Dip is basically a huge algorithm that takes in data to improve its AI. In that quest, he asks me lots of questions to confirm his conclusions.
“So, Dip, that makes what percentage of planets in the known universe wants me for murder?”
My theory is he’s more likely to develop an actual intelligence if I never give him a straight answer and finally frustrate him into figuring things out on his own. Or maybe I just don’t like answering absolutes.
“Approximately one times ten to the negative six percent of the planets in my database has you wanted for murder.”
“Now, does that seem like a large percentage?”
“It is my understanding that most sentients would consider that number to be extremely small.”
“That’s the great thing about the universe, Dip. You can massacre an entire planet and still find a nearly infinite number of places to go where no one has ever heard of you.”
“Are there any other great things about the universe you could give me as input?”
I looked out the window. “It’s mainly black.” That’s my favorite color.
“I have processed this new data and reached a number of conclusions. May I run those conclusions by you, Rico, and get your feedback?”
I took out Niko and plugged him into a data port. “In a minute, Dip.” Time to finish up the job. Plus, Vito had some ‘splainin’ to do.
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I didn’t expect six to try and draw on me at once, but, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting anything. I like to be surprised.
Now I’m fast – we’re talking brain altered by top neurosurgeons fast – but I’m not usually fast enough to shoot six humanoids before any can get off a shot… especially since I didn’t have the drop on them or anything. Still, I had drawn my two blasters and shot two of them before the rest had even a full grip on their guns. Those shots panicked the rest, and only one bolt came even near me. When the noise died down, there were more than six bodies lying on the ground. I wasn’t sure if it was my shots or theirs that killed the others, but, frankly, in the past few seconds I had grown a deep-seated prejudice against purple aliens with tentacles coming out of their heads and thus didn’t really care.
Their blood was orange, if you were curious. If there’s come correlation between alien skin color and blood color, I never figured it out.
“Anyone else?” I asked as I put my guns back in their holsters. The aliens made a number of sounds, all of them variations of the word “No” according to my universal translator.
I dropped Niko out so Niko could do what Niko does – collect DNA and other info off corpses for verifying I had done my job – while I headed for the door. This was a civilized city in that I could expect police to show up at some point. In some places, the reaction time for police was so quick they’d be there half-way through the trigger pull. In others, I had enough time to play a couple hands of Solitaire before making my hasty escape. I used to look up police response time before landing on the planet, but I stopped a while ago to add a little spice to otherwise boring hits.
Niko crawled up my leg and into my pocket, his spider-like body folding back into a ball. Hopefully one of those I killed was the target, but, if not, I was still getting off this rock either way. I wasn’t the one who screwed this up.
I was just a couple yards from the bar when I heard sirens coming my way. Now, if I was after a dangerous psychopath, I’d probably be quieter about it – if I weren’t me, that is. Well, maybe the first officer on the scene could at least serve as a cautionary example to others.
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