Light dims on humanity's reign over the galaxy.
Charlus Vaughn, a teenage refugee escapes deadly machine justice with her penitent mother.
Rescued by a data-pirate crew, she falls into the path of ancient arachnid machinations that propel her back towards her mysterious origins and the heart of her unknown heritage.
Light dims on humanity's reign over the galaxy.
Charlus Vaughn, a teenage refugee escapes deadly machine justice with her penitent mother.
Rescued by a data-pirate crew, she falls into the path of ancient arachnid machinations that propel her back towards her mysterious origins and the heart of her unknown heritage.
"What's the point? We need to get away from the city." Charlus pleaded with her mother. The hangover of traumatic fear still widened her eyes, and no doubt sustained her quickened pulse.
"You know the point, Charl. Thanks have to be given. The man saved our lives!" Charlus' chin dropped to her chest. Frustration at her mother's gentle voice in such a calamitous environment wrestled with the simple notion that the man gave her the creeps.
She looked up and towards the remains of their street. Most of the familiar structures were either gone or obscured by thick gouts of smoke that rolled across her view, snagging occasionally on partially demolished walls or burned-out hover vehicles.
"Fine," she said as she stomped across the yard and through a large fractured hole in the Pickett fence. Brenner was one of those guys that spent all his time preparing for disaster and no time on personal hygiene. Begrudgingly though, Charlus was able to accept that if not for his hidden bunker, she would not be around to be surly and disagree with her mother's ludicrous insistence on good manners!
As she approached the remains of Brenner's street level abode, instinct made her creep. It was clear the attack was over, but something about his place tickled the back of her neck. What's more, as she picked her way through his ruined home, she found the hatch to his safety bunker already wide open.
Pondering the black void below that swallowed the worn wooden ladder, she rubbed her forehead, smearing soot and gritty debris across her face. They needed to get out of the city in case the Black Bots came back for any survivors, but she was forced to return to Brenner to thank the man. He'd never even said a word to them, just nodded towards the hatch and spent the night staring at her. His face stern and calculating as if he were weighing prize livestock. Charlus had the feeling that the man was no hero. He had sin on his chip. At least he had before he'd dug the thing out of his arm and gone supposedly off-grid.
As if sensing her suspicions, Charlus' mother carefully appeared next to her, the wreckage crunching underfoot on the ceramic kitchen floor. She squeezed the girl's shoulder and, without hesitation, vanished down the ladder and out of sight. She wasn't gone long enough to cause worry, but she emerged slightly paler than before.
"Looks like you were right about him," she said with a small, conflicted smile. Charlus shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed in frustration.
"I was right, but that's not why they…"
"Let's get out of here." Her mother interrupted, obviously not wanting to repeat the argument about why people were being systematically executed across the planet. She walked out of the kitchen, sliding a makeshift axe from the work surface as she went. Charlus followed, shaking her head. There was no talking to her mother when she'd shut down a conversation. Right or wrong, she was as stubborn as a police drone, only not quite as lethal as they'd become in recent days.
Confident that the night's attack was fully over, they scavenged a few neighbours' places for clothes and supplies. No survivors and no protests, just long dead stares and faces frozen in fear. Charlus wasn't permitted to comment, otherwise her mother's casual monologue would ensue with each discovery of a dead resident. A one woman conversation about what it was that made each person's sins outweigh their more charitable behaviours. She'd heard it so many times since the attacks began and, frankly, her mother's naïve idea of right and wrong was starting to curdle her blood.
"It's not about sin, mum!" She couldn't help herself. "They came for everyone!" Her mother stopped walking and looked Charlus in the eye for a long moment.
"Then they all must have more to hide than we realised." Completely convinced and immovable on her point, she turned and led them from the town towards the expanse of woodland where they both hoped they would be safer.
They'd never walked in those woods. In fact, they'd not been on planet that long. This place was just the latest holding city. A place they'd been dumped while they had their remainer credentials checked over, their rights poured over, and their usefulness to the galaxy assured. Since dad had gone, they both had the sinking feeling their usefulness was waning.
Once they'd arrived beneath the canopy of the strange native trees, the stench of smoke and destruction abated. The trees weren't like anything they had expected, their pale pink branches were more like giant spiked thorns and the red gossamer matrices strung between did not resemble leaves at all but still they formed a shield from the sky above that was hopefully enough to block any drone lenses from picking them up. The ground was springy, with occasional sap sacs and tube-like roots that pulsed as, presumably, they carried nutrients across the forest floor to feed the gigantic tree structures.
Walking without devices or any tech at all was a silent and boring activity for Charlus. With vast voids of stimulus, her mind crept back to the events of the last few nights. To the bodies and the explosions. The machines, relentless and murderous. Impact of metal on stone, they'd picked apart their city with such ease. Tearing open buildings to pluck out families like grubs from an upturned log. The people were so unaware, so unprepared. Whatever crimes had been committed there was no arrest, no incarceration, just instant and brutal death.
Charlus' mind wandered to places devoid of hope and her mother noticed. She put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
"Don't think, don't look back. It will only hurt and haunt your thoughts." She said in her gentle, song-like way.
"But how?" Charlus answered, louder than she'd expected as a collective of flying creatures alighted from the canopy above. "It's not a dream, mum, that did just happen. They were killing everyone, stamping on their bodies, breaking them apart, children, dads, everyone!" Her mother stopped and put her other hand on the opposite shoulder, looking into her daughter's panicked face.
"Don't let it in, my love. Let's get away. That's what we need to think about right now. We've been spared and so we have time to get far from here."
Charlus shook her head and made the universal frustrated groan of a teenager. "We've not been spared!" She rolled her shoulders, pulling away and stomping ahead. Her mother closed her eyes regretfully before turning to follow.
Merrian Vaughn was a single mother of a teenage girl. She was a remaining human in a galaxy, eager to see the back of her species. She had lost her husband and over the last two nights had narrowly escaped death on numerous occasions. She was exhausted and consumed with fear for the life of her daughter, Charlus. As she trudged through an alien forest on a planet she knew little about her mind was tearing itself apart.
It was not just with the trauma of the violence they had witnessed and escaped that weighed so heavily, but with a secret she dare not reveal. A secret that must stay deep inside her and never be forgotten. This secret, handed over by her missing, probably late husband, Terrus, explained it all. The death, the destruction and potentially how to remain safe from it. It also laid the weight of blame for this cataclysm on the shoulders of Terrus, Charlus' father.
"They're here!"Charlus exclaimed in a shaky, panting voice. Mother and daughter had found a track through the pink trees that led towards a structure, mostly buried by orange wheat-like plants that gave the impression of flames frozen to stillness. Merrian followed her daughter's wavering finger to several black shapes scattered on the floor. The humanoid shapes were the same that had come for the neighbours, only these were crumpled and immobile. Against her will, Merrian's mind replayed a memory of Dryk, the street warden, as he'd approached the first black invader with his hands up and a calm smile. The machine had spun with insane speed, pivoting from its human mimicked hips and smashing its black rubberised fist into the side of Dryk's head. It was the sound of the spiral fracture of his neck that made acid reach up from her guts. The rag-doll crumple of his body made her eyes close, and she shook the memory away with a desperation she barely had the energy for.
The Black Bots were scattered around the entrance to the structure they'd seen through the foliage. They were damaged and inert. Chunks of the thick black rubber had been hacked out of their primitive skeletal frames, exposing dull metal bones and thick copper oil as it pooled beneath. Two of them were missing their right hands. Another memory reared up as Merrian investigated. It was Deana from two doors down. Her demise was not as violent, but somehow worse. The Black Bot had simply touched her with a chrome-boned hand and released a charge that ended her in an instant. Her body flopped to the street, lifeless and unmoving, like a switch had released her soul from her body.
"What did this?"Charlus asked with genuine curiosity as her hand hovered close to the crudely sheared stump, the proximity causing Merrian increased distress. Rough grooves scored its dull grey bones now exposed from the thick black rubber that encased it. As they looked on, transfixed, Merrian noticed a steady trickling line of the copper oil that bled from the machine's corpse. It swirled with glittering particles and shimmered like metallic shampoo. As she watched, she realised with horror that the line was moving up the thing's arm from the hard packed floor. Defying gravity to return to its host and begin repairs.
"We got to go!"she said, suddenly alarmed. She instinctively grabbed Charlus' arm and scannedthe nearby structure.
"Mum! What is it?"Charlus countered, then twisted her arm from her mother's grip.
"They're trying to heal!" Merrian shouted, her eyes desperate and bulging.
"How do you kn…"there was a sudden clamour from inside the building and Merrian used the excuse to leave the half-formed question behind. She practically ran towards the building, its automated doors sliding apart as they sensed her proximity. Without warning, she stopped and Charlus stumbled into her outstretched arms from behind. Before the complaint was voiced her daughter realised the inherent danger right in front of them.
Charlus looked at her, an idea passing between them silently, a technique they'd used before. Then, together, they bounded through the opening. The doors, suddenly and murderously animated, slammed shut with a force that flicked Merrian's hair and almost crushed her back foot. The force of the impact of each door on the other sent a buckling wave of pressure that caused loose plates to slide away and several sparks to jump from the servos that powered the recently malevolent contraption.
Relieved, mother and daughter shared a look and Charlus did not object as Merrian placed a caring hand on her head.
"Back for more? You robotic devils! Come get some!" an obviously pained voice was followed by the powerful rev of an electric motor.
DB Rook's Residuum takes no prisoners as it drops us straight into the heat of the action, as we join Charlus and her mother Merrian in the immediate aftermath of a robot-inflicted massacre, on the run with seemingly nowhere to turn. From this breathless start, we're flung into an adventure that shows the reader an inventive, clearly well-thought out world, full of endearing characters and plenty of thrills.
This particularly ramps up about a third of the way in when we meet Captain Diaz and his assorted crew of ragtag data-pirates. It's a familiar trope, the down-at-heels captain making his way on the fringes of society, with shades of Firefly and Star Wars in the mix, but that's no bad thing. There's a reason tropes become tropes, after all, and what matters is how the writer handles them. The good news is, Rook knows what he's doing, with a solid grip on his characters, his world and his plot.
If there is a downside, the irony is that it might actually stem from this solid grip. It's a short read, and one almost gets a sense that in his eagerness to get to his (genuinely interesting) story, Rook has kept back a lot of detail that is all lined up in his mind, but never quite gets onto the page. We learn pretty quickly, for one example, that Charlus and Merrian are refugees, and it's possible to get a sense of what they're refugees from and what that experience has meant, but it's never explored fully. And this particularly feels like a missed opportunity, as it feels as if Rook has this in his head, but has rushed past it to keep the pace up. Some authors can give the impression of making things up on the fly, but that really doesn't feel like the case here.
There's a few aspects that could have benefitted from an editor's light touch, but these are few and far between. The story's fun, the worldbuilding high quality and the characters are genuinely engaging. The story finishes with plenty of potential for (and a strong indication of) more adventures for Charlus, Diaz and the rest, and I for one would love to read more. A bit more room next time for the story to breathe and maximise the rich world Rook has created for us would elevate this already pleasing series to another level again.