Perfection, Class 3 Planet
Darragh Houston
“I don’t see what’s so perfect about it, is all,” Darragh noted as they walked through the long, winding streets towards their destination. The sun was warm and soft, the wind gentle and refreshing, and every building covered by some form of vegetation that gave the whole place a very ‘at-one-with-nature’ feel. It all seemed very… forced.
It didn’t look as though Keffa agreed with him, and she was staring at him as though he was a complete idiot. “It’s a Class Three planet! Class Three! If you were stranded on a Class Three planet you’d have to sew your mouth shut to stop all the food trying to jump in and keep you alive! That’s about as close to perfection as you’re going to get. That’s where they got the name!”
Darragh looked around at all of the total perfection and shrugged. “First of all, let me just say that the prospect of any kind of animal trying to force feed itself to me is just highly disturbing. Second of all, I guess I’m just not a fan.”
“Not a fan of everything being perfect… what could you possibly improve that would suit you better?” Keffa demanded, completely mystefied and far more annoyed about his opinions on this sort of thing than usual. Maybe it was the stress of meeting her old associate, or maybe she had some other kind of unfortunate connection to this place, but Darragh didn’t care either way – the simple fact that she was taking the bait made it all entirely worth it.
He feigned considered thought for a short time. “Well,” he finally said, “for starters there’s the air…”
She threw her arms up in exasperation. “You mean the air that couldn’t be any cleaner? The air that never blows harder than a stiff breeze? That air is what you’ve got a problem with?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Too clean, too gentle. A good windstorm makes you feel alive.”
“A ‘good windstorm’ would probably be lethal to ninety-percent of life native to this planet,” she said. “I doubt that’d be an improvement, even to you!”
“Ah, I don’t know,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “That’d be survival of the fittest, unless I’m mistaken. Might even do the place good to have a bit of a downpour.”
Keffa stared at him, her mouth opening and closing as words died on her lips before the light of understanding finally showed in her eyes. “You sonovabitch, you’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”
He held it together only long enough to see Keffa’s look of total self-disgust, and then completely failed to refrain from laughing. She didn’t look impressed, with him or with herself, but that only served to increase his own amusement.
With a quiet ruff, Chir reminded them that he was there. “We are nearly there. It would be good if you could remain professional when we meet with this ‘Vakno’. If half of what Keffa tells us is true, this Corti female has more connections than we’ve ever had, and has the power to really ruin our day. I’d like to avoid pissing her off.”
“Not a problem Chir,” Keffa said, giving Darragh a pointed look. “One hundred percent professional behaviour.”
“Oh yeah,” Darragh agreed. “One hundred percent.”
“Very reassuring,” Chir said dryly. It didn’t sound as if he believed them but as though he remained completely resigned to the inevitable fuck-up that was to come.
Their destination was not all that far from the spaceport where they had landed, and although public transportation had taken most of the rest of the way they had also been forced to make the rest of the way on foot once they started getting into the really expensive neighborhoods. Here grew the most luxurious gardens, spilling from the most extravagant buildings, and the few businesses that traded here were the variety that could afford to be selective in their clientele.
Most of them advertised their presence with some signage, or at the very least some of their wares made visible in the large windows, but there was one place that did not. One place with no windows, that would go unnoticed by any who did not look, and it was that place that was their destination.
This unassuming structure was the business house of Vakno, the name of a Corti that Keffa apparently knew well enough to have a history with, although possibly not a very cordial one.
They stood before the entrance, outwardly an unimpressive white and gold affair of light construction that Keffa assured them concealed a heavy security door, and waited for some kind of response.
“Do we need to knock or something?” Darragh asked, feeling increasingly uncomfortable at walking around this sort of neighborhood.
“She knows we’re here,” Keffa replied. “You can’t see the cameras, but they’re there. She’s probably hoping we’ll give up and go away, or she’s annoyed we’ve turned up without invitation, or she’s still pissed off that I broke off our business arrangement and left her holding the bag.”
“You did something unprofessional?” Darragh mocked, raising an eyebrow too high. “No! I don’t believe it!”
She glared at him. “Shut it.”
“Perhaps you could both ‘shut it’?” snapped a disembodied voice. Female, and clinically Corti. “Inside. Now.”
The door audibly unlocked, a heavy thunk that proved true Keffa’s assertion regarding its sturdiness. Darragh gave it an experimental push, and found that he had to lend it significantly more effort than any other door he’d seen since leaving Earth. By Earth standards it was the kind of door you used to keep out everything short of a charging rhino, out here it was probably on par with most heavy security vaults.
He inspected it more thoroughly once they were inside, finding the back of it to be polished steel about an eighth of an inch thick. If that was anything to go by, the front of it, hidden beneath the façade, would be exactly the same. He looked up at Keffa with a face full of suspicion. “She didn’t by any chance get this door because of what you did?”
She rolled her eyes. “Vakno’s had dealings with humans before me.”
That wasn’t actually an answer, but Darragh chose to let it slide. He didn’t doubt that Vakno might choose to shoot Keffa, but it seemed less likely that she’d have installed that kind of protection unless Keffa was a lot more dangerous than she’d let on.
“Down this way,” Keffa said as she made for the stairs, the only notable feature in the inside of the building. Apart from the stairs and the door it was just one big, empty and grey room.
Darragh rolled his eyes this time, making sure she caught the expression. “How fortunate we’ve got you here to guide us. We’d have been completely lost, otherwise.”
Chir sighed with volume, and that was enough of an expression of displeasure that they knew it was time to stop their bickering. Darragh whispered an apology and followed Keffa down the stairs, leaving Chir to take up the rear.
What waited below was nothing like what had been above. The room was heavy on closed cabinets, and more than one hummed quietly, indicating electronics within. Another two hums joined them, the unmistakable sound of very heavy weapons being charged, and as Darragh emerged from behind Keffa he saw the source of that particular noise: a pair of drone-mounted turrets that flanked a Corti female on either side, with weapons pointed straight at them.
Keffa raised her hands in the universal sign of ‘please-don’t-shoot-me’, and Darragh was quick to follow suit. She didn’t look too scared, however, and he assumed that perhaps this was simply all part of doing business with the Corti female.
Well, he hoped it was, because otherwise this might end up getting rather messy.
Vakno herself was seated in an extremely luxurious ‘power-chair’, the sort of thing that the egotists on Earth would have used to make a statement about who was in charge. On their side of the desk there were much more standard chairs, although she wasn’t exactly offering them the opportunity to sit down.
Instead she steepled her fingers, leant forward and scrutinised her former associate over them. She did not seem to be particularly impressed. “You’ve disappointed me, Kefani,” she said, “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, and yet here you are, darkening my door with…” – she waved vaguely at Darragh and Chir – “…these in tow. Normally I wouldn’t have let you in, or you’d be dead by now, or both, but I find myself curious as to what you think you can possibly achieve by pissing me off further with whatever new business proposal you are preparing to shit out?”
Darragh stared at the Corti, and then at Keffa, and wondered if he might have placed slightly too much trust in Keffa’s decision-making skills. Chir must have been feeling the same way, because it was only then that he worked his way past the two of them and stepped to the fore.
“We’re not here on Keffa’s behalf,” he said. “She may have brought me here, but the request and the business is mine. I am–“
“Chir,” Vakno finished, looking at him with an expression that conveyed staggering boredom. “I know. I wondered what kind of idiot would bring a Gaoian warship into orbit around Perfection, and decided to look it up. Imagine my surprise to discover that it was the legendary pirate lord who managed to lose control of two pirate bases?”
Chir frowned, marginally taken aback by the directness of the rebuke, but holding her gaze. “Those were both… extenuating circumstances.”
Vakno smiled tightly; there was no humour there. “They always are, but you’ll have to agree that there was a very significant common factor. Why are you on my planet? Your presence endangers everybody around you, and from my initial checking you lack the kind of funds required to secure my services.”
“Keffa has suggested that not all payments need be made in credits,” Chir replied, paraphrasing Keffa’s lengthy examples about the sort of work Vakno might put them up to should they request a trade of favours. “I have my own ship, and it’s full of Gaoian soldiers. Surely–“
“Had.” Vakno interrupted, a hint of genuine amusement entering her smile. “You can have that one for free.”
There was a confused silence for a moment, filled only with the three visitors looking at each other in incomprehension until the light slowly dawned. Darragh looked at Vakno, swallowing cold dread, and asked the question. “What do you mean, ‘had’?”
“I’m not in the habit of expanding upon my freebies,” Vakno replied, “but I am enjoying this. Your vessel left orbit shortly before you got here, and to be honest I’d thought you must have been on it until I saw you here.”
“But–“ Keffa began.
“No!” the Corti information specialist interjected, rising to her feet. “That much is all you get. Get out. Never return.”
There was no mistaking the finality of her decision, nor the menacing way the two turret-drones inched closer to them in a very intimidating sort of display. Chir looked at the two death-machines and said it for all of them. “I think we should leave.”
They did so, and did it in a hurry, wanting to get clear of the building and to somewhere they’d be able to get more information, and were unsurprised when the front door slammed shut behind them, and the heavy locking mechanism sounded off.
“Could she have been lying?” Darragh asked Keffa as Chir opened up his communicator and started trying to contact the ship. “She might have been lying just to get us out of there, right?”
“She might have been, but she enjoyed it too much, and besides,“ Keffa said, looking down at the increasingly frustrated Gaoian commander, “It doesn’t look like we’re getting any evidence against it.”
Chir gave up in a snarl. “I’m getting nothing!”
“I don’t understand how that’s possible,” Darragh said, although he had a few troubling suspicions. “Surely they would have sent word if they were being attacked?”
“We all know how that might have happened,” Keffa said, biting her lip slightly in hesitation that showed she didn’t much like what she was about to say. “We’ve been betrayed, and our ship has been stolen.”
“I don’t want to think about my own crew betraying me,” Chir said, gripping the communicator in what would have passed for a Gaoian death-grip. “Not again! What kind of commander does it make me if my crew are constantly turning against me?”
“Well…” Darragh started, remembering all of the genital-shooting that had resulted in them getting the vessel in the first place.
“No,” Chir interrupted, holding up a hand. “I know it isn’t me, and I know that Gaoian males don’t do this sort of thing. If something has happened to my ship, then something has happened to my crew.”
Darragh shared a glance with Keffa; she looked like she had her doubts, and he added them to his own. There was a certain naiveté to the idea that Gaoian males were above that sort of treachery, and it was not something that Darragh felt did Chir any favours. That bubble would need to be popped eventually, but for now it was more important to focus on what they were going to do next.
“We can’t stand here all day,” he said, “we need to decide what we’re going to do. We have no money, we have no cruiser, and we have no Doctor to patch us up if we’re injured.”
Keffa swore. “Doctor Grznk was on the cruiser!”
“Unfortunate if he’s dead,” Chir said. “He’s been with us since before Cimbrean, and it was reassuring to have a skilled surgeon around for when we needed it.”
“City first then,” Keffa said, making her first steps in the direction they’d come. “Someone at the starport might know something, and we’re going to have to find some sort of work if we want to eat.”
“I’m already hungry,” Darragh complained. “I would have packed a sandwich if I’d known we were likely to lose our feckin’ ship around a planet called Perfection! At least there are worse places for thing to go completely tits up.”
Breathing out a decisive huff, Chir turned to look up at Darragh. “Don’t worry, I won’t allow you to come to further harm. I– where’s Keffa?”
They looked around for any sign of her and found none. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere.
“Where’d she feckin’ go?” Darragh mumbled, trying to puzzle out how a girl of that size could vanish without a trace. There wasn’t anywhere they could see for her to slip away, and had she run they would have heard her doing it. For all intents and purposes Keffa had vanished into thin air.
“This doesn’t sit well with me,” Chir growled. “Something is wrong. Draw your gun, Darragh, I think we are-“
He didn’t finish his sentence, and this time Darragh saw the reason; a flash of motion as Chir was lifted in a shimmering beam of light, almost imperceptible against the bright light of day, and then gone into nothing in the course of a moment. It was just like something out of judgement day, but Darragh had grown a little dubious on the existence of the Catholic God, and figured that even if he was real he probably didn’t use Corti abduction beams. Someone or something had taken them, and Darragh was guessing that it wasn’t to help them. He drew his stungun, just as Chir had suggested, and fired directly above himself.
The discharge outlined a shape, a craft the size of an escape pod, that was moving into position directly above him. He knew he had to get away, that he had to run, and he stumbled back as he filled with panicked indecision. Then the moment was over, and he was being lifted into the air, just as he had when the Corti had first abducted him.
But back then he hadn’t had a gun, and even if he had he would have been too scared shitless to have done anything with it. That was not the case today; he fired off two more blasts, straight up into the insides of whatever was taking him, and the beam faltered.
The beam failed.
Darragh hit the ground hard, landing heavily on his side and hitting his head with enough force that for a moment the world was all white. There was a crashing sound, the unmistakable sound of something big falling on something bigger, and he twisted around to see a Corti-styled pod stuck in a very large hole in a nearby residence. Neither owner was likely to be happy.
But it was visible, and he knew it on sight; he’d seen them when he’d escaped the Corti all those years ago: it was a Corti abduction drone, deployed to take a single sample, and that could only mean that there were others. If he was going to get away, he had to do it before they managed to deploy another one to take its place.
Darragh got to his feet, finding plenty bruised but nothing broken, and hobbled for safety. He had to get to the public street, he had to get into a crowd, and preferably indoors, and he had to find some place where he could sit down and figure his way out of this mess. He’d barely made the street when the police arrived, pouring from their vehicles in the alien equivalent of riot gear and taking up position before he could change course.
They were there for him, and there were at least some Irbzrkian stunguns amongst all the kinetic pulse guns. He raised his hands in the interstellar sign of surrender, and experienced for the first time the pleasure of being hit with fifty-thousand volts. It seemed they weren’t taking any chances.
+++++
The Superior Firepower, subverted Hierarchy Command Cruiser
Askit
Xayn, the V’Straki interloper who’d somehow managed to impress Adrian simply by existing, eyed the human carefully as he considered his decision. He’d been doing that for the past (two minutes) and Adrian was beginning to look bored.
“You can make a choice any fucking time you like,” Adrian said, stretching his neck and rolling a shoulder to relieve the tedium.
“I have many options!” the V’Straki hissed back. “I am considering them carefully! I believe… do you have any ‘fives’?”
They were playing a game that Adrian called ‘Go Fish’ while Askit and Trix were actually working. The two Deathworlders had crafted a deck of cards together, according to Adrian’s specifications, and following a brief explanation of the childishly simple rules they were both playing to win. Askit, finding himself with little to do while a progress bar filled on the console in front of him, was watching them with some vague form of interest from the security cameras.
That’s how he knew that Adrian was cheating.
“Go Fish,” the human replied, grinning manically over his cards. There were three fives in his hand.
Xayn grumbled as he took up another card, a solitary seven that didn’t help his cause whatsoever. “Shit.”
Unlike the V’Straki, Adrian’s consideration of his choices took a mere moment. “Got any ‘sevens’?”
“Go Fish,” the V’Straki replied. It appeared that the compulsion to disobey the rules of a child’s cardgame extended to both species.
Trycrur, present by hover-cam proxy, was apparently watching the game with similar interest along with some surprise over what was going on. “Are they… are they both cheating?”
“Yes they are,” Askit said, smiling wryly. “I’m not sure what the point of it is supposed to be, since if this continues it seems like they’ll each end up with half of the deck.”
Adrian had drawn a card, an ‘eight’, which didn’t much help his hand at all, and Xayn was again considering his options. Fortunately he was somewhat less delayed in his decision this time. “Do you have a ‘six’?”
There was no need for Adrian to lie this time. “Go Fish. Do you have any ‘fives’?”
“I do not!” the V’Straki automatically responded. “Go-“
“That is fucking bullshit!” Adrian shot back. “You just asked for ‘fives’ like two fucking seconds ago. Why would you do that without any fives?”
V’Straki looked a lot like a Vulza twisted into humanoid form, just without the wings, and had a somewhat elongated face like brown leather with mouthful of sharp teeth as long as Askit’s fingers.
“It is part of my strategy,” Xayn explained, although he was less than convincing. “I aim to confound you.”
A blind man could tell that Adrian didn’t believe a word of it; raised eyebrow, knowing smile and outstretched hand all said it for him before he uttered a word. “Just give me the fucking card.”
Xayn grumbled, but did as he was told. He was rewarded with a look of triumph as Adrian put down a set of four ‘fives’.
“That is impossible!” Xayn accused. “It is not possible to have drawn more than a single ‘five’ since I last requested one!”
“I was aiming to confound you,” Adrian said, clearly pleased with himself. “It’s a fucking strategy.”
Askit turned the sound off as the two began to argue. “I believe there may be more to this game than the rules imply; at least there is if you play it the way those two are playing it.”
The progress bar finally filled, and Askit’s attention was diverted to the wealth of information scraped from the legion of Dominion databanks that had fallen to his cyber-predations. He filtered it for the results he wanted, running automated cross-referencing tools of his own devising until he finally had some answers.
“Does that say what I think it says?” Trycrur asked, still looking over his shoulder in an extremely irritating way, and Askit made a mental note to figure out how to create a display that only he could see which didn’t involve cybernetic eyes.
“It does,” Askit conceded, and pointedly closed out of it before any more secrets could be spilled without a big reveal. “I think we’d better get the others in on this.”
+++++
The Superior Firepower, subverted Hierarchy Command Cruiser
Adrian Saunders
“‘Go Fish’? More like ‘Go Fuck Yourself’,” Adrian said, keeping his hands over his hard-won ‘fives’. “You were doing the exact same thing!”
“That is different!” Xayn defended. “When I did it I had no idea you were holding three of them!”
Askit approached carefully from the side of the argument. “If I might make an observation, you were also withholding sevens.”
Adrian blinked at Askit as the information sunk in, then turned back to the V’Straki. “What the fuck, man? How can you complain about it when you were doing that as well?”
“Because I am losing!” Xayn growled back. “Cheating is not a viable strategy!”
Adrian slapped the table. “Cheating is always a viable fucking strategy!”
“Such things make you sound like my father!” Xayn complained. “He was always going on about strategy!”
“That…” Adrian said, raising a finger and pointing at the V’Straki. “That is a fucking weird kind of thing to say.”
Askit coughed politely, a repetition of something he’d obviously seen Adrian himself do at some point. “If I might interrupt this… whatever it is, I think you should know that I’ve found some things.”
Adrian’s attention was on him immediately. “About Jen?”
“Priorities, Adrian!” Askit scolded him. “It is of vital importance that we get the reptilian bio-weapon here an implant so he doesn’t kill everyone around him who isn’t protected.”
“So you found Grizzles,” Adrian ascertained. “Good job. Where’d you find him?”
“Perfection,” Askit replied.
“I said ‘where’, not ‘how’,” Adrian remarked dryly.
“Very amusing,” Askit said, oozing sarcasm in spite of actually seeming to be a little amused. “The planet Perfection is a Class Three world. That is how it got its name.”
“You do not seem pleased by this, Askit,” Xayn observed, studying the little grey alien with the kind of attention to detail only a predator could muster. “I would say you are… displeased?”
He didn’t have much in the way of eyebrows, but Askit managed to raise one enough to be noticed. “I would say you are… correct?”
“So, what’s the problem?” Adrian asked, interrupting any further exchange of pointless bickering.
Askit seated himself, folding his hands on the table. “There is a Corti female on that planet who goes by the name of Vakno. She claims to be an information specialist, but for the right price she’ll take care of more than just information.”
Adrian frowned. “So not an old flame then?”
“No fire of any kind is involved…” Askit replied, confused once again by the use of idioms. “But there are two reasons why I believe that she was their most likely destination. The first reason is that there’s literally nothing else on the planet I can picture Chir being interested in, and the second reason is that Darragh Houston was arrested in the vicinity of her place of business.”
“Darragh got arrested?” Adrian asked. “For the bank robbery? Or did some other shit hit the fan?”
“That would be… a mess,” Xayn mused as Askit pondered his next words. “There would be fecal matter everywhere…”
“The reports I’ve found show that some kind of drone smashed into a nearby residence, and when police responded they found Darragh alone at the scene, and peacefully detained him,” Askit explained. “He has since been held over the bank robbery. Prior to that incident their cruiser left orbit, without the lander, and did not file a route with system control. “
None of that stacked up to good news, and especially not for Darragh. Adrian reckoned that in the best case scenario, Darragh had gone down on his own and had gotten himself caught, but from having known Darragh it didn’t seem like the sort of mess he got himself into on his own. The most likely scenario was that shit was severely fucked, and that everybody was in some sort of trouble.
“Fucksake,” he said with a heavy sigh. “We should probably start by rescuing that dickhead. You reckon this ‘Vakno’ is a likely suspect behind this fucking shemozzle?
“Maybe,” Askit considered, rubbing his undersized chin as he mulled it over. “She’s cold enough, calculating too, but she wouldn’t do it unless she had a good reason, or was being paid a fortune, which would amount to the same thing.”
Xayn growled, a slightly grating hiss of a noise that expressed his frustration and confusion. If nothing else, the game of Go Fish had given them an understanding of each other’s expressions and mindsets, and in view of the differences between them it had been a little surprising they had so much in common. “I don’t understand this. Are we intending to rescue a criminal from legal authorities?”
“Yeah…” Adrian said, remembering now that he’d forgotten to ever mention that part of their reputation. “As it turns out we’re all criminals, but if it makes you feel any better the Galactic government are probably under control of the Hierarchy, and those guys are stone cold evil.”
Xayn growled again. “That only makes me feel very slightly better, Adrian Saunders.”
“Don’t worry,” said Askit, “you’ll get used to having the galaxy for an enemy. Some of the things people out there would do to Adrian if they managed to get their hands on him… truly awful.”
“Wait, what?” Adrian asked. He’d never actually heard about this, and apart from the people on Irbzrk and in government he hadn’t expected anybody to really know his name or anything about him, let alone plot against him.
Askit waved the matter aside. “It hardly matters. They all still think we’re dead, after all.”
“They’re probably about to find out that we’re not,” Adrian said. “Especially when we kick down the door to their prison and bust Darragh out.”
“Perhaps some disguises are in order?” Xayn mused. “If you are both despised as much as you say, it would seem prudent to keep our enemies ignorant of your survival for as long as possible. And then, when the time is right, we spring from the shadows and crush them!”
He pounded the table and sent the cards flying. Then, with a muttered apology, he leant down and started picking them up.
“So we go kick down the prison door, wearing masks, and rescue Darragh,” Adrian plotted, “and then we go visit this ‘Vakno’ and throw questions at her until we get what we want, and then we rescue whoever else needs rescuing. Sound like a plan?”
“It sounds like Plan B,” Askit said. “But with masks.”
Squaring the cards after making sure he’d found them all, Xayn looked between them in obvious confusion. “What is this ‘Plan B’?”
Adrian turned to him, a cool smile curving the edge of his lip. “That’s the one where we make people sorry they ever fucked with us.”
+++++
Vaulting Star, Gaoian Patrol Cruiser
Doctor Grznk
The best thing that Grznk could say about his situation was that he was still alive. That would have been more comforting if he wasn’t currently in hiding from enemy forces invading the starship, or if he wasn’t the only survivor. It had all happened so fast that there had not been any meaningful resistance, and from what he’d been able to tell the command deck had fallen to the enemy before the Allebenellin had even boarded.
Betrayal from within.
Grznk had survived because he’d broken the scanners in the medical room as soon as he’d realised what was going on. It had been quick thinking, and once upon a time he would have simply panicked and fall victim, but there’d been enough traumatic events in his life to let him recover his wits. He supposed he should be grateful to Adrian Saunders for that much.
“First step in any emergency,” he said to himself, quietly enough that nobody could overhear if they were in the same room, let alone walking through the corridor outside, “is to assess the situation…”
He paused, mulling it all over, and came to his conclusion. “The situation is completely fucked.”
Not a phrase he would have used once upon a time, but it seemed that proximity to foul-mouthed humans changed his perspective on many things. Right now he was stuck in the relative safety of his medical room. He had no way of knowing where anybody else was on the ship, or at least not without potentially alerting them, and as the ship was currently travelling faster-than-light there was no chance of escaping on the secondary lander.
An escape pod would allow it, but leaving on one of those would not only alert the enemy, it would also leave him in an escape pod and at the mercy of whomever these people represented. Not an ideal situation.
The bleak reality of it was that he was alone, he was stuck, and he wasn’t getting out of there without some help.
“I suppose it’s too much to ask to be unexpectedly abducted by Adrian Saunders for a second time?” he asked the universe bitterly.
As usual, the universe kept its answers to itself. All there was left to do was to sit and to wait for circumstances to shift in his favour.
It was not a good plan.
+++++
The Superior Firepower, subverted Hierarchy Command Cruiser
Askit
The hover-cam was waiting for him when he returned to his office, and Askit could feel the accusations emanating from it even before they were said. It floated closer to him, likely making its best attempt at a leer.
“You’re a little close,” he said dryly. “Unless you’re trying your hand at macro-photography, in which case I suggest that a better subject might be literally anything else.”
“You lied to Adrian!” Trycrur accused. “You should have told him what else we found.”
He frowned at the small drone, stepped past it and returned to his seat. He didn’t like speaking with the drone, there was something more disconcerting about that than through the use of the communications system, but if Trycrur insisted on this method then he may as well be in his most comfortable place. He regarded the little robot for a moment, leaned back into his chair and sighed. “We both know what would happen if I revealed everything. Those two are dangerous, and we have a moral obligation to guide them.”
The little drone tilted slightly, managing to convey an expression of serious doubt. “You are not the sort of Corti to whom I would ascribe a ‘moral obligation’, Askit, although I would not ascribe it to any Corti. You, however, are a criminal and a liar.”
“I am both of those things, Trycrur,” he admitted; it wasn’t like it was uncommon knowledge. “I am also interested in focusing our efforts on achieving our goals. You want a body, I want to crush my enemies and make a lot of money doing it. Going after Jen right now would be a distraction. We need Grznk, and from the sounds of it Grznk needs us, and I’m not going to let Adrian run off to find his female when she’s most probably either completely fine or already dead. We both know he would.”
Trycrur was silent, and the hover-cam drifted back and forth in a convincing fascimile of thoughtful pacing. Askit regarded it as it did so, waiting for it to finally stop.
“You’re right,” Trycrur admitted. “It doesn’t erase the fact that he’s going to be extremely pissed off when you tell him the truth.”
“I am not going to tell him the truth,” Askit said, “for exactly that reason. I’m not an idiot.”
“And once we have Grznk…” Trycrur began, leading off in the expectation that Askit would finish the sentence for her.
He obliged. “We will have him fix the V’Straki. Then we will probably have to deal with whatever has decided to mess with Chir, and then we can go and find Jen. I’d feel a lot better about heading into that part of space with a medic, an accomplished strategist, and two more humans.”
“And what about Point Zero?” Trycrur asked, referring to the mysterious origin point she’d discovered in Zero’s memories, and she’d asked him to check for any details surrounding the coordinates.
What he’d found had been a near total lack of them, to the point that it rubbed him the wrong way. That point in space was supposedly a singularity, and had absolutely no interesting features to it whatsoever. It was as boring as a singularity could be, and nobody had ever bothered to send a probe to inspect it. Nothing of any note had ever happened in that part of space at all.
Space was vast, so that wasn’t impossible, but given the source of the information it seemed improbable. The way it seemed to Askit, somebody was doing their level best to ensure nobody went anywhere near it, and nobody – Zero included – had any kind of information regarding what might actually be there.
“I’ve learned my lesson,” he told her. “There’s supposed to be a singularity there, but if it isn’t then it’s definitely something the Hierarchy want to keep hidden. Either way, I’m not going there unprepared, and we don’t share the news with Adrian until we’ve got something better to go on.”
“Had enough of flying stolen Hierarchy ships around singularities?” Trycrur asked wryly. “I can’t imagine why.”
Sighing again, Askit spun his chair and returned to his work. “I’ll let you know if I find anything new.”
+++++
Derktha, Agwaren Capital City
Jennifer Delaney
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
Jennifer Delaney was not one of those people. She did not enjoy the choking smoke, or everything being on fire, or the flying robots that were killing everybody with flamethrowers. Those topped the list of things that she didn’t enjoy.
She and Groddi were crawling, heads below the smoke where there was still breathable air, and had been trying to figure out what the fuck was going on when one of the robots had rounded a corner at speed. It was, like the ones on the mountain, a robot that reminded her of a floating metal crab, but as this one lacked limbs that turned into god damned fusion weapons it had one vital flaw.
It had something she could grab.
Although it had been moving quickly, incinerating everybody in front of it, it had needed to slow down to take the corner, and was above them before it realised what was going on. About that same time it had discovered it was now in the iron grip of an infuriated Irish girl and was being swung back and forth against the walls until it was thoroughly broken.
Groddi had been suitably impressed, first inspecting the ruined machinery and then staring at Jen as if he was having a revelation. “… So fast! Maybe you really are the Chosen One… that was a servant of the Dark One you just destroyed.”
“That’s nice,” she said, “but it’s just a fucking robot and it tried to cook us, so maybe you could be amazed later on? What are these things even doing here?”
As usual he failed to understand a word that was being said, and she sighed in frustration. Then he presented her with his sword.
“I believe you may be able to put this to better use, Chosen One,” he said, far more respectfully than he had previously been. “Please, honour me by using my sword to save us.”
“Sure,” she said, taking the heavy blade and checking it over. It was sharp, cutting into her probing thumb with only a small amount of pressure, and it was heavy enough for her to realise that her pre-Space-Babe self would never have been able to use it.
“You don’t even know how to use a sword,” Old Jen whispered from the reflection in the blade. “And what’s a sword going to do against flamethrower robots?”
New Jen glared at the reflection. “It’s going to kill them. I am going to kill flamethrowing robots with an alien sword. Today might not be so bad.”
“Apart from all the dead Agwarens?” Old Jen asked.
New Jen shrugged. “Their day might not have been quite as good.”
Time to ignore her past and focus on the present, she looked up at a befuddled Groddi and gave him a resolute nod that even he’d understand. He nodded back, and then she was away, sword in hand, chasing the source of the smoke for the machine killers.
They were easy to find, she just had to follow the screams. The first she came upon had just finished roasting up an Agwaren knight who’d been defending a group – possibly a family? – of cowering commoners. It turned to face her too slowly, and the heavy blade smashed through it in a flash of steel that drew gasps from her audience. It came away awash in plasma fire, blue flames licking at the sizzling blade. It was lucky it had a leather grip, or her hand would have been sizzled along with it.
“Shit, that’s fucking hot!” she cried out, sticking the damned thing into the ground while she donned her cold-weather gloves. She was overly-warm already, but better that than third-degree burns, and she still had a lot of heroing to do.
It was time for Plan B.
+++++
Unknown time, unknown location
Chir
For the second time in his life, Chir had emerged from stasis to find himself a prisoner to unknown forces. At least this time it didn’t look like he was also going to be made a slave, although at this point it was hard to tell whether that was going to be a good thing or a bad thing.
He was in a cell of sorts, a brightly lit white box with three walls and a forcefield strong enough to keep him where he was, wherever that might be. The box itself was not without facilities, coming with an uncomfortable bed, dispensers for water and nutrient spheres, and a metallic recepticle to remove his leavings. That wasn’t good, these were the sorts of things you put people in when you wanted to keep them for a very long time, and thanks to the stasis he could be literally anywhere in the galaxy by now, and might have been held for any length of time. He wondered if the two humans had been brought along with him, or if they were confined elsewhere, serving some other purpose, or dead.
It was the not-knowing that was the worst; that and the immeasurable boredom. He had no way of knowing how long it was before he finally slept, and no way of knowing how long he slept for, but when he finally awoke he was no longer alone: a solitary figure was outside his cell, standing in the featureless, grey corridor.
It was a Gaoian. It was a female. It was Layla. He couldn’t get to his feet fast enough.
“Layla!” he said, his eyes darting around her for any signs of a trap or coercion and finding none. “What is going on? You’re supposed to be on Gao!”
“I was, briefly,” she said coolly, her eyes fixed on his. “I was coordinating the strategy to bring you into our custody, but I came once you’d finally been captured.”
“You orchestrated this!?” Chir asked. He was aghast that the mother of his cub would act against him so coldly, and with such premeditation, for no apparent reason. “How? Why?”
“I coordinated your capture, Chir,” she replied. “I am not the will behind it, and if you are looking for someone to blame then point the finger at yourself! Did you imagine that you could go on plundering forever, or that you could retire and nobody would come seeking reprisal?”
“Then you’re working for someone?” he demanded. “Why not simply kill me and have done with it?”
“Who I am working for is unimportant, Chir,” she said. “What we want is paramount. You will work for us, and should you survive… well, if you do a good job you may even get to keep living.”
Chir couldn’t repress a growl. “Why would I possibly accept those conditions?”
“Because you don’t wish your cub to come to harm,” she replied flatly, her hard eyes leaving no doubt of her capacity to make good on the threat. It was hard to believe that this was the same female he had lain with, whose company he had so enjoyed, and with whom he had shared his secrets; discovering that it had all been a ruse felt like a black knife twisting in his chest.
“You are a monster,” he said with absolute certainty. Gaoian females were renown for their protection of each other, and above all their children; it was unheard of for one to actually threaten the life of her own cub. “What is so important that you need to threaten me with something like that?”
She smiled, undoubtedly satisfied at how quickly he’d come around to her point of view. “The job is simple: I want you to kill that annoying Corti hacker, Askit, along with his human friend. Cheer up, Chir, you’re going to be the man who killed Adrian Saunders.”
Chir growled back his obligate protest, more guttural than he’d had cause to be for a very long time. “You fucking bitch!*
The smile faltered for a moment, and she even flinched, but it was back a moment later as if it had never left. “That,” she said, “is how you got into this mess.”
+++++