Tension crawled over Alaya’s back and shoulders. Isham stood back there, behind her. His presence pulled in and thinner than nanowire, he still set Alaya on edge. Because my survival instincts still work.
Vora, the member of her team most likely to murder Alaya, was on the docks at that very moment. Isham and Alaya watched from a service access hatch. A major part of stealing from a guest was not letting the theft get traced back to Nissa. Bahl-Mau could have a reputation as unsafe, that was fine. But the gangsters there required a reputation for trustworthiness or their fellows would avoid the place, along with the wealthier marks.
It was also why the tourist had made himself such a natural target. They weren’t welcome anywhere in the black. Their credits were more than welcome, but they weren’t. And when they traveled out here where spacing was high on the list of acceptable punishments, no one minded if a tourist or two got tossed into the void and their property confiscated by dock authorities. Especially if that property found its way around the station in the form of gifts.
Activity in those docks looked like a normal day now. Even the damaged area had been cleaned up so there was little indication of the accident aside from the cordon. There was no sign of Vora either. Gaz had stealth capabilities built into her chassis, but they weren’t quite up to the caliber of Vora’s. Funny whoever set her up didn’t bother with chem. Though she knew which hatch Vora used to enter and exit, Alaya couldn’t actually see the hatch opening or closing. This was only a guess, but Alaya suspected Vora’s projection capabilities exceeded the size of her frame.
“That is one damn secure ship.” Vora’s voice sounded next to Alaya’s ear.
Cute try. But Alaya had been waiting for it, so showed no reaction when she said, “but did you get control? Or at least plant the device?”
“I planted it, but nothing happened.”
Alaya kept the irritation off of her face. “Good. Nothing is supposed to happen. Not until I activate it.”
“And then?”
“And then I give the ship to Nissa. Simple.”
Isham nodded and started walking back down the tunnels. “I’m just supposed to accept that. You have a magic box that can take over a void ship? A fucking SenoAg coupe no less?”
Alaya had practically drooled when she’d read that detail in the file. SenoAg Industries produced a line of the finest void ships in any Loop. They were expensive as the best kinds of sin and could take a serious beating before they dropped their passengers off at the Styx. “The only bad thing about SenoAg is their dig-sec. They used to use Yamadana Tech’s flight and control package, but they switched over to Goengruen.”
Vora slowed, but still scowled. “Cause they’re the best.”
“Ha. No. They are the most expensive. And if you need a course plotted, a firing solution calculated, all while your personal AI butler preps dinner and installs your replacement kidney, done. Their processors are fast, efficient, and chunky. But their OS is rotten crap. And techs like me love nothing more than owning an elite system like that and un-fucking the security holes.” Alaya activated one of her implants. It pinged the black box she’d given Vora. The SenoAg was already purring back to her with streams of data readouts and statuses. “The ship’s already mine.” She pointed up at the aft warning lights. “Hello Vora. This is Alaya.” They blinked in time with Alaya’s tone.
Her scowl deepened, but Isham actually laughed. “Can you make it dance?”
Sure, he was dangerous. But Alaya had lived longer among the dangerous than the gentle. And Isham was growing on her. “Wanna take her for a spin? She’ll dance in the black.”
Isham shrugged, this time less indifferent and more “name the time.”
Alaya took a look back at that ship. It had a raptor-like appearance with a fake cockpit in the nose which itself had a slight crook to it. Those wings might have supported the ship in atmosphere, but that made no sense with suspensor technology, which the SenoAg definitely possessed. The owner had given the poor ship a terrible name: The Musk Duster. A part of her wanted to kill him just for that. He definitely did not deserve such a fine vessel.
There were good reasons to take over a ship before rolling her captain. Not the least of which were her weapons, which dock control could usually override, but not always. Ship out of the way the only thing remaining was for Alaya and her team to hit their VIP.
Off to the guest wing of the station. Security here would be tighter than the rest, tighter than the docks even. Alaya didn’t come here often, only when she had to hup some high roller’s luggage all the way out from the docks. Inevitably they stiffed her when she finished.
It soured her even more on their as of yet nameless target. According to the file Nissa sent, he was a cyl-born rich boy out of some inner ring. Standard augment package, a few combat mods Isham had to be aware of, but nothing extreme. In terms of weapons, the only thing he registered was an old Nomad II. That gun was the first grudging ounce of respect Alaya was willing to give their target.
The second model of Nomad material pistol stood among the top three personal weapons in the solar system as far as Alaya was concerned. In part because her father adored those guns. But the technical specs spoke for themselves. They loaded mass, not rounds. Anything, up to and including good old H2O could be used as ammunition. Nomads fabbed their rounds as needed and when full could fire continuously for hours before running out. With a switch, a gunner could change between HE, Incendiary, and of course, normal bullets. The only thing the gun lacked that other models might have was a guidance system for propelled rounds.
Security eyed them as Isham and Alaya walked through the guest quarters. They were dressed like visitors, but with a keen-enough eye, those folks might have tripped them up. Not today though. The teams were more interested in threats at the entrance to the guest area than people already inside.
Alaya had tried to get the room next to their target when she’d registered. But it was taken. In a fit of pique, she’d almost had whoever happened to have that room ejected from the station, but that would have required looking them up in the first place and breaking into a different system. More work in other words. So she just reserved one room over. They weren’t bashing through a set of guest walls anyway. There would be a quicker way to piss Nissa off later, Alaya was sure of it.
Vora had already laid out most of their gear, including Isham’s weapons and armor. Alaya’s bags remained packed in the corner. Their little sneaky-lady did not care for Alaya. And frankly, Alaya thought she could soak her head in liquid nitrogen. They were never going to get along. Attitude or no, Alaya couldn’t dispute the woman’s skills. Only an idiot would look at her rig and imagine Vora survived on the level of her technology alone.
“Has he left his room?” Isham asked the question as he went over his weapons meticulously. Most of what Alaya saw she recognized. Her respect for Isham rose with each item. As did the bulb of fear in her belly.
Nanowire, sometimes erroneously called “monofilament” wire, lay in spools on the bed. Isham checked each one and loaded them into hatches on his arms and calves. Next to where those nanowire spools lay were a pair of GRG Combat Drones. The tech otaku in Alaya’s brain wanted to scoop them up and sniff them. Those drones were two of the most dangerous weapon platforms outside of void ships and combat borgs. A good drone operator — Kirk might have learned to if not for, shut that down — could pilot those drones to total victory over a platoon of baseline marines. Not that anyone with a reasonable neuron in their skull would field a platoon of baseline anything.
Isham loaded the drones into his chest, beneath his shirt. Second to last he slipped a quartet of blackened carbonized blades into his forearms and shins. Alaya might have been concerned, but she’d grown in the void. This kind of load out wasn’t even a special occasions deal for someone like Isham. Or her.
A pair of twinned Kytani pulse pistols finished up his weapon selection. They were carbon-blackened like his blades and had prayers scribed along the barrel; pulse weapons didn’t technically require barrels, but often possessed them because the more advanced weapons could control the pulse spread using magnetic modulation along the barrel. Her coproc translated the prayers as she studied the barrels. The left said: “While I have the Power and the Ability,” and the right said, “I shall teach Truth and Virtue.”
Not at all what she expected to find on Isham’s guns. Even her mother’s prodigious instruction had never included such a quote. It took her coprocessor a solid minute to find the reference. It was a Zoroastrian quote. To cover up for the delay, Alaya quipped. “So… why do I feel like that absurd arming sequence is your only nod to your idiom?”
Isham cocked his head to the left, another odd gesture for the otherwise expressionless man. “Because you are astute.” It was a tiny smile, so thin it might have been a film grain cast over her optics. And then it was gone.
“Are you two ready?” Vora had her hand on her hip and her appearance camouflaged so there was no way to tell what expression she wore.
Alaya could imagine. “I have to unload my gear.” It took her a second to rewind. “You didn’t answer Isham’s question.”
Vora twitched. “The tourist has been locked up in there slogging himself all day.”
“Really?” Alaya wrinkled her nose.
“No, twit. I don’t know what he’s been fucking doing.”
Alaya’s hand stopped on the bag. “Why not? You didn’t toss a drone or take any kind of peek in there?”
“Bitch, I tried, but I couldn’t.”
Ignoring the insult, Alaya’s belly rolled. This was the first sign of deviation. “What went wrong?”
“I don’t know. He has some kind of fucking shield up around his room.”
“What kind of shield? Arcane? Nano-exclusion? What?” This time, Isham spoke. His tone was even and his face neutral as usual. But the fact of his interest raised Alaya’s alarm level one more notch. Every question he posed had been the same on Alaya’s mind.
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck.” Every job had a tangle, a little wrinkle that might or might not blow the whole fucking thing up. And here it was. “I’m going to check right now.” She grabbed a drone magazine from her bag. Where Isham carried two combat drones, Alaya carried over thirty. None of her’s packed the kind of punch the GRG combat drones did, they were mostly scouting/sab loaded.
“Don’t go out there alone.” This time Vora moved to intercept Alaya.
Temptation reared its head in Alaya’s throat. Now you’re serious about the job? But if she said what she was thinking, Vora would only become a bigger pain in the ass. Not that she had much room in that regard. “Okay. You’re covering me?”
“Of course.” The scorn was obvious in Vora’s tone.
“Then you’re on support Isham stay here unless you hear shouting.”
“Yes ma’am.” He walked over to the faux wooden chair near the door and sat down.
Ducks in place, Alaya waited for Vora to expand her camo field. Once it was in place, Isham opened the door and the two women waltzed out of the room in tandem. Synchronizing their steps was simple compared to baseline because their cybercircuits sought to move them in unison upon command.
They passed the second doorway where a muffled voice argued loudly with someone else. Alaya appreciated the fact that maybe someone else suffered under their own personal Vora too. At the target’s door, Vora and Alaya stopped. The former cocked her hip and remained in place while Alaya deployed a drone at the door.
Finesse made all of the difference here. Most anti-intrusion fields kept out all living things, all digital signals, or had some anti-nano capability. The key was to find out which one, how to counter, and to keep the owner’s own security system from detecting the intrusion.
Alaya’s drones were kitted out for this purpose, tweaked by herself and Gaz. Probes on the drone failed in several ways and almost sat Alaya back on her heels. This tourist was suddenly interesting. His ship had practically been a joke to take over, what with the simple vulnerabilities Alaya had exploited. But his personal quarters were a nightmare. Very rarely did one encounter a field which blocked a broad spectrum of intrusion. Whatever this guy was using was high end and might employ active counter-measures. Meaning just trying to step into his room might disintegrate or space one of Alaya’s crew.
“Fuck.” She kept her curse over their tight band and signaled Vora back to their room. “We’re down to plan D in terms of surveillance.” She waited to report until back in her room.
“Why’s that?”
“Because this guy is running a fucking alpha-cherry security field. I’ve heard about shit like this, but cracking it will take a tick or three.” Alaya thought about it for a moment. “Actually this plan F. We’re going to cut through at least part of this guy’s setup.”
Vents. A long, long time ago, films and TV loved to show people crawling through air spaces they would never manage in reality. But out here in space there was no shoving something out of sight and in place where a hand couldn’t access it if needed. Even in the time of ubiquitous drones, no one wanted thousands to die because all of the batteries were down and no one could reach the life-saving reset button. A place like Bahl-Mau, built late enough for such constant, direct access to be critical, still had good sized vents with little security between them other than the grating itself. Unlike a door or other fixture material had to pass through the vent or the occupant could suffocate.
It was worth a try.
“So what, are we just waiting?”
“Yes.” Alaya had already shifted what was happening in the room to her coprocessors. Her main attention transferred to her drones. Three of them flew up to her vent and out, into the main plenum and through toward their target’s room.
Their next door neighbor had lowered his voice now, but he still sounded angry with whomever he was chatting with. Alaya recorded the whole thing with her coprocessor for later review. Maybe it would be funny.
Nothing came out of their target’s room. Before she sent her drones through the vent opening and out the exit, she set them to checking for the security fields and either adapt or deactivat them. One of the drones just looked through the grating visually.
Their target sat on the anemic couch visitors received with his eyes blank and staring up. It was a sim trance. He could have been commanding his own drones for all Alaya knew. Unlike Isham, who could have been practically any age or nationality, this man was extremely fair complected and grey haired. His skin was wrinkled, but not excessively so. He was one of those wealthy who chose to leave his apparent age on the older side. It made sense, especially for men who would borrowed authority with grey hair and age.
Drone scans clocked a major series of cybernetic augments installed in the man’s body. This was on the level Alaya would have expected from a cylinder-born person. He’d received some of those near birth and would have gotten new ones every year after.
On the table next to him was a field generator. Chills ran over Alaya as she scanned it. They were going to have trouble stopping that field. For one, the generator itself was huge powerful enough to fill a much larger area. Which meant the effect would be concentrated. For two, Alaya couldn’t find the generator’s make or ID anywhere in any network she had access to. It was either a custom piece or something more sinister.
“Fuck.” She pulled her drones back. Plan L it was then. “I need you to setup a GRG in the vent system Isham. You need to take out a field generator before we can breach the door safely.”
“Point the way.”
“You’re just going to shoot it?” Vora sounded unimpressed.
“Unless you know a way to sneak something through that field, shooting it’s our only chance.” Alaya addressed Isham. “It’ll burn out the first few rounds, so go full auto. Silenced if you can. If not, don’t sweat it.”
She outlined the plan for both of them. This would be noisier than she wanted, more likely to result in their target’s death, which she would have liked to avoid, and it was a little monkey-brained. If she’d had time for clever, she might have tried to concoct something more elegant.
New-fangled field generator, I would like to introduce you to your great grandfather several times removed: Isaac Fucking-Newton.
The second they left their nondescript guest room, Isham came with the two women. The plan was frustratingly simple as far as Alaya was concerned: barge in, grab the loot, and leave. If Mr Sim woke up and attacked, then he would suffer Isham’s displeasure. Or pleasure, it was hard to tell with Isham. The key was, they had to wait until the second GRG put enough rounds into the field generator to stop it.
Those shots were utterly silent. The field generator’s explosion was not. It burst like an overripe capacitor, flames, goo, and displeased smoke all escaped from the black casing. That sound was also the go signal for Alaya’s crew.
She had the door unlocked before Isham sent the kill command to his drone and opened a microsecond after the explosion. Time around her slowed down as every processor and ever core augment narrowed her focus to his instant.
Vora shot ahead of them, angling away from the main room toward the principle’s bedroom. His room was laid out identically to their own, so Vora’s path was utterly clear. Either she didn’t care, or she didn’t consider their target a threat as he sat up from the couch.
Vora died in a spray of metal and flesh as the man on the couch pointed at her. The level of spellcasting such a feat required hit Alaya with a heavy spike of fear and adrenaline. Unfortunately for the man on the table, he’d seen through Vora’s camouflage and killed her instead of Isham, who was the much bigger threat. Twin blades scissored through the man’s neck. Normal metal, swung by weak fleshy arms would have caught on the spinal column, especially the titanium column their target wore.
But Isham’s weapons were anything but common and his strength was vast considering his size. The head flew off as Alaya let out a heartfelt “fuck”. Vora was an annoying bitch, but losing someone on her first mission was a bad look.
Isham completed his movement, with his back foot down and his hands at his sides. Alaya shouted at him to run as she heard a supersonic whine coming from their target’s body. He moved fast, Alaya had seen Gaz move at her top speed and in that moment, she was pretty sure Isham beat her. Like a depleted uranium round fired out of a railgun, Isham hit Alaya with incredible force. But he didn’t break or injure her. He grabbed her and threw her in front of him, out of the room and into the lane outside.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The ensuing blast spun Alaya side over side away from the room. Sensors flickering and red lines across her internal scans, Alaya ignored them and forced herself to her feet. Incredibly, the explosionhadn’t damaged the walls or structure, but had instead thrown a five meter column of flame out of doorway. Where Isham had been standing.
His body lay crumpled forward, smoking and missing all cloth and most of its flesh. He was probably dead. Next to their target’s room, the man who’d been staying there finally came out and Alaya had a look at him.
“Fuck.” It was Kowal. Of course it was.
He’d hardly changed since he’d killed Alaya’s mother and father, tried to kill her. Face, build, even his hat and suit were the same. There was something different about him now, a wildness at the edges of his eyes. Or maybe he was just reasonably panicked about the suite next to his own exploding. Very reasonable to panic over such a thing. Alaya looked nothing like the eight-year old girl this monster had terrorized, so he didn’t recognize her.
She lurched toward him, still ignoring the flashing warnings from her cyberware. Kowal had gained feet and menace in Alaya’s brain over the years. Seeing him so afraid and reduced, relatively speaking, only made her want to catch him and crush him then and there. All she had to do was reach him.
Her legs began to shake as she moved. Those red flashing warnings were actually not supposed to be ignored. Alaya’s hindbrain knew that, but the rest didn’t care. Shaking trunk and unsteady balance aside, Alaya continued after Kowal. The coward sprinted away before smoldering arms wrapped around her torso and pulled her back.
“There is nothing in there, ma’am.” It was Isham’s voice, raw and mechanical. “Your body is severely damaged. You are going to enter shock within the minute if you are not stabilized.”
“What just happened?”
“Our visitor was someone other than what they represented. And they were certainly casting remote into the station.”
“He exploded.”
“Indeed. If not for your warning, I believe we both would have been incinerated.” Isham lurched himself and said, “I wonder. Have you attempted to access station security since you woke?”
Too many systems in Alaya’s body had redlined. All but two coprocessors were offline and both of those were occupied in keeping her body alive. Emergency systems she’d put in place had already begun broadcasting her location to Gaz. Which meant Nissa and whoever else wanted could also locate her. “What happened?”
“We are already flagged as criminal elements.”
“How long was I out?” Fuck it. Alaya kicked on her real implant. If the whole sector of space knew she was a fucking princess, they would just have to deal with it. Time synchronized and she discovered her systems had been down for less than two seconds. The order to make Alaya and her team criminals had gone out before they’d even started the job.
They were being setup.
“Who the fuck was our target?” Alaya slurred her words as she tried to look up at Isham. He was all metal and chassis now. She hadn’t done her homework properly. This was all her fault, Isham, Kowal, and… gods please don’t let Gaz be hurt.
— — —
Time worked against Gaz now. She could access her personal credit accounts, log into her work accounts as well. But the moment she did either of those things, algorithms would begin seeking answers to broad-mandate questions. Questions like: “If Gaz is out of her room and checking her accounts, why isn’t Ms Feng?” All that had to happen to ruin Gaz’s decade would be for one of those algorithms to complete its sequence by posing this question to one of Ms Feng’s personal guards.
Bad times.
For now, Gaz kept off the net and off of the radar. Security personnel could manage that much better than regular citizens. Normally. But Gaz couldn’t log into anything to give herself clearance. So she took a new shape and acted like a drudge. It was a convenient disguise right up until she reached Nissa’s sector of the station.
Before the place had looked alert, a few more guards with armor and slightly better weapons. All veneer of peace was gone now. Two large mech walkers stood guard at Nissa’s. They were both armed with ship-killer plasmas and ballistic munitions. Just one of them, technically any human holding one of those weapons in their own arms, could destroy the entire station in a few minutes.
Nissa had two of them. Live and scanning anyone who happened by. Gaz did not need to attract their attention. The scanners on something like that might note an anomaly with her chassis.
Worse times.
Reaching out to Alaya might get her killed. Waiting to hear from her might drive Gaz mad. Madness it was. Gaz found a darkened corner of the station and hunkered down. Many timers ticked down around her, hemming her in virtually and mentally. Eventually they would find Ms Feng. It didn’t really matter who “they” were. Once the information hit her guards, Gaz would become target number one for the entire station. Maybe the entire Loop.
Based on what Gaz had done to her, Ms Feng had at least four more hours before she woke up. If security had not flagged Gaz within three hours and thirty, she was going to contact Alaya. By then they would need to make preparations to escape.
Gaz had almost completed her settling in to wait when an explosion shook this section of the station. At once her sensors ran a scan of the blast and location and found it in the guest area of the station. Not two seconds later Gaz received an alarm she’d learned to dread: Alaya’s life signs had gone critical.
Normal people only perceived time in a rather gross fashion. At the very fastest, a person could perceive and respond within a few milliseconds. Neural processes — purely mental — occurred at a speed close to that of sound. Such a speed set the perceptive limit for humanity over at least two millions years of life. In the last two thousand, that limit was shattered.
Gaz perceived time down to the nanosecond scale. The people she ran by appeared still next to Gaz, not because she moved so quickly, but because her perceptions had been tuned to their maximum resolution. Every system in Gaz’s body had gone active. She’d ceased analyzing the information she’d stolen from Ms Feng. She’d stopped her chem trail tracking or her drone monitoring. All that mattered to her was Alaya’s safety.
Drones swarmed ahead of Alaya, flying faster than she could run, they reached Alaya before Gaz did. Horror might have stopped a baseline human. Parts of Alaya’s face and front were burned off. Cyberware the two of them had installed in her exposed spewing fluids and sparks. Another cyborg supported Alaya, appeared to be helping, not hindering her. Otherwise Gaz would have turned her weapons on that cyborg. Her drones began immediately administering sedatives, anti-bacterials, and regeneratives to Alaya.
Attention thus fixed on her charge, Gaz had failed to keep proper track of her surroundings. It was the cost of turning every system to the same end. What would have normally kept her alert and aware had essentially been turned off.
Force akin to a steel press, applied in a millisecond crushed Gaz’s skull. If not for an old lesson, one of her earliest, Gaz would have died then. But she kept her cranial matter in the locus of her gut, where most opponents wouldn’t bother to hit.
Proximity drones fired off their warnings far too late to help Gaz. And they sent their payload containing the identity of her attacker: McRory. He needed no mechanized suit to destroy Gaz’s body if he wanted.
The question before Gaz was how to respond. A hulking cyborg, stronger, faster, and with technology likely as advanced as her own had flattened her in one blow. Either respond in kind or fake her own death. It was an easy decision.
She’d personally witnessed what happened when the brain pans of cyborgs in her line were crushed. It was a simple matter to twitch her body and fire off a few convincing sparks. McRory paused over her and shoved her head into the metal of the wall, like he was trying to scrape her brains off of his knuckles.
People who thought like him probably kept their brains out of their skulls too. The only person Gaz had known directly with any similarity to McRory had done the same. The question was where? If she scanned him, it would tip him off she was still alive. And surprise was the only chance Gaz had. She had two limbs and one chance.
So two guesses.
One was the lower waist; the same place, more or less, Jaree had claimed to keep their brain. The second choice was her own location: right in the center of her gut.
McRory chuckled scornfully as he rose and shook his fist. “Bitch wasn’t…” He’d looked over at someone for a moment. It might have been the only opening Gaz would get. She drove one hand up through his crotch and the other two feet up through his hara - his belly. Losing a mental bet with herself, her nanites speared brain tissue through the upper section.
McRory shouted in rage, raising both fists before his systems panicked and shut down from neural trauma. Gaz moved with her liquid grace as McRory’s aborted shout continued and he brought his hands down where she’d been.
This time she risked the ping and scanned him. Sure enough she’d hit his brain right through. The nanites in her carapace had already eaten through the tissues. McRory was dead. But his cybernetics had a berserk mode. Standing next to him was the silhouette of a woman, who might have avoided another person’s notice, but not Gaz. The woman had activated some kind of stealth generator and vanished off of most sensors.
Gaz had other methods of tracking people nearby no stealth generator could fool. McRory had been speaking to her and she was trying to escape before McRory’s berserk caught her. So Gaz dusted her with luminescent nanite particles, covered the whole area with a burst of them as she condensed her body down to the size of a sparrow and flapped up to the rafters. Berserk, McRory brought his hands down on the woman, crumpling her, but not breaking her stealth field until the second blow. She had nothing against the unknown woman, now lying there twitching in puddles of her own fluids. A berserk like McRory needed to kill everything in sight before he settled.
Now that her senses were back in the now, Gaz detected the rocket launch before the projectiles flew at her. Sparrows were not the most aerodynamic birds, just the most ubiquitous. But Gaz didn’t need to be aerodynamic to avoid those rockets, she needed to be quick. Mechs had moved to the front and back of the large concourse to hem her in. They weren’t firing their real weapons yet, so Gaz swiveled toward the one closest to McRory’s now dormant corpse.
It was gruesome, but she had an idea.
Flechette nanites burst from firing pods along Gaz’s wings as she aimed toward the mech. The pilot knew their business and strode out of the line of fire like a consummate professional. It was almost shame to kill them.
Gaz’s bird form collapsed among the wreckage of McRory and the small pile of broken cyborg he’d created. Ignoring his memory banks and personal settings, Gaz inserted a nanite thread which, in the absence of his brain, allowed her to drone the massive warrior. Her own body as the harness, she grabbed ahold of the other stealthed cyborg and pulled her up when McRory rose.
A part of her giggled when she looked at McRory’s load out. When the pilot of the mech who’d been her target took a faltering step back at the sight of McRory’s resurrection, Gaz did laugh. It wasn’t kind to laugh at someone’s death. But in fairness, they’d fired the first shot. Silent as the void, McRory charged. It was difficult not to appreciate the elegant design which allowed almost three tons of cyborg to sprint forward at full speed without making a huge racket.
Calamity roared over the concourse as McRory hit the mech. If she hadn’t seen him in action already, Gaz would have bet on the mech over McRory. But he tore the armored suit open with the same speed and ease an adult handles a simple bag of kale. The way he’d bent and folded the cockpit, the pilot did not survive.
McRory spun without a sound and swatted two rockets out of the air before they contacted with him. The second mech pilot had a set of balls on them. Maybe too big. Gaz had McRory tear the ship-class rail-gun off the mech. Normally there would be no firing such a weapon, but McRory and Gaz had access to cybermorphic nanites. Before he’d finished turning, Gaz had control over the mech gun.
The second pilot fired their rockets a little too late. Two hole appeared in the center of their mech suit, both of them leaking fluids. Alarms blared over the station at the breach Gaz had just ripped in the hull. This was best, really. It would be easer to tear her way through airlocks than it would be to fight her way.
Besides, she was incredible close to Alaya now and nothing stood in her way. Armed with a railgun capable of punching a hole in the station and the rocket pods ripped off of the first mech, no one stopped McRory as he charged toward Alaya, smashing through anything in Gaz’s way.
She found Alaya standing next to a strange man. If she’d had a clear line on him, Gaz might have shot him on principle. Her medical drones had ignored him, but her sensors had picked up the way he’d taken care of and protected Alaya while she was injured. With his skin burned away, Gaz could make out the the details of his guy’s cyborg chassis. He wasn’t on McRory’s level, or on Gaz’s. But he was close. His combat augments were top of the line outside of speciality shops. The pistols at his sides had seen use. Pulse pistols were uncommon and ideally designed for the same kind of black work Gaz had done once upon a time: these were assassin’s weapons: designed to take out biologics without damaging the cybernetic or arcane parts.
Surprisingly, the faceless cyborg stepped between McRory and Alaya. “Sorry sir, but our mission was a bust. We’re ready to report.”
Nissa. Alaya had been doing a job for the underboss…
Before Gaz came up with a fitting retort, the cyborg pulled his Kytani pulse gun and fired once into McRory. At the same time he grabbed Alaya around the waist and rolled away with her, keeping her on the opposite side from McRory.
Few things would have stopped Gaz and forced her to turn her whole processing system on events so thoroughly. He’s trying to save her.
“Alaya, tell your erstwhile savior to stop running from me, please. We need to get out of h…”
“Mistress?” It was Darby’s voice, over the general line, the same one Gaz was using. “Is radio silence ended? Someone is lurking around the our flagship. Should I turn our weapons on him?”
“What?” Gaz and Alaya spoke at the same time. “Who the hell is it and do you have weapons control?”
“I am sorry, but dock authorities have not released the weapons lock. Oh! The intruder has gained access to the aft docking ing ing ing…” Darby started glitching as a voice purred over their general line.
“I just knew I could not trust you, little mouse.” Gaz had not met Nissa directly, but she didn’t have to guess.
“Well bitch, you’re the one who set me up.”
“Ah yes, but your little illegal cyborg slave killed her back up. Well played.”
Neither Gaz nor Alaya had a chance to respond as a railgun round hit McRory in the side, right through the location of his brain. It did nothing to the huge man, but it did put second hole in the station.
“You’re just going to take us out from a distance?”
“Oh yes, better to take you out with railgun than dirty my own claws.”
Gaz smiled to herself. McRory hadn’t really ousted her from their security room. She’d been there personally and though she’d had to cut off communication with the drones she’d left there, she didn’t have to leave it off. Activating those had been as simple as bending her foot. Having them perform a VonNemann maneuver in the security control room had taken a little time. Enough for Nissa to find them and start firing. But as the woman bragged, Gaz’s remote drones reached critical levels in the security control system.
They hit their own version of a berserk mode. The only thing Gaz didn’t mess with was the airlock control systems for the railgun holes already piercing the hull. She locked Nissa and her people out of their computers as hard as she could, including burning several hard lines which led to other sections of the station.
She kept their ship on lockdown, considering it had been invaded. But something had gone wrong with the dock controls. At least one other group — probably Kowal — had sabotaged Bahl-Mau IV.
“Grab Alaya and follow me!” Gaz shouted at the skinless cyborg who consoled with Alaya long enough to nod to her and jog up.
“Kirk.” Alaya’s voice came out over the comms. “Please save kirk.”
“You need to rest, you’re badly injured.” Gaz didn’t want to be the one to say it, but they needed to get Alaya more cyberware, pretty soon. Some of the damage could be permanent this time. And if not this time, the next.
“Promise me you’ll save him.”
“Yes. Of course.” It was etched in platinum now. Gaz consulted security’s map of the station and found where they were keeping Kirk. It was a bleak discovery when she realized it. But she’d made a promise. Hopefully they could save the boy and reach their ship before whoever was aboard managed to steal it.
McRory and the skinless cyborg — Isham — made excellent time to the stocks. Two hapless humans guarded the stocks, but they laid down their weapons and ran off when faced with the prospect of fighting McRory. Handy.
Fortunately Gaz had already sedated Alaya by the time they reached the stocks. Kirk’s body had been recycled already. He was in big trouble, and would probably be spaced or worse in the next few days. A few pounds of flesh and some attached cyberware floated in a quartz vessel fed by a digital system in the base which sustained the neural matter and, usually in these cases, tortured it too. Poor kid. Gaz would have just killed him and recycled him.
She pulled him into their bundle of fallen cyborgs and turned. McRory’s frame split in two as a series of anti-material rockets hit him right in the center of mass. Nanomachines melted under the heat, and if he’d had any brain matter left, McRory would have died.
Playing dead had worked last time so Gaz set him down and let him twitch. A figure slithered about the doorway, undulating with her torso to keep herself upright. Two lower arms carried a large anti-material rocket launcher and the two upper stroked her chin.
“Well well, if it isn’t our mouse and her little assistant.”
Gaz spoke over the general band. “We’re sorry, Alaya cannot come to the line right now, would you like to leave a…”
Rockets exploded overhead, ending Gaz’s sarcastic response. “That’s enough. Come out so I can confirm you’re the cyborg I want or I will rocket Alaya back into the afterlife.
“Mmm, I suspect you’ll do that anyway.”
“And yet you have no choice. Do it or watch your friend die.”
A single eye blinked at Gaz from behind Alaya. It wasn’t her, but rather the skinless cyborg. Could she trust him? He’d saved Alaya so far. “Fine. Give me a second.” Gaz prepped a sequence in her drones in case she was about to die. She released McRory, though left herself in control of his chassis and the other stealthed chassis. Then she stood up as if she’d been hiding among the debris.
“Selen was telling the truth.”
Fuck. That could only be Selen Feng. “About what?”
McRory didn’t move, but simply made sure his chassis had control over the rocket pod still.
Nissa made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “It’s wasted on you.” If she’d fired at Gaz, Nissa might have killed her. Gaz was entirely focused on McRory and keeping Alaya alive.
So was Isham.
He moved with a blur, standing in his current position one instance, three feet away the next. When he’d planted his foot at the end of his impossible long step, McRory emptied her pod into Nissa.
The explosion ripped out chunks of the section, exposing the stockade to the rest of the nearby station, which included the docks. Covered in dust and bits of ash, Gaz and the others appeared fine. The concussion didn’t even affect Alaya.
McRory picked up Gaz who picked up Kirk and the other chassis and ran ahead of Isham and Alaya toward the docks. Right as their ship took off, ripping pieces of the landing gear and weapons systems off of the hull. Gaz briefly considered having McRory toss her at the departing ship, but that would have separated her from Alaya.
The other ships in the docks were already breaking lockdown. With as many explosions as the station had suffered, there was no reason to be surprised by the flight.
Gaz unlocked every ship in the dock and considered which one she was going to take.
“You need a ship, do you not?” Isham addressed Gaz.
“Yes. Why?”
He pointed to a SenoAg coupe large enough to fly twenty people comfortably. “How will we get on?”
Isham raised Alaya. “She already took control of it. Can you do anything about that?”
“Really? Excellent.” Gaz rushed toward the SenoAg, “The Musk Duster;” an odious name, and called up the usual security protocols she and Alaya used. As expected, Gaz hit on Alaya’s control frequency at once.
The door of the coupe popped open and Gaz dragged herself in by way of McRory and closed the door once everyone was in. Then she fired up the ship’s engines. Aboard the station, security was going nuts while Gaz continued to play with them. She locked out weapons controls aboard the station and released her own shipboard weapons to herself.
A coprocessor, one watching the monitors, interrupted Gaz’s focus. Four people huddled outside their primary airlock. Two of them clutched at the third’s hand. Tiny little humans, both of them clutching a different looking doll. A woman held the hands of the two children, her dirty brown hair matted to her face, back hunched by the weight of a small crate hung from her shoulders. A man jumped and waved at the camera. He was as dirty as the others, all of them with the look of drudges about them. Gaz noted black tattoos and scars peeking from beneath the adult’s shirts, but couldn’t see enough to gauge their significance.
“They will likely die with the others.” Isham’s voice was monotone as he made his observation. “We should depart now.”
Alaya was in the medical creche already, recovering with the help of an incredibly advanced treatment and augmentation system. All they needed were the actual parts and the ship’s autosurgeon could have upgraded Alaya as they took off.
Gaz didn’t initiate the launch sequence. Instead she stared at the monitor with the family standing under the camera. One of the children held a small bear. He or she, it was impossible to be sure at such a young age, looked oblivious to the danger his parents understood with panicked clarity. That child was on an adventure. The other child held a more human-like doll, something printed locally from public files. Unlike her younger sibling, this girl knew what was going on. Her eyes were blank and empty. Horror had already driven her beyond the point of breaking and this little girl could not know fear anymore. Just like Alaya. It had taken years to purge that stare from the young woman’s eyes.
She opened the door.
“This is foolishness, but I will guard the ramp.” Isham moved with a soldier’s precision and abandon. Gaz felt the man’s old war scars from across the room. Alaya would have missed it, but Isham wasn’t just a vet, but something else. He’d been put on ice and only woken to kill, Gaz could practically smell the freezer burn on him.
“Oh thank you, oh thank you so much!” The man burbled over himself as he hugged Isham and practically wept into his fleshless metal frame. Would he have been so glad to see Isham like that in other circumstances? How bad was it out there?
The woman wore a blank expression nearly the twin of the older child. They didn’t let each other go, but the youngest charged into the ship with a belly laugh, holding their bear tightly as they waddled in.
Gaz redirected her attention back to the conn. This was a fine ship. With the dock controls released and free, Gaz only had to enter a simple command sequence to liftoff and turn to exit. The AI handled the rest. She could probably issue verbal commands without a problem. That could come later. The last thing she did before she broke contact with the computers in Bahl-Mau station was to record the flight data for Alaya’s flagship. Before disconnecting, she pulled down as much data as she could regarding Kowal and the pirates, Nissa, and even Selen Feng.
Whoever had taken their ship had a solid lead on them. Out in the void catching up with someone meant they were standing still. Ggraphene-thin margins split the difference between losing a target and keeping up with them. She set her AI to full follow mode and used the course Bahl-Mau had recorded for the flagship’s trajectory.
Then and only then did Gaz relax. Alaya was safe. She was safe. And they had a plan. She set coprocessors to review the flight data they’d captured starting with whoever had stolen their flagship.
About the same time she spotted Kowal boarding their ship, dozens of alerts fired off through the ship as proximity alarms joined them.
“Ah. It was inevitable.” Isham noted the event on his display and returned to watching the family Gaz had saved from Bahl-Mau IV. Or rather from the now blasted remains of the station. Most likely, Nissa and the other bosses, who themselves were projected into the station had decided to end their little game.
There was no question who was directly responsible for this: those wealthy bastards who’d callously murder millions for amusement. But then again, Gaz and Alaya were distally responsible. They’d shaken the pillars of heaven knowing heaven could respond with meteors.
Automated processes added to Gaz’s lifetime death toll. Did she split the numbers with Alaya or was she responsible for more or less than half? What was she going to tell Alaya when she woke up?