Princess

"I'm still skeptical why ZashaSec subcontracted a smash and burn." Gidget commented absent-mindedly. "I was under the impression retaliations were one of those 'in-house' kind of jobs."

"Who cares?" Havoc countered with his usual blood-thirsty indignation. "More slanties for me to kill. More bodies, more pay."

"You're lucky none of our colored co-contractors are here. Otherwise you might come down with a case of lead poisoning, meatbag." Chop, the group's third, snarled robotically; her voice barely distinguishable as female—or even human for that matter—from years of surgical enhancements.

"Try anything and you'll be in for another round of replacement parts, Chop." Havoc retorted.

"Did you just make a pun of my name? Coming from anyone else, I'd say that was cute but I'm sure you did it by accident."

"It was actually a play on words." Gidget said.

"Stow the chatter you three." Princess finally barked over the kill-team's shared comm network. A trio of grumbling acknowledgments came by way of response. "Clancy, you got a location for us yet, or do you need me to come over there and motivate you?"

"Nothing ferrocrette yet- oh wait, that's something."

"Get on with it."

"Airlock oh-five-nine-four on level eight was just manually opened, safeties and alarms are being blundered through— really amateur stuff. Looks like someone is dumping something."

"Are we close enough to catch them." Princess asked.

"Not a chance, but you'll pick up a hot trail. I'll stay jacked-in a relay directions."

"Too afraid to earn your danger pay?" Havoc sneered.

"If you want to get shot on a side-hustle right before our next contract be my guest." Clancy bit back.

"Squabble on your own time, we're on the clock people. On me."

Princess took off at a jog, Havoc trotting beside her in the cramped service corridors of gawking workers. While an armed man and woman in matte grey-black armored bodygloves was a sight worthy of such attentions, it was the two following behind that drew the most attention. Two giants of steel stomped along at a brisk walk, their heightened stride keeping easy pace with their jogging companions.

The first suited warrior's armor was recognizably inhuman, just as Chop was herself. The arms were long, a textured abrasion saw worn on each forearm like a pair of bucklers from the tech savage worlds of old. The body of the suit was all jagged slabs of chitinous plating that resembled some insectoid guardian caste, blending functional protection with lethal elegance of form. The legs, though massive on the scale of a normal person, appears to be thick, stumpy things of serrated hooks and barbed edges. Where there should have been a head on the armored giant, there was simply a circular neck sporting maggot-carved holes around its circumference.

The second metal goliath, looked like a huge trash can on legs. The bizarre sight would have been near-comical, if one ignored the twin gimbaled machine guns where its shoulders should have been. The head, which resembled something between a omni-corder camera and the turret of a tank, was a mass of lenses, antenna, sensors, laser modules, and cyan stencil of a smiling face with leering eyes over fanged teeth. The smiling face was a good match for Gidget's maddened genius and his deviant technophilia. A passerby questioning where the insectoid suit's head had went might reasonably concluded that it had been scrapped for parts to adorn the trash can.

"Why are all these cunts staring at us?" Havoc grumbled.

"I wonder…" Chop said, robotic voice dripping with sarcasm.

"They probably haven't seen Powertechs in the flesh, if at all." Gidget answered, completely failing to read between the lines.

"You solved that mystery, Gidget." Princess mumbled, shoving aside the workers too stunned or too slow to get out of her way.

"Take your next left-side exit. Then you should have line of sight on the airlock." Clancy commed via the net.

"Got it." Princess answered. "Techs, hang back. Havoc take point, I'll back you up. Aim is less than lethal until fired upon, these might be locals just getting their socks wet. And Havoc…"

"What?"

"Make sure you have non-penetrators loaded this time. We don't need another Syrenia incident."

"I'm not an idiot." Havoc complained, checking the magazine of his battle rifle and swapping it out for another.

Princess didn't need her pentachromatic vision or helmet optics to see the red and black tipped rounds being exchanged for green polymer ones. She could only blink her eyes in momentary disbelief at his stupidity. What kind of moron used armor-piercing twin-stage incendiary/explosive discarding sabot rounds for any mission in the void? Forget about the risk of explosive decompression or flash fires or civilian casualties from over-penetration, just from cost-efficiency and target selection the idea was completely lacking in common sense. She restrained a weary sigh and stacked up opposite Havoc. He thumbed at his fire-selector, which was already set to full-auto, and Princess hefted her shotgun in reply.

The doorway opened, Havoc charging right while Princess faced left, covering the dumbass. A pair of men in business suits smartly raised their hands in surrender when they found themselves looking down the barrel of Princess's eight-gauge combat shotgun. She flicked her muzzle in a shooing gesture and they both turned back the way they came.

"Oi, flat faces!" Havoc bellowed behind her. "Whatever you're doing in that airlock, you better get your yellow asses-"

Blind gunfire burst from the inner airlock. Three shots pinged down the hall in sparking ricochets, hitting nothing important.

"That's it. I tried to be nice." Havoc grumbled before opening up on full-auto.

For all of his shortcomings—and there was no shortage of those—Havoc was something of an idiot savant when it came to combat. The enemy had decent cover, were adequately armed and had better knowledge of the battlefield than we did. I didn't even have time to scrabble into cover or signal the Powertechs forward before Havoc had emptied his magazine of rubberized bullets into the airlock and slapped a fresh magazine in his rifle.

Bouncing polymer slugs beat nine kinds of hell out of the goons hiding in the airlock. One of them made a run for it, his pistol still locked in hand under a broken wrist. Princess sighted down her shotgun and sent three spreads of polymer shot down the hall at knee height. By the time Chop and Gidget arrived, the fight was already over.

"Did you get anyone on our list?" Clancy commed.

"We'll let you know when we finish checking their pockets." Princess replied. "Gidget, blacklight."

Princess didn't need the change in lighting, but it helped everyone else catch a fraction of what her pentachromatic eyes saw all the time. She could see that the bodies were all still warm but cooling already on the infrared spectrum and in ultra-violet she spotted blood splatters and invisible ink tattoos with all the usual gang symbology. She saw other things too, things that slithered and swam and crawled and flickered out of reality all at once, but these were a recent addition to her lifelong mutation that she was learning to ignore.

"Well, I guess that explains why they hadn't flushed the airlock yet." Chop noted, hoisting bodies one-armed as if they were stiff-limbed puppets.

Princess pulled her gaze off the unreal non-things she couldn't begin to understand and examined the mundane contents of the airlock. Aside from men with heads and necks caved in by Havoc's liberal fire spray, there was a plain cargo trolley with a half sealed crate on it. Two bodies were sandwiched inside, a man in a knock-off suit leaking blood out of partially cauterized bullet wounds and the other… It was a girl but mangled as she was, it was hard to identify much beyond that.

"He's hot." Princess mumbled, barely believing what her eyes were telling her.

"I've seen better." Chop said, following her gaze.

"How can you tell? All these slanties look the same to me." Havoc said. A half-second later, Chop tossed him one of the bodies she'd been holding.

"Search that and shut up."

"Not like that. His body temperature is up, not exactly common for people on death's door." Princess clarified, digging out her trauma kit. "Chop, get him out of there."

"Why are we wasting time on a not-dead guy?" Chop asked, tossing another goon's body onto Havoc out of hand.

"From the looks of it, this is a punishment. Pair that with the timing of ZashaSec listing our smash and burn, and I'll put a brick of X-10 on this guy being involved somehow."

The background chatter of information being relayed to Clancy faded from Princess's mind. She wasn't a surgeon and there was only so much she could do with a basic trauma kit, but hot guy's major injuries were all through and throughs and what was weirder was some of them had already been cauterized. It was almost like who ever had done this didn't want him to bleed out, they wanted him to suffer. Princess heated up a char wand and set to searing every leak she saw. Hot guy writhed under her, blood loss and delirium robbing his movements of any strength. Sealed in her voidsuit, there was no way for the smell of burning meat and bloody ruin to reach her nose yet her mind readily supplied the reeking scent from memory. Lastly, she sank a combat stim into his neck and hoped he wasn't to far gone to be useful.

The dying man's grey eyes flicked open, his pupils massive and unfocused. He bolted upright into a half-sitting position before his body put an end to any resistance he might have been planning. He slumped against the airlock wall, quick labored breaths amplifying the adrenal shaking all across his body. His eyes would glaze, he'd blink heavily and then they were open wide once more, the drugs in his veil revitalizing the flesh but clearly not his mind.

"What…" He croaked

"You were about to get tossed out of this airlock by your friends over there. We stopped them. Now you're going to tell me why I didn't waste my time by saving you." Princess said.

"I… I did some paintings for the Void Dragon." The bloodied man shook his head then sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. "This was my paycheck."

"The Void Dragon?"

"He called himself Mister Satou-"

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Did you speak face to face?"

"Yes."

"Could you pick him out from a crowd?"

"Yes."

"Where did you meet him?"

"Bar called the Goodnight Moon, level nine."

"Good, then your coming with us." The bloodied man furrowed his brow. "Unless you'd rather I flush you out this airlock instead?"

"Fine, I'll go. But I want something in return."

"Your life isn't enough?"

"I want off Tengoku, I don't care where you're going but when you leave you're taking me with you."

"If you travel with us, you'll need to work. What can you do aside from catch lead?"

"I can drive."

"We don't need many drivers off planetside."

"I can handle a gun."

"We've got that handled. What else?"

"I can sneak around. Get into places I shouldn't."

"We're mercs, not spys."

He was floundering and she could see it. With a sly glance over her shoulder, Princess made sure the rest of her team were still busy sorting through their kills.

"How about you tell me why you're nearly ten degrees above heatstroke while you're one foot out the door?"

"How did you…" The bloodied man looked down to his charred wounds and made his own assumptions. Princess felt no need to clarify the misunderstanding. "I can't really explain it. It just sort of happened one day."

"Like magic?" The bloodied man just nodded his assent, the look in his storm grey eyes not quite pleading. "Fine, I'll take you with us, but this conversation isn't over."

Princess swapped over to the kill-team's comm net.

"Clancy, we need directions to a bar called Goodnight Moon somewhere on level nine. Havoc, we catch anything?"

"All four have gang ink, three with murderer's tears and one with a red hand. Some are still breathing."

"Nothing great but not too bad." Chop concluded.

"Snap some flicks for the client, then toss them all in the airlock." Princess ordered. "And be quick about it, we've got a nest to clear before the rats scurry away. Our new recruit here will brief us as we walk."

"My name is Hiiro."

"Sure it is, Rookie." Havoc chided.

"Congrats, Rookie, Havoc just volunteered to carry you."

Princess had only been half kidding, but there was only so much combat stims could do to perk someone up. They found a service lift with Clancy's guidance and its occupants were 'persuaded' that they'd much rather take the stairs. The scantily clad women that Princess had seen everywhere on this gangster's paradise of a station watched her kill-team's progress with dead eyes and quiet hatred. In her years starhopping and those before, she'd seen enough colonies of human debris that she had a pretty good idea of what would happen to most of those women after her team left. Classicism and elitism both had a disparaging tendency to rear their ugly heads in the unfrequented fringes of human controlled space. Princess slapped her helmet's faceplate and focused on the mission. A few hundred meters from the bar, Princess called the kill-team to a halt.

"Gidget, you're on shock and awe. Barge right in the front door and firebase. Chop, you're running clearance, Havoc and I will hang back by the door and snag any runners. Once the area's secured we'll make a quick sweep and tag any faces. Rookie, that's where you come in. Everyone clear?"

The group all made their affirmations and stalked into a loose square formation, the armored giants take the lead. The plated titan's took off at a dead sprint and then some, each thundering step reverberating its way though the entire hall like the frenzied drums of war. The human warriors followed at a considerable more measured pace, slowed as they were by Hiiro's sagging weight.

By the time the powertechs were at the bar's entry, they'd gained a seventy-meter lead. Chop didn't even slow as she bulled through the panicked bouncer, her wrist saws bisecting the man even as she tore his limbs from his screaming body. With a skipping, shot put throw, Chop sent the ruin of a man sailing through the bar in a high arc that ended in a grisly clatter on a stone table. Gidget was three long steps behind her.

"Please stand for tonight's entertainment." He announced. If any of the stunned gangsters inside followed his instructions, Princess didn't see it.

The paired machine guns on either side of Gidget's suit opened up in a throaty staccato roar. Legs splayed in a bracing squat, the weaponized trash can played its fire left and right in shallow double helices. By the time Princess, Havoc and the Rookie made it to the bar's entrance, Gidget had filled the lofty room with a hail of slightly less-that-lethal polymer bullets numbering just under two-thousand. Chop was bulling though the barrage with equal impunity from Gidget's firespray and the desperate snapshots of surviving gangsters hiding under tables or behind overturned furniture. Some might consider the gross display of fire to be overkill—but as Havoc had once put in one of his brighter moments—there was no such thing in mercenary work. There was only 'open fire,' 'reloading,' and 'I'm out.'

"Reloading." Gidget said, two minutes into his fusillade.

The silence was nearly as deafening as the gunfire had been. There weren't any brave souls left in the bar to try and make use of the opening. A quick headcount turned up over thirty dead or dying men and half that many terrified women who'd come through the firestorm lightly bruised but otherwise unharmed— physically at least. With Gidget's avatar of recycled death looming by the doorway, Princess and the others entered the bar.

"Anyone who want's to leave here alive, make a single file line by the bar." Princess barked. The serving women reluctantly obeyed, any defiance they might have held long since beaten out of them. "Rookie, start checking faces on the ground. You too, Havoc."

The women—and girls freshly blooded by puberty she now realized—were all tagged with infra-red slave serials on their necks. It was another all too common practice in void-based petty fiefdoms. Princess felt a disgusting pang of relief that she'd been born a mutant, her red-violet eyes and albinoid skin sparing her from such a fate. For a moment she wrestled with the familiar dilemma of her upbringing; would she rather be desired as these girls had, or be persecuted as she had? Neither prospect was very particularly appealing. So what was this feeling in her guts? Resentment? Jealousy?

Princess was tempted to remove her helmet, to show these girls that they'd been saved by a woman, yet she didn't. She'd done that in the past when she was young and naive, and she'd been burned; rejected by those she'd rescued because of the color of her skin and that of her eyes. These girls weren't free, she hadn't really saved a single one and in a week's time someone else would be having their way with them. That was the harsh truth of reality.

"Go, get out of here and try to lie low for a while." Princess said.

Some of the younger girls didn't budge, but a motherly type with dead eyes took their hands and pulled them away from the carnage. No matter how jaded Princess became, there were still gaps in the armor around her heart. One of the first lessons she'd learned about being a hired gun was that feelings got more mercs killed than the bad guys did. She couldn't save everyone, so she needed to focus on keeping her own alive.

Princess surveyed the scene, taking in the full scope of the bar for the first time. Therm-optically, the bar was quite striking between the chill air currents mixing with the heat of bludgeoned bodies, splattered blood and corpse piss. Without the bodies and blood, it might have been nice enough on its own to a norm's eyes, but the window made her pace quicken. Not for reasons of beauty or passion or any of that garbage, but purely because she now saw just how close they were to explosive decompression. She'd only been spaced once and it was an experience she never wanted to repeat.

"Rookie, did we catch any big fish?" She asked, tearing her attention away from the window.

"No one I recognize so far." The Rookie answered.

A door shunked open somewhere near the window. Havoc was already sprinting towards the noise before I'd even spotted the door, his rifle in hand. Gidget was still behind everyone, guarding the bar's main entrance, and Chop was collecting bodies above me to the left of the room's dance floor.

"Oh shi-" A gunshot cut Havoc's curse short. A burst of return fire stitched a line up the right wall, every fiery shot exploding on impact and leaving scorched craters around tiny punctures.

A clump of four thugs wearing light body armor stormed the room; half wielding laser carbines, the other two with shot cannons. They were fanning to the right, headed for the solid protection of the bar, firing as they moved. She dove for the cover of an overturned table inches ahead of a strobing lance of crimson heat.

"I'm pinned!" Princess yelled.

"These guys are kinetically shielded." Gidget stated passively. His words were a tinny buzz barely heard under the torrent of fire he was laying down. "Rubbers aren't going to cut it."

The fire on her position lightened enough for her to poke her head out and shoot back. Princess didn't bother aiming her spreads, instead scanning the battlefield at a glance. Havoc was dragging himself towards the Rookie to her left. Our latest addition had looted a pistol and was taking slow, aimed shots around his cover to some effect. Gidget was slowly wading his bulk into the fray, twin streams of gunfire roaring from his weapon mounts.

Chop was bulling her way up the center, laser fire and shot hammering into her, stalling her momentum with every ringing impact. Ten meters from the bar, one of her legs started dragging. Then at three, he left shoulder threw out a burst of sparks and the arm went slack at her side. But now she was on top of them, clubbing guns away and raining anvil blows with her remaining fist as the thugs scattered.

Princess's magazine clacked empty, a replacement of lead slugs slotted home a second later, her fire barely stalling. The Rookie dragged Havoc into cover and borrowed his rifle, ending the firefight seconds later. The only sounds to be heard were the hissing metal of cooling barrels and the drips of shattered bottles spilling their contents.

"Havoc's down." Princess commed. "Swap to lethal ammo and sweep the room again. I don't want any more surprises."

While her team limped to obey, Princess headed to Havoc and dug out her trauma kit again. The Rookie was still holding Havoc's rifle, teetering on his feet and watching her instead of making sure they didn't get shot in the backs. With the powertechs on perimeter detail, she didn't waste her breath chewing him out— that could wait until later. There wasn't anything immediately fatal, Havoc's chestplate having caught most of the pellets that weren't buried in his arms or guts.

A new voice cut through the air.

"I'd like to turn myself over to whomever just slaughtered all those criminals. I'm an innocent bystander who they were holding hostage!"

Princess looked up and saw a slimy lizard in a perfectly pressed three-piece suit standing, empty hands upraised, in front of the bar's massive window. He had all the right traits to look like a legitimate salary man but the way his neutral smiling face looked over the room filled with human wreckage ruined the illusion. There was something else, something predatory lurked around him just beyond the edge of her enhanced vision, that made her muscled tense in readiness.

"Rookie," She whispered. "You recognize this one?"

The Rookie snapped off a five-round burst, starting at the slimeball's thigh and stitching up his chest until the final shot bored through his skull. The explosive rounds blew gaping holes of ragged meat through the slimeball, but the bullets didn't stop there. Dense cored sabots flew, straight and true through meat and bone, impacting the reinforced window hard enough to leave fist-sized dents in the layered glass. What was left of the slimeball's body toppled sideways, revealing a gore-smeared window that was still intact.

In the time it took Princess to blink in disbelief, reality caught up to her fears. A crack split the splattered viscera, connecting the five dents and spreading.

"It's gonna bust! Get Out NOW!"

The Rookie grabbed one of Havoc's arms, Princess the other and they frantically heaved him towards the entrance, Chop limping away from the bar opposite them. Gidget was already clear. The sound of acrylic grinding against itself was deafening, a cobweb of expanding fault lines that would drag them out into the void to die any second now. If she survived, Princess knew that sound would haunt her just like that hull rupture from years past still did.

When they reached the entrance, she looked back to make sure Havoc's legs were clear and immediately wished she hadn't. A massive crack, five meters tall had formed in the center of the window, thin fingers branching from the main body every foot of the way. Suddenly, inevitably, the window failed.

The escaping air blew out of the room, taking the window with it in a howling detonation. The changing pressure turned the bar's entrance into a funnel for the rest of the orbital's atmosphere to jettison from. In an instant, Princess found herself caught in a hurricane trying to drag a downed comrade clear of a methodically descending emergency bulkhead.

There wasn't enough traction on the metal floor for her to hold her ground. Opposite her, the Rookie was already bowled over against the wall, barely able to keep himself upright. Havoc's dead weight was dragging her back into the venting room, inch by dreadful inch.

"Someone help me!" She roared, hauling herself against the wind and sliding two steps back for every step she gained.

Gidget shifted his cylindric bulk, forming a crude windbreak. The tempest flying into Princess redoubled from the other side, staggering her closer to the precipice. A massive gauntlet took Princess's chest in hand and lifted her like a doll. The gale slamming into her back and rushing under her feet made her stomach lurch as she and Havoc was drug clear just as the emergency bulkhead sealed shut.

"Well, that was exciting." Chop said breathlessly. "Do you think that'll come off our pay?"

"Indubitably." Gidget answered.

The sound of Princess slapping the Rookie across the face was almost as loud as the sound made by his head hitting the wall.

"You're lucky we have a deal, otherwise I'd kill you here and now for that stunt." Her voice was ice cold.

The Rookie lost the fight with gravity, slumping to the ground in slow motion.

"I didn't know you could kill with a slap." Gidget mused. Princess didn't feel the need to correct him.

"Clancy, we're headed back to you and then we're extracting. Call ahead and let the Shadow know we've got wounded meat and damaged steel."

"I'm seeing alarms about a hull rupture. Was that Havoc again?"

"What do you think? Now, let's get the hell of this rock."