The Marine swore. “Are you hurt, Mute?” His friend raised a shaky thumb before Mel and Pingu joined us.

“What happened here?” the rabbit asked before realizing that Belle escaped. “Shit! Pingu? Secure Mute with you in the cockpit.” He then spun towards Braun and us: “I saw there’s no armory on this ship—but she has other ways to make our life miserable. Braun—come with me to the reserve. Ali and the wet rag—check the reactor’s room below.”

“Take those talkies, guys!” the Soviet added before throwing a bulky radio to my partner, then rushed back upstairs to the main deck.

“They just gave us orders,” Ali whined, turning off the device. “We don’t follow orders. Plus, Roger Rabbit called you a ‘wet rag’…”

I groaned. “Let’s catch this garlic-roasted lizard, we’ll deal with Ricochet and his anger issues later.”

Nevertheless, the hunt for Belle Sassie proved to be more complex than expected. Plunged into the dark after the sabotage of the alternator, the Interceptor’s narrow passageways turned into her element. Her slender body and scales allowed the Freak to sneak into every nook and cranny. We were all afraid of falling into an ambush, especially in the technical chamber. The latter was dimly illuminated by less-than-helpful emergency ceiling lights.

“Nothing in the closets?” asked Ali. Playing randomly with the buttons, she turned on the loud talkie. “Crap! This shit’s heavier than my gun!”

According to the stacks of mini-cassettes, we had to be in Mute’s apartments. Besides the magnetic tapes of songs, the Freak owned the most colossal collection of Kung Fu movies in the system. “Let’s proceed to the Baltimore. I’d also love to snoop through this new top-secret engine,” I replied. Jumping from shelf to shelf, I quit inspecting the cicada’s VHS.

“Nothing for us either,” announced Braun’s voice through the talkie, “but some knives are missing from the kitchen—be careful.”

“Reassuring, Comrade!” Ali grunted. Struggling with the heavy device, she finally tossed it on Mute’s berth.

The narrow passageway leading to the reactor may have suited the Cicadomorphan medic, but not my human. She had to crawl to cross the six meters separating us from the anti-radiation airlock.

“Without those red diodes, we would be in trouble,” Ali sighed. She was sweating copiously because of the air heated by the Baltimore. “This would be perfect for a little ambush.”

“Now that you mention it…” I had noticed them when we were halfway through the passageway, but thought it was just a reflection of the backup ceiling lights. However, two white eyes were obviously watching us from Mute’ stash.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” my partner shouted, drawing her huge .50 caliber as fast as she could.

We heard the whisper of a reptile and footsteps through the darkness. Panicked, my associate fired several times. The bullets whistled over my ears, turning us both deaf. Each flash of light emanating from the cannon drew the salamander’s shadow against the walls.

After each shot, Belle Sassie got closer before her knee hit me in the snoot. I was then dragged forward by Ali’s foot as my copilot was hauled to the reactor chamber where she immediately stopped firing, fearing that the bullets could ricochet on us—or worse, smash the Baltimore’s control instruments.

When I landed in the security airlock, the power had been restored. Alas! We were still at the mercy of a medium-well Sassie Salamanca, eyes filled with rage, waving a knife under the throat of my most precious belonging: my nourishing hand.

“Alright… Sassie? Belle? Miss Salamanca? What should we call you?” I asked, trying to defuse the situation despite a sizzling tinnitus.

“Shut up! Let me think!” cut out the terrorist in a strange hoarse voice. Her burns had mostly healed thanks to her salamander’s DNA. Dark blood was dripping from a fresher wound on her hip. A bullet had passed against her human flesh.

The white light suddenly turned blue and the pressure changed inside the room as the reactor started a new cycle. The unexpected metallic rattle startled Sassie Salamanca, who planted her blade under her hostage’s chin. My sapiens counterattacked immediately by giving her a violent nudge in her bulging eyes then on her opened wound.

Victory! Ali was holding Sassie at gunpoint while I pushed away the blade she had dropped. “Nothing serious?” I asked, as I saw her feel her jawline.

“Nah.”

On the ground. Sassie had curled up in a fetal position. “No! No! No! No! No! No!” she cried out to tear her throat. The tone of her voice varied from hoarse to high-pitched. After a few seconds, she possessed the phonation of a young woman: “Please don’t hurt me!”

My human kept a safe distance. With her valid hand, she pointed to the circular hatch above us—a direct access to the hold. As I jumped from rung to rung to activate the mechanical opening, my sapiens continued her conversation with the strange Freak: “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it? You stuck a knife under my Adam’s apple.”

“Ali, for the thousandth time, only human males have an Adam’s apple!” I corrected her.

The salamander woman grabbed her head. She was shaking with tears. Drops flowed from her large black eyes and began to drip along her scales. “Please! That ain’t me,” she said. “That ain’t me, I swear! It’s Nash!”

Ali and I exchanged a look. “Nash?” I uttered when I unlocked the hatch.

“Nash is hurting everyone! He’s hurting me too!” Belle curled up. She was being shaken by a new, more violent spasm: “—shut it, you stupid bitch! You are pathetic!” It was the hoarse voice again. It had replaced Belle’s. Her tears had dried, sucked up by her skin.

“I see,” Ali said. “So, Nash’s back?”

“Indeed!” cried the dark passenger, straightening. “And who are those dirty Lunapolis’ slaves? A bounty-hunting whore sent by the Gods and the Technocracy to quell the wind of freedom blowing over the Outer Worlds colonies?”

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The hatch suddenly opened and Braun’s head appeared on the other side. His gaze oscillated between my human and the Freak.

“And here’s Captain Braun Kamirov!” Nash spluttered again. “The little doggy of the Admiralty. Your Soviet ancestors would be red with shame! You dirty commie traitor!”

“Yes. Her lampoons aren’t really pleasant,” I commented, throwing Braun’s new pair of handcuffs to my partner.

“How’s it going?” asked the MP after meeting us at the medical module, a good hour after the capture of Sassie/Nash.

Once again on her feet, Mute got lost between her various cassettes and Ali had to take over: “You want the theatrical cut or the remastered remake?”

“We had to tie her up and sedate her to keep her quiet,” I pursued as we all had our eyes on the TEP-scan’s results appearing on the module monitor. “We’re faced with a case of split personality rather—how can I put it—screaming.”

“The military module can diagnose a mental disorder through a scanner?” asked Braun.

“No. But for that the Corps has to care about mental disorders in the first place,” I said. “But thanks to the TEP, we could bring out the beautiful implant attached to her right temporal lobe.” Attentive to the report, Mute typed from one of her metal medical appendages the black mark left by the inorganic foreign body on the greenish screen. “An implant which must have required a lot of power to break its little secret,” I explained. “Which is a formidable and unique program of mental takeover. So far pure science fiction, it was calibrated in advance for a specific purpose: to destroy the gas trade around Jupiter.”

“That should mean something to you, right?” Ali said, turning a second screen toward Braun. Overlooking the electronic analysis of the nanometric data-core, the lines of code formerly protected by military encryption flickered at the bottom of the screen. “It’s stamped ‘Technocratic Marine Corps’ on the entire ICE!”

Braun slammed his fist violently against the bed. He then lost himself in swearing and sprinted towards the cockpit without even a thank you.

“Classic Rasputin…” Ali sighed. “Clueless as fuck.”

“Boneheads! You are all manipulated!” The salamander woman had woken up despite the powerful sedative. Her animal DNA was truly foolproof. Or was it the ferocity of this program that called itself Nash? “The Gods. The Black Haven. The Corps and the mega-corporations…” he coughed. “A great bunch of liars and schemers—”

“Mute? The Kitty? We have a problem.” The program’s libertarian verses were interrupted by the voice of the Techno-Marshal echoing from the talkie. “According to Pingu, the Buzz Aldrin is blazing ahead on Piper Alpha—the most important refinement hub in the region. The tanker’s control computer is protected by an encrypted key. Does Belle have something to say about it?”

“Belle?” Nash cried. “This bitch has nothing to do with it. She only shares a piece of me. I’m the one who set up the Buzz Aldrin’s last flight.”

“—enough!” intervened Sassie Salamanca with her high-pitched voice. Rejecting control, her body was shaken with more spasms.

But as Mute tried to administer her a new dose of tranquilizers, Ali stopped her. “Belle is fighting back,” my human said. Sympathetic, she passed her hand on the cheek of our poor prisoner, who was writhing with pain. Besides the reopened wound in her stomach, the poor Freak suffered a serious psychological torture. “Drugs will do more harm than good.”

“I’m not Isaac Dazzle but I can hack the implant,” I suggested. “However, the control computer may jump!”

“Do it! I’m shutting down all the auxiliary systems,” Pingu declared through the radio. “Hold on!” There was a jolt and the lights went out. The continuous purring of the filtration device had stopped. Only the medical module and the microcomputers were still operating.

“We should dissociate the two,” I explained. “We’re facing an implant that alters brain activity and electromagnetic fields governing semi-human neurons!” Ali frowned. “Alright—I just made that up!” I admitted. With the rear legs anchored on the chair, I struggled to break through the pirate implant’s data-core barriers. Unfortunately, with the ongoing battle between Sassie and Nash, no nerve signals remained stable. “I just know that Sassie has to stay lucid—or I’m incapable of interfering with Nash!”

The data-core resisted, but not for long. The zealot swore. It was his ultimate affront, because when my worm rooted in the small processor of the implant, all the barriers opened and the chip almost fried. The data-core was ours. Nash was temporarily out of the race but my attack had fused the implant to the brain.

“1776-1789-1821-1848!” Belle listed between her fangs. It was a code.

“Did you hear that, Mel?” I asked on the talkie.

The grumpy rabbit confirmed the proper consideration of what was presumably the encrypted key. The Buzz Aldrin could deviate from her murderous course.

The Freak was crying all the tears in her body. She struggled so hard that her forearms and ankles were bleeding. But already, her wounds on the wrists were healing around the metal that held her. “Help me now… I beg you!”

Alas, Nash had finally regained control. He laughed. After a spit aimed at Ali’s face, he repeated his constant threats: “We—well done. But it’s too—too late. I will ki—kill this bitch slowly. Your ma—machine and your grasshopper can’t do anyth—What?” My sapiens had drawn her caliber and placed it on Belle’s forehead. “You—you are insane!” Nash reacted.

My human ignored it: “Lee? Can she recover? Shall we do it?”

I sighed. “This is either a bold idea or a really idiotic one.”

Ali cocked her gun. “Boldiotic is our motto, furry ball… Belle? You’re gonna have to be a strong salamander.” Mute, syringes of morphine in the mouth, gave the green light for this crazy poker shot.

“Freedom or death!” cried Nash.

As if a stupid program could know one or the other.

The next morning, Pingu had set up the Ark for the return flight and Braun came to tell us about the response of the Marine HQ concerning the implant: “Stolen from a stock of Deimos laboratories two months ago. Reconfigured by the rebels for such attacks. Things are now being taken care of by the highest instances and—”

“Fuck your instances and whatever that means!” My partner was furious and for a good reason. Belle’s involvement could be costly to the Freaks.

“Stop focusing on the big picture,” Braun resumed. “Technocracy… Metacastes… Intra-stellar wars and revolutions will always be there, no matter how much air you and I toss around. But one thing has changed today!”

“—the life of this young woman,” the marshal who had joined us went on. A cigarette continually at the corner of the muzzle, he sadly glanced at Sassie Salamanca who was slowly healing from a wound much more profound than chains or bullets in the brain. “Our dear Mute will craft her a new FID. Amalthea will take care of her.”

Braun smiled. “For my part, Sassie Salamanca died on the Buzz Aldrin.”

Marshal Bunny offered me a cigarette before he escorted us to our ship with the Marine. Returning to Amalthea Bay wasn’t our plan as I wished to take advantage of the planet’s gravitational pull to continue our journey across the Outer Worlds. On the way, Braun promised to pay us the bounty, but Ali refused. The entire sum was to be given to Sassie.

“Captain, your girlfriend’s competent,” said Mel when Ali left the hatch. “Competent, but insane.”

“Competent suits me perfectly,” the Soviet concluded by closing the airlock of the Kitty for us.

Back to boldiotic business!