A screeching alarm blared in my room as I slept, waking me up in a second. I shot to my feet and slammed my hand on the control panel next to the airlock door. The alarm immediately stopped, and I took a moment to get my breathing under control. That alarm always makes me jump every time I hear it. I need to remember to change it one of these days. Actually, no, I’ll have Sam change it for me. What’s the point of having an enslaved man if I don’t use him for things like changing alarm sounds, running errands, picking cotton, or using him as my personal whip toy.
The idle thoughts of torturing Sam and listening to his screams of pain helped calm me as I took one final deep breath and shook my head to refocus. That alarm means that we have an hour before we land. I should get ready. Yawning, I took in the room I slept in. Of course, I slept in the captain’s quarters, and it had about the same square footage as your average prison cell. Six feet wide, seven feet long, seven feet tall, the only difference from the rest of the crew quarters was that it had the only shower.
I stripped out of my tank top and underwear and dropped them on the floor before stepping into the shower and turning it on high heat. The water came out ice cold, and I even felt a few icicles hit my back. After a quick five-minute shower, I got out, dried off, and dressed in my nice three-piece suit. Then I looked down spitefully at my high-heeled, foot-stabbing lady stilts next to the door.
“I fucking hate you,” I said with as much anger as I could muster directed toward the shoes. Then I picked them up, deciding to walk barefoot up to the bridge. I found Haru already on the bridge, ready and waiting for me to take us in for a landing.
“You’re up,” Haru said, a little drearily.
“I am up. And there’s a shower in the captain’s cabin ready and waiting for you,” I said, with a warm smile.
“Thank you,” Haru groaned as she got up and stumbled down the corridor to the captain’s quarters.
I sat down in the pilot’s seat at the front of the bridge and watched the streaks of light fly by as the ship traveled faster than light. I sighed wistfully as I watched the multi-colored lights. Most appeared white or blue, while others appeared red or orange.
The light show reminded me of my oldest and most cherished memories. The first one that comes to mind is from when I was just a five-year-old child. I had two loving parents holding me in their laps as they flew me across the galaxy, and I always loved watching the stars fly by then, too. When the ship stopped, I turned to my father with a big smile on my face and said, “Fuck you.” Then I shot him and my mother before being boarded by my master, who was hired to kill my parents. Having failed at that, he took me in to collect the bounty that way. He still didn’t get the money, and I was two ice cream cones richer.
So, feeling pity for him, I made him a proposition, asking him to train me in the art of killing. In exchange, I would give him one of my ice cream cones. His response warms my heart to this day. He said, “Fuck you and your ice cream cones, you little snot-nosed pile of badger shit! Go juggle some hedgehogs and fuck off!”
I had to knock over several pet stores for the hedgehogs, and by the time I got back with the hedgehogs, he had eaten my ice creams. So, I assumed he agreed to teach me, and the rest is history.
I sighed wistfully, “I hope you’re rotting in hell where you belong, Master. I’ll be there eventually, so keep a spot nice and toasty for me.”
“FUCK!! VVVIIIOOOLLLEEETTT!! THE WATER’S COLD!!!” Haru yelled from the captain’s quarters a moment later. I slapped a hand over my mouth and held in my laugh as I realized I forgot to tell her the water was cold. “OW! IS THAT FUCKING ICE!!” Haru yelled another moment later, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing any longer.
***
I brought the ship in for a landing at one of the nicest spaceports I’ve ever seen. The steel landing pad had been cleaned until it shone, and all the tools I would typically see strewn about the pad were nowhere in sight. Bravo to Carthage for keeping such a clean landing area. I do hope to be able to mess it up before I leave. Meanwhile, I need to go to Lazuli Academy for girls.
Standing, I turned to Haru and said, “Let’s go, Haru. And you do the talking.”
“Heard that,” Haru confirmed as she stood and followed me out of the ship. With brisk steps down the narrow corridors of my ship, I put on my business suit jacked and ensured it fit perfectly around my cropped leather jacket and hid it from view. Once at the exit ramp of my ship, I picked up the two briefcases with all our equipment, handing one off to Haru, and entered the code to exit the ship.
The airlock hissed open and slid into the wall as a ramp extended down to the landing pad. The sudden influx of daylight made me squint a little as my eyes adjusted. Once they did, I took in my surroundings in an instant. The skies above were clear of clouds, and I looked up into a towering metropolis with silver and rainbow buildings made of glass and steel with vines and numerous other plants climbing up the sides of the buildings. Birds flitted around and twitted happily as they flew, and two women stood at the end of the walkway.
The woman on the left looked to be about my age, weight, and height, with a brown lady suit, long blond hair tied in a bun, and thin rectangular glasses. The woman on the right looked a bit older, with black hair, and also wearing a brown lady suit. I smiled and began my approach with a straight back and walked with confidence.
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The two women mirrored my actions, and once we met in the middle, the woman on the right stuck out her hand and said, “Hello, Ms. Ricme. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
I shook the woman’s hand as I asked, “The pleasure is mine. Might I ask your name?”
The woman chuckled lightly as she said, “My apologies. I’m Shania Cartwhit. The principal of Lazuli Academy. And this is Cassandra Bordeaux, the vice principal,” Shania added, gesturing to the other woman.
Cassandra shook my hand next, “Hello, Ms.Ricme. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” I said, already sick of pleasantries.
Noticing this, Haru stepped forward and introduced herself with a slight British accent, “Hello, Mrs.Cartwhit and Mrs.Bordeaux. I’m April Shervill. It has been quite a long flight, and we would like to get on with our tour.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Follow me, and we shall begin,” Mrs.Cartwhit said, turning to lead the way to a nearby hovercar. After that, I began to tune out all that was being said. Something about giving scholarships to children for future college endeavors or some bullshit. I wasn’t paying attention. I just sat in the car and nodded, looking pretty while I waited to arrive at the academy.
***
The hovercar soon arrived at the academy, and I couldn’t wait to get to work doing my job. I stepped out of the vehicle first and took in my surroundings. The academy stood three stories high, with straight, sheer walls and all the aesthetic appeal of the most penetrable of prisons. Large windows rimmed the exterior of the building, and I could see a few curious children peeking out the windows to see what was going on outside their boring classes. Directly ahead of where I stood was a very simple archway with the school’s name printed across it so police officers wouldn’t mistake it for a minimum security prison.
“And here we are,” Mrs.Cartwhit said as she stepped out of the vehicle, “Welcome to Lazuli Academy.”
A small smile spread across my lips as I nodded, “Thank you for bringing us here.”
“Yes, of course, it’s our pleasure,” Mrs.Cartwhit said, “Now, shall I show you around?”
“Not just yet,” I said, stepping into the hall, “I would like to talk to all the students quickly before getting the tour.”
“Oh, umm, of course. Why, though?” Mrs.Cartwhit asked.
“I want the kids to spend this week working their hardest. I’ll tell them to be on their best behavior today and select a few at the end of today. Then, I’ll see how the students act the rest of the week to see how they behave. I only want to promote the best students and give them a helping hand for the rest of their lives. Simply put, good things go to good students, and I want them to know that,” I expertly explained.
Mrs.Cartwhit beamed at the explanation, “Right! I’ll get the kids ready in the assembly hall.” Haru, Mrs.Bordeaux, and I followed her into the office just a few steps down the hall and on the right. As Mrs.Cartwhit walked around a desk and tapped a few buttons on a tablet computer, I noticed a few cameras in the room’s corners. I quickly activated my cybernetic warfare program in my eye, accessed the cameras within a few nanoseconds, rewound the security feed by three minutes, and set it on a two-minute loop before entering the room. That’s when Mrs.Cartwhit pressed two fingers to her right ear and spoke, her voice going over the intercoms, “Attention all students, there will be a mid-morning assembly in thirty minutes after your first-period class.” Then she closed the intercoms.
I cocked my head a little and asked, “Why the thirty-minute window?”
“So we can set up the assembly hall for the students before they go there,” Mrs.Cartwhit explained as though it was obvious.
I nodded as though I realized something, and I did. She just made my job a little easier. I gestured to the door, “Shall we start the setup then?”
“The setup is automatic,” Mrs.Bordeaux answered quickly.
“Well, then, mind showing us there?” Haru asked, “Then, showing us to the nearest ladies’ room? We should freshen up before the announcement.”
“We’ll be glad to,” Mrs.Cartwhit said as she walked back around the desk and out the door. We closely followed Mrs.Cartwhit and Mrs.Bordeaux as they walked down the long hallways, taking the first left in the hall and going down a flight of stairs to an underground gymnasium. The room was one-hundred-ten feet in width, one-hundred-twenty feet long, with a thirty-foot high ceiling with support beams holding the school up.
Things are just getting too easy. Then I saw the twelve cameras in the room and quickly hacked them, doing the same loop as with the school office cameras. A low hum began to resonate through the gymnasium, two walls began to pull out, and bleachers began to form. Mrs.Cartwhit gestured to the gym and said, “And just like that, the setup process for the announcement has begun. There are restrooms just down these stairs in the locker room.”
I peered around her as we walked down the stairs along the wall and saw the locker rooms she talked about. “Ah, thank you,” I said politely as we soon reached the bottom of the stairs. As Mrs.Cartwhit and Mrs.Bordeaux reached the polished foe-wood floor, I lunged and stuck their livers with incredible force and shattered a few of their ribs. The two women collapsed to the ground in a heap, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I relaxed my body. “Well, that’s taken care of now. Let’s get to work,” I said with my hands on my hips.
“Right, and what’s the plan now?” Haru asked, her arms crossed in disappointment.
“Now we open our briefcases and get set up,” I said enthusiastically, dropping my briefcase on the ground beside the two unconscious women. Haru joined me, and we opened our briefcases together. I had placed four sets of handcuffs, two necklaces, two synthetic nano masks, twelve pounds of C4, eight cans of knockout gas, twenty detonators, four MK-252 plasma pistols, a command pad in my briefcase, and a role of ducktape in Haru’s.
I pulled out two sets of handcuffs from my briefcase and cuffed the two unconscious women before applying a strip of tape to their mouths and around their heads. I then dragged them into the locker room. I turned to Haru and said, “Put on the necklace and the nano mask.” Haru did as she was told, and I quickly did the same. I then accessed my system’s stopwatch function and started a twenty-five-minute timer before breaking down the plan, “Take those canisters, place them on the bleachers, and attach one detonator to each one. You have twenty-five minutes.”
Haru nodded and gestured to the mask on her face, “What’s with the masks and necklaces?”
I smiled and pulled out the command pad, opening a screen and selecting a few options. The masks began moving on our faces and took the form of a white skull with hollow eyes wrapped around our heads. “The masks will hide our faces, and the necklaces will obscure us from cameras. I took care of the cameras in the office and here, but not in the halls, not that I noticed any,” I explained quickly, “Now, let’s get to work. We don’t have long.” Haru nodded, taking the canisters and getting to work as I grabbed the C4 and detonators. Can’t leave any witnesses.