by Alex White
Looking her in the eye, Sharp said, “Only a precious few are worthy to join us, and they must have absolute resolve and incredible talent. Our ranks contain only the most ruthless strategists and deadliest fighters. Of course most of them die, but no one forced them to join. People die climbing the highest peaks in the galaxy, but the ones who reach the top are heroes.”
The stranger’s face distorted with rage and she rushed to the privacy screen, sweeping it aside. The carrel gave an angry beep at her intrusion, but did nothing else to protect them. Her eyes darted from Boots, to Orna, to the open deposit box—to the unique serial number etched on its side.
She’d been trying to enter Maslin Durand’s access code into the central console.
She was there to collect his things.
Boots raised her hands to calm her. “Listen, lady, this is a secure vault. You’ve got no slinger and no spells, so let’s talk. Who are you?”
The woman drew a palm-sized handle from her suit pocket and flipped it, ejecting a razor blade almost as long as her forearm. Weapons were allowed in the vault, of course, because the IGF didn’t give a damn if their clients shanked one another.
Boots went to eject her finger blade—no arm battery. “Oh, uh …”
Orna swept up the metal tray and hurled it at the woman’s head, and she ducked clear. Orna leapt the table and tried to sink a kick into her gut, but the woman caught her foot and swept the ultra-sharp blade toward her neck. Orna seized the woman’s wrist, but she turned her momentum into a throw, hurling the quartermaster out against the console like she was a child.
The suit turned on Boots like a wolf ready to tear out her throat.
“Let’s think about this,” said Boots, lunging to keep the table between them. “You don’t know who I am. I could have valuable intel.”
She swung her blade across at Boots, and as she ducked back, it extended another few centimeters, whipping across her nose with a thunk. It didn’t hurt much, but it bled like a river.
Boots staggered back, clutching her face, shocked at the amount of crimson pouring between her fingers. The stranger came rushing around one side of the table in a flurry of swings, and Boots retaliated with the first thing that came to mind—she slung her blood-soaked hand at her attacker’s face. A slash of her blood hit the stranger’s eyes, and she shook her head, trying to wipe it away. Boots seized the opportunity to grab the folio out of the box and bolted for the entrance of the carrel.
Before she could make it clear, something crashed against the back of her head and she rolled to the ground in a daze. Shaking away the dancing lights, she spotted pieces of one of the desk lamps on the ground around her. She pulled herself across the tile, trying to get to the vault entrance—if she called for help, she might be arrested. If she didn’t, she might die.
She’d almost made it to Orna when she glanced back to see the stranger striding to the edge of the carrel, adjusting her cuffs. She stepped one foot into the open vault—
And a crawler smashed a vault box into her body, folding her in half for a quick end.
Boots looked back at Orna to find her hand against the barnacle, her eyes rolled back in her head. She blinked, her icy eyes coming to focus on Boots.
“Got the cash,” she said, hefting the sack of chits.
“Got the contract,” said Boots, and they both rushed for the vault exit.
“Is everything okay in he—” John appeared before them, and his tray of steaming cookies clattered to the floor. Boots couldn’t smell them through her blood, but they looked heavenly. “Oh, my god, your nose!” He peered past them. “Oh, my god, that woman!”
“We were attacked,” said Boots. “We have to get back to our ship, because—”
Silhouettes crowded the lobby exit to the outside, and Boots gulped. Coming in from the street, there had to be a half-dozen other goons ready to succeed where the first of them had failed.
Slinger fire perforated the room, and John, Boots, and Orna hit the deck. John yanked back his sleeve and checked something on his watch.
“Apologies, ladies!” he shouted over the thump of armored transports outside spinning up their autoturrets. “I didn’t realize you were VIPs!” He tapped the watch face and a set of duraplast shutters slammed down in front of the assailants.
“Now,” said John. “Let’s let security handle all that, shall we? Fetch your things.”
They rushed to the hidden recess, where John drew out the velvet-lined box with their personal effects. Orna donned her silver circlet and closed her eyes, contacting Charger. Boots pocketed her paragon crystal and plugged in her battery, happy to have her arm back. As a precaution, she tested the stiletto knife in her finger, glad to have it working.
“What all comes with VIP service, John?” Boots asked, trying not to sound too frantic.
“Occasionally, we have clientele with exceptional enemies.” The attendant pounded another hidden panel, which unfolded to dispense a tripod and an assault slinger with a massive drum magazine. “Those designated VIPs will have a priority escort from the station in the event of an attack. Pardon me a moment.”
John grabbed a staff from its clips next to the tripod and slammed it down, where it branched out like a tree, each limb webbed with layers of shield magic. He snapped the barrel of the assault rifle into the mount and took aim at the front doors. Then he raised his watch to his lips.
“This is John Buppert, auth code seven-five-two-two-four, requesting access control lockdown on my location. Give me a two-block clear zone.”
Explosions rocked the street outside, melting the duraplast windows like popping bubbles. Through the raging blaze, Boots could make out the shapes of armored transports on fire. Whoever these people were, they’d taken out a veritable motorcade of armored trucks.
“Stay behind the shield, if you please!” John called out with a smile, then spun up his heavy slinger, filling the entrance with knock rounds. They exploded against assailants, the interior walls, the street outside, and the skeletons of armored transports. The air thundered with each impact, and he held down the trigger until the magazine ran dry.
Boots took her hands from her ears and stared at the carnage in disbelief.
John gestured to the open panel where he’d gotten the assault rifle. “Just to be on the safe side, you shouldn’t go out the front door. There’s a lever in that cabinet. Would you mind pulling it?” Then, into his watch, “I’m going to need support for two VIPs. Yes, they are. No, I’m looking right at them.”
Boots scrambled to the cabinet and yanked down the switch as another volley of fire crackled across the back wall beside her head. Then she nearly fell over as a two-meter square of the floor began to sink.
“Orna!” Boots called out, and the quartermaster raced to her side, sliding into the opening.
Crap.
At the mention of Orna’s real name, John glanced back at them, a venom in his expression that Boots never could’ve expected. He might not know how or why, but he knew he’d been betrayed. Then a lance round caught him by the leg, and they sank out of sight.
The elevator opened into a wide electrical shaft full of conveyors and maintenance bots zooming along conduits. The hallway thrummed with power. Steam hissed from gratings in sudden spurts. The elevator sealed above them, magic shaping the rock into a solid face.
Boots looked around for an obvious way out, but the maze of tunnels extended in all directions. “If John reports us, we’re screwed. The station’s automated defense network will track us anywhere we go.”
Orna scoured the wall of conduit, jumping out of the way of a crawler bot. “Maybe those bastards outside will kill him before he can get a message out.”
“Don’t say that. I like John. Can’t you hack us some station credentials or something? Make it so we can get past all of the cameras without getting blasted?”
“It’s not that easy. I was only able to designate us VIPs within the vault because it was local security. Central securit
y would fry my brain in a heartbeat. There’s another solution, though,” said Orna, tracing her glyph and grabbing one of the duct maintenance bots. It stopped with an angry beep as she forced her magic inside. Then it let go of the conduit pipe, and she placed it on the ground.
“I’m listening,” said Boots.
“This place is huge, so they can’t lock down the whole thing, just the protected structures. Buildings, vaults, that kind of stuff.” She grabbed another bot off the rails and paralyzed it. “It’s hard to shut down an alarm, but it’s easy to set one off.”
“Yeah. Alarms are the problem.”
Orna grabbed another. “No, alarms are the solution.” Then another. “I’m going to send these bots throughout the station underground, and they’re going to start drilling.”
“Did you hit your head back there? You’re going to bring security down on us like a tidal wave!”
“Wrong,” said Orna, hooking the bots to all different conduits. “The exit to the tunnels is right there. They’re going to think there are hundreds of hackers drilling into the data cables down here and put every building on lockdown.”
“Then we get topside while security is spread thin. Okay. What about those guys that shot at us?”
Orna clicked a fingernail against her circlet. “Working on that. Charger is en route.”
One by one, she tapped the bots with her spell, and they raced off down the tunnels. Orna grabbed Boots’s hand and dragged her toward the nearest ladder before climbing up and cautiously opening the door.
“Looks clear,” she called down to Boots. “Let’s go.”
They emerged onto the street level to find an abandoned thoroughfare. It hadn’t been crowded before, but the commotion outside Twenty-Six-D had cleared everyone out. Deafening klaxons blared at two-second intervals. Between the alarms, Boots made out the sound of an approaching security drone.
“Drone!” whispered Boots. “Back to the tunnels!”
Orna grabbed her by the collar, hauling her away from the ladder. “When those crawlers start drilling, the underground will be a death trap.” She slammed Boots up against the back wall of Twenty-Six-D and said, “Flatten out as much as you can.”
“What the hell? We’re sitting ducks out here! That drone is going to shoot us!”
The drone came buzzing around the corner, a pair of slingers on either side spinning up at the sight of them. Boots braced herself to be beaten unconscious by knock rounds, but instead, it made a pleasant chime, swooping down to guard them.
“We’re still VIPs inside the vault,” said Orna. “Looks like the immediate surroundings are zoned vault, too.”
“So as long as we don’t leave this area, we’re okay?”
“Yeah. If I can get my hands on this little guy, he can give us an escort back to the ship.” Orna traced her mechanist’s glyph and slapped at the drone, trying to catch it. The bot swooped out of the way with little trouble and gave her an angry chirp. If they left the side of the vault and lost their VIP status, it’d almost certainly shoot them for trying to hack it.
Boots watched with mounting fear. “Grab it!”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Orna jumped for it and stumbled away from the wall. Boots caught her and yanked her backward.
“If we don’t get out of here before the human security shows up—” Boots started, but was cut off when a trio in suits rounded the corner, slingers in hand. She couldn’t be sure if they were cultists or guards.
Then they blasted the defense drone.
“Run!” shouted Boots, and they hotfooted it for the far end of the clean, featureless alley.
Slinger bolts sizzled past them, and Boots counted the distance to the end of the alleyway. Thirty paces—it felt so unbearably far. Twenty paces—rock shrapnel sliced the side of Boots’s face as a round struck the wall beside her. Ten paces—Orna surged ahead of her.
A glowing bolt of energy punctured the quartermaster’s hip with a puff of bloody mist.
Orna screamed in pain and stumbled to the ground. Boots slowed up enough to clasp hands with her and began dragging her backward toward the corner.
“Crap, crap, crap,” Boots repeated as Orna groaned in agony. Five paces—she needed a distraction. Boots shouted, “If you shoot us, you’ll never find the papers we stole!”
Their attackers loomed large in her view, taking confident aim at Boots’s head. One of them signaled the others to hold fire, and they closed in on the pair like trained mercenaries.
“Give us the folio, now, and you can walk away,” called the lead, just a few meters down the corridor. He wore a similarly crisp suit to the woman in the vault, his features polished and fashionable. He’d probably bought his visage—few people were born with that unnatural beauty.
“What folio?” feigned Boots.
The leader fired a slinger bolt right past her ear, stealing the breath from Boots as it passed. It had come so close that she felt a light sunburn on her cheek. “Answer incorrectly again, and we’ll just search your corpse.”
Orna clutched her bleeding side and laughed, just a chuckle but strange all the same.
“Shut her up,” said another one of the suits.
Boots looked to her comrade, who must’ve been delirious with blood loss. “Buddy, I’ve been trying for over a year.”
The quartermaster only cackled louder. The leader kept his slinger trained on Boots, but cut a glance over to the laughing woman. His slinger shifted ever so slightly toward the quartermaster. If she was trying to stall them, it seemed to be working.
“Whoa, now! Let’s be reasonable,” said Boots, drawing out the leather-bound pages and holding them in front of herself like body armor. “Shock can do nasty things to a person. I’ve got your folio right here.”
“You have no idea what’s coming,” said Orna, baring her teeth.
His slinger barrel snapped to Orna’s head. “Shut her up, or I will. Three.”
The quartermaster was almost wheezing with laughter.
Boots gave him a pained smile. “I’m sorry, can I just have a word with my friend?”
His grip tightened. “Two.”
Boots turned to Orna and gave her a “what gives” look, but the woman kept on laughing. Her stalling tactics were only going to buy them three seconds.
“Knock it off, Orna!” Boots considered slapping her.
“One.”
Orna sat up with madness in her eyes and a wild grin. “Here comes my special boy!”
She wrapped her arms around Boots and threw her to the ground. Charger bounded around the corner at the end of the alleyway and flooded the corridor with discus rounds, slicing the attackers at odd, spinning angles. Boots shut her eyes and held on to Orna as the projectiles hissed overhead, sailing into the vault across the street.
In the silence that followed, Boots surveyed the damage. A couple of dead goons and shallow, smoking slashes in Twenty-Seven-E: barely even scratches on the massive structure. Servo screams and lightning crackle brought Charger to them, where it loomed over the pair of women.
Gone were the slick, regraded steel plates and duraplex guarding his torso. Arcane fires roared from his chest like souls in a demonic smelting furnace. Skeletal supports jutted out of him like bones, and he held out one claw to help Orna up.
Boots stared at the machine wide-eyed. “Holy …”
“Charger!” Orna slapped his claw away. “Why are you naked?”
Charger recoiled and pointed to its open chest, making a case only Orna could hear.
She rolled onto one side and pushed herself upright, doing a terrible job of stanching the blood pouring from her wound. “No, I don’t care if you’re faster! Keep those chest plates on and—”
Orna passed out into his arms.
“Damn it!” Boots rushed forward, but Charger backed away, popping open his chest plate and stuffing Orna inside like a rescue bot—except he wasn’t. He was Orna’s original creation. “No, Charger! She’s wounded!”
<
br /> It held up a hand to Boots, giving her the wait finger. She considered giving it a finger of her own, but thought better of it. Then she saw the styptifoam filling Orna’s wounds and the duraplex mesh erupting from spinnerets in Charger’s cushions.
She’d redesigned Charger to handle her massive blood loss after Mother had punched a hole through Ranger.
Charger leaned forward to Boots, and a young boy’s voice said, “Nominal oxy sat. Blood pressure envelope okay. Pulse okay.”
Boots blinked. Was that little thing really the voice package Orna had installed? It totally ruined its badass aesthetic.
More alarms sounded across the station’s expanse, and Boots looked over the freshly departed corpses littering the alleyway. She grabbed the leg of their leader and turned him onto his side to search his pockets. His top half didn’t turn with the rest of him.
Boots held down her lunch, but only because she’d been to some dark places in her day. She didn’t find an ID, access cards, or anything of the like. Holding her breath, she attempted the same search on his mangled blazer and found a portable drive with a built-in imager. She also (unfortunately) learned he’d had a significant number of organ modifications done, from the sparkling silver bits in the ocean of blood.
“What were you doing with this imager, buddy?” she mumbled to herself, inspecting it.
A red light flashed across its surface; it took her a moment to realize it was a dying heartbeat. These men were transmitting imagery to something off-station—
—just like the imagers in the archives.
The eerie song of Izak Vraba’s spell filled her ears.
“Crap!” Boots yelped, throwing the imager to the far end of the alleyway as shadows poured forth from the walls around her. They danced wildly to the flipping of the lens as it bounced across the concrete. It came to rest at an odd angle against the far wall, still able to see her.
Charger buzzed loudly to get her attention, and Boots bolted for him as fast as her stocky legs would carry her.
“Okay, uh, boy. Let’s go!”
The bot reached behind its head and unslung the ammo canister from its back, hefting the tub under its arm like a beach ball. Charger nodded and turned around, so Boots could see a mounting handle and a couple of brackets she could ride.
