Daisy's Run

by Scott Baron

  The compartment was well-hidden, and its width was significantly less than other pods. A secret lab, nestled in the Váli’s main structure rather than a removable pod.

  You could walk from pod to pod right past this and never even know it was hiding only a few feet away.

  “You see that, Daze? Over there, on the far wall,” Sarah pointed out.

  Daisy looked and saw there was a solitary double air lock door. One way in, one way out. From the inside it looked just like every other set of pod doors on the ship, but Daisy suspected this one led somewhere unexpected.

  What the hell, let’s see how far this rabbit hole goes, she thought as she opened the first of the matched doors and stepped inside.

  She reached for the second door’s activation panel as the first door sealed behind her. Hesitating just a second, she touched the control, and the second door slid open with a whisper.

  “Jesus, Daisy, you startled me!”

  Tamara jumped up from the red peppers she was tending, accidentally crushing her watering spout with her cybernetic hand. The unit automatically self-sealed, preventing any loss of water.

  Behind her, Daisy heard the airlock door slide shut, blending seamlessly with the chamber’s wall.

  “Tamara? It was you? But you’re human. How could you do something like this?”

  “Wait, what?” Tamara said, a confused look momentarily flashing across her face. It was quickly replaced with one of realization. “Oh, you mean the parts in the bio lab. No, I don’t deal with that stuff. It’s not my department. I just grow the food.”

  “This is insane. You’re working with the cyborgs! How many of you are in league with them? Does the captain know? And what about Gus and Reggie?” Daisy’s mind was spinning. “My God, Sarah wasn’t an accident at all, was she? She knew something was wrong, and you killed her!”

  “Whoa, hang on a minute, Daisy, it’s not what it looks like! This is all just a big misunderstanding. Come on, calm down. Let’s go talk to the others, and we can clear this all up.”

  “Clear it up? You people are sick.”

  “Trust me, it will all make sense if you just talk with us.”

  Daisy’s eyes trailed down. Something wasn’t right.

  Her hand, she realized. Tamara had been pressing the intercom button since she entered the room.

  Further, the arm Tamara was sporting wasn’t her usual gardening variety. Sure, it looked benign enough, but it was actually a highly-advanced cybernetic combat arm, complete with a full complement of anti-personnel and defensive measures hidden under its sleek exterior.

  How do I know that?

  “Better question is, what are you going to do about it?”

  Daisy took off in a sprint, twisting as she darted past Tamara.

  Just need to make it to the adjacent pod, then I—

  A flash of bright metal shot out, a hot pain radiating up her arm as the powerful mechanical hand gripped her by the wrist.

  Damn, she’s fast.

  “I’ve got Swarthmore. She’s in the botany facility in Starboard Six. She found the parts lab,” Tamara shouted into the open comms. “Hold still. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  The slow cracking sensation in her arm told Daisy otherwise.

  Daisy focused, forcing the crushing pain from her mind as best she could as she flailed her free arm and grabbed the nearest thing to her.

  A small plant in a metal pot. It would have to do.

  She swung it hard, a dull gong ringing out from the container as it connected solidly with Tamara’s head. The botanist stumbled, and though she didn’t release Daisy, her grip did lessen slightly. It was enough, barely, to give Daisy the leverage to twist around and grab the sturdy metal hand with her far-weaker flesh one.

  The elbow.

  As if on auto-pilot, her free hand instinctively darted to the small uneven spot that she somehow knew was there. Code flashed in her mind, a series of commands and override options presenting themselves in an instant. Without hesitation, Daisy quickly punched a pattern into the nearly invisible access pad on the cybernetic arm. It was supposed to be keyed only to Tamara’s DNA, but little did she know, like just about every program in existence, its designers had built in a back door.

  This had better work!

  With a pop and a click as Daisy’s fingers flew, typing in the sequence by touch, Tamara’s arm loosened its grip, then powered down entirely. A moment later, the hand abruptly disconnected from below the elbow. Then the hefty mechanism finally released Daisy’s arm as it cycled off.

  Daisy didn’t hesitate.

  She pulled free and was already running the second the disembodied hand let go, hitting the deck with a clang as she bolted through the far door.

  “Shit, she disarmed me and is heading out of Starboard Six into Starboard Seven!” she heard Tamara shout into the comms before the airlock shut behind her.

  Faster, dammit! She pounded on the airlock door impatiently. Finally, the first door locked shut and the second one slid open. Pod Seven was empty—no one was waiting for her. At least not yet.

  Not stopping to thank her luck and tempt fate in the process, Daisy sprinted to the next door and started cycling it just as she heard the one behind her open.

  “Daisy, wait!” she heard behind her. Tamara was lurching through the airlock while clumsily attempting to re-attach her hand as she chased her.

  Daisy ignored her and was already into the next airlock, keying in bypass codes, temporarily blocking all comms to the area and overriding the door’s safety mechanism as it slid shut behind her. When the inner door opened, she grabbed an EVA tether and jammed it in the open door. She then grabbed a power driver from her tool pouch and popped the door’s control panel.

  The wires were easy enough to splice, and she felt confident the workaround should hold. So long as something was in the doorway, the safety wouldn’t allow the other airlock door to open. Daisy had simply created a safety loop for the entire pod that tied the jammed door’s protocol to the main door as well.

  I only have a few minutes before they work around my bypass and figure out how to trap me in this cluster of pods, she realized as she stepped into Starboard Eight.

  “Oh, I remember this pod,” Sarah said.

  Daisy ground her teeth.

  “I died here.”

  “Shut up, Sarah, just shut up! I don’t need this right now,” she barked at the voice in her head.

  “It’s so cold out there, Daisy. And no air.”

  “Not helping,” she huffed as she ran to the far side doors leading to Pod Nine.

  “It’s okay, Daisy. I don’t blame you. It was the others’ fault.”

  Listen, this is really not the time for this, okay? I’m begging you, please leave me alone!

  The voice went silent.

  Sarah?

  Nothing.

  Daisy set back to work, grabbing a spare tether line and running to the far door at the end of the pod. Secretly, she found herself almost hoping to hear her friend’s voice once more.

  No time for moping, she thought as she re-routed her bypass on the pod, allowing the unblocked door to Starboard Nine to slide open.

  Starboard Nine. The zero-g pod.

  A gravity-free place she had once despised with a passion, but now something that she could use to her advantage. Clipping the tether to her belt, Daisy pushed off into the room, aiming for the D-ring mounted on the ceiling. Only it wasn’t a ceiling. Or a wall. Or even a floor. It was simply the direction Daisy wanted to go.

  Forcing her body to relax as she floated, she snapped the tether in place as she flew by, giving a gentle tug and redirecting herself with ease to the door leading to Starboard Ten. If she could make it to Starboard Twelve, she’d be able to cut through the central passageway to the port side without them noticing. That should buy her at least a little more time as she made her way to the comms array while they tried to get to her in a pod she was no longer in.

  Daisy gently landed ne
xt to the keypad, firmly grasping the handle next to the door before reaching for the control panel.

  It lit up, ready to cycle open, and she had not yet touched it.

  Shit!

  Her fingers flew across the keypad, but the inner door began to open before she could enter her bypass codes. For a moment it hummed with the strain of conflicting commands, then finally stalled in place.

  Just a few more seconds and I’ll have it, she thought as she keyed in the commands to override the inner panel and close the door.

  “Daisy, talk to us. This can all be explained,” Gustavo called to her through the narrow opening.

  “Bullshit, you’re in league with the fucking robots!” she yelled back.

  A dark metal tube jutted through the gap, blocking the mechanism and engaging the no-close safety just as she overrode the door commands.

  Dammit!

  A blast of compressed air brushed her cheek as the tube sent a projectile flying into the opposite wall, where it sparked brightly upon impact.

  “A stun rifle? You motherfucker!”

  Daisy released the door, positioned her body out of the line of fire, locked a foot under the handle, and grabbed the barrel, tugging hard, but Gustavo was too strong to be so easily disarmed. Using both his hands to yank the stun rifle back from her, he pulled as hard as he could.

  Of course, that was her plan, though she didn’t know how she knew so clearly what to do when facing an attacker in an unusual tactical situation like this. Regardless, Gus fell backward when she unexpectedly released the weapon, Daisy’s body barely kept from flying the other way in the zero-g chamber by her anchored foot.

  With the opening now clear of the obstruction, she quickly executed the override command, sealing the door, but once again, it stayed ajar.

  “His leg, Daze!”

  Sarah was right. Gustavo’s boot had jutted into the gap when he fell.

  Sonofa—

  The door slid open, and Gus dove at her headfirst. Daisy had just the slightest of moments to yank the tether she was still tied to, sending her gliding out of his reach.

  She bent her legs just before she reached the wall, then pushed off hard as soon as her feet made contact, twisting in mid-air so she was traveling feet-first.

  Gus took both of her boots to his face, the impact sending him crashing into the nearest wall, then rebounding into the ceiling. Daisy, on the other hand, was used to the quirks of the zero-g pod, an edge she was damn sure to use to her fullest advantage while he was still stunned.

  “You don’t understand—” was all Gus managed to get out before he found himself whipped into a spin, flying toward the far wall. Daisy had braced herself with her tether, then yanked Gustavo’s nearest leg, resulting in a nausea-inducing ride, smack into unforgiving steel.

  Daisy unclipped the tether and pushed off again, deftly attaching the loose end to Gustavo’s belt, then kicking him into a tight spin, wrapping him in the tether as he flailed.

  It won’t take him long to get out of that.

  Gus made a horking sound as he vomited in the zero-g pod.

  Okay, maybe it’ll take him a little longer than I thought.

  “No dicking around, Daze. Get the hell out of here,” Sarah urged.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” she silently agreed, then made her way back into Starboard Eight, jamming the door behind her.

  She was locked in, with pursuers desperately trying to catch her at each end. And with Gus going so far as to start shooting at her, she now knew just how serious they were, and to what lengths they would go to capture her. She had only one option.

  She knew what she had to do, and knew she had no other choice. Nevertheless, the thought of the EVA doors that had taken her friend sent a small shudder running up her spine.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Override disengaged,” Mal announced, having finally regained control of both the doors and comms for the small conglomerate of pods Daisy had somehow managed to take control of. The normally calm AI found the ease with which she had been blocked out more than a little disconcerting and was pleased when the code blocks unexpectedly fell to her access attempts.

  Starboard Seven and Nine both cycled open their doors into Pod Eight at the same moment, Tamara and Gustavo visually ensuring the other was not about to be ambushed, silently nodding to one another as they stepped in and sealed the doors behind them.

  “She didn’t come out my way.”

  “Mine either,” Tamara replied, looking at the weapon in Gustavo’s hands. “Jesus, Gus, a stun rifle? Really?”

  “Hey, Captain said whatever it takes, and this was the least lethal thing in the armory. You know how important she is.”

  Tamara gave him an unhappy look as she reached for the comms panel.

  “Is that puke?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Jesus, Gus, you trained for zero-gs. And what happened to your face?”

  “She ambushed me.”

  “Ambushed, huh?”

  Tamara’s raised eyebrow told him just how much she believed him.

  “Captain,” she said into the comms. “Daisy ran to Starboard Eight, but she’s not here. She must have made an EVA outside the ship. She could be anywhere out there.”

  “I read you, Tamara,” Captain Harkaway replied from Command. “Daisy disabled a lot of our equipment in that section, but I’m going to have Mal scan the ship’s surface as best she can. Standby.”

  Gustavo looked around the pod. All of the strapped-down containers were too small to hide in, so it really did seem their shipmate had opted for a space walk.

  “She actually did it. I mean, why an EVA? She has to know we’ll find her out there. Was she hoping to keep us locked out long enough to pop back in on the other side of the ship?”

  “Probably,” Tamara replied. “She couldn’t have guessed we’d get past her overrides so quickly. But now that we’re in and know what she’s doing, she’s kind of screwed. There are a limited number of external airlocks on the Váli, and now that we know what she’s up to, all we have to do is grab her when she finally comes back in.”

  “Why didn’t Mal notice what she was up to, though?” Gustavo asked.

  “She’s the electronics expert, Gus. Plus, with all that extra stuff Mal had the neuro-stim pumping into her head for all those years, I’m sure she has more than a few tricks up her sleeve none of us could have foreseen.”

  The captain’s voice came back over the intercom. “All right, you two, get out of there. She’s still not reading on external scans. I’m going to send Barry to suit up for an EVA to go find her.”

  “I can do it, Captain,” Gustavo offered.

  “I know you can, Gus, but I need you up here backing us up on navigation in case she tries to fiddle with those systems. And besides, Barry doesn’t get tired.”

  Reluctantly, Gustavo accepted the order. “Copy that, sir,” he said dejectedly as he opened the door back to pod nine and stepped through, cycling it closed behind him. Tamara’s door wouldn’t budge, however, leaving her inconveniently stuck in Starboard Eight.

  “Hey, the access back to Seven won’t open.” Tamara grunted as she tugged on the sealed door. “Gus, what’s up on your end?”

  “I made it part way. I’m stuck in between Pod Eight and Nine,” he grumbled. “So yours is jammed too? Wonderful. It looks like neither door will open now. We’re stuck.”

  “Freakin’ Daisy. Leaving us yet another little surprise. Hey, Mal, can you get this damn thing open for me?” Tamara asked.

  Silence.

  “Mal? Aw, shit. Gus, it looks like she must have left some kind of worm behind in the comms. Mal’s been locked out again. What can you see from your end?”

  “Hang on, I’ve got to access everything through this shitty little terminal in here.”

  Gustavo bent over and eyed the device, then began tapping out a few minor systems check codes.

  “Looks like she embedded a secondary override,”
he said, entering a longer string of commands into the tiny console on the wall between pods. “Give me a minute. I think I can find us a workaround. I should be able to have us both out in no ti—”

  The blast would have been deafening, if there was sound in space, but when Starboard Eight blew its explosive bolts, the entire external airlock assembly broke free in a blink of an eye and silently emptied the pod of oxygen and crew alike. Tamara held on as long as she could, but the force was too strong, and finally, she too was jettisoned out, with neither a bang, nor a whimper.

  “Sarah sends her regards,” Daisy muttered with grim satisfaction.

  Safe in the sealed, pressurized crawlspace of the Narrows above pod eight, she began the long crawl toward her salvation.

  “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do…” she quietly sang to herself. “Dammit Vince, you got that stupid song stuck in my head. Just my freakin’ luck. First my boyfriend turns out to be a cyborg, then he lays that stupid earworm on me. We should never have watched that movie.” She was most certainly not amused.

  Daisy’s elbows, knees, and hips were rapidly becoming unbearably sore from all the crawling through the ship’s wiring and conduit system. Normally she’d have simply switched off the artificial gravity in the area to take the pressure off. It would have made life much easier, but there was no way Mal wouldn’t pick up on that particular trick, no matter how much she tried to mask it.

  “Looks like I’m just going to have to be black and blue for a while,” she muttered, crawling farther along in the cramped Narrows. “Probably a few shades of purple and green in there too.”

  A half hour of discomfort later, she finally arrived at the closest communications nexus. It wasn’t the main uplink, and it would require a bit of creative wiring, but seeing as how she designed the repaired comms array currently perched atop the ship, Daisy felt confident of her odds of success.

  Of course, patching in would have been much more of a breeze if she weren’t forced to do it with minimal equipment, lying on her belly, and with jury-rigged gear accessing things from the wrong side of the console. Nevertheless, once she got started, the path to success seemed clearer and clearer.