Awakening

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  “Man, don’t say it like that.” Olofi appeared right behind them when Loco took a few more steps inside. “You make it sound like I’m going to hit her or something. You always have make things sound so violent, Loco.” He raised a hand up to the girl, who was still flailing as best she could, and touched her temple with two fingers. “Sleep now,” he said.

  The girl went limp almost instantly, her eyes shut in slumber.

  Olofi removed his hand.

  “Let’s just take her to the cargo bay. Get her in some more solid restraints.” Loco walked past Bentley and Jelly Bean to the other side of the bridge, towards the lift. “Olo, you’d better come with in case she wakes up and starts bawling again.”

  “She won’t,” Olofi said. “Doesn’t work that way.”

  “Bullshit,” Loco answered on the move without looking at his companion. “It fails all the time. Like, the last three times.”

  “Those all had very specific interference sources,” Olofi said.

  “Just come the fuck on, okay?”

  “If you’re afraid of getting lonely down there, you could just say so,” Olofi teased him as he followed him to the elevator. The rounded doors shut around them and lowered them from the bridge.

  Bentley noticed Shango was standing rather close to her, giving her that same piercing gaze he’d had on her the first time they’d met.

  “You’re in my chair,” he said when their eyes finally met.

  “Oh!” Bentley sprang to her feet and took a step back. “Sorry, it’s just the most comfortable one in the room.”

  “It’s an important workstation,” Shango said as he took a seat and immediately opened a viewscreen with a wave of his hand. “Dismissed.”

  “Okay…” Bentley slowly walked away from Shango towards the bridge’s exit. “Guess I’ll get a drink, then.”

  “I will accompany you,” Jelly Bean offered dutifully.

  The doors to the bridge closed behind them. Once Bentley was certain she was out of Shango’s earshot, she looked over at Jelly Bean.

  “What an asshole,” she said. “Dismissed? Who the fuck does he think he is?”

  “Shango can be less than personable, I agree,” Jelly Bean said. “But it’s only because he takes his work so seriously.”

  “His work? You mean like kidnapping helpless girls in cocktail dresses? Yeah, real fucking serious business.”

  “I did tell you that the nature of their work can be less than P.C.”

  “Sure. I guessed it was maybe some stealing, some kill-or-be-killed stuff. But this?” Bentley grimaced at the fresh memory. “What is this, some kind of pirate ship?”

  “No!” Jelly Bean exclaimed, almost as though she were in a panic at the thought. “No, nothing like that. They don’t hurt innocent people, Bentley.”

  “That girl looked pretty damn innocent to me. What could she be guilty of? Bootleg breast implants?”

  “I don’t know. But they wouldn’t have her here unless there was a good reason. And I’m certain they don’t plan to hurt her.”

  “They’re tying her up in a cargo hold! That doesn’t exactly tell me they’ve got good intentions,” Bentley approached the door to the mess hall and Jelly Bean buzzed it open. She stopped in the doorway to look at her android companion.

  “It’s not like they enjoy it,” Jelly Bean said. “It’s just what they need to do to survive. Their skill set is very… combat-oriented. When you operate outside the law with those specific abilities, job options are limited.”

  “I guess,” Bentley muttered, unconvinced. “Is it always that gross, though?”

  “Not always. At least, not from my understanding of what you would consider to be gross. Their work is extremely varied.”

  “I’ve just developed a very sore spot about innocent girls being taken against their will and whisked off to strange spaceships,” Bentley admitted. “No idea where that might have come from.”

  “Sarcasm detected,” Jelly Bean spoke in an exaggerated robotic monotone that made Bentley crack a smile in spite of it all.

  “Was that supposed to be a joke?”

  “It was. My intent was to lighten the mood. It appears to have been moderately successful.”

  “Well,” Bentley finally passed through the open entrance to the mess hall. “Thanks for trying.”

  “I have a very extensive database of other jokes if necessary: an Imperial official walks into a bar with one woman and two dogs and says-”

  “Maybe later,” Bentley sidled up to the bar, searching its countertop fruitlessly for the area Loco had taken a glass from. There didn’t appear to be any console or other area to interact with it. “Maybe show me how to get a few drinks out of this thing? Then you can tell me all the bad robot jokes you want.”

  “Android,” Jelly Bean corrected her.

  “Right. Android.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bridge, Aboard the Chesed, Klaunox Sector

  Olofi stood next to Shango on the ship’s bridge. His compatriot was seated in his usual spot, operating multiple functions on the Chesed with agile, precise finger swipes in unison with corteX uplinks.

  “Still nothing?” Olofi asked.

  “He has not answered any hails to the private channel we were provided with,” Shango replied calmly. “His receptionist also sends us to the same address without response.”

  “Bureaucracy is a bitch,” Olofi said.

  “Bureaucracy is order,” Shango answered. “It’s the futile attempt of mankind to assert structure in an inherently chaotic world.”

  “They fight chaos, and just end up making more of it.”

  “Perhaps,” Shango said with a nod, still focused on his screens. “But the result is that they, too, are all too often forced to obey rules that they may prefer not to. For example…” Shango swiped his screen aside to make way for a profile in the dossier Max had provided. It was a woman, perhaps in her early thirties, with blonde hair cut-short and a deeply bitter expression that permeated her face.

  “Rena Marlen, age 26. Jedson’s second executive assistant. From the information we have, I’m to believe she is made to deal with some of his extralegal affairs. It’s likely that she will feel compelled to answer a masked, untraceable call out of concern that it could be an important unregistered client.”

  “You think that’ll work?” Olofi asked skeptically.

  “Worth a shot, I guess.” Shango pulled up three more screens. Olofi recognized these as rerouting channels and scrambling programs, a few of which he’d used himself from time to time.

  “Open your channel,” Shango instructed him. Olofi received a ping on his corteX requesting permissions, which he granted. The two of them hailed Rena, receiving a call after three seconds had passed.

  “Talk to me.” Rena appeared on the screen, the expression on her face every bit as foul as the one in her photo. She squinted at the two of them, and her surprise was only obvious from a slight raising of her voice. “Wait, what? Who are you two?”

  “We’re associates of Mr. Jedson,” Shango said, taking the lead. Olofi considered himself better with people in general, but when it came to sounding like a consummate professional it was hard to beat Shango’s general demeanor. “We wanted to contact him ahead of our meeting.”

  “I’m sorry, do you have an appointment?” Rena sounded annoyed, though from what Olofi had seen of her so far he considered that maybe this was just the way this woman always spoke.

  “Negative,” Shango replied. “Our matters with Mr. Jedson are extremely sensitive and as such our meeting couldn’t be scheduled ahead of time.”

  “I can assure you that Mr. Jedson schedules all of his meetings with me,” Rena said with a hint of defiance. “All of them. Even the… informal ones.”

  “That you know of,” Olofi quipped. A slight arch of Shango’s brow told him that he’d have preferred silence from him on this call.

  “Miss Marlen, this call was only made as a professional courtesy,” Shango
pressed her. “Our ship will be docking at your station in five minutes. You can inform Mr. Jedson of our arrival, or we can give him your name when he asks why he received no warning.”

  “You’re docking?” Rena seemed more concerned by the first part of Shango’s words than the professional threat that followed. “Like, right now?”

  “Correct,” Shango affirmed. “Our business is rather urgent, you see.”

  Olofi noticed Rena looking between the two of them, and not just at their faces. At this point Olofi recalled they were still armed to the teeth, something he would have seen as an oversight usually, considering how suspicious it would look on a professional call of this kind. But in this case it seemed to be of use. Olofi suddenly understood why Shango had made such a strong point that they would be docking at the station imminently.

  “Okay,” Rena said, sounding considerably exasperated. “Mr. Jedson isn’t in right now. He’s missed all his appointments in the past half hour and I’ve been advised to cancel all further ones for the day. Maybe that wasn’t supposed to include yourselves, but if it was then you’d need to have some way of contacting him that I don’t have.”

  The emphasis the woman had put on herself at the end of that sentence made it sound to Olofi like she very much doubted anyone would have such a means of contact. But that didn’t matter to them, really.

  “We just might,” Shango lied with a perfect poker face. “Thank you for your courtesy, Miss Marlen. That will be all.”

  “Are you still docking?” Rena asked with an air of trepidation. Shango didn’t answer her, instead abruptly closing the corteX call.

  “Fuck!” Olofi cursed.

  “Indeed,” Shango swiveled his chair around to face his companion. “It would seem he’s already jumped ship, so to speak.”

  “I guess he doesn’t give a fuck about that girl after all,” Olofi observed contemptuously. “She seemed like a decent girl. Maybe not a paragon of humanity, but another innocent bystander just trying to live her life as best she could.” He frowned at the thought of her tied up in the cargo bay, hoping she hadn’t awoken yet.

  Shango stroked his beard pensively. “He may not even be aware she is missing.”

  “Max seemed pretty sure he would be,” Olofi countered.

  Shango shifted his weight where he stood. “He may have underestimated his eagerness to leave.”

  “Or overestimated this guy’s sense of basic human decency,” Olofi said with a clenched fist. His mind wandered briefly to the inherent hypocrisy in judging a man for doing nothing to stop a kidnapping he had personally undertaken.

  “In any case,” Shango said, turning his chair back to face his console. “We did precisely what we were hired to do. We acquired the girl. This was strictly asset delivery, and whether or not those assets achieve their intended bargain is of no concern to us.”

  Olofi made a mild grimace at the thought. “Somehow I have a feeling Max isn’t gonna see things that way…”

  “He will have to,” Shango replied. “Arrange for asset delivery. Tell him he’s welcome to extend the contract if further action is needed.”

  “Can’t you handle the call this time?” Olofi asked with a reserved groan.

  “I don’t see why that would be necessary,” Shango replied matter-of-factly as he brought up a fresh set of screens. “You were the primary contact on the job, after all.”

  “Fine, fine… But can we-” Olofi’s next words were halted when the door to the bridge opened and the sound of heavy boots off the metal ground followed. Loco came in, a heavy blaster in each arm, with a hefty ammo belt loaded with high energy rounds and what looked like a pair of grenades. He was grinning widely, with that shine in his eyes that always came up when he was ready to go into battle.

  “Alright, locked and loaded! Let’s get this thing started!” he roared eagerly, only for the other two to give him blank stares in return. Shango barely gave him more than a turn of the head.

  “...What?” Loco asked, clearly knowing the answer. The elated expression on his face visibly melted into disappointment, and he dropped both of the guns with a sigh. “Dammit…”

  He turned away from the pair of them and began to begrudgingly unbuckle his ammo belt.

  +++

  Jedson’s Private Shuttle, The High Roller

  Jedson’s shuttle was executive class. His position didn’t entirely merit it, but with the right creative accounting he’d been able to justify expensing the majority of it. The rest he’d had to put up himself, but at this moment he was very glad he had done so.

  The shuttles given to most managers of his level were serviceable, but meant for day-long trips between planets and stations for meetings. They were seldom equipped for more than a night’s stay. But executive shuttles had all the amenities of a fine room, with comfortable furniture for lounging in, multiple bedrooms for hosting additional VIPs, and a smaller servants quarters. It even had a state-of-the-art autocook. While it still wasn’t ideal for the kind of trip he now needed to undertake, it was an absolute lifesaver on such short notice. Most importantly, it came with a very well-stocked liquor cabinet.

  “This fucking day…” he complained, sitting in the plush chair that sat behind the shuttle’s helm. He was drinking his whiskey straight from the bottle now, and he poured a generous amount down his throat before wiping it from his lips with the sleeve of his designer coat. On another day, he’d have been upset with himself for that, the material was such a pain to clean. “How far out are we now?”

  “Just a few klicks, sir,” Elena, his third assistant, was piloting the shuttle. That wasn’t strictly her job, but his actual chauffeur wasn’t someone who could be trusted for something like this.

  “Well can’t you hurry it up? The sooner we get out of this sector, the better.” Jedson was irritable. He went to raise the bottle to his lips again but was stopped by a hand that grasped its base. He looked up and saw the grinning, leathery face of Valdes, his partner.

  “Maybe lay off the bottle a bit,” Valdes said with his usual calm condescension. “Who knows what we might need to deal with on the way out.”

  “What you might need to do, I think you mean,” Jedson answered while jerking the bottle out of his partner’s hand and defiantly taking another drink. “Ops is your field, not mine.”

  “Division of labor isn’t going to mean much for the next couple of days,” Valdes calmly replied. “We all need to stay sharp.”

  “I’m under way too much stress to work right now,” Jedson answered him, sinking further into his seat. “Consider me on break. Extended break.”

  “What’s going on?” Valdes turned his attention away from Jedson and towards Elena, snapping his fingers at her. “Did you just speed up?”

  “I was asked to hurry up,” Elena replied.

  “If you do that then you’ll set off a hundred red flags. If we bring up a warp signature or a velocity irregularity we’ll have the Quester’s office on us in five minutes.” Valdes came up to the helm, putting a hand on Elena’s shoulder to push her from her seat. She moved out of the seat quietly, trying to hold back her indignity at the manhandling, and Valdes sat at her station.

  “Look, we just have to do a steady cruise, like this…” Valdes skillfully operated the helm to bring the shuttle’s movement to his specifications.

  Valdes was a compulsive micromanager. To most people it was his most irritating trait. But that was what Jedson liked about him; it usually meant he insisted on doing all of the hard work. But, short-handed as they were, he seemed to be getting distressingly comfortable with the idea of delegation.

  As if I don’t have enough fucking problems, Jedson thought to himself.

  “There,” Valdes stood and offered the seat to Elena again. “Just keep her steady, and don’t change a thing unless I tell you to.”

  “Yes, sir,” Elena replied curtly.

  “We’re not going to get all the way to the Fermi sector on cruise impulse,” Jedson grumbled. “No
t in a thousand years.”

  “Of course we aren’t,” Valdes said while observing a star chart on an open screen, drawing a few lines along it. “But if we warp out of here now anyone could find us. Just be patient, friend.”

  Jedson flinched at this. For the first time, he felt that resentment he saw in subordinates every time Valdes dealt them his signature brand of supercilious friendliness. Thankfully, he still had his drink, and that was readily making those feelings fade into that delightful head-swimming that blurred out the uncomfortable specifics of his situation. He had escaped. He was going to be fine.

  Everything was going to be fine.