by T. K. Toppin
“Yet, you can cut her just as easily.” I kept my mocking tone. “Bet you didn’t expect him to do that, did you?” I nudged the girl with a smile. “Oh, wait, I forgot. It was your idea. What’s wrong with you, girl? And what kind of father would actually do it? Surely not a real father, who’s supposed to love and care for his only daughter. No matter what, a real father would never listen to any suggestion as horrible as that. Hurting her, cutting her so viciously, unless…he’s insane. Mentally unbalanced. And he just can’t help himself. Just like his daughter. Two peas in a pod. How sweet.”
Silence.
“I know you heard every word,” I hissed into Margeaux’s ear. “You know all about your genetics, your history. Look around. Look at this madness. You helped cause this and it has to stop. Tell me you don’t give a damn. Tell me what you feel when you see him. I’ll tell you how I feel. Sick.” I gave her a rough nudge for emphasis. “Very, very sick.”
“It’s a lie!” Margeaux spat, her body rigid, breathing hard. “It’s all lies! You would say anything to save this stupid man and his stupid station.”
Margeaux jerked angrily and snapped her leg backward to kick my shins. I dodged away with a neat shift, which tightened my grip around her neck. She jabbed out an elbow and caught me square in the gut. I grunted and buckled, gritting my teeth. Margeaux’s other arm swung wide, making her body twist, and caught my injured shoulder. She dug her fingers in. With a yell of pain, I knocked her claws away with my right hand. Still holding the krima, as my hand retracted, I backhanded Margeaux across the face with a solid smack.
The desire to engage the krima and slash Margeaux’s angry face was great. Instead, I snarled in controlled rage and gripped her even harder.
The scuffle ended as soon as it had started, and Margeaux was back in her headlock, seething with such fury that spittle flew from her mouth as she snorted and grunted with rage. She made a high-pitched growl that sounded like a whine of utter frustration heard only in young children. The sound filled me with delirious happiness.
John stepped forward, shifting so he stood before us. “Release the governor and we will return your daughter to you.”
Ho laughed. “Such ridiculous promises. Do you really expect me to believe that?”
“Believe what you want, the choice is yours.” John lowered his head some more, changing the angle from which he glowered at Ho. “Either way, you will lose.”
“It’s all lies!” Margeaux persisted, her voice high and angry. “They want me to believe we’re abominations. Genetic freaks! Descended from a clone.”
Ho snapped his attention to stare at his daughter, a half-grin frozen on his face. He blinked but said nothing.
“Enough of this bartering!” Mwenye said, struggling in Ho’s grip. “It’s getting us nowhere. You want what’s in my head, don’t you? No one else needs to get hurt. If you want it, then release me and I’ll give it to you. You have my word.” He glanced at Simon. “Too many have died. I won’t have any more dead because of me.”
Ox shifted, glancing at Simon. With an imperceptible return nod, Simon eased back to regard Ho. “Ox, stand aside for the governor.”
Mwenye glanced at John. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Just like that?” Furious, I glared at Mwenye. “You can’t be serious? You’re meant to protect that code!”
John inclined his head. “This is not your fault, Governor. But I’m afraid the girl must stay with us now that the situation has changed.”
“I’m sorry,” Mwenye repeated.
“The governor is right. Too many have died already.” John’s tone rang with finality. With that, he yanked Margeaux from my grasp and curled his hand around the back of her neck. It was so quick, so unexpected, that both Margeaux and I gasped in surprise.
“The station is yours, Ho. Allow us clear passage out of here or I will hurt her. You know I will. And then I’m coming after you,” John continued in a low voice, directing his glacial stare at Ho as he walked with purpose toward him. John held no weapon, just Margeaux’s neck. Her eyes were round, staring with disbelief. Her breathing was tight, suggesting the pain he was inflicting on her was excruciating.
Ho hissed in anger. “I will kill you all if you do not release her.”
“No, you won’t. You want your daughter alive, but you want the access codes more. It’s in your nature to want what you cannot have. You crave it because you and Fern are one and the same.”
Ho blinked, distracted. “Fern…?”
I followed John’s lead, trailing behind him, partially hidden. And still shaking my head in disbelief at what Mwenye was doing. How had the plan shifted so unexpectedly? Had I missed something?
As we neared the console, I snagged the back of Simon’s chair and pushed him before me. He muttered something—a protest of sorts, but I barely heard.
“You believe that nonsense?” Ho laughed again. It sounded deranged. “You actually believe that drivel? It’s preposterous!”
“It’s the truth, and you know it,” I said from behind John. “I saw the look in your eyes. Didn’t it make you feel sick? It did me.”
Ho shook his head as he inched closer to Mwenye, who had by now slumped into the chair once occupied by Ox. Ho shoved the pulse gun to Mwenye’s ear, making him flinch. “The codes, Governor. Now.”
Mwenye made a great show of fussing over the console, tapping keys and opening files with methodical care. His manner clued me in that he was stalling. So that was the plan. Distraction until the new wave of Space Militia arrived.
John walked a wide arc around Ho, making a point of placing Margeaux before him like a shield. Parker and Ox fell into step. At the doorway, the Junkies and droids had their weapons trained on Ho. They shifted, angling themselves—ready.
“Father.” Margeaux sounded offended, and in pain. Her breathing was labored. “Make him…release me.”
“He will not hurt you.” Ho scoffed, distracted. His eyes were riveted on Mwenye. “So long as I hold a weapon to this one’s head, you are safe.”
“He is hurting me, Father. My head is going…numb.” She seemed sluggish, as if her spine was made of liquid, her limbs like jelly as they flopped uselessly at her sides. “Make him stop. I can’t feel my…my legs…”
Ho spared his daughter one look. “Silence. I will fetch you later. Do you realize how close I am? All that we’ve worked for, it is here, now…it is this close.”
Margeaux wailed. “Father!”
“So sad. He doesn’t care for you,” John crooned into her ear, a wicked smile curling his lips. He batted his dark eyes, making himself look as innocent as the devil. “After all you’ve done for him, all you’ve been through. He cares not.”
Ho sneered. “Do you even realize what I have right here, at my fingertips? The knowledge and genius of unfathomable research and uncharted science! To mold together man and machine beyond anything ever tried before? Do you even know what that means?”
“Abomination,” I enunciated.
“No!” Ho snapped. “Progress. The elimination of disease and death, the insurance that man will live forever!”
A loud disturbance came from the anteroom. Gunfire and shouts erupted like some random street riot. Ox and Parker shifted, eager to join in. Ho cocked his head in the direction of the noise, a look of glee brightening his face.
“My men are here,” he grinned. “Hurry up!” He jabbed the gun into Mwenye’s ear again.
Mwenye inhaled deeply. “It takes time. If it’s not done carefully, everything will be lost. The sequence must not be broken. I need to concentrate.”
Mwenye’s hands may have been steady, but his face was knitted in confusion as if he knew someone had messed with his files. Instead of glancing at Ox, Mwenye kept his head down and started tapping away furiously. I hoped he was bungling things up even more.
“Something is wrong,” Mwenye said, the knot still between his brows. “Someone has been tampering with my files.”
“What do you m
ean?” Ho directed a cold scowl at Simon.
“I mean that maybe your men have done something to it. It will take longer than I expected.”
“But you can retrieve the commands, can you not?”
“Of course I can!” Mwenye retorted with genuine offence.
“Father, please. Make him release me.” Margeaux’s voice was now thin and weak.
John, with Margeaux before him, had now rounded Ho completely. Gunfire still came from the doorway.
“Quiet, girl. I will not have any—”
A low rumble vibrated through the room like an earthquake. Ho wobbled, almost losing his balance, as did everyone else. An odd silence followed as we stared at each other. Like deer in the forest, we paused in the face of imminent danger to listen with frozen bodies, ears rigid with strain, eyes large and alert, noses flared to catch the scent of danger.
“What…?” I couldn’t finish as I gripped the back of Simon’s chair. The soles of my booted feet had been tickled by the vibrations, and my toes had instinctively clenched.
“Something quite big,” Ox muttered beside me, and put a large, steadying hand on my shoulder. “Very, very big.”
“Let’s hope it’s not your gunship, Ho.” John curled out a smile. “If it is, you’re trapped on this piece of floating metal. But, no worries, you’ll be immortal soon.”
“True enough. It will all be irrelevant once the technology is available to me.” Ho waved a hand, uncaring. “The droids will be under my control very soon, ready to protect this station from you and whatever army you send my way. I am unstoppable. In any case, the gunship has served its purpose.”
“As your daughter has? Call off your men outside so we can leave unhindered.”
“You cannot leave here.”
“Watch me.”
“You cannot leave.” Ho ground the gun into Mwenye’s ear.
“It’s a stalemate, Ho,” Simon said in a weak voice, “or have you not noticed? If one of us doesn’t give an inch, we’ll all be here forever. Once the codes are unlocked, the governor is no longer needed. Then you can kill him at will. Haven’t you noticed that he understands this and has resigned himself to it already? But we’ll have the upper hand by holding your daughter. And trust me, I will not hesitate in killing either of you! Now, something blew up out there—could be yours, could be ours. Aren’t you just dying to find out? I certainly am.”
If Ho cared for Margeaux, he didn’t show it. “All I’ve ever wanted was what is before me. I am this close. I have the research. I just need this facility and the information for the cell-fusion cloning. Everything I need is all right here, in this very space station. Just a few more minutes and everything will me mine. All mine.”
Ho grinned. “I don’t care whose ship it was. And you won’t harm Margeaux. You’re not barbarians.” He waved his free hand again as if dismissing us. His eyes never once leaving the controls Mwenye worked over.
Chapter 32
Just before Ho’s gunship exploded into a hundred million pieces of phosphorescent light, it glowed bright then undulated like a belly dancer.
The gunnery sergeant on board the Renwick paused with his finger poised over the holo-trigger, frowning. In The Sloop, its sergeant opened his eyes wide, thinking the gunship looked like those old stories of Jack-O Lantern’s. But whatever the cause, both agreed later among their friends over some space-brew beer that something massive within the ship had ignited in that split second with the brightness of a hundred billion candles. Night had turned to day, in that moment, far out in the depths of space.
Space carried no sound, but the shockwaves that followed rocked both deep-space warships and their inhabitants like driftwood on a vast ocean.
From the stingy little cockpit window of her escape pod, Captain Grosjean gaped in awe. The magnitude of the blast was enough to suck small satellites in its wake. A tiny escape pod, puttering along with all its might across space, wouldn’t stand a chance.
Having deployed her team before her, she and two lieutenants brought up the rear. Grosjean rammed the controls to full throttle. The small engine whined in protest as she screamed out orders for her passengers to hold fast.
While the gunship’s gravitational mass wasn’t big enough to cause the explosion to turn into an implosion, it was still big enough to disrupt space like a giant washing machine. If they didn’t reach the Scrap Yard’s docking bay before the shockwaves hit, they’d be catapulted into the far reaches of space. Or disintegrate from the impact.
They were less than a minute to the Yard when the blast hit, like being sideswiped by a train. Grosjean and her lieutenants lurched sideways in the opposite direction. The small craft rocked and juddered and the engine hissed and crackled, desperately trying to make headway. Grosjean tried her best to ride out the storm by angling and swerving to keep on course. She snapped out her arms and braced them against the pod’s frame.
Something ripped away from the outer shell with a tearing noise. One of the lieutenants made a frantic sound; he flailed but could do nothing, wedged as he was like a piece of luggage on a back seat.
“Bay doors within range!” Grosjean yelled. “Come on, just a little farther…” She punched the thrusters. A series of lights on the controls flashed to indicate overload.
“Within range of what?” her other lieutenant shouted back with something like rampant panic pitching his voice high. Grosjean’s reckless reputation was known throughout the known space system.
Ignoring him, Grosjean spared a moment to worry over the fact they might not reach the Yard in time. If she were to die as collateral damage, it sure as hell wouldn’t be like this, flicked helplessly out into space in a puny rowboat!
“Grapples,” she roared and slammed her palm over the release button for the grappling ropes.
“Grap—It’ll rip us from the inside out!” the lieutenant shrieked with horror.
“Then secure your helmet, engage tanks, be ready to eject and pray to whichever god will listen!”
The two grappling hooks shot out like projectiles, making a hacking sound as they spiraled toward the docking bay doors and were embedded within seconds. The small craft snapped back with a horrendous jerk. Grosjean yelled out a snarl, gripped her arms tightly around her chest as the seat harness dug into her.
Within moments, the outer shell of the craft had ripped away, slopping off like excess water as metal and glass disintegrated. It rocked and jerked, the shockwaves pulling it one direction while the grapples tugged it in the other.
The craft was nothing but a stump with gnarled bits of metal framework around it. The base where the grappling ropes were connected was still intact. Designed to pull the craft the moment they were deployed, they would slowly start to tow the pod in. Used generally for piggybacking or being towed alongside larger crafts, it wasn’t designed to withstand the pressures and speeds of high velocity shockwaves from explosions. The central structure was the strongest part of the craft. The main chassis, seats, and controls, now useless save for the automatic reeling mechanism below their seats, were fused together. The seats could eject manually, but to do so now would pop them straight out into open space.
They’d have to ride the shockwaves out, exposed as they were like literal sitting ducks in open space.
Grosjean judged it to be another thirty seconds before space righted itself. She’d once experienced the destruction of a deep-space war cruiser. That had taken exactly two minutes and forty seconds from the moment it exploded until the last of the shockwaves abated. All that had been left of the cruiser was a small piece of metal, wrangled and twisted beyond recognition. The rest had just evaporated, crew included.
Her ears almost popped but finally, with a sort of sharp jolt, it was over. They’d been spared the shower of debris, but she felt windblown and charred all the same.
She turned to look at her lieutenants. They appeared to be alive; it was difficult to tell with their reflective visors down.
“Are we still toge
ther?”
One nodded, the other raised a somewhat reluctant hand.
“Very good.” Grosjean grinned behind her visor, then whooped loudly, causing the lieutenants to jump. She hadn’t had this much fun in quite some time. “Prepare to eject, on my mark!”
* * *
I wasn’t sure if we’d manage to both get away and stop Ho. From the looks of it, John seemed quite determined to get the hell out and forget about Ho altogether. But I knew him better than that. More than anything, he wanted us safe and away from danger so he could go back and finish the job he’d come here to do.
I glanced down at Simon; he was slouched and lopsided in his seat. The top of his head bobbed as I inched the chair along to keep time with John. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined it must be even paler than before. He needed to get to the Labs. Urgently. Dread set in as I thought that might never happen.
Ho spoke like a maniac, blathering on and on like a mad, mad scientist. The battle sounds from the anteroom unnerved me as well, but they weren’t as fervent as before. The Junkies were shouting directives for the other side to stand down. Their response was more gunfire. But that was about it.
Whatever John had done to Margeaux had rendered her insensible. No doubt he’d latched those clever fingers of his onto some pressure points at her neck. She looked like the walking dead. I couldn’t say it gave me pleasure to see, but like her father, she just wouldn’t shut up. She’d plead and whined for Ho like a baby, and it had become distracting and annoying. But a small, mutinous part of me was concerned for her. I wanted to tell John to stop hurting her, whatever it was he was doing.
Mwenye still sat hunched over the console. Whether or not he was biding for time was still debatable. He may well have been scared shitless and bumbling about. Simon said something to Ho, goading him, but Ho wasn’t really listening.
“We are walking out of this room. Order your men not to shoot or your daughter gets harmed,” John said. He’d shifted, back toward the door. I moved with him, covering his side. Ox and Parker now stood by the door, their weapons directed toward the anteroom.
