We Dare

by Chris Kennedy

  By the time Maria reached the barracks, she saw movement over at the armory as nine genies walked out of it. All of them were armed now, holding assault rifles. Two of them were leaning heavily on a compatriot, while three others held hands over different parts of their bodies. They’d obviously been wounded, but the armory had been taken.

  Isabella put her hand to her ear. “Copy that,” she said. “All units in the compound…be advised that the armory is open. Get there as soon as your objectives have been accomplished. Equip yourselves and carry out any and all weapons and munitions you can. Meet up at the control tower as soon as possible.”

  “The compound is secure, Momma,” Isabella said. “All that’s left are the outliers, and the canines are mopping them up right now.”

  “Excellent,” Maria said as she turned the corner of the first barracks. A hundred genies in their black combat armor were walking down the middle of the street in a loose group. Dozens more were walking out of four of the five barracks. The guards who had stood outside the last barracks were on the ground, dead, and the two guards outside the control tower were also lying on the ground motionless. “Have the canines sniff out any survivors. Search the entire base, but don’t take more than two hours.”

  “Understood.”

  Every single genie present looked at her with kind eyes.

  She smiled, nodding to them as she walked by, but there wasn’t time for words. That would come later, if everything went according to plan. She had one last task to perform. With the genies in tow, Maria walked out across the tarmac to where Angel and Carmen waited.

  “You have them,” Maria asked.

  Angel held out two large suitcases. “It’s all here,” he added with a smile.

  “Good,” Maria said. “I want both of you to give them all the serum before you lift off.” Maria breathed a sigh of relief. The suitcases were full of 200 syringes, each loaded with the retro-virus she’d created. The Gen2s would be free of the Methionine Protocol. “You have a team for the Cortez?” she asked.

  Angel nodded. “Isabella will be leading it with Valerian and Dolan, with a full squad going along to handle the skeleton crew. We sent the orders and got confirmation only a few minutes ago.” She added. “When we pull out, the shipyard will think we’re taking it for a training cruise.”

  “Very good,” Maria said. “We’ll meet you at the rendezvous location as soon as we can. If you don’t hear from us by four A.M., you pull for deep space just like we planned.”

  “I wish we were going with you,” Carmen said. “It could be dangerous.”

  “You can’t be seen there,” Maria said. “As long as the populace has no reason to believe genies did what we’re doing, there won’t be an outcry for their extermination. You know we can’t take all of them with us.”

  Carmen nodded and then stepped forward, wrapping her arms around Maria. “Thank you, momma,” she said. “We all owe you our lives.”

  Maria hugged her back fiercely, then she let her go. “Just make sure the transport is waiting for us,” she said. “I’ll see you soon,” she added. “Come on, Altra,” she said, then she walked past and got into the shuttle.

  * * *

  Part 5

  Altra set the shuttle down on the roof of PSG, and they both got out, Altra carrying a small briefcase in one hand. It was a short walk to the executive elevator, and when they approached, Maria entered the pass code she had created. A moment later, the doors opened and the two of them got in. As the doors closed, a voice came in over the speaker in the ceiling.

  “Hello, momma,” Toku said in his low, grumbling voice.

  Maria looked up at the camera in a corner of the ceiling. “Hello, Toku,” she said. “The security recordings are off?”

  “Yes, Momma,” he said. “All the way down to Lab 4. I did like you asked. I created substitute recordings, and I’ll install them as soon as you leave, using the credentials you gave me.”

  “I thought we agreed you were coming with us,” she said, suddenly concerned.

  “We did,” he said, “but I was thinking that if any of us here at PSG disappeared, they’d know we were involved.” He sighed. “It will be better if I’m here to tell them there was never anything on the video. That way, the others will be safe.”

  Maria closed her eyes and fought back the sudden urge to weep. “I understand, Toku.” Looking up at the camera, she smiled. “I’m very proud of you,” she said.

  “I know, Momma. You were always proud of all of us.” There was pause. “There’s one thing,” he said, worriedly.

  “What’s wrong?” Maria asked, suddenly afraid.

  “Selina’s gone, and I don’t know where,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Maria’s heart sank. One more of her children lost. “Dammit,” she muttered. “It’s alright,” she said, looking up at the camera. “There’s nothing we can do about that. Hopefully, she’ll be safe.”

  “I’ll do what I can, if she comes back,” Toku said.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m going to leave something in her room. It’s for all of you. There are instructions inside. Just make sure nobody else finds it.”

  “I promise, Momma,” he said.

  The elevator dinged, and the doors opened.

  “Thank you, Toku,” she said.

  “Anything for the family,” he said, and the comm went dead.

  Maria sighed and stepped out of the elevator into the main aisle of Lab 4. It looked exactly as she had left it, save for the fact that the shadows inside the maturation chambers were now motionless. Asleep. As she stared at the chambers, something occurred to her…about what El Presidenté had offered her.

  She walked down the aisle, inspecting each console to make sure all systems were nominal. When she reached the middle, she heard a motion behind her.

  “Maria?” a frightened man’s voice called out.

  Maria spun, pulling the pistol from her waistband. She leveled it at Richard Cabrillo, standing in her office doorway.

  His eyes went wide.

  “Don’t move,” Maria said, approaching him slowly. Altra kept pace, her feet clicking across the tile. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I guess you’ve come to finish the job?” he asked, terrified.

  Maria cocked her head to the side. “What are you talking about.”

  “You had Julio killed, out of revenge, and now you want to kill me,” he said, backing up.

  Maria chuckled. “I didn’t have Julio killed. El Presidenté did that. Although, I have to admit, I didn’t lose any sleep over it when I found out.” She eyed him. “Where is Selina?”

  Richard looked surprised. “Julio had her sent away for training somewhere.”

  “Why?”

  “He planned on keeping her for himself…as a body guard. She’s not due back for weeks.”

  Maria’s heart broke. There was no way they could stay for her. She realized that all of it was Richard’s fault. His ambition had set the wheels in motion. Her heart went cold, and apparently, her eyes did too, because Richard got an even more terrified look in his face.

  “Please—” he started.

  She raised the pistol and pulled the trigger three times. Crimson blossomed on his chest and he staggered backward, falling to the floor. She looked around her office, and back at Richard’s body. She was amazed at how easy it had been to kill him.

  Slipping the pistol into her waistband again, she walked out of her office and turned left toward the end of the aisle. She opened the door there, revealing a long hallway lined with doors on either side. Stepping up to the first one on the right, she opened it and stepped into a small dorm room of sorts, with a small desk, chair, and a single bed.

  “Altra, slide…that under the bed,” she said, gesturing at her dead former colleague.

  “Yes, Doctor Fujimoto,” Altra replied, and did as she instructed.

  Maria went to the desk and pulled out a pen and a piece of paper, writing a quick note.r />
  Selina, find Toku. He has something for you. I wish you could have come with us, but there just wasn’t time. I will always regret having to leave without you. Please forgive me. Please survive. Love, Momma.

  She stepped up to the bed and slid the note between the blanket and pillow, where only Selina would find it.

  “Come on, Altra, let’s wake them up and get out of here,” she said.

  “Yes, Doctor Fujimoto.”

  * * *

  Five private busses rolled down the nearly empty highway, having left the city twenty miles behind them. Maria sat in the front seat as Altra drove the first bus. She looked over her shoulder at the faces of sixty-five of her children. Feline, canine, and rhino all looked up at her with a mix of fear and wonder.

  Maria had awakened them as quickly as possible, told them they were escaping, and marched them up the stairwell to the lowest level of the parking garage where busses she’d charted through PSG sat waiting for them.

  Altra guided the bus onto a narrow side road bordered by thick trees and continued on for another four miles until they came to a wide swath of farmland that opened up for miles. Not far ahead, squatting in the middle of a green field, sat the interface troop transport. Altra pulled off the road, and they bounced over the rows of plowed soil, coming to a stop forty meters from the transport.

  In the darkness, just outside the open loading ramp at the back of the transport, stood Carmen and Angel, illuminated by the bay loading lights.

  Maria led her children to the rear of the lander and heard low growls, muttering, and mewling behind her.

  “Did they get it?” Maria called out.

  “In orbit. It is no ship of the line,” Angel replied with a smile, “but for a mothballed assault ship, it will do.”

  “It all went like clockwork,” Carmen added.

  “Excellent,” Maria said. “Once we’re aboard, we’ll assign duties and set course for Montoya Four-Gamma. We have four hundred maturation chambers, and the consoles to support them ready to go. Vasquez will be dead by the time we’re gone, if he isn’t already.”

  Carmen and Angel smiled.

  “I’ll get right on it,” Angel said, turning and walking into the transport.

  “What happens now?” Isabella asked from behind her.

  “There’s a ship up there, waiting for us. With it, we’re going to steal some equipment, and we’re leaving this system as quickly as we can.” She looked into his eyes, then looked out at the ocean of furred faces looking to her with hope in their eyes. “It’s time to find you all a home.”

  * * * * *

  Quincy J. Allen Bio

  Quincy J. Allen is a cross-genre writer with numerous short story publications and a growing list of novels. His first short story collection Out Through the Attic, came out in 2014 from 7DS Books, and its sequel was released in 2019. His most recent short story, “Sons of the Father,” appeared in Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter: Files from Baen, published in October of 2017.

  Chemical Burn, his first novel in the sci-fi detective noir series Endgame, was a finalist in RMFW’s Colorado Gold Contest in 2011, and the latest installment of the Blood War Chronicles, Blood Oath, is book 3 in an epic fantasy series featuring a clockwork gunslinger in the Old West. His first media tie-in novel, Colt the Outlander: Shadow of Ruin, set in the Aradio brothers’ Colt the Outlander universe, debuted at San Diego Comic Con in July, 2018. It’s a post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure with bounty hunters, feline assassins, and killer machines of alien origin. He is currently working with Kevin Ikenberry and Mark Alan Edelheit on new novels, as well as continuing books in his own series.

  He is a writer, publisher, and editor who works out of his home in Charlotte, North Carolina with the woman of his dreams, the best dog ever, and a cat that is either an angel or the devil incarnate.

  # # # # #

  Do or Die by Jamie Ibson

  “Micah Carillon, you have been convicted of murder, piracy, slavery, and petty theft. You have been sentenced to death for your crimes, and by the power invested in me by Her Royal Highness, Queen Suzanne of Windsor, I hereby carry out said execution forthwith, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “Miff iff oolhiit,” the condemned protested, and received a cuff to the back of his helmet for his protestations that had him seeing stars again. He’d been gagged after spitting in one of the bastard’s titanium faces.

  “Moments like these remind me of an ancient saying. You can’t control who comes into your life, but you can always choose what airlock to throw them out of. As it happens, we stand here today in one such airlock. You’re an inhuman savage, Carillon, and it is my distinct pleasure to put you down.” The leader of the cyborgs closed Carillon’s cracked polymer visor, and mashed a transponder onto it with sealing putty.

  There were three of them in the airlock. The two troops in stylized ancient Greek armor, complete with Trojan helmets, were tethered to the deck. Micah Carillon, murderer, pirate, slaver and thief, was decidedly not. His suit went tight as air was evacuated, and then the door opened, bathing them in blinding sunlight and radiant heat. The ship’s screens filtered out the many harmful rays Parker-Barrow’s sun put out, but when one was close enough to a sun to deploy a fuel scoop, it was dangerous to be out of doors.

  Carillon writhed and struggled, but he was on his knees, his hands and ankles poly-cuffed and bound to each other. His shipsuit would have protected him from mere vacuum, but it couldn’t handle the heat at a mere hundred fifty light seconds and sweat dripped into his eyes, burning. A brutal kick from behind sent him tumbling forward, away from the ship. His rib cracked from the impact, and he watched, helpless, as the airlock hatch to his ship, the Free Mercenary Ship Reprisal, closed with him on the wrong side.

  * * *

  Forty three seconds passed before the transponder on Carillon’s visor confirmed his vitals had ceased, overwhelmed by the brutal heat of the danger-close sun. Fifty-one more seconds passed before the vac suit spontaneously ignited, and another thirty seconds passed before the transponder ceased transmitting.

  Having confirmed Carillon was now nothing but carbon and ash, Bellerophon returned to the interior of the reclaimed ship. There was work to be done.

  * * *

  “Ahoy, Pandora’s Hope,”

  “Ahoy, Reprisal,” Captain Mick Mitchell replied. “All goes well?”

  “The primary business is concluded and recorded for the courts, and we have better than thirty innocents to transfer over. We will remain aboard with our prisoners to avoid any mischief, but Daedalus assures me this heap can keep pace with Hope, despite its appearances. If you and Kari would join us, I think our new guests in the hold want to see a friendly female face, rather than these ugly mugs.”

  “You mean your cyborg death’s head doesn’t win hearts and minds? I’m shocked, Roph, positively shocked. I’m sending Daedalus the intercept now, we’ll meet you above Parker-Barrow Three.”

  “See you soon,” Bellerophon replied. Mitchell was right, of course. Long ago, when he’d swapped his failing, crippled meat body for this synthetic one, he’d gotten one of the scarier looking visages they had. It made sense at the time, since the Lakonia Project was a military one, and any psychological advantage was a good one. But there were times when he didn’t want to look utterly terrifying, which generally meant having to hide behind a blank-faced helmet.

  “Course set,” Daedalus confirmed from the pilot’s station. “Our passengers might wish to know they’ve been rescued, boss.”

  “I’ll take care of that now,” Bellerophon replied, and used the comms desk to open a channel to the inner hold of Reprisal.

  “Attention, passengers, this is Commander Bellerophon of Myrmidons Incorporated, a contractor group operating under writ from Windsor Court. We have seized this vessel from the slavers who captured you, and their captain, one Micah Carillon, has been executed under Queen Suzanne’s own authority. Please remain calm, we will be rendezvousing with our partner ship, Pandora’
s Hope, in approximately four standard hours. You will find the accommodations rather more pleasant there, if perhaps a tad crowded. We are currently six jumps and a hundred light years or so from the Windsor cluster, so it will be a little less than three weeks before we can get you home. Please make any injuries or illnesses known to Hope’s crew so they can be treated, and then help yourself to a meal. Bellerophon, out.”

  * * *

  “Why do we do this honor guard bullshit again?” Kratos whispered to Artemis.

  “Because the kids need to know there are good guys too. Now shut up and fake it,” she whispered back.

  “Myrmidons, hah-ten, CHUN!” Captain Mitchell ordered, and the eight cyborgs came to attention with crisp, mechanical precision. They towered over the unaugmented humans, their average height being close to two hundred centimeters. Hope’s pilot, Kari Castell, escorted the first woman down the line of armored hoplites, still as statues. The woman had a young boy perched on one hip, and the child’s eyes went wide as he took in their armored plate, finned helmets, and obviously extensive mechanical parts. The child tugged at the woman’s sleeve and whispered in her ear.

  “I don’t know, Eric, why don’t you ask him?” she answered and let the boy down. He timidly approached Kratos, and stared up at the Myrmidon’s armored form.

  “Sir? Is it true you chopped off your whole body?”

  “What the hell?” Kratos subvocalized on his internal circuit, inaudible to everyone but the cyborgs.

  “Answer him, you ass,” Artemis replied. “And take a knee, while you’re at it.”