Discovery

by Craig Martelle

  “What are you doing?” Char whispered over her shoulder.

  “Dive to your right when I say go,” he whispered out the side of his mouth, keeping his eyes on the bot.

  “I already don’t like it,” Char started to say, but Terry was executing his plan.

  “I don’t think we’re going anywhere, Jack, so take your laser pistol and jam it where the sun don’t shine! I guess that could be anywhere down here. No matter, prepare your orifice. Here comes one laser pistol.”

  Terry took one step forward and dove to his right, yelling “Go” as he jumped. Char dodged to her right, the opposite direction of her husband.

  Laser fire filled the air and none of it hit the bots, as Char had known it wouldn’t. Terry thought it had been worth a shot. He scrambled to his feet and jumped against the wall, slamming his chest into it as he spun around the doorframe to deliver a reverse roundhouse to the bot’s metal chest. Terry kicked it hard enough to lift it off the floor and send it crashing back into the room. The robot across the way shot him twice before Terry could fight his way into the room.

  Char saw the fire, ducked, and charged. She wrapped up the bot’s legs, lifted, and body slammed the device onto the floor. It grabbed her hair and shoved the pistol in her face, but she batted it away and fought with an intense fury that made her eyes glow purple. She started to change; beyond her control, the inner werewolf emerged.

  On Terry’s side of the corridor, the robot rolled to get to its feet, but Terry delivered a flying stomp to the middle of its back. It pancaked, and he stomped it again before dropping and trying to tear off the metal arm holding the pistol. He twisted and pulled, but it fought back, stronger than his enhanced muscles. They struggled to a stalemate. Terry with his leverage equaled the bot and its strength.

  Terry roared with the adrenaline rush and the arm bent. The fingers lost their grip, and the pistol clattered to the floor. Terry lunged, caught the weapon, and rolled to fire into the bot’s chest again and again. It slammed into him, and Terry grunted from the pain of the impact and threw the thing off him.

  It tumbled to the floor with no light behind its eyes. Terry bolted through the door and across the hallway. A brown werewolf with silver belly fur was running back and forth like a Jack Russell terrier avoiding the laser fire from the bot. Terry delivered a series of shots on target, and the bot started to lose momentum.

  Terry pressed the advantage while the bot rerouted systems and prepared to bring itself back to full functionality. From point-blank range, Terry drilled more holes into its chest. Into the area from which he’d ripped the technology in the first bot they killed.

  It turned to him and lunged, but the systems failure was complete. Its legs froze before it could complete its attack and the bot fell on its face. Char kicked at the bot and then squatted and peed on the thing’s back. Terry grabbed the pistol before it could get befouled and put a few more holes in its head.

  The room had an area for repairing robots, and it was already gearing up to fix the one that Terry had damaged. He emptied the laser pistol into the repair equipment and bot-recovery drones, then threw it on the floor near the bot. Char swished by, tail brushing his leg as she passed. Terry backed into the corridor and leaned around the doorframe to shoot the laser pistol. He dodged back when it exploded spectacularly exactly as he had hoped, even though the power pack was spent.

  Terry found recovery drones trying to drag the second bot through a small door at the back like the cleaning bots had done to the bodies in the cafeteria. “Stop!” he ordered. Char bounded through the room, snapping viciously at the small metal creations, and they retreated back into their hole. Terry fired a few more shots into the security bot to make sure it was dead.

  “Do you think there are more bots behind the last two doors? Or worse?” Terry asked. The werewolf cocked her head back and forth at him before starting to growl low and dangerous.

  “Fine. Let’s check it out.”

  Terry returned to the corridor, looking out before leaving the confines of the security room. Once he was sure the way was clear, he went left, staying close to the wall. Char loped along beside him.

  “Watch yourself! I don’t want you to get shot.” He waved her back, but she wasn’t listening. He waved his wristband before the door, and it opened. Terry ducked his head past the door to get a quick look, but the werewolf shot past him. “Dammit!”

  He was after her in less than a heartbeat, ready to take on whatever the room threw at him. Inside, Char had one person cornered, the Erthos who had ordered that they be taken. She snapped at the leader’s face.

  Terry hurried over to grab a handful of fur and Char snapped at him. He fought with her to keep her from biting him, and the purple eyes glowed and sparkled. His shoulders slumped, and his hands dropped to dangle freely. “I’m sorry, Char.”

  He fixed the cornered Erthos with an angry glare. “I need you to answer some questions.”

  Chapter Ten

  The War Axe, in orbit around the Efluyez Homeworld, Alganor Sector

  “I don’t know.” Christina frowned and turned the material over. “It seems too light to do the job.”

  “Let’s test it right now. Grab your Jean Dukes Special, dial it to one, and let’s see what it does.” Kai looked excited. Christina removed her ever-present custom sidearm from its holster.

  He wrapped the cloak around himself.

  “What are you doing?”

  “A live test.”

  “Bullshit!” Christina holstered her pistol and crossed her arms.

  “Boy toy won’t get hurt,” he taunted.

  “Boy toy is going to get plenty hurt, but not by me shooting him. I’ll kick your ass upside-down and backwards before I shoot you,” she countered.

  Kai knew his limits. There were some battles that were worth fighting, but he saw the look on Christina’s face and knew for certain this wasn’t one of them. Kai hung the cloak on a hook and stepped behind Christina. “Whenever you’re ready.” He covered his ears.

  The colonel pulled her JDS, fired, and holstered it, all in under a second. Together they inspected the cloak. There was a minor scorch mark where the tiny projectile had hit it, but no penetration. The JDS accelerated its ammunition at varying degrees until number eleven on the dial, which was as destructive as a small nuclear weapon. Most people couldn’t handle the weapon while firing at that extreme because the kick could break normal bones. It took someone enhanced to attempt it, and only then in limited doses while well-braced.

  They tried it on the number two setting, then three. They made it to five before the round penetrated the material.

  “Can we call that a successful test?” Kai wanted to get the War Axe’s automated production line going as soon as possible.

  “Yes. Make them in the same color as the uniforms. We’ll call them boat cloaks, and they need to be long enough to cover us right to the ground. We will need helmets, too. I don’t want any exposed flesh.”

  “I’ll get these churning. I have everyone’s measurements. I’ll give you an estimate of production time as soon as I have it, and then we’ll start working on the helmets. It’s going to be tight.”

  “We have three days.” Christina looked confused.

  “We have only three days.”

  Band Rayal Seven, Okkoto

  “There you are!” Bethany Anne called from the doorway.

  Terry relaxed. “This means no one is in that room across the way?”

  BA nodded in agreement. “It’s empty, mostly.”

  “I don’t want to know what that means, but you’ve seen the stairway. It appears to be blocked by a billion tons of rubble.”

  “A billion?” BA looked down her nose at Terry’s exaggeration. “If you can move enough of it, it looks pretty open.”

  “You can see inside there?” Terry turned his head but kept his eyes on his prisoner.

  BA didn’t dignify his question with an answer since she had just told him what she’d s
een. Char growled at the Erthos clone.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it,” she said defensively. “It’s always been blocked.”

  “Then why are you guarding it?”

  “We’ve always guarded it,” she replied matter-of-factly.

  “Of course, you have.” Terry shook his head. “What do we do with you?”

  The prisoner looked blankly back at him.

  “Why is she still in drag?” BA asked, pointing with her eyes at Char.

  “That’s a good question. Lover?”

  The werewolf started stalking a circle around the room, snapping at TH each time she passed while ignoring Bethany Anne.

  “Go away,” Terry snarled at the prisoner. “Anywhere but here.”

  After the door closed behind her, he took a knee and tears started to run down his face. The werewolf studied him before dragging its tongue across his stubble and up his face.

  “I love you, Char,” Terry mumbled before looking at BA. “Will she be forever in this form?”

  Bethany Anne looked at him. “Why am I always saving your ass, Terry Henry Walton?”

  A glimmer of hope. A spark of life.

  “It’s what you do?” Terry ventured.

  “As long as it doesn’t become a full-time job, I’ll let it slide. This time.”

  BA crouched and focused her attention on the werewolf. “Make that ‘this time’ once again. Wonderful, I’m being redundant.”

  Char stopped pacing and blinked quickly. She began to pant, mouth open and tongue flapping with each breath, then howled softly as if sharing her pain. The great brown wolf’s body started to change, and with a great sigh, Char was kneeling on the floor, as naked as the day she was born. The silver streak of hair representative of her belly fur in place on the left side of her face

  She stood and stretched.

  “Thank God!” Terry turned to BA. “Thank you.”

  “I forgot how to change back,” Char said slowly. Rolling her head. “I seem to have misplaced my clothes, but look at that! My wristbands stayed on.”

  Char shook her hands in the air while Terry selfishly looked at her magnificent body.

  “My eyes are up here, mister,” she quipped.

  “And what beautiful eyes they are! I love that you have a big, bushy tail, but I prefer the human you.”

  “What a horny bastard,” BA trolled before starting to laugh.

  “I’ll be right back,” Terry said and strode past BA, giving her the side eye. She was still laughing.

  Char leaned against a small table. The room was austere. “What was she doing in here?” Char asked.

  BA took a step to her left. “Who knows what management does when no one’s looking? Probably lining up the next worker that she was going to fuck with.”

  “Thanks, BA. I started to panic. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Old age?” BA quipped. Char smiled at the jest.

  “I don’t change into a werewolf anymore. It’s been so long. I changed through emotion, not intent. I think that messed with me.”

  The door opened, and Terry came back in. His face was scratched up, and blood trickled from his hair. He handed over Char’s clothes and boots. “Your shirt was ripped, but everything else looked like it had been spared. “Hey! You have a crease across your ass.”

  Char waved a hand impatiently. “What happened to your face?”

  “Those little Roomba-wannabes are some mean bastards. I had to dive into the cleaning duct as they were dragging your shit away. The fight didn’t last long.” He smiled and scrubbed a hand over his face.

  “Thanks. I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no. We’re not doing it down here.”

  “Where did that come from? And I wasn’t thinking that at all, but I am now.”

  Bethany Anne snorted. “If I had been drinking a Coke, I would have shot it out my nose. Do those Roombas clean up nose Coke?” There was a pause as TH and Char turned in her direction. “Wait. That didn’t sound right...”

  Char dressed. Before she put on her boots, she showed them to BA, who said, “I love those. I must have a pair. Onyx Station?”

  “Keeg!” Char declared. “Thanks to a mutual love of shoes with the station manager, we have a Baxter and Birney with the latest modern and throwback styles.”

  “Of all the stores that did not survive the ghost ship’s attack, Baxter and Birney did, without a scratch. Bizarre, to say the least. No food or hardware, but the shoe store came through. My All Guns Blazing was freaking gutted! I’m still replacing the vats. I have to hide beer on my ship because there is none left on Keeg, but there are women’s shoes.”

  “The universe and fate have delivered the necessities. And please, don’t do it. If I walked in on that, I’d be scarred for life. I might even have to invent new swear words to help me get through my angst.”

  Terry’s face turned bright red, but Char remained unperturbed.

  “Don’t worry. You won’t.”

  “Does anyone know what time it is?” Terry asked.

  “I feel like I’ve been up forever.”

  BA held up her arms and twisted her wrists back and forth. “No watch.”

  “Forty hours?”

  “If we haven’t passed it yet, we will soon, and we’re no closer to getting out of here than when we started.”

  “Why is forty hours important?” Bethany Anne asked.

  Terry looked at the floor. Char balanced on one foot as she put on a boot. “That was when the shuttle was going to return for us.”

  BA pursed her lips. “So, is it a one-time bad deal?”

  “We can call for it if this thing is still working.” Terry produced the comm device the flight attendant had given him. It was scratched and scarred, but the light came on when he pressed the button. “We’re going to miss our ride, so we’ll have to call for one when we get back to the surface and hope this thing transmits.”

  “I’m tired and could use a few minutes of sleep,” Char said.

  Terry nodded in agreement. “What do you say we take Tonie’s room and then, you know...”

  “We’re not doing it.”

  Terry winked at BA.

  “Incorrigible. Whatever led me to save you in the first place? You could be a frozen relic, a monument to love, forever trapped in Antarctica,” BA mused. She looked over her shoulder. “Gotta run. I’ll be back as soon as the next crisis passes.” BA wriggled her fingers in a wave as she walked away. “Later, bitches.”

  The War Axe, in orbit around the Efluyez Homeworld, Alganor Sector

  “We’re going to look like old Earth vampires,” Kimber said. Joseph and Petricia scowled at her.

  “For the record, I never wore a cloak. Well, there was that one time. Wait. There were lots of times, but that was in the 1700s! They were all the rage back then.”

  “You know how fashion has a way of returning. Here we are, Vamp Central. Bad Company rocks the vamp. We are. Clap, clap. Vampires!” Christina taunted.

  “I thought I knew you,” Joseph muttered before working his way to the back of the room.

  “Where are you going? You’ve got to model it for us.” Christina pointed to the ballistic cloak Kai was holding.

  The mischievous look in her eyes encouraged him more than her order. He was one of the original group, a vampire who had joined Terry Henry Walton in North Chicago many years prior. He lived near them for decades, untrusted by Char and her pack, but Terry had always been honest with him. And once they’d accepted him, they’d risked all for him.

  When he and his partner Petricia had been victims of the blood trade, drugged and held for years, their blood siphoned and sold to the rich, Terry and Char had gone to war to find them and bring them home. Terry had personally carried Joseph to safety through gunfire and explosions. He had never asked for thanks, saying it was just what friends did for each other.

  Joseph had had friends over the centuries, but only Terry had been willing to die for him.

&nb
sp; Maybe he’d never had the right friends. Joseph was at home with the Bad Company, no matter where they were or what they were doing. And Joseph had learned that he, too, would do anything for his friends.

  “Why not?” he said, throwing the cloak around himself dramatically before holding it up to where just his eyes showed in the classic Bela Lugosi rendition of Count Dracula. “I vant to suck your blood!”

  The younger warriors looked at him as if he were speaking in tongues. Christina, Kimber, and Auburn clapped. Terry’s proclivity toward watching the classics had dragged his whole family along on TH’s version of a required classical education.

  “No blood-sucking!” Kai declared, even though he knew that with the latest updates to the nanocytes coursing through Joseph’s blood, he no longer needed blood of any type for sustenance. He and Petricia were no longer vampires of necessity, but, they would always be as part of their identity.

  “I shall not, good sir. It’s light, and it swishes gracefully while I walk.” Joseph took a few steps to demonstrate. “Good job on the weighting along the lower seam to keep it hanging smoothly.”

  Joseph marched forward, making a military left turn. The cloak flowed with him without interrupting his stride. “I think we have a winner.”

  Kai beamed. “Smedley, start the process and churn them out as quickly as you can. Joseph has his in hand. All the rest will need theirs, even our four-legged warriors.”

  Christina hadn’t approved that. She moved close to Kai and whispered into his ear, “Why do they need them?”

  “If shit goes down, they’ll run into the middle of it. Look who you’re keeping out of the mix. Those are three of our best, and they are the most likely to survive an extreme whatever-it-may-be.”

  “I’ll hold them in reserve, but it never hurts to have some extra protection.” Christina kissed Kai on the cheek. “How long until they’re ready?”

  “Twenty hours,” Smedley replied.

  “Sounds good. What do you have for helmet designs?” Christina pressed.

  “My God, woman!” Kai blurted. “All your good ideas create more work for me.”