Bodyguard

by William C. Dietz

  I looked at Sasha, she looked at me, and both of us shrugged. The channel and whatever it was that traveled within it seemed harmless enough and could be investigated later. We needed to get where we were going, and get there fast, or we would suffer what could be painful consequences.

  I repositioned my feet, pushed off, and coasted for twenty feet. The ridges were spaced about six inches apart, which placed one wherever you needed it, and a sort of rhythm emerged. Push, coast, push. Push, coast, push. Over and over again as we made our way down the corridor. It became kind of hypnotic after a while, so much so that my senses were dulled, and it was Joy who gave the alarm. “Look! Something’s coming!”

  I looked, and what I saw scared the hell out of me. It turned from a dot to a blob to an oncoming train in a matter of seconds. The drive unit had diagonal yellow and black stripes across its front end, mounted no less than four flashing red beacons, and filled the passageway from side to side and top to bottom. Rollers kept the vehicle from scraping against the bulkheads and explained the wear marks I’d noticed earlier. The train, if that’s what it should be called, was making a good fifty or sixty miles an hour. And why not? The humans were gone, as far as the barge and its computers knew, so cargo could be redistributed by the fastest and most efficient means possible. Sasha was first to get the words out of her mouth. “The next niche! Move!”

  It felt crazy to launch ourselves at the oncoming train, but the distance between us and the niche ahead was less than the distance between us and the niche behind. I put all the strength I had into the push, but the air felt as thick as old-fashioned molasses. The deck and bulkheads moved with maddening slowness, and the stripes hurtled towards me with what seemed like unbelievable speed. Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes as I willed myself forward. I saw Sasha make her way into the niche, followed by Joy. Good! Someone would live, someone would…

  The Beep! Beep! Beep! of the warning buzzer filled my ears and drove all the remaining thoughts out of my mind. I felt the outermost wave of displaced air touch my face, waited for the mind-numbing impact, and felt a hand grab my jacket. The beeping sound turned into a long, thin scream as the train roared by. The heel of my left boot bounced off the side of a cargo module and threw me deeper into the niche. My head hit the bulkhead with a distinct clang. Anyone who had a full load of brains would’ve been injured. I was momentarily dizzy but otherwise fine. The train was gone as quickly as it came. I looked at Sasha. “Thanks. You saved my life.”

  There it was again. The flash of compassion, of caring, quickly hidden by a shrug and a flip reply. “It was my turn.”

  We paid attention after that, pushing our way down the corridor, watching for oncoming trains. That’s how I spotted the change in what had been dull uniformity. The difference was hard to describe, except to say that the lighting was different, and the bulkheads had been replaced by a vague haziness. But the area acquired definition as we moved closer, rolled into focus like a carefully adjusted lens, and became a vast open space.

  The bulkheads fell away and the corridor became a sky bridge that spidered out over a large cargo bay. It was filled with bushes. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. They were lushly green, almost identical in size and shape, and heavy with purple blossoms. Light glittered off tiny wings as a host of robotic insects flitted from one blossom to the next, spreading pollen, or doing whatever it was they had been designed to do. I noticed that the bushes, and the containers they sat in, were secured to the deck.

  My stomach flip-flopped as I drifted out and over the abyss. Heights don’t bother me, but floating does. I wouldn’t fall, not till gravity had been restored, but I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere either. Not unless the air-conditioned breeze blew me against something solid. I made a grab for the railing, got it, and checked to see if Sasha was watching. She wasn’t, thank god, and neither was Joy. Both had ignored the view and were well on their way to reaching the other side.

  I followed, careful to plan my movements, and was grateful when the corridor closed around me. We had gone about fifty feet down the passageway when the vertical access tubes appeared and the hall ended. That was interesting, but not half as interesting as the foot-high letters that spelled out the words, “Corpies Suck!” followed by some incomprehensible lines and squiggles. It didn’t take an art historian to see that the artist had used some sort of marker rather than spray paint. I turned towards Sasha. “The tug crew, I suppose?”

  She gave me a dirty look and pushed herself towards the access tubes. “Come on. Let’s camp on the main deck. I’d rather look at bushes than metal bulkheads.”

  That seemed reasonable, so I tagged along. Sasha had rigged a way to tow her duffel bag one after the other. The second one bounced off the coaming as she pushed herself down through the tube. Joy shoved her cases into position, waved cheerfully, and dropped feet first into the tube.

  That left me. I pushed myself into position, planned my approach descent, and “climbed” down the rungs intended for use with gravity. It worked pretty well.

  I was concerned about where Sasha would lead us once we arrived on, or in this case near, the main deck. I needn’t have been. In spite of the fact that she had pooh-poohed my concerns regarding security, the girl had good instincts, and headed for the point where the bulkhead intersected the vessel’s hull. While not exactly a fortress, this would protect our backs, and allow space for a kill zone between our quarters and what I increasingly thought of as the forest.

  Though not as tall as your average tree, the bushes did tower over me, or would have if I’d been standing rather than floating. That made them a forest, as did the brooding feel that surrounded them, and the rather large amount of space that they occupied.

  A cloud of glittering robo-insects rose into the air, hovered for a moment, and settled back down. Light glinted off their silvery wings and made them look like branch-grown diamonds.

  It was then that I noticed the fragrance that drifted up around us. It smelled good at first, like perfume on a high-priced hooker, but grew thick and cloying after a minute or so.

  Once there we found the corner already occupied by four storage modules. I tried one and found it unlocked. A quick investigation revealed that the boxes contained hand tools, fertilizer concentrate, and a whole bunch of lab equipment that I didn’t understand. But density is density, and if lab equipment can shield me from darts, then I don’t care what it’s for.

  Sasha grumbled when I freed the containers from the deck, and insisted on rearranging them into a protective semicircle, but went along with the plan. Not because she liked it, or thought it was necessary, but because I’m a crotchety old bastard who has to be humored.

  Once our newly formed bulwark was in place, and was mag-locked to the deck, our next requirement was furniture. Beds had first priority, since they could do double duty as acceleration couches, and would cushion us from the effects of gravity.

  With that in mind, we spread out to see what we could find. I wanted to say something cautionary, like “watch out for people with Mars Bars,” but knew better than to push my luck. I took the port side and headed towards the bow, while the others took the bulkhead and headed towards the access tubes.

  We’d been at it for fifteen minutes when a squadron of mechanical insects took to the air and Joy came swinging through the branches. You could see bushes swaying all the way back to where she’d come from. Her last swing, followed by a split-second release, sent her flying towards my shoulder. She hit with a thump. I fell backwards and struggled to right myself. “Damn it, Joy…what the hell are you doing?”

  “Arriving,” she said brightly. “And I found what you’re looking for.”

  “You did? Where?”

  “In a storage room near the access tubes. Cargo pads…lots of them.”

  I used the bush tops to pull myself along. Blossoms came loose and floated through the air like organic confetti. The smell of them stuck to the back of my throat. Joy held onto my right shoulder ta
b and chattered the whole way. I didn’t pay much attention to what she said, but realized how pleasant her voice was, and understood how lonely Wamba must have been. I wondered if he’d make another Joy, or if that was possible, since she was one of a kind. I hoped so.

  The cargo pads were right where Joy had said they’d be, and while some of them were raggedy, and others were stained, most were reasonably clean. It was a simple matter to free the pads from the straps that held them in place, sort them in mid-air, and take the ones we wanted. Sasha arrived towards the end of the process and helped tow them to our newly created home.

  It didn’t take long to discover that securing the pads to the deck was going to be a problem. But through the judicious use of magnetic clamps borrowed from here and there, and the huge roll of duct tape that I had included in our luggage, we created what looked like comfortable beds. Gravity would provide the true test.

  With that effort out of the way, Sasha and I discovered that we were tired. So, after eating some rather salty ration bars, and washing them down with water siphoned from the irrigation system, we strapped ourselves in for a good night’s sleep. Not that “night” had any particular meaning within the realm of the eternally lit cargo bay.

  I felt one of us should keep watch, but Sasha thought it was unnecessary. So, since robots don’t sleep, and she would be up and around anyway, Joy was the logical compromise. I’ve got to admit that I felt some qualms about entrusting our safety to a twelve-inch-tall android, but my eyelids grew heavy, sleep beckoned, and I went along.

  It was two or three hours later when I was awoken by the sudden and unannounced imposition of Earth-normal gravity. And, while I was growing more and more accustomed to zero-gee conditions, it felt good. And so it was that I had just rearranged my bed, snuggled under a cargo mat, and drifted off to sleep when Joy jumped up and down on my chest. The poppers attacked two minutes later.

  13

  “Good for one free meal.”

  A pass to the Lunar Gardens Cafe found in popper number two’s waist pouch

  The poppers were cautious, and that was a mistake. Had they rushed in and nailed us in bed, the whole thing would have ended right there. But they didn’t, and we made reasonably good use of the extra seconds. I scrambled to my feet, checked to make sure Sasha was up, and pointed to the right. “You take the right, I’ll take the left!”

  She nodded, held her gun in the approved two-handed grip, and took aim. There were four poppers in all. Two males, a female, and an android. A limited-edition model with three eyes, vampire fangs, and a pimp-city wardrobe. He, she, or it worried me more than the others did, because robots can be damned hard to kill. They charged the cargo modules, leaped to the top, and spent half a second looking at us.

  I wasted half that time wishing I had the .38 instead of the dart gun, took aim, and pumped the trigger. Black holes marched across the front of the android’s peach-colored jumpsuit. Jets of bright blue fluid spurted out and splashed on the deck. The robot grinned. He was still grinning when his gun came up, his finger squeezed the trigger, and Joy climbed his pants leg. The first darts blew air into my ear and the rest went wide as Joy jumped for and grabbed his gun arm. Darts splattered against the deck at my feet while hot plastic peppered my ankles.

  The robot frowned, tried to shake Joy off, and died as my darts found and destroyed his central processing unit (CPU). He was still in the process of falling when I picked my next target. I fired, but she had moved, and the darts tore through empty space.

  Diving onto an opponent can be quite effective if you hit and knock them down. But if the other person turns sideways as I did, and the assailant hits the deck like she did, the shoe’s on the other foot. Only the most charitable of souls would have ignored the opportunity to jump on her exposed spine, and given the fact that I’m not especially charitable, I didn’t.

  But, instead of the yielding flesh that I had expected to encounter, my boots landed on some of Pro-Tec’s finest semirigid body armor. It did what it was supposed to do, and spread the impact of my attack over a wider area. I was still in the process of absorbing that information when the woman did a military push-up. I tottered and fell sideways as she rolled. I saw her gun come up, fired mine in response, and watched a hole appear between her eyes.

  The air whooshed out of my lungs as I hit the deck, and I was still struggling to breathe when Sasha arrived. She placed hands on hips and grinned sardonically. “What the hell kind of bodyguard is this? Lying around while I do all the work?”

  This was less than fair, and I was planning to say so, when I saw three bodies where there should have been four. I struggled to my feet.

  “I see three of them…where did the last one go?”

  Sasha shrugged and gestured towards the bushes. “I hit him once, maybe twice, but he got away.”

  I looked where she was pointing and saw a trail of blood. “Damn.”

  She frowned and looked defensive. “It’s too bad he got away…but we narrowed the odds.”

  I looked to see if she was serious. “Yeah? By how much?” I watched her think it through. If four poppers had made it aboard the barge, then why not five? Or six? Or ten? Assumptions could kill you. The voice confirmed my fears. It came from the bushes somewhere.

  “Not bad for an over-the-hill head-case and a teenaged bimbo, but it ain’t over yet. Not by a long shot. I’ll be back! Wait for it. I’ll come when you least expect me.”

  I jumped to the top of a storage module, saw a cloud of robo-insects take to the air fifty yards out, and considered going after him. It didn’t seem wise, though, not with the cover the bushes provided, and no certainty that he was alone.

  I made one helluva target standing on the storage module, and jumped down. Joy grabbed my pants and scampered up to my shoulder. She put her feet at the base of my neck, grabbed an ear, and leaned way out. She looked happy. “Hiya, boss. How’s it hanging?”

  I looked into her face, saw the merriment that danced in her eyes, and understood something that would have been obvious to anyone but me. Wamba had equipped Joy with the single emotion he wanted her to have, the one he hardly ever felt himself, and hoped to experience by having her around. Had the plan failed? Was that why he had given her to me?

  I forced a smile of my own. “Pretty well, all things considered. Thanks for the help. You saved my life.”

  Joy beamed with pleasure and rubbed herself against the side of my face. The feel of her miniature breasts brushing back and forth against my ear stimulated strange thoughts. I plucked her off my shoulder, smiled reassuringly, and placed her on the deck. She giggled happily. Long, slender legs flashed and she cartwheeled away. There was no doubt about it. Joy needed some clothes.

  But first there were other more pressing problems to deal with. Like collecting the arsenal of weapons our attackers had unintentionally delivered and going through their pockets. Not a pleasant task, but a productive one. We found money, about four thousand in all, lots of spare ammo, some gas grenades, enough knives to open a cutlery store, two varieties of illicit drugs, and, last but certainly not least, temporary I.D. cards of the sort that corpies provide to freelancers. They can be set for anything from a day to a year and erase themselves after that. But these were good and came with 3-D photos, thumbprints, and a scanner strip. None of which would have meant diddly except for the fact that all the cards had been issued by Trans-Solar. Shasha knelt beside me. I showed her the card. “So much for getting rid of them on Mars.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Damn.”

  “Yeah. I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what’s going on?”

  The stubborn look reappeared. She shook her head. “I already have.”

  I shook my head sadly and got to my feet. “Right. And corpies give to charity. Well, let’s dispose of the bodies before they start to smell. I think I saw an ejection port near the storage compartment.”

  What would have been easy in zero gee was hard work in ship-normal gravity. People
weigh more after they die, or seem to, and it doesn’t make sense. Life should have weight, and leave a body feeling lighter, like a canteen emptied of water. But that’s not the way it works, as the guys on the local meat wagon will be glad to tell you.

  But, by rolling the bodies onto a cargo pad, and dragging them to the ejection port, we got the job done. Of course, lifting the stiffs and stuffing them down the tube was not an especially pleasant task, but better them than us. Once that was accomplished, the rest was easy. It was a simple matter to close the hatch, seal it shut, and hit the green button.

  I felt a slight vibration as air was pumped out of the chamber and heard a thump as the bodies were ejected from the tube. I tried to feel something, tried to think religious thoughts, but nothing came. It’s hard to empathize with poppers, dead or alive, and my religious training, if any, had disappeared along with my other memories.

  The adrenaline drained out of my bloodstream and took my energy with it. I was afraid. And who wouldn’t be? We were trapped on a spacegoing barge with one or more hired killers. Fear was normal, and anything else would be stupid. But fear is an uncomfortable emotion. It saps your strength and demands full attention until you respond. But what should we do? Our arrival at what had been our fortress served to underline the problem.

  The android was where we’d left him. His sky-blue body fluids had oozed out, mingled with human blood, and formed a brownish crust. What had seemed snug and secure prior to the attack felt open and vulnerable now. I had just started to think about that when Sasha assumed command again. She stood hands on hips, her gun in easy reach, with a newly acquired backup stuck in her waistband. “Collect the gear, Max. We’re pulling out.”

  I would look back later, remember how she’d taken control, and wonder how I could have been so stupid. But I was stupid, and still am for that matter, and it felt good at the time. I nodded slowly. “Yeah, you’re probably right. No sense in staying here. We’ll build a fort somewhere else.”