by Dave Bara
“Close your eyes!” he said to Makera. The flash followed and he opened his eyes again. Amanda/Yan was gone out of sight of the door, no doubt further inside the work room. “Go!” he said, jumping up, rifle at the ready, and running for the air lock door way.
Inside was mess. There were people on the floor moaning, others trying to move and get out of the room. A haze of smoke and mist filled the air. Renwick coughed as he took up a position behind some stacked boxes. Makera was at his side a second later.
The work room was huge and very cold. Breathing was hard and the chill had an immediate effect on his vision. He looked up through blurry eyes to see a private yacht hanging above them in dry dock, perhaps fifty meters from where they crouched, suspended in a zero-G field. There was repair equipment and materials strewn about the deck with many workers, now recovering from the double jolt of the decompression and the EM pulse, scrambling to get out of the way of the advancing android.
Amanda/Yan was throwing anything that got in her way, equipment, haulers, hydraulic lifts, people, to one side as she passed. She was checking ID’s on the workers of course, then letting them go if they weren’t her man, like throwing unwanted fish back in the water.
“She’d make a hell of a cop,” said Renwick.
“Cop?” asked Makera, unfamiliar with the reference
“Policeman,” he said. “C’mon. We have to guard the door and make sure our man doesn’t slip out.” They spent the next few minutes stopping workers from leaving by pointing their guns at them, then letting them go when they weren’t Kish. Amanda/Yan was far ahead in the bay and out of sight, though there were sounds of the occasional struggle, probably with a guard.
“This is going too slow,” said Renwick. “They’ll have reinforcements here soon.”
Makera let go of a man twice her size that she had been restraining, practicing her own version of catch-and-release. “What can we do?” she said.
“Yan, can you hear me?” he said into his com, but it was dead. “She was right, our coms are down. Come on,” he tapped Makera on the arm. “Let’s find Yan.”
She was under the yacht, sorting through a pile of people that included unconscious guards and workers.
“How did you-“ started Makera.
“I don’t want to know,” said Renwick. “You didn’t hurt them did you?” he said to the android.
“Not permanently,” she replied. The room was quickly emptying. Renwick looked up at the huge yacht hanging above them. “Kish must be on board,” he said.
“Logical,” replied Amanda/Yan, “since he is an engineer. Most of these appear to be metal workers.”
“We have to get up there,” said Renwick. It was a good twenty meters up to the bow of the yacht.
“That will be difficult for you. Regrettably the scaffolding came down in the decompression,” Amanda/Yan said. Renwick looked around. She was right, there was no way up to the yacht. Her main decks were well above normal human climbing level.
“Are either of you trained in zero-G suspensor fields?” asked Amanda/Yan. Both Renwick and Makera shook their heads.
“Then it’s up to me,” she said. At that moment the yacht moaned and tilted to one side several meters. “That would be the suspensor field breaking down. A regrettable side effect of using the EMP,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”
“Before what?” Renwick said. Amanda/Yan looked at him like he was a moron.
“Before the field fails completely and the yacht resumes normal gravity,” she said.
“Uh-oh.”
“I will be back as soon as I can,” she said. “Prepare to receive more workers.”
“Um, Yan,“ started Renwick, “How will you get up to-“ at that moment Amanda/Yan crouched and then leapt the entire twenty-meter height of the yacht strait up, landing on the open deck above.
“Oh,” said Renwick to Makera. “That’s how.”
A few minutes passed with no sign of her or any workers, and the yacht continued to list further, groaning with every movement.
“I don’t like this,” said Renwick just as she reappeared at the bow of yacht.
“Please catch the workers as I drop them down,” she yelled down to them.
“What the hell?” said Renwick, watching helplessly as Amanda/Yan dropped a full-grown man bigger than he was down towards them. Thankfully the man descended at a significantly reduced rate of speed due to the low-G suspensor field in place. Renwick ‘caught’ the man and directed him safely to the ground. He had an astonished look on his face, said “Thank you”, and then ran from the room. By then Makera had guided a second worker to the ground. Renwick caught the next one.
Kish was the sixth one down.
There were four more after that, then Amanda/Yan followed, not requiring assistance as she landed.
“We have to get out of here,” she said. “I estimate perhaps four minutes before that yacht goes through the floor.”
“Can you run?” said Renwick to Kish.
“Yes,” he said. The look on his face was one of one of a man in shock, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of Amanda/Yan.
“Then let’s go,” said Renwick. Just as they started to move a coil rifle shot laced across the position where he had been standing a second earlier. They all rushed for cover behind a stack of metal crates next to an abandoned loader. “Welcoming committee is here,” he said.
“Yes, six of them,” said Yan. “All armed. And unfortunately I am not impervious to laser fire,” she said.
“Time to trade you in on the new model,” said Renwick. Behind him the yacht moaned and tilted to a severe angle.
“What will we do?” asked Makera.
Renwick looked around the room, analyzed their precarious situation, and shook his head.
“Panic,” he said.
9.
Contrary to his statement, Renwick didn’t panic. Instead he turned to his most valuable resource.
“Yan, how many stun grenades do you have?” he said.
“Two,” she replied, then pulled up her tunic top and began shuffling around inside herself again.
“What the hell?” said Kish.
“You’ll get used to it,” said Renwick. Coil rifle fire was peppering the crates and the loader in front of them.
“We can’t take much of this,” said Makera. Renwick nodded. At least these attackers had the same older model coil rifles that the station guards had carried. With each shot the rifle had to take about three seconds to recharge before it could fire again. He and Makera had the Mark 7’s, which you could hold in one hand and that allowed them to fire in much more rapid return. Amanda/Yan handed him a stun grenade and he loaded it on to the end of his rifle, then switched the mode from laser to grenade launcher.
“I’ll need a diversion,” he said. “And someone to spot the targets for me.”
“I’ll be the diversion,” said Makera over the din.
“And I’ll be the spotter,” said Amanda/Yan.
“What can I do?” asked the disheveled Kish, who seemed to be recovering his bearings.
“Stay down,” said Renwick forcefully. “We go in three... two... one... go!”
Makera leapt up, cat like, and fired a string of semi-automatic rifle bursts of suppressing fire while she moved across the line of fire to the relative security of another abandoned loader. Amanda/Yan stuck her head out, then called back to Renwick.
“Fifty-three point nine-two-two meters, azimuth seven,” she said. Renwick rose, pointed, and fired the grenade, then ducked behind his cover again. A second later it exploded, sending a jolt of high-intensity compression waves though the chamber. At the distance they were from the grenade the effect was minimal. To those closer, however...
“Four down,” called Amanda/Yan. “The other two are scrambling.” Renwick looked out at his handiwork. The two conscious guards were indeed retreating, firing as they ran for the doorway. He was about to call Makera off when he watched in horror as she cut the
two men down with her rifle, one of them was severed completely in half, falling into two perfectly cauterized pieces.
“Restrain yourself, Ambassador!” he demanded, rising with his rifle poised. She snapped around to face him, rifle leveled at his midsection. “Will you cut me in half as well?” he said. The fire of Raelen rage was burning in her eyes. “They would have gone for reinforcements. It would have put us in greater danger,” she said.
“It wasn’t necessary!” he shouted at her. Amanda/Yan stood and placed herself between them.
“The yacht,” she said. As if on cue it tilted again and started forward, towards the floor, and them. If it fell now, it would crush them. It wobbled and then steadied itself, precariously.
“We’ll finish this later,” said Renwick.
“I’ve already done that,” said Makera, challenging him directly.
“Senator, Ambassador, Mr. Kish, we need to go now!” said Amanda/Yan. She grabbed Kish by the collar of his EV suit and started moving. Renwick dropped his rifle to his side and then started running for the doorway, following as fast as he could go. He never looked back until he had cleared the work room doorway. Once on the other side he turned just as Makera came through. He watched Amanda/Yan drop Kish, not gently either, and then pick up the discarded hatch, slamming it crossways back into the door opening, the hatch embedding into the wall in a way that was almost disturbing. Behind the hatch there was a grinding sound as the zero-G suspensor field collapsed.
“Run!” yelled Renwick. They all did.
The corridor deck beneath Renwick’s feet was twisting and groaning, shifting like soft plastic as he ran. Kish stayed close on his shoulder. He was unaware of Makera, nor was he concerned for her, not after what he had seen her do in the work room. There was a coldness about him as he strode down the long corridor, waiting to hear the fate of the yacht behind him.
The crash was deafening, and from the violent vibration it seemed as though the whole arm of the station would come apart around them. Alarm claxons, alerting the station to a loss of atmosphere in the dry dock, rang through his ears. He ran wildly, with no thought or intent except to get away from the danger. As he rounded a corner he suddenly saw a lifter dead ahead.
“This way!” he turned and yelled over the din, slamming the lifter call button. To his delight the lifter doors opened immediately. Kish stopped and changed direction, coming towards him, then Amanda/Yan came around the corner. His heart pounded in his chest as he waited for Makera with a combination of disdain and concern. Finally she came, running full bore, and then dove for the lifter, sliding the last five meters across the floor to land at his feet.
“Go!” she looked up and said. He hit the close control and selected the gallery deck as their destination. The lifter began to move even as the interior lights were flickering, coming perilously close to going out several times. As they moved he removed the power pack and shouldered his rifle. Amanda/Yan helped Makera to her feet while Kish peeled off his work suit to reveal plain gray coveralls beneath. A few seconds later and they exited the lifter, mingling into the crowd at the main concourse and acting as if nothing unusual had happened to them all day long.
AN HOUR LATER THEY were back in their berth with Kish, who was vigorously eating soup and drinking water. It had been a full day since his last meal. Amanda/Yan was scanning the auctions for more information on the sale of Lieutenant Cain. Makera was sulking in a corner, cleaning her rifle coils. Renwick, for his part, was ignoring her while scanning the news stream for word on their earlier escapade.
“Lieutenant Cain’s opening bid price is up fifty percent since yesterday morning. Her skills as a pilot are proving to be almost as valuable as her sexual characteristics,” said Amanda/Yan.
“That’s nice to know,” said Renwick, sullenly. “Looks like the whole Centaurus Arm of the station went black after the yacht crashed, according to the news reports. No video or security telemetry of our escape, either. And the yacht ended up diving into the planet before the owner could pay the station fees to retrieve it.”
“Hope he had insurance,” said Makera from the corner. Renwick ignored her.
“There will likely be telemetry data of us entering the Centaurus Arm just before the yacht incident,” said Amanda/Yan. “I will endeavor to eradicate it.”
“Endeavor? Sure you feel all right?” Renwick asked, forcing himself to try humor. “You’re not going all android on me are you?” Amanda/Yan managed a smile.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s hard to express myself in this thing.”
“Personally I find it an improvement in efficiency over your original personality,” chimed in Makera from the corner. Amanda/Yan’s response was to close her eyes. Renwick turned his attention to Kish.
“If you feel like talking, what happened out there after we left, on board the Phaeton I mean?” he said. Kish stopped chewing and swallowed hard, then spoke.
“We lost power after the last plasma grenade volley,” he said. “By the time I got the generators back online the Gataan were aboard. We had no time to defend ourselves before they were on top of us.”
“How many survivors were there?”
“Eleven of us,” said Kish.
“Eleven?” said Renwick. “There’s only three of you here. Where are the others?” He dreaded the answer.
“They weren’t deemed valuable enough, so our captors called in some ‘friends’, and sold them off, I assume to be auctioned off to the mines at Cundaloa,” Kish said. Renwick took this in with regret.
“We’ll find them,” he promised. Kish nodded acknowledgement, then continued.
“The captain, Mischa, and me were taken here on the surviving corvette. We all assumed you were dead. At least that’s what the Gataan told us. They said you slipped into the Void trying to escape and were killed. Glad that isn’t the real story,” he said. Renwick shifted uncomfortably.
“Actually, that’s not far from the truth,” he admitted. “We did end up in the Void, but we didn’t die.”
“What? How?” said Kish. Renwick sat down next to him.
“That takes some explaining,” he said. He then proceeded to catch Kish up on all that had happened since they had departed the Phaeton in the skiff. “And so now we’re here to rescue you. But we won’t be going to Cundaloa to rescue your crew just yet, I’m sorry to say. We have unfinished business in the Void.”
“Can you use an engineer?” Kish asked.
“Always, Mr. Kish,” said Amanda/Yan from across the small room, breaking her silence but not opening her eyes. “Always.”
AFTER SIX HOURS OF rest and recuperation the auction of Lieutenant Mischa Cain of the Unity cruiser Phaeton was pending inside the next two hours. Renwick roused his comrades, then discussed his plan.
“Based on our current credit, we have the equivalent of twelve thousand Unity crowns. Looking at the auction lists however, Lieutenant Cain has an opening bid established of nearly ten thousand crowns already. Her piloting skills seem to have outstripped her value as a sexual distraction. The current estimated sale price is between fifteen and eighteen thousand,” he said.
“So we don’t have enough money,” said Makera. Renwick shook his head.
“If we put Yan up for auction, we would have more credit, but she’d have to be detained as collateral for the auction,” he said.
“That seems like our only option,” said Makera.
“Would you be so quick if it was you on the block, Ambassador?” Renwick said, still angry with her over the killings. “I could probably get thirty thousand easily just for you. However I’d be tempted to leave you behind, and I couldn’t live with myself if I did that. So you’re not an option at the moment.”
“More’s the pity,” she said. He ignored her.
“Yan has the ability to take care of herself and escape, especially if she is properly equipped. She still has a stun grenade, and I’d like to give her a pistol,” he said, holding out his hand to the Ambassador.
“You’ll have to stay here, Mr. Kish,” he said. “You’re still a fugitive, and we can’t risk exposing you, even if we did take out your paper trail.”
“Understood,” said Kish. Renwick gave him his pistol for defense along with a power pack.
“I’d like to leave you here as well Ambassador, after your exploits in the dry dock. But I’ll need backup and Yan will be indisposed for a while, so I’m stuck with you,” he said.
“A ringing endorsement,” she said. He was annoyed by her continued barbs and her lack of conscience over the killings, but she really was his only option, so he chose to ignore her.
They made final preparations and then made their way out to the gallery and down to the Auction Pits. They did a check of their repaired coms and found they could communicate with each other well enough. Renwick escorted Amanda/Yan down to the Auction Board and registered her for sale.
“How much do you want for her?” asked the selling agent.
“A hundred thousand crowns, gold,” Renwick replied. The agent looked down at him in surprise.
“She’s pretty enough, but she isn’t worth that much,” he said. “I’ll advance you five thousand against final sale.” Renwick stepped up to the podium the man was standing behind.
“My good man, I think you misunderstand,” he said. He nodded to Amanda/Yan. She walked up to a metal support beam near the door to the auction pits and pulled it out of the mortar it was encased in, then bent the thick beam into a perfect “C” curve. The agent looked impressed.
“Robot?” he asked. Renwick shook his head.
“Android. Able to simulate a human in all form and functions. All form and functions,” he said, smiling. The agent got his emphasis.
“You got your hundred-thousand,” he said, motioning for Renwick’s credit chip. Renwick handed him his card and then authenticated his code into the auction system. “Just so you know, the agency rate goes up to ten percent for everything over a hundred thousand, and I think she’ll go well over that.”
