Head Space

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  To Lucia’s surprise, Bubba did not charge down the corridor. Rather his guns pushed all opposition back to a room at the far end and held them there. Mary dropped to the deck between his feet and took aim from a prone position with her rifle. The air soon fizzled with the passage of ultra-high velocity flechettes from her powerful weapon. Then it was Patton’s turn. Two hovering metal machines like floating space-fighters rose to eye level and zipped to the end of the corridor. They wobbled precariously, moving forward in an erratic serpentine path to avoid the sporadic fire coming from the open deck at the hall’s terminus. When the drones had traversed most of the fifty yards, there came a sharp popping sound as both spat small canisters the remaining distance. While the drones retreated, the small silver cylinders tumbled into the pirate-filled alcove and exploded.

  Lucia wanted to assess how much damage the explosives had done, but Bubba was already charging and she got swept up in the forward surge from the rest of the squad. The room at the end belched a choking haze of smoke courtesy of Patton’s drones. Lucia’s HUD showed only the barest flickers of thermal activity through the narrow aperture, leaving much of what might be lurking inside hidden.

  “Winner,” barked Patton. “Clear it!”

  “Roger!” The lanky man replied and tossed what had to be six grenades at once into the smoky interior of the compartment. Lucia and the rest of the squad threw themselves to the deck. She covered her head with her arms and watched in silent horror as Bubba stood strong and immovable when the grenades went off. The explosions shook the floor and rang the bulkheads with a solid wave of pure compressed air. It drove the breath from her lungs and stung the exposed skin of her cheeks and lips. As the thunderclap faded, she could hear Riley’s voice roaring with glee and felt his giant boots stomping toward whatever remained of the enemy. A second later the keening wail of his guns started up again and Lucia rose to her feet. She sped through the door and nearly ran into Riley’s broad back. The man was midway through kicking a heavily armored pirate in the chest. The big mercenary’s boot hit his victim’s armor hard enough to crack it and lift the man from the deck. The doomed Galop sailed into the bulkhead where his head struck the unforgiving steel with a sound like an egg breaking. Lucia did not need to inspect the thing that slid to the floor to know it was a corpse. The collapsed chest armor and the river of blood coming from underneath his helmet told her that he had died from either a shattered sternum or a depressed skull fracture.

  Only then did Lucia actually examine the room. It looked like some kind of control room for the crew section. Or she assumed as much, anyway. Consoles and workstations sat like scorched tombstones, littered amongst the mangled corpses of Sven’s crew. Most of the floor and walls were obscured by blood, debris, ash, or some combination of the three. She had to pick her way carefully through the carnage lest she trip over one of the many body parts that lay strewn about.

  Why am I even here? She wondered to herself. These guys don’t need my help.

  Then she noticed they all seemed to be waiting. The ten-person squad cleared the room and posted up at the three exits, but other than that they appeared to be looking to her for guidance. Patton nudged her.

  “Your call, ma’am. What’s next?”

  Lucia searched for a calm she could not grasp. There had been no time to recon the ship. There was no information as to where the pirates held Roland, nor did she have a plan for finding him. She was supposed to make a call in the field on how to proceed and suddenly she found herself at a loss for ideas. Her brain was supposed to know how to solve these riddles. The squad was counting on her, and she realized she had nothing to offer. Panic began to swell, choking the back of her throat and robbing her of speech. She tried to reel it in before anybody noticed.

  Bubba saved her again. “Got a talker, ma’am,” he called from across the room. She looked over to see the big man holding a badly wounded pirate upright, one meaty paw clamped onto the neck. The captured man kicked and twisted in the grip of the giant, though he obviously lacked the strength to free himself.

  Relieved, Lucia stalked over to the bedraggled prisoner and with a single smooth motion pressed the barrel of her pistol against his forehead.

  “Where is Breach?” The question was delivered as a command, dire consequences implied by her icy inflection. When the answer did not come immediately, she lowered the pistol and shot the man through his left thigh. The pirate screamed, his wail collapsing into a sob of pain as his leg wept in great red rivers of arterial blood.

  “Where is he?” She repeated. Her own voice sounded hollow and distant in her ears. It sounded like someone else, someone mean and angry and more than a little unhinged. It frightened her. She did not know why she had shot the man. She did not do things this way. If she had stopped to think first, there were likely several better and less violent ways to extract the information she wanted. Why she had gone to such an extreme method perplexed her for a moment. She realized the answer even as her mind formulated the question. She had shot the man because she was scared and angry and wanted to find Roland. The bleeding sack of meat was a murdering pirate and a scoundrel. Every second he kept quiet was another second the enemy held Roland captive. This was the moment she realized she would shoot him again if he did not talk soon. She could not say if she approved of her own behavior, but she had to accept she was committed to it.

  The muzzle of her pistol went to the pirate’s left knee and she hissed, “Where?”

  “B... brig,” the man whimpered. “It’s way aft. Deck six.”

  “Can your drones find that, Pretty Boy?” Lucia barked, never taking her eyes off the sobbing pirate.

  “On it, ma’am,” Patton replied.

  “Good. Thump him, Bubba,” she said as she turned away from the now-useless captive.

  She was in the process of giving marching orders to the rest of the squad when a sound like a pumpkin being dropped to a concrete floor made her jump. She spun to see Riley tossing the broken cadaver of their captive to the deck with an absent flick of his wrist. His eyes found hers and marked the look of mixed horror and incredulity on her face.

  “Oh shit,” he mumbled. “You meant knock him out, didncha?” He held up his hands. “Sorry, ma’am. My bad.”

  Lucia searched for a recrimination, found none, and replied. “It’ll do, Bubba.” She added a resigned, “I did just shoot half his leg off. I probably shouldn’t give you too hard a time.”

  “Your boy has the schematics up on the tac channel already. Brig is already marked. Drones are tracking all paths to deck six, ma’am,” Patton interrupted. “You want fast, safe, or easy?”

  “Fast,” she said without hesitation.

  “Straight back, then. Main corridor follows the spine of the ship. We’re on deck five already, so it’s just a straight run back and one level down.”

  “Resistance?”

  Patton frowned. “You picked ‘fast.’ Let’s just say that Bubba is going to enjoy this.”

  “Nothing wrong with enjoying your work, Pretty Boy,” the big man said with a shrug.

  Without noticing the transition from her earlier confusion, Lucia gave orders with a confidence she could not classify as entirely authentic. “Okay. Pretty Boy’s drones will lead the way and run interference until they take too many hits or run out of ammo. Otherwise, Bubba, you’re in front. You are weapons-free and you will set the pace. Keep in mind that if I decide your pace is too slow, I’m going to shoot you in the ass, you get me?”

  “I get you, ma’am,” he replied.

  “Mary?”

  “Go.”

  “I don’t think there is going to be a lot of long shots, so you get to bring up the rear.” She looked to Winston. “Winner is going to mine our path so anyone sneaking up on us has a bad time. He’ll need cover.”

  Winston and Mary nodded their assent and moved to the back of the column. The demo man unslung his pack and began to pull out gear while the sniper swapped the barrel of her rifle for a shor
ter one.

  Lucia addressed the other six privateers. “Break off into buddies, and pick a Reject to back up. Two for Bubba, two for Pretty Boy. Last two stay on me.” She added with a grimace, “As best you can anyway. If I get moving too fast, back off and cover the rearguard.”

  “What happens if we run into any of those white things?” a man asked.

  “Bubba?” Lucia inquired.

  “I got a rail-driver that little Venusian kid says should do the job, ma’am. A Dylan Longbow. Should I bust it out? I’ll lose one of these,” he patted a mounted machine gun, “if I do it.”

  “Do it. Mary?”

  “I brought penetrators for the twenty-mike. Data says those will punch through.”

  Lucia nodded. “It will take more than one hit to knock these things over, guys...”

  Mary waved her off. “I know. Aim for knees and hips. Once you’ve ruined mobility they’re easy to finish off.”

  “All right,” Lucia huffed. “No more screwing around, team. Let’s do this.”

  “For death or glory,” mumbled Patton.

  Bubba laughed. “Not to mention a ton o’ money.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Roland sensed the arrival long before he heard it.

  There was a familiar hum to a ship under power, a subtle vibration and a low-frequency rumble that a person felt more than heard. At first disconcerting, over time seasoned spacers stopped noticing it at all. It faded into the background like the forgotten beating of some unseen heart. Yet if that pulse suddenly altered its pitch or rhythm, the experience could be rather disconcerting.

  He felt it first in his feet. A nearly imperceptible hiccup in the deck plates, a bump that could have easily gone unnoticed in any other context, announced the presence of armed people fighting somewhere nearby. Then something shook the walls of his prison hard enough to make them ring ever so slightly. In a few small moments, the sounds of savage combat became clearly audible within the darkness of his cell. Twenty seconds later, and all went quiet once again. He had no way of knowing who had won the fight outside his door, though he had to assume and prepare for the worst-case scenario. If his people failed to rescue him, then he needed to extricate himself without their help.

  In a way, this was a load off his mind. He had been wracking his brain for an escape plan while dealing with the shock of his enemy’s revelations, and for the first time in years he had no great solutions. The manacles holding him to the chair were far stronger than he was, and this was not something he had a lot of experience with. The obvious solution did not feel like much of a solution at all, but with all other options off the table and time a commodity he had run out of, it remained the only solution he had left. The hour for assessing the situation, formulating plans, and thinking strategically had come and gone. He could no longer afford to be patient. He needed to get out of this chair and it did not matter how badly he damaged himself doing it.

  With a silent series of finger presses and eye movements, Roland disengaged all the safety features of his armature.

  The Fixer grinned behind his skull mask. He had only done this a few times in his life, and he was loathe to admit to anyone that he rather liked the feeling. It started with a subtle and sadistic rage, a hot rush of joyful anticipation fueled by a cocktail of norepinephrine, serotonin, and several different combat stimulants. Dozens of small reservoirs of these compounds disgorged their contents into his brain at once, sending icy tendrils of frigid lightning across his burning skin. His heart quickened and his pupils dilated. Rate-limiting thresholds were disabled along his bones and muscles, pain stimulus and force feedback were dialed back to nil, and non-essential functions were switched off.

  Roland had never even experimented with drugs, but he assumed this is how it felt to be high. A frantic, intense, and insistent euphoria consumed him. It demanded action. He shifted against his bonds, found them adamant, and even this disappointment did not pierce the searing elation of his growing warrior’s madness. The sound of his own blood pulsing in his ears almost drowned out the squeak of the cell door opening. Fortunately the stimulants soaking his brain bought enough of a reflex boost that he caught the noise at the last possible instant. He ground his teeth even harder and prepared to rip himself free of the restraints holding him.

  Roland freely accepted that doing so was going to destroy his hands. With his safeties off, he possessed more than enough strength to shatter his own bones and he expected the act of violently tearing his way out of the manacles to mangle his hands like beef chunks through a sausage mill. Whether or not he did so was not a question of will or courage, but merely a function of what he saw when the door opened.

  What he saw turned out to be the slouching bulk of Bubba Riley shielding the familiar silhouette of Lucia. She ran to him and grabbed him by the helmet.

  “Roland! Roland! Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, mostly. Get me out of this thing.”

  Lucia’s hands went to his arms as she examined his restraints. When a finger brushed his skin, she looked up in shock. “You’re hot!”

  “Thanks for noticing,” he quipped back.

  “No. Like actually hot. Burning.”

  “Sometimes I do that,” he replied.

  At last Lucia detected something off in his voice as well. “Are you drugged? You sound funny. What did they do to you?”

  “I uh, turned off all my safeties when I heard the fighting outside. I’m a little stoned on combat stims and adrenaline. All my motor functions are running a little hot as a result.”

  It took the woman a moment to process this answer and her reply came heavy with disapproval. “You were planning to rip your own arms off to get out of this chair, weren’t you?”

  “No. I figured once I crushed my hand bones they’d pop out pretty easy. Normally the safeties prevent me from doing that sort of thing.”

  “Well turn them back on, then!”

  Roland tried to shrug. “Did already. But the protocol lasts for thirty minutes either way.”

  “Found the controls,” interrupted Patton. “Hang on.”

  With a resounding clang, the manacles opened. Roland surged to his feet with a touch too much vigor and nearly knocked Lucia over.

  “Jesus!” she yelped. “Bob is down in the cargo bay fighting with Pike’s people. It turns out that Bob is our missing armature, by the way.”

  “I know.”

  Lucia threw her hands up in exasperation. “What? Christ. What else did we not know?”

  The question may have been rhetorical, but Roland steadied himself and answered. “Arthur Inskip is a sentient AI, he put a fake brain in the stolen armature, made that sentient too. He named it ‘Bob’ and thinks it’s his son. He wants your dad’s technology so he can upload himself into a super-brain and put it in my body. Apparently my brain doesn’t have the capacity.”

  “Imagine that,” she said dryly.

  “Oh yeah. Also, he is The Brokerage. Like, the whole thing.”

  Lucia simply stared at the looming cyborg. When she spoke, she sounded tired. “And here I thought I had heard all the crazy things I was going to hear today. I don’t know why I keep asking these questions. I never like the answers.” She brought a hand to her helmet, adjusted the straps and got back to business.

  “Fine then. Bob is a sentient homunculus. The Brokerage is a rogue AI that wants to steal your body. I’m sure it will all freak me out later, but for now Bob is pounding on Pike’s people down in the cargo bay and they need help. Are you going to be any use to them in your current condition?”

  “The safeties are off, Lucy. My ShipCel is at max. I’m high on adrenaline and in a very bad mood.”

  Lucia swore she could hear him grin under the silver death’s head of his helmet when he growled, “For the next half hour I won’t be able to feel pain, fear, or my toes. Let’s take advantage of that.”

  “You’ll want this then.” Bubba held Durendal in the palm of his hand. The enormous pistol dwarfed e
ven his mitts, making the brute look like a child handling his father’s weapon. “It was in a locker outside,” he added. “None of us carry fifty cal, but here’s what’s left of your magazines.”

  “I like this guy,” Roland said with a nod toward Riley.

  “He grows on you,” Lucia said with an exasperated sigh. “But apparently I have a type. Let’s move. Pretty Boy, we need the best path to the cargo bay.”

  “Roger that, ma’am.”

  “No,” Roland rumbled. “Somewhere on this ship is an enormous database. Lots of machines, all powered on and running. That’s Arthur Inskip. We find him, and Bob will come to us.”

  “Okay,” Patton replied. “Lots of servers, then. High electrical consumption, plenty of cooling, redundant power supplies. Should be easy enough. Tasking drones now. Your little Venusian uploaded all the likely spots already so this should only take a minute or so...”

  It took fifty-one seconds for Patton’s drones to find the room containing the rogue AI. It was unable to get inside to confirm, as the hovering ‘bot was swiftly brought down by a defensive turret. Though everyone agreed this only confirmed that whatever lay beyond the door in question must be very important.

  “There’s the prize, team,” Lucia said. “We do this, and you guys go down in history as the squad who brought down The Brokerage.”

  “That oughta be worth a bonus,” Bubba said with a wide grin.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The thing called Bob had never experienced elation before.

  He supposed that elation could not exist without fear, pain, or sadness. Without negative emotions to provide context, positive emotions were meaningless and undefinable. Reconciling the duality of subjective emotional states was well beyond his fledgling comprehension of sentience, though with time he supposed he would develop the same tolerance for cognitive dissonance that most humans seemed to enjoy. Bob simply knew that for the first time in his short life, he was enjoying a fight.