Hardshellz

by Morris Kenyon

CHAPTER 8. BREAKOUT 1.

  It sounded as if an old-style hydrogen bomb had been detonated outside. The earth shook like it was jelly and not solid rock. A deafening boom washed over us. Çrámerr, who was taking the food trays from the pirate, fell against the other man and they fell in a tangled heap of arms and legs. Julianna tumbled out of her easy chair her mouth open in an unheard scream of surprise and fear. The pirate by the airlock rocked on his feet and looked as shocked.

  They don't call me the best interplanetary recovery agent in the galaxy for nothing. Okay, they don't call me the best interplanetary recovery agent in the galaxy at all. That's how I like to operate – under the radar, my skills known only to those who matter. As I stumbled forwards, unbalanced by the tilting floor and the heavy metal table I was holding, I flung it at the pirate by the airlock's door.

  It caught him square on the chest before I fell flat on my face. Didn't do him much damage, especially in that thick protective suit he wore, but it knocked him over. Like a fool, he dropped his weapon and it skittered across the bucking floor. He was fast – I'll give him that – but I was faster. I was up from my sprawl in a nanosecond and on the pirate. His hand was stretching out for his pistol but I kicked it away into the room.

  Kicking him in the chest made no impact – not in the soft slippers I had on against that protective suit, so I lifted up the metal table by two legs and swung it like a clumsy club against his head. It didn't do much to improve the pirate's gorilla-like appearance. A spray of blood splashed out over the wall and floor. A second, more savage blow put him out for the count.

  No time to pride myself on taking him out so quickly. Looking around, I saw Çrámerr wrestling the second pirate. Çrámerr may be an irritating specimen of the hi-man race but he wasn't lacking in neither the courage nor uptake departments. That's two reasons why he was a top V-P of Economou. He'd seen what I'd done and reacted instantly.

  However, his pirate was obviously a veteran of countless starport bar fights and knew how to handle himself. He was a squat, muscular ape-man with straightened black hair and several scars crossing his face. Guess he thought they added to his fearsome appearance. I couldn't take a wild swing with my table for fear of hitting Çrámerr so I threw my arm around the ape-man's throat and hauled him back away from Çrámerr.

  He made a strangled sound and jerked his hands back behind his head, his thumbs seeking my eyes. But that left his face open and vulnerable. Çrámerr snatched up a fallen plastic spoon, reversed it and plunged the handle deep into the pirate's eye.

  He screamed as his eyeball popped and his hands flew back to his face trying to push back the incredible pain he was feeling. I tightened my grip on his neck, cutting off his air supply. I maintained my choke hold and gradually, the pirate's struggles weakened and ceased. Only when I was sure he wasn't faking it, did I release my hold. He fell face forward onto the tiled floor and didn't move.

  For a moment I felt sorry for the pirate. Not a nice way to die. He hadn't been a bad man in his own way – uncommunicative and unfriendly – but he'd never harmed us. Well, I thought, if you take up a life of crime, then a violent death is always on the cards. That's the way it goes. I put the man from my mind.

  Panting with exertion, I stood. Julianna held the pirate's pistol and I took it from her. I wondered why she hadn't used it. Of course, gynoids are usually pre-programmed not to take life – but maybe she was merely shocked and unused to fast-paced combat situations. Glancing at the pistol, I saw it was a Maz-Blazter, a standard energy weapon. Not my favourite but better than nothing.

  Çrámerr grinned. "So what's the gameplay, Vargo? Can't pretend these two got caught in the explosion."

  No. There was no way we could get away with that. We'd nuked our spaceships, as the saying has it.

  "Right – this is what I'm thinking. We need to get out of here, rescue the President's crew – or at least the essential ones – then steal a shuttle and get back on board the President. Then hyper-jump out of here."

  Çrámerr grinned, his cool Nordic face lighting up. "Sounds inspirational – and just think of the massive bonus when we save the President."

  I'd forgotten how money motivated he was. And rescuing a multi-billion Hydran craft would be another feather in his cap. Another step on his way to the Board of Directors.

  "I'm not leaving without Sava's shell," Julianna said. And that made things much more difficult. I didn't want to leave it behind neither. Failure wasn't an option for me – no excuses, no exceptions.

  No time to waste. I tugged off the protective suit from the ape ape-man I'd strangled. Unsurprisingly, it didn't fit too well. "Çrámerr, you're coming with me. Get dressed." Çrámerr was a known quantity, I'd fought with him before against swarms of Krillaz on Hancox 1 so although he was too gung-ho and bloodthirsty I knew what he was capable of.

  Julianna looked a little annoyed but I just didn't know how she would cope in a sudden emergency. And if she was a gynoid, then she might not be able to fight anyway. I let her check our seals and then I picked up the second Maz-Blazter and tucked it into its holster. The protective suits' helmets concealed our identities and I was pleased to see that the life-support systems were nearly fully charged. We had hours.

  "Let's go," I told Çrámerr. Dragging the pirates' bodies through the airlock, we left Julianna to clean up our suite. That way, if other pirates checked, she might not get into trouble. She could plausibly explain that they left after dropping off our food. I hoped so, anyway. How she'd explain our absences I didn't know. Maybe she could say we were in the bathroom. Together? Hmm...

  I pressed the button, the airlock rapidly recycled the air and then, with a second press, the outer door opened. Gesturing for Çrámerr to stay back out of sight, I stepped out into the open. Immediately, rain lashed down upon me. It was like standing under a waterfall. Water poured over the open ground before me, sluicing away into drainage ditches where it would finally end up in this world's forming oceans.

  But that didn't concern me. Men in protective suits ran around like ants after their ant-hill has been kicked in. Under high-powered arc lamps casting bright white light over the scene it was easy to see what had happened. A meteor had smashed into the base, demolishing a couple of structures – maybe storage sheds but it looked as if a fusion-generator power plant had been damaged as sparks and electrical bolts flashed up into the clouds.

  A new crater, still smoking, took up the end of the clearing. We had been lucky as only another hundred metres or so it would have smashed into our building, killing us all instantly. It would have ended our problems at a stroke but I breathed a sigh of relief it had missed us. A stroke of pure luck it had impacted where it had.

  Pirates were moving vehicles out of the way, others were tackling the blaze while a knot of men stood around the burly form of Knofahgginarebagz as he directed operations. Others seemed to be rubber-necking and getting underfoot. Basically it was a scene of organised chaos. Perfect. Nobody would be checking up on the two dead men for a while and all the confusion gave Çrámerr and I perfect cover.

  Ducking back into the open airlock, I called Çrámerr out. Together, we hauled out the pirates' bodies and dragged them through the deluge until we came to a dip in the ground well out of sight of the main base. No reason for anyone to stumble across them there. We left their bodies in the dip where they lay forlorn in a puddle of muddy water.

  Not wanting our radio transmissions to be overheard by any pirates monitoring them, we touched helmets.

  "First things first," I said. "We need to make sure there's someone who can fly a starship. The captain or some of his crew. Then we need a shuttle to get us off-world. We'll want more protective suits. And also, we're not leaving without Sava's shell."

  "A long shopping list, my friend. But doable – though we'll need to get all our ducks in a row. Let's go."

  Together we crossed over to a well-illuminated three-storey building made out of prefabricated Konkreet slabs. Among the collection
of buildings and outbuildings, it seemed the most likely to be the accommodation block as, in the perennial gloom of this world, its lights stood out brilliantly and reflected off the surface water as rain poured off its steep sided roof and flowed across the hardpan. We kept our heads down as the deluge bounced off our suits. There was no let-up – and wouldn't be for the next few million years.

  Çrámerr flashed me a grin as I pressed the airlock's opening button. There was no electronic key needed as who would leave this building in order to suffer a terrible death? Any prisoners of the pirates were as secure as any felon held in one of the MWC's super-max penal colonies.

  We stepped inside the moment it opened and waited for breathable air to cycle through. As soon as it did, I took the lead, Maz-Blazter raised. On the inside, we found ourselves in a corridor. Fortunately, it was deserted. Çrámerr wasn't anybody's fool – that's why he was a VP at Economou. He blocked the air-lock's interior portal so it couldn't close until it was unblocked. That would stop the pirates on the outside coming in through this entrance. We took off our helmets and breathed deep of the building's fresher air as the pirates protective suits smelled rankly of bodily secretions.

  Doors – all closed – lined both sides of the corridor.

  "Wanna put your money where your mouth is?" I asked Çrámerr. "Open one and I'll cover you."

  I had to hand it to Çrámerr. As I've said before, he was no coward. Aiming his own Maz-Blazter at the opening, he pressed the wall-mounted control panel. A green light shone and the door slid open. Lights flickered on revealing a store room lined with more protective suits. They looked like desiccated brown corpses hanging there from the walls. Various tools were stored on racks or in boxes on the floor.

  "Useful," Çrámerr commented.

  "C'mon," I said. "We've got loads to check out."

  We found little else of interest on the first floor – a canteen and kitchen area that didn't look as if it would pass any hygiene inspection. Chairs were scattered about in the rec room as if the pirates had all left in a hurry – which they had. We came to a bank of elevators and rode up to the second floor. As the doors opened, I pointed my Maz-Blazter both ways up and down the corridor but there was nobody in sight.

  We came to a door that wouldn't open to my touch. Its control light stayed adamantly red.

  Çrámerr raised his sculpted brows. "Looks like we may be steering towards the right ball-park here."

  "Stand back," I said, aiming the Maz-Blazter at the panel. Well, it works in all the holo-movies so why not? I aimed and fired. A bright red bolt flashed from the muzzle, exploding against the panel in a shower of sparks. An acrid smell of burning plastic hit my nose and I coughed. I fired a second shot and this time the panel itself exploded. There was a crackling, popping sound and then the door itself slid open with a sad groan.

  We stepped into a well appointed stateroom. A frightened looking woman stood against the far wall by the view-screen. She held a plastic knife from her last meal before her body and assumed a karate stance.

  Aiming my Maz-Blazter kept her from doing anything stupid. She was a small, petite woman, brown skinned with jet-black hair and liquid almond eyes and I guessed that her ultimate origins were somewhere from Earth's South Asia region. She wore a lime-green jacket and trousers – the uniform of Economou Logistics.

  She frowned. "Aren't you Luis Çrámerr? One of our VPs?" she asked looking over my shoulder.

  Çrámerr smiled as he stepped forwards. "Correct. And you would be...?" Without access to the Galactoweb, he was at a bit of a loss. Not that that ever stopped him.

  "Nanisha Suna Paranavithana, Under Captain of the President Perseus P Porter, sir," she said. Her voice was sweet but with a definite off-world accent.

  "Pleased to meet you, Captain," Çrámerr said. "Can you approximate the location of your crew and can you co-ordinate us off this position?"

  Under Captain Nanisha seemed totally clued-up. Well, you don't become captain of a star-craft if you're a dim-bulb and she understood Çrámerr's speech without the benefit of a translator.

  "Some of the essential crew – the engineering and maintenance people mostly, together with the Chief Captain – are up on the President repairing any damage caused during the fight. I know some flight crew are being held here. As to the stewards and the like, well I guess they've either been ransomed or sold as slaves. But if we can reach the President then we should be able to escape, sir."

  "Sounds like you're a Grade-A positive thinker and reading from my manual," Çrámerr said approvingly.

  "However, it would greatly help if we can put a spanner in the pirates' works first and stop any pursuit, sir. We won't be able to outfight or outrun them," Captain Nanisha said.

  That sounded like good advice and I'd been thinking along those lines myself. "Let's find and rescue the rest of the crew and get to a shuttle."

  Taking a small bag with her, we left Nanisha's room. She led us to where the rest of the crew were held captive and after a few shots from my Maz-Blazter, I opened the door. There were only eight of them, both men and women. These days, even large star-craft can be operated automatically and the human crew is mostly a fail-safe. And to reassure the passengers as, even now, people like to know there is somebody on hand in case everything goes belly-up.

  Now we'd got the crew, there didn't seem much point hanging around and I was mentally congratulating myself on how easy everything was going. I was leading the group back down to the first floor storeroom where they could put on protective suits when a shout from behind me made me change my plans in a hurry.