The elevator stopped at the surface.
“It’s all computerized, isn’t it? The whole system?”
“As far as I can tell, thanks to the octopus. The GravGens should be on their own system, though, as usual. What are you thinking?”
“I studied Sparky’s menu. And I have an idea. We wouldn’t need to blow up anything at all. And we could do it from a distance.”
“You, my dear, are one stand-up criminal. You think your little seahorse can override the system?”
“I bet he can!”
“Go for it. Let’s see what these things are capable of. No one had a chance to get them out of the lab and test them before that sodding kraken killed everyone.”
“And Plan B is explosives.”
“Agreed! Put your mask on, wheel these crates out the door, and we’ll bring the Queen Anne around to pick them up when we’re done.”
Moments later, they stood before the lab’s central control panel. “Patches says she wants to watch.” Patches lay comfortably on Mags’ left arm, held to her chest as the smuggler rubbed one fuzzy ear and then the other.
“She probably can’t be hurt, but you and me might want to get back to the elevator door.” Sparky hovered over his shoulder. Tarzi tapped his ring and turned it slightly, tapping it some more.
“You’re not going to fry us, too, are you?”
“Ha! I bloody well hope not. Stand back!”
The seahorse lowered onto the control panel. A web of green lightning gathered around his body. Crackling tendrils of electricity reached into the panel. The bones and decay in the bottom of the tanks bubbled and stirred.
“He’s overriding the pumps.” The tanks creaked. The water pressure inside steadily increased, straining at the glass and metal bonds.
Patches’ ears twitched. “Mew!” She leapt down from Mags’ arms and ran for the elevator.
“Good idea!” Water sprayed from the seams around the bases of the tanks. A pipe burst overhead, shooting a stream of cold water into the cavern. “Tell him to blow the doors and let’s get the fuck out!” Mags took off after Patches.
“On it,” called Tarzi. “Just—one second.” He tapped his ring again. His eyes darted across the menus only he could see. Water pooled around his feet. “Oh, shit. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
“Tarzi!” Mags called back to him. “Are you trying to electrocute yourself? Let’s go, go, go!”
“Come on, Sparky. Blow the damn doors already!”
Suddenly, the web of electricity grew to a sphere. It engulfed the entire control panel. Tarzi fell back into the water. He scrambled backwards on his hands and feet. His muscles spasmed as a series of shocks racked his body. The door to the outside cavern slid open.
Tarzi pulled himself to his feet and sprinted for the elevator. The lightning sphere grew in size, until it was several meters across. Sparky hovered calmly in the middle of it, feeding electricity into the system. Sparks crackled on the water and all along the metal circuitry of the tanks. The cavern groaned under the increasing pressure.
Tarzi ran like hell.
Mags stood at the elevator door, holding it open for him, with Patches standing behind her. Their faces flickered in the green glow of lightning that filled the cavern.
Then the tanks exploded. A deluge erupted into the laboratory. Torrents of water poured through the small door to the cavern where the octopus waited.
A wave rose behind Tarzi as he ran. Mags held out her hand. “Come on, come on, come on!”
The wave caught up with him and threw him down. The force propelled him across the floor and towards the elevator. Tarzi screamed.
Patches leapt into Mags’ arms. The wave smashed the young man into the back wall of the elevator. Holding Patches with one arm, Mags reached down to pull him up.
He sputtered, finding his footing. “Sparky!” Water rose in the elevator.
Mags held her finger over the button to close the door. “Here he comes!” The seahorse zipped across the waves, speeding towards the elevator, and slipped inside.
“What the hell are you trying to do?” Mags yelled at the seahorse. “Drown us all?”
Sparky chirped happily and hovered over the young man’s shoulder. The doors closed. Tarzi shivered as he stood up to his chest in the cold water trapped in the elevator with them. Patches meowed unhappily, climbing onto Mags’ shoulder.
But as the elevator rose to the asteroid’s surface, a strange feeling of elation came over each of them. The mother octopus reached out with her mind to show them what transpired in the caverns below.
Submerged in water now, hundreds of octopus eggs began to hatch. Tentacles emerged from translucent shells to wave in the water. The baby octopuses pushed aside their shells and swam up, up, up.
Floating in the water-filled cavern, their mother greeted them. The babies gathered around her, their tentacles playfully touching her. She swished the water around them. She touched their minds, one by one, feeling their joy and newfound freedom.
The elevator came to a stop. The door opened to the asteroid’s surface and water spilled out onto the rock, taking the trio with it.
Patches leapt clear.
Mags scrambled to her feet and shook her head.
Tarzi grabbed her arm. “Is that what it was like, being in her mind?”
“That was just a little taste. I think it was her version of a thank-you note!”
Patches shook the water from her fur. She purred with satisfaction.
PART TWO: THE LIBERATION
The dragon leaned over the top of the pen. Its tongue flicked through the metal bars, tasting the captive scents.
Kala held the trembling Sarah tightly. The dragon’s breath turned her stomach.
“Jesus, what are these fucking things?” Suzi huddled against the back of the pen. No one could answer her.
Once clear of Earth, the ship’s crew charted a course for their rendezvous with a much larger ship on the edge of the Belt. They spoke to each other in a growling, hissing language punctuated by rasping shrieks like giant grackles. The girls could not understand a word of it. Perhaps that was for the best, for the current topic of dragon discussion centered on how angry Major Dekarna might be if they ate some of the captive cargo before the rendezvous.
Beside the pen, a wall of smaller cages held more trapped animals from the forest: rabbits, foxes, squirrels, stray dogs and cats. The dragons’ breeding stock of live mammals had grown weak from generations of inbreeding in their travels across the vast desolation of space to our solar system. Fresh genes, they hoped, would strengthen their farms. And new tastes from Earth would always be a boon for their kitchens.
Hyo-Sonn listened to the pitiful cries and chatter of the animals next to her. She held her hands to her ears to block the noise, but it made no difference. She felt on her neck the dragon’s breath, as warm as a fresh pile of dung. The dragon’s tongue flicked across her face. She screamed and pressed her body to the floor. Then the dragon spoke.
“Mammals,” it growled.
“Fuck me, they can talk?”
“Suzi, shut up!” Hyo-Sonn looked up into the dragon’s face. A pupil expanded and contracted as its eye’s yellow orb swiveled back and forth, taking in the sight of her fear.
“Hurr hurr hurr.” The dragon laughed in its laconic, reptilian fashion. It waved one of its comrades over to the cage.
The second dragon brought a pole a meter long with a spiked hook on the end. He made more unintelligible noises to the first dragon. Had Suzi understood their language, she would not have been pleased to know the beast remarked on how much energy she had. The two dragons chirped back and forth about whether it would be better to save the energetic one for breeding or to eat her right away.
The second dragon opened a door on the top of the pen. All nine girls scrambled away from the opening. The first dragon took his weapon, a pronged staff, and ran it along the bars of the pen. Sparks flew where it scraped against the metal bars.
Shocks racked the girls’ bodies everywhere they touched the pen. The reptile laughed again. “You,” it said, pointing to Suzi. “We save for later.”
But the girl next to Suzi was not so fortunate. As if spearing a fish, the second dragon thrust the spiked pole into the cage. It impaled the girl next to Suzi, entering into her soft abdomen and hooking on her ribcage. She struggled helplessly as the dragon pulled her toward the opening.
“Let her go,” Hyo-Sonn shouted. Tears soaked her face.
The first dragon shoved his weapon between the bars and delivered a shock unlike anything Hyo-Sonn had ever felt. Her muscles spasmed. She flailed like a fish on land.
The girl on the hook tried to resist, but life grew rapidly dim in her eyes. Blood spilled from her wound and the corners of her mouth. As the dragon yanked her through the narrow opening, her neck and limbs broke in horrible angles. The pen’s door slammed shut.
The dragon’s eyes grew wide with pleasure. He pulled her body from the hook to dangle like a broken trophy in its hands. With claws wrapped around her neck and head, he took a firm grip.
The other dragon grabbed her arm. The two monsters pulled her limbs off her body. Other members of the crew watched the display with delight, encouraging them to feast.
The girls in the pen screamed. Hot blood splattered across Hyo-Sonn’s face and arms. The dragons tore off chunks of the broken girl’s skin and muscle and gulped them down. They crunched her bones, flicking their forked tongues between mouthfuls. They moved on to her internal organs.
Sarah closed her eyes. Even the horrors visited upon her in the Clinic could not compare to what happened just outside the cage. Her mind recoiled at the thought, reaching instead for something to comfort her.
She thought of her favorite song, the song she would sing quietly to herself when the Clinic’s staff would have their way with her. She sang the verses in her mind over and over again until they drowned out the awful things. Sarah retreated into the song until she could hear the screams and the tearing flesh no longer. She imagined the singer, brave and strong, someone whom no one would dare make suffer in the ways Sarah had suffered. She held this image in her mind until it glowed with a white light that outshined everything.
Then, in some way Sarah could not have explained, she felt someone else listening.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
“Oh, god, that’s so much better.” Tarzi emerged from the shower room aboard the Queen Anne wearing a pair of sweat shorts, scruffing the water out of his mohawk with a towel. He tossed his freshly cleaned cap on his bunk. It landed next to Sparky, who lay motionless beside the pillow where Tarzi had set his ring.
Meteor Mags sat on the edge of her bunk next to Patches. She wore a towel wrapped around her body and another like a turban around her head. “No kidding. I think I horked up a gallon of snot before I got that octopus goo out of me.”
“That’s just a lovely image, Mags. Thanks for that.”
Mags had her portable keyboard set up on its stand by her bedside. A melody played on the ship’s speakers. She harmonized it with a handful of chords, trying a few different voicings.
“Is that song what I think it is?”
“As long as you think it’s Invincible by Kelly Clarkson, then yeah.”
“Get the fuck out, Auntie. How can you even listen to that over-produced, pop bullshit? If there was any more reverb on that track, I’d have to vomit.”
“Shut the fuck up! Patches loves this song!”
Patches stretched out alongside Mags’ thigh and kneaded the blanket, opening and shutting her eyes slowly. Though Patches was no longer sharing her mind directly with her pirate friend, she felt closer than ever before. Patches had always felt a great bond with her unruly companion, but this was something more. She did not know if it would wear off, or last forever, but she could feel Mags’ love for her the way a planet feels light from a star. Patches basked in it.
“She would, wouldn’t she?” Tarzi plopped down on the edge of his bunk. “I think Clutch’s Immortal would be a better pick for her, though.”
“Word. But you just need to hear the song itself instead of thinking about how it was produced.”
Tarzi scoffed. “She should have had Steve Albini produce that album. It would have been a million times better.”
“Or Rick Rubin.”
“Come on, now.”
“What?” Mags threw her hands in the air. “Hello, dill-weed! That guy even made Def Leppard sound like a real rock band on High’N’Dry.”
“That was Mutt Lange, dumb-ass. Rubin did that Cult album you like.”
“Whatever! And don’t even start with that ‘Rick Rubin ruined The (International) Noise Conspiracy’ crap again. Armed Love is the best album ever!”
“I don’t know,” said Tarzi. “I liked their earlier stuff way better. A New Morning all the way.” He made the sign of the devil.
“I can’t fault you for that pick. But just listen to this song, okay? And forget you ever heard it another way before.”
He resigned himself to his fate and listened.
Mags touched the keys. In response, a grand piano played over the speakers. She sang.
Tarzi’s incredulous look melted away. His lips slowly spread into a smile. Patches purred like it was going out of style, flexing her paws happily. Mags closed her eyes, swaying as her hands moved over the chords. But halfway through the chorus, she stopped.
“Did you hear that?” She opened her eyes and looked around.
“Hear what?”
“I heard somebody singing.”
“All I hear is you, Auntie. And it sounds great. I take back what I said about—”
She stood. “No, seriously. You don’t hear that?” She stared out the window. “There it is again.”
“There’s what again? I think that octopus addled your brains. There’s nobody here but us.”
She whirled around to face him. “Tarzi! That’s not just any song. That’s my song. From the Psycho 78s album! And someone else is singing it.”
He ran his hands over his damp mohawk. Mags seemed completely serious, but he heard nothing unusual. Through the window of the Queen Anne, he saw nothing but stars, the occasional asteroid, and distant nebula.
“Someone else is out here, little man.” She took her seat at the ship’s command console. “And we’re going to find out who it is.”
Tarzi stood behind her and peered over her shoulder at the monitors. “But look. Not a thing on radar. We’re a gazillion miles from any—oh, what’s that, then?”
A blip flashed on the screen.
“See? I told you! Why do you always gotta act like your auntie is a crazy person?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because everywhere we go, we either almost die or rack up a massive body count for no reason thanks to your infamous temper?”
“Hahaha, fuck you.” She touched a screen. It zoomed out to a wider field of view. “Look at this. That ship’s on a course for this blip way up here. Does that radiation signature look familiar to you?”
Tarzi’s smile turned into a grim mask. “It sure does. That’s not one of ours. That’s a lizard ship.”
Mags raised an eyebrow into a wicked arch. “You learn fast, dear. Now get suited up. This ride isn’t over yet.” She marched back to the armory, flinging her towel on the bed. “We might even get to play with our new toys.”
★ ○•♥•○ ★
The Outer Planets.
“Commander.” Major Dekarna stood at attention with her helmet in her hand. Always loyal to her commander, she had taken advantage of her leave to visit Cragg, now under house arrest for the loss of his ship in the ill-fated attack on the Queen Anne.
“Major,” hissed Commander Cragg. He sucked the marrow from some hapless mammal’s femur, then tossed the remains on the pile in the corner. “Can you believe this insult? The ‘great empire’ can’t even provide live food here.” He seethed. “Come sit, Major.”
The dragons spoke in
their own tongue. Dekarna looked around the room. “Nothing about this treatment befits a commander of our forces. ‘Insulting’ is putting it mildly.” Narrow windows let in slats of light from the surrounding moons. The light grazed Cragg at his unimpressive table before falling on concrete walls devoid of any decoration. The single object which had decorated the wall, a picture of the dragons’ supreme leader, lay in fragments on the floor. The dead skin on the ground showed Cragg had been sequestered here long enough to shed. “Has the council given any word on when they will issue a decision?”
“Ha!” He slammed his fist on the table and rose to his feet. “Any time they find it convenient. The whole proceeding is an exercise in administrative nonsense, Major. The case is simple. The smuggler used unexpected weapons against us in a council-sanctioned military maneuver. Our ship was destroyed. This is to be expected in a war.” Cragg paced back and forth. “But in the end, they will reinstate my command. They have no choice. They merely have to put on a show first to please the accountants who would rather tally expenses than pursue victory at all costs.”
Dekarna’s tail lashed the rancid light. “Your command has never been in question, sir.”
His lips peeled back in a gesture that, in some species, could be called a smile. “My faithful Major. Have you brought me good news?”
“Indeed. The smuggler has no support on Earth. Not a single authority would lift a finger if we attacked her base. We risk no unnecessary conflict.”
“And her base is the asteroid, Vesta 4?”
“Yes, sir. The politicians say her presence in the Belt is utterly uncondoned. Her crimes are beyond number. Frankly, our contacts would welcome the opportunity to be rid of her and begin mining that rock without her interference.”
Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Page 22
