by Watson Davis
"Open the door to your ship, and surrender yourself to the authorities."
The ship's control panel flicked on, all its lights springing to life, information flooding into my on-board, launch sequences engaging. Except for the outer portal. The police had overridden my command of the airlock.
I manually blew the explosive charges I'd placed around the lock, cutting my vessel off from the umbilical connecting me to my berth even as police subprograms combed through the operating system of my ship for the backdoor subroutines installed for external piloting of my spacecraft.
Subroutines I'd corrupted so the bad guys couldn't do that.
My Pueblo 1774 surged out from the dock. With three ships converging on my position, I searched for an escape route, spotting a crease between the ships if I moved fast enough. I hit the thrust, accelerating, the force pressing me against the chair.
A tight-beam transmission pinged, relayed from my ship's computer to my on-board, a picture of someone sitting on a chair.
I gave my ship a nudge, adding rotation, and fit through a gap between two larger ships docked and taking on processed ore; my rear banged against the ship, flipping me. I fought to regain control, aiming toward the Family ship, planning on doing as much damage as I could before I died.
The image changed: a hand grabbing a fistful of hair, pulling the head back to reveal Vanessa, her face almost unrecognizable, wet with blood and sweat gleaming in the harsh lights, her left eye darkened, the whites discolored from the blood. A man's voice said, "Let's not make this difficult."
"Leave her alone." I sent the message as a response. To the police, I transmitted, "I surrender."
I reversed the engines, killing my velocity and bringing my ship to rest with the station. The police vessels closed in on me. My ship shuddered as the harpoons struck, latching on to my hull, ripping at my thin armor, the synthsteel groaning. The police guided my ship in close to theirs in a deadly embrace.
# # #
"Dorothea-fucking-Ohmie." Mercedez Gorovitz perched on the edge of a stool, rocking forward and back. She pressed a bag of ice to her discolored face, her right cheek swollen and her right eye shut, makeup and blood streaking her face like a primitive battle mask. She glared at the holo-image of Dorothea before her. "That's the bitch, all right. I did not even recognize her. Thank you for identifying her for us."
“Go to hell.” Vanessa leaned forward on the cot, gasping for breath through the blood and sweat dripping down her face, streaming down into her mouth, out of her nose; her wrists were bound together behind her back, her right shoulder throbbing, the rotator cuff shredded, the fingers on her left hand and all of her toes broken and dislocated, and her lungs burning with each labored breath.
Santina, battered and bruised, reached through the bars between their cells, her hand on Vanessa's back.
"I should have recognized Dorothea from the Fortunate Son's video." Jarod Gorovitz sat in a chair before the holo, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. "The little girl who got away, not so little now."
"Won't happen again." Roscoe, blackened goggles covering his eyes, flicked a switch on the multi-tool, reconfiguring it into blowtorch mode, the wrench attachment shifting into a nozzle, the internal gases merging as they emerged from the nozzle, combining into a blazing cone of blistering heat.
"Do you think FountainCorp cares enough about you to pay enough for us to return you to them?" Mercedez shook her head. "I don't think so, my dear Vanessa. I think you're going to work off your debt to us all by yourself, spreading your legs and opening your mouth for cocks and cunts."
"So what do you think our little Dorothea is planning?" Roscoe ran the flame over the end of a pipe, the metal glowing brighter and brighter with each pass.
"Her foot is going to be so far up your ass," Vanessa said, spitting each word out, "her toes are going to come out your mouth."
Santina, eyes fierce, nodded.
Roscoe reached out with the pipe, placing the heated end on Vanessa's knee; tendrils of smoke rose up. Vanessa screeched, throwing her head back in agony.
"Stop!" Santina screamed, pressing herself into the bars, swinging her arm without making contact. "Leave us alone, you fucking assholes."
"Outsider cunts, I swear." Roscoe withdrew the pipe, bits of Vanessa's charred flesh clinging to the white hot metal.
"I lied," Vanessa whispered. "I'm going to execute you fuckers myself."
Mercedez dropped the ice pack from her cheek. "Bitch, you're at the ass-end of the line of people who want to kill me. You'll be begging me to snuff you before we're done with your tight little anus."
"When my team gets here—"
"You are AWOL," Jarod said, "Motayen's been relieved of duty, and the team reassigned pending the review of its members. Once we remove Dorothea from the streets, this little diversion will be over, and we can get back to business."
Mercedez lifted her head, her eyes unfocusing. "The yokels have found Dorothea. They're trying to arrest her."
Roscoe and Jarod straightened, switching to the police feeds to watch.
"Roscoe." Jarod ambled over to Vanessa and grabbed her by her hair. "Tightbeam this to Dorothea's ship."
Roscoe chuckled, his fingers on his temple as he crouched down in front of Vanessa. Jarod pulled her head back, saying, "Let's not make this difficult."
Jarod made a chopping motion with his left hand, and Roscoe faded his output to blackness, shutting off the sound.
“Leave her alone,” Dorothea’s throaty voice said from the monitors.
Roscoe chuckled.
"I can't believe that ploy worked." Mercedez shook her head, touching her swollen cheek with delicate fingertips. "I expected her to be made of stouter material."
"LightDream has arrived." Jarod's eyes defocused, his hand rising to his temple, head tilting. He blinked a moment later, eyes returning to focus. He turned to Mercedez, pointing down at Santina. "Clean her up and prepare her to be examined by the LightDream physician."
# # #
"I mean, thanks for the tip, Mercedez, but the criminal is in our custody now." The police captain leaned against the dingy gray-tiled wall across from my cell, beneath a flickering lamp suspended from the paneled ceiling, his eyes running up and down my body. "She's a wanted fugitive, a terrorist. I expect FountainCorp's going to donate more money to the Orchid Flower Retirement Fund than I can even imagine."
I propped myself up against the rusty bars with my left shoulder, brushing off flakes of old paint curling up on the bars, and I crossed my arms over my chest, crossed my legs at the ankles. They’d undressed down to my skivvies. When his eyes finally worked their way back up to mine, I smiled and saying, "Come on, you know they're the bad guys. Give a girl a break."
"I haven't notified FountainCorp, yet." The policeman pushed himself off the wall, continuing his conversation with the Family while his eyes studied the golden tattoo on my arm, fingertips on his temple. "I'm stressing the 'yet' part."
"The Gorovitzes abducted a couple of friends of mine." I cracked my knuckles. "They can't be allowed to get away with shit like that. Do the right thing, help me rescue them, and bring these puke-stains to justice."
The policeman nodded. "Sounds like we have a deal, Mercedez. Soon as the funds show up in the retirement fund, I'll order some of my best officers to escort her over."
"Come on," I pleaded, "be a fucking hero for once in your miserable fucking life."
His eyes focused on mine. "How much money you got in your bank account?"
I sighed. "I've got maybe a hundred thousand creds saved up."
He smiled, shaking his head. "Not good enough, chikki, and your kind is way too dangerous to have running around unsupervised, with all your ideals about heroes and justice and shit."
# # #
"Here she is," Mercedez said, pushing Santina, dripping wet and shivering, into the small cubicle toward the physician waiting for her.
Santina cried out, the torn ligaments in
her knee exploding with pain as her weight shifted to it. She stumbled forward, hopping, ready to fall to the floor once more, ready to endure the kicking once more, but she could not go any further.
The physician caught her, putting his hands under her arms and pulling her up, but this just reminded her of her dislocated shoulder and her shattered collarbone.
She groaned once more.
"What have you done to her?" The physician glared at Mercedez, easing Santina onto the makeshift gurney the younger grandchildren had slapped together for him.
"A helluva lot less than you assholes." Mercedez crossed her arms over her chest and reclined against the door facing. "You do whatever it is you're supposed to do, and shut the fuck up." She touched her tender cheek, her voice quieting, staring down at the floor. "I have had a bad day, but it's looking up."
The physician arranged Santina on the gurney: lowering her, laying her out, moving the dark, soaked strands of her hair from her face, then grabbed a blood sampler.
Santina gazed up into his face, looking and finding a bit of mercy in them. She begged him, "Help me. Please. I'll do anything."
"I'm sorry." Tears welled up in his eyes, but he jabbed the needle at the end of the sampler into her arm anyway.
Her blood pumped through the needle into a tube, each beat of her heart sending more spurting in until the tube filled and he slid the needle out.
"Well?" Mercedez asked. "Is she something your boss is willing to shell out some creds for?"
"I’ve drawn the blood." He raised the device, his brow furrowing, finger flipping some switches on the device's surface, his voice growing distracted, more distant. "The analysis will take more time."
Santina collapsed on the gurney, eyes drifting closed, with no fight left in her.
The physician placed the device down on the gurney between Santina's ankles. He rested his hand on her forehead. Her body convulsed, muscles spasming; something burned in his hand, a disc, searing into her soul. Her back arched despite the crunching of bones throughout her body, and she inhaled, but she didn't scream, couldn't force any air out through her throat.
I am in hell.
The physician edged away from her, snatching his device full of her blood, shaking his head and saying to Mercedez, "I'll pass the results to my employer, but they do not appear favorable."
# # #
I marched between the police officers, head high, hands behind my back, secured at the wrists and at the ankles. Six police officers surrounded me, two ahead, two behind, one at each of my elbows. Their boot heels clicked on the tile floor; someone kept this area cleaner than the rest I’d seen of the station, the lights bright and harsh, the dark blue and white tile almost glowing in the stark light. Square columns stretched from the floor up to I-beam rafters in the ceiling, vents blowing out atmo in a whispering sigh.
At the end of the hall at a colorful hatch decorated with children's drawings, two squat men waited, dark goggles over their eyes, wearing heavy brown work boots, wrinkled, baggy pants and thick canvas shirts held together by silver duct-tape on the dirty orange threads.
"There you go." The policeman at my right elbow shoved me toward the Family goons.
I shuffled my feet, struggling to maintain my balance, but I could not. I fell to my knees, tumbling forward and landing face first, the floor cold and hard against my bare knees and my forehead, the cuffs digging into my wrists and the shackles digging into my ankles. Head down, my unfocused eyes stared down at those tiles tracking the movement of my captors out of my peripheral vision. I tensed my stomach and my legs, waiting like a spring.
"Only two of you?" one of the cops behind me said, hitching up his pants, thumbs in his belt loops. "Thought you guys said she was a badass of some sort."
A brown boot stepped toward me, from in front of me—one of the thugs approaching. I thrust up and out with my right heel, striking the smug cop in his left knee with a satisfying snap, bending it opposite of the way knees are supposed to bend.
I twisted, rolling to my upper back, pulling my knees to my chest, looping my arms down around the manacles around my feet so my hands were no longer behind me.
"Somebody…"
The cop crumpled to the ground like the sack of shit he was.
I spun myself around, sweeping the legs out from under the cop who had been holding my left elbow. I threw myself across him, grabbing his ass, fingers clutching his back pocket to stabilize myself. I hit another cop at the ankles with my feet.
"…get…"
He fell on top of me, collapsing on me, his shoulder smacking me in the mouth. I wriggled beneath him until I was face down, my hands before me, and tucked them into the waistband of my underwear and back out again, hoping no one had noticed.
"…that bitch!"
I pressed myself up, the cop sliding from my back. I jumped on his chest, pinning his shoulders with my knees, jabbing down with the manacles against his throat; his eyes bulged.
"Nemesis…"
I tried to twist back around, to bounce off him, to move on to the next target on my list, but a forearm caught me across the cheek. I rolled away, but one of the cops grabbed me, wrapped his arms around me and threw me away from him before my heels completed the strike to his crotch.
"…damn you all."
I landed hunched over, body tightening, spitting blood from my mouth, my cheek throbbing, checking the damage I'd caused.
One of the thugs approached me, holding his hands out, his lips mouthing the word, "Vanessa."
I snarled at him, but allowed him to wrap his filthy fingers around my upper arm, allowed him to drag me to the door covered in children's drawings. The other thug smirked at the cops, saying, "Only takes two of us to control the cunt."
I scurried with my secured feet, trying to keep up, but he moved too fast for me. He dragged me behind him to a metal catwalk, me trying to gather my legs beneath me as the metal grate tore at my feet, at my ankles, scratching me, scraping me here and there.
The other thug backed onto the catwalk, shutting the door behind us all; the catwalk swayed underneath his lumbering tread. He laughed. "That was fucking priceless. I've got to download the footage of that shit and show it to the cousins."
The guy dragging me shook my arm and sneered down at me, "Gonna be a shame to hand you over, kid."
He lifted me up, and the other thug grabbed me under my right arm. The two of them carried me bodily through the maze of the engineering section of the ship, my feet dangling between them. I struggled to breathe, my injured ribs aching as I tried to identify the type of ship, to memorize landmarks, to ascertain my location, but this was a Family ship, built according to their specifications, changed over time to fit their changing needs and growing population, the whole thing alien to me.
We entered a circular, cavernous room, a cross-section of the belly of a normal cargo hold, lit by a web of spotlights emanating from the middle of the hold that lit up some boxes and crates gathered in clumps. They lugged me up to a row of cages bolted to the deck, with water pooling up on the floor because of a lack of drainage and the stink of human feces and urine dense in the air. Two of the cages were occupied: Santina and Vanessa.
They tossed me into the third cage in the line, next to Vanessa, who crawled toward the bars between our cages, reaching her shaking fingers through the bars.
# # #
"First Father." Dr. Darnell Nieve tipped his glass toward Jarod, lounging in a big leather chair, sinking into the cushions, ankle resting on his knee.
"Dr. Nieve." Jarod raised his glass of port toward the representative in a salute, reclining in his own leather chair, his legs stretched out before him, the heavy wooden doors muffling the sounds of the children playing outside but not totally dampening them, allowing a sense of home to seep in.
The two sipped their port, Darnell humming his satisfaction, his eyes drifting closed. He licked his lips and said, "Always a pleasure to come here and dine with your fine Family, First Father."
"The pleasure is ours, having your company for the evening." Jarod did not mention the money streaming into their coffers.
One of the lesser daughters shooed the children away from the doors, her harsh whispers almost louder than the children's game.
"About the girl"—Darnell winced a little bit, a pained expression on his face as he shook his head—"I hope it won't be a problem, but according to our records, and verified by the tests we've run, she wasn't far enough along in the trials to have built up sufficient levels to help with our research."
"I feared as much." Jarod took another sip, smacking his lips. "She received a clean bill of health from the FountainCorp physicians, and although you say they had no idea what to test for, I'm sure they would have detected any anomalies. We will require a disposal fee, of course."
Darnell coughed. He uncrossed his legs, setting his glass on the round handmade table between them and peered over at Jarod, searching his face for a hint of a joke. "A disposal fee? I expected the quite substantial sum of credits we delivered to you to recover her from FountainCorp would be adequate to cover any additional charges."
"We are but a poor Family, struggling to gather food to put in the tiny mouths of our children." Jarod placed his own glass on the table. He shrugged. "A big corporation like yours surely cannot begrudge us that? I'll even give you a discount."
"A discount?"
"Pay us what we agreed on, and you can take her away and push her out an airlock on your way home." Jarod smacked his lips. "Pay us nothing and we will dump her in some colony, and let her tell the story of the things your corporation did to her, things your biologists did to her friends, and the other children you experimented with which led to the death of an entire station. If that’s what you want. Or for a nominal fee, we’ll dispose of her."
Darnell pushed himself to the edge of the chair, leaning forward. "But you're the ones who captured her in the first place. She'll blow your operation as well as ours."
"As far as she knows, we are just another branch of your organization. LightDream offered her work, and she ended up in your lab." Jarod smiled. "So those are your three options. You can pay us full price and haul her off to do as you will. You can walk away and we let her loose somewhere. Or you pay us the disposal fee, and we terminate that little experiment."
