by Watson Davis
"Damn LightDream for getting me into this. And damn Nieve to a deep, dark hell." Jarod stamped his foot and slammed his fist into his palm, spittle shooting from his mouth with each word.
"We can't hold the zombies back for much longer." The young man rushed up to Jarod but stopped short of touching him, the men and women following behind stopping as well, the terror of the wrath of the First Father battling against the fear of losing him. The man said, "We've got to put you on an escape shuttle."
"And what then?" Jarod growled. "Get picked off by one of the pirates fleeing the colony? Get picked off by whatever damned ship killed Nieve's ship?"
The woman at the console turned around, eyes panning around the bridge, searching through the shadows, her hands behind her on the console.
I slid the barrel of the slugthrower under Mercedez's shoulder and steadied it there, pointing in the general direction of the people to the right of Jarod. I squeezed the trigger. The slugthrower roared, sending a spray of small-caliber shot into the room, spreading out among the people on the bridge. The pellets pinged off the armor, useless against that, but against the soft targets, the exposed flesh, the pellets did well enough, puncturing the skin, gouging them in delicate places, stinging them.
Their shouting and screaming masked the scream of the woman who pointed me out in the darkness. I pulled Mercedez closer to me and stood up, looping one arm around her neck, my elbow under her chin, forearm against her cheek, and my other arm under her armpit, pointing the slugthrower at the tightly packed center of the group.
The light-armored soldiers whirled toward me, hurling themselves between me and their First Father, aiming their weapons at me, chain guns with their barrels rotating, preparing to fling their bullets my way in a wall of death.
“I’ve got the Third Daughter!” I screamed. “To kill me, you’re going to have to kill her.”
"Kill the bitches!" the First Father yelled.
"Fuck." I hunched down behind Mercedez, bringing her up to shield more of me, wondering if this was how my life was going to end. But the soldiers didn’t follow the First Father’s command; they didn’t blow us to smithereens.
"I've got the shot!" one of the armored men bellowed.
The First Father pointed at us, shouting, “Take—!”
The whole bridge exploded, glass crashing, the floor cracking and twisting beneath me, a shock wave slamming against me, driving me up off my feet and back. My arm slipped from around Mercedez's neck, slugthrower squirming in my hand, my fingers tightening, trying to grab the damned weapon, trying to maintain control of it, with the weapon discharging into the air uselessly.
I landed hard on the ground and lay on my back moaning, looking up at a blank, gray, starless ceiling.
A singed faceplate appeared, staring down at me from a midnight blue heavy-combat suit of FountainCorp manufacture, smoke rising up from it. Sly said, "Hey, Hero, what's shaking? You need a new tailor."
# # #
"We need to go." Kevin stood beside me, resting his boot on the chestplate of one of the armored Family men, powdered stone billowing around us on the Family bridge. "I suspect Captain Lu is getting anxious right now. Let’s not keep her waiting."
“You just make sure the Family brats are out of the hold where I locked them,” I said, pulling those Family goggles off my face.
He held his hands up. “Fine. Whatever.”
I turned back to the First Father. Malordo was holding him up. I clutched my left arm against my side, pressing against the ribs, the pressure helping with the pain, but my mind fuzzy with exhaustion. “We know the Gorovitz Family specializes in the abduction and trafficking of humans, as slaves, as test subjects, as hostages, but I want a list of your clients.”
“Fuck you.” He spat at me.
“Start with who you were working with on the Frozen Lotus station."
"Listen, chikki-chikki, this sort of affront will not be allowed." Jarod Gorovitz tried to pull his arm out of Malordo's grip, and failed. He glared at me. "Do you hear me?"
"You abducted Santina and the other kids used in the Unity's nano experiments, offering them jobs and money, and selling them to the highest bidder. Is that right?" I placed my hand on the base of his neck.
"Unity?” He shook his head, pursing his lips, brows scrunching up over his eyes. “You trying to trick me into giving up names? I feel nothing but pity for you, you ignorant grunt. You will be hunted down like the rabid she-bitch you are, and you will pay for all the Family lives lost, all the Family assets destroyed. You will be whipped and beaten until you beg us to kill you."
"So, your Family is going to send thugs to beat me up?" I snorted, patting his cheek. "Really? That's all you got?"
"Hero?" Edmund whispered. "We can question this fuck on the Old Girl."
"You do not get it, do you? You stupid cunt." He laughed. "All the Families are one Family. No one has to send anyone to do anything. Every corporation in the System deals with the Families. First time someone wants a Family to do them a favor, they grab you, and hand you over. There is nowhere you can go to escape. There's nothing you can do to keep yourself safe."
"Somebody's got to atone for what happened to Santina." My eyes narrowing, I edged close to him, putting my face right in front of his, smelling his baby-powdered deodorant and the stink of his sweat. "Who paid you to abduct me when I was a teenager?"
The eyes of the entire team turned toward me.
The wheels turned in Gorovitz's head. I saw that look in his eyes—calculating, figuring out what to say, what not to say. He grinned. "You know, I fucked you a couple of times when Mercedez first got you, just to break your tight little ass in."
Edmund lunged forward, but I slapped my hand down on his chestplate, forcing him to be still.
"Yeah?" I leaned in, ignoring the disgust in the pit of my stomach, the bile rising in the back of my throat. I whispered, "I barely noticed your little prick."
Gorovitz squirmed in Malordo's hands, Malordo chuckling behind him.
"What do you think you're going to do to me?" he growled. "There's nothing you can do to me. There is no state going to convict me, no corporation going to secure me, no Family going to do anything except what I tell them to do. Hell, even Fou—"
The First Father's head erupted, brain, blood, and bone exploding up in a vortex of goo, spraying up into the air all over Malordo's armor. The slug itself clipped Malordo's armor, sending sparks flying. The First Father’s body slumped, his bowels evacuating, urine staining his cream-colored pants.
I spun, clenching my side. Sly, Kevin and Edmund ducked, aiming at the originator of the shot. Malordo threw the body to the ground and moved around in front of me, shielding me.
"Whoa, whoa." A man stood in FountainCorp armor, raising his hands, palms toward us. "I solved your problem for you."
"Who the fuck is this asshole?" I asked, recognizing neither the armor nor the voice.
"It's me. Mick Frankl, FountainCorp CounterEspionage." He didn't move as Edmund and Sly approached him.
"So it is." Edmund lowered his weapons. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"We followed you guys. And a good thing, too. Great work. You guys deserve all your accolades, but we should all leave immediately, before those things taking control of the station find their way in here."
I stormed around Malordo, pointing at the bastard. "You killed him before I could get any good information from him."
"Oh, come on." Frankl dropped his arms and shook his head. "You weren't going to get anything out of him except more of his blathering like a madman."
"He knew who ordered all those people seized." I strode up to him, jabbing my finger into his chestplate, driving him backward, step by step. "He knew who paid to have Santina snatched. He knew that that contact would give us a line into the Unity. He knew who had me taken hostage when I was a kid, and why. He knew, and you blew his damned brains out."
"Yeah, and you should be thanking me now."
&n
bsp; "Thanking you?"
"Yeah. He was right. He had too many connections to bring him to justice any other way. FountainCorp wouldn’t have touched him. If you offed him, you could have been brought up on all kinds of charges by all sorts of different groups. But me? I'm CounterEspionage." He turned, indicating all the damage around us. "By my being here, by my killing him, this all becomes a covert op to legally remove a corporate enemy who stole corporate assets that could have spilled important corporate secrets. The corporate assets being you, Vanessa, and Santina. I'm the hero here."
I could not speak.
Edmund touched my shoulder. "Come on, Hero. We gotta go."
"Yes." Frankl nodded. "We gotta go now."
Quitting Time
I eased into C&C in the Old Girl, closing the hatch behind me, muffling the voices of the young men and women stuffed into the hold. Orchid Flower station retreated behind us. My stomach fluttered, my throat getting thick.
I failed.
Edmund and Kevin sat strapped into the command chairs, facing back into the room toward the rest of us. Frankl floated by the hatch, a little above it, to my left. Vanessa floated on a makeshift gurney, heavily bandaged, Moritz on one side with a med unit stitching up her cuts, Sly on the other holding her steady. Lorber and Malordo were curled up and nestled in between exposed pipes along the ceiling.
The door to the cockpit stood open with Captain Lu leaning against the hull, Stemple at the helm behind her.
“Drop me off at some neutral station with Frankl,” I said, gesturing with my thumb up toward him. “He can take me in and turn me over to FountainCorp. That should take the heat off you guys.”
“What?” Malordo said, her brow furrowing. “What are you talking about? The Gorovitzes were behind the bombings. We know that.”
“Or was it Unity?” I shrugged my shoulders, shaking my head. “I got no proof that would stand in an impartial court. Do you?”
“Shut up, Ohmie,” Edmund said, crossing his thick arms over his chest. “I’ll drop the lot of you off at Firefox or maybe Skerritt station. Then I’ll head to FountainCorp Security with Frankl and turn myself in with the civilians in the hold. It’s my fault you all are in this mess. I didn’t do my job.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
“You think I’m letting you drive the Old Girl?” Captain Lu shook her head, her lips twisting like she’d tasted a sour grape. “Are you crazy? I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to go AWOL with you idiots. I’ll drop you guys off with the people in the hold, then I’ll head back and say you forced me to do it. You fucking assholes.”
“Yeah,” Stemple yelled from his seat in the cockpit. “You bunch of fucking assholes.”
“Sweet Nemesis,” Frankl said, shaking his head, sticking his tongue out like he was about to lose his lunch. “Can I offer you self-sacrificing simpletons a win-win way out?”
“The goons reporting to you tried to kill me.” I glared up at him, tapping my foot on the floor, the contact enough to send me drifting up to his level. “I don’t even know why you’re here. We should have flushed you out an airlock. Accidentally.”
He smirked down at me, shrugging his shoulders. “I didn’t know they were working with a Family. I never ordered them to do any of that.”
“And the ones who grabbed Santina?” I asked.
“I had no knowledge of that.” Frankl shook his head, turning his attention from me to the others in the room, spreading his hands out before him. “Somehow the Family got to several guys in my command. Once we get back home, we’ll track down the guilty parties.”
He seemed so calm. Too calm. I wanted to strangle him and be done with it.
“But…” He turned his blue eyes back to me, his face wide with a boyish smile, then raised his forefinger and waggled it from side to side before pointing it at me. “I suspect you already took care of the ringleaders.”
I grunted.
He held up his right hand, palm toward the room. “Listen. You all don’t need to find a place to hide out. No one needs to be a martyr and lose their company benefits. While I was digging through the Family computers, I found conclusive proof that clears Dorothea and the rest of you. You’re all going to come out of this smelling like roses—a bunch of heroes, working on a super top-secret CounterEspionage sting to track down evildoers, with medals for the whole lot of you.”
Vanessa’s head jerked up, her eyes blazing. “We’re supposed to trust you? Why?”
“I’ll arrange everything before we even come close to anything or anyone from the company,” Frankl said. “I can arrange everything, and you all can watch over my shoulder as I do it. You can see the holovids I transmit and the messages I send. You’ve got my word. What do you think, Captain?”
Edmund licked his lower lip, his eyes darting to me, to Vanessa, scanning around the room.
Frankl pushed off from the hull, directing himself to Edmund’s side. “Everything goes back to as close to normal as we can get it. What’s not to love about that?”
"Well, while you’re setting all that up, you can send over my resignation," I said.
"What?” Edmund said. “You’re going to ditch us?”
“Wait. Why?” Kevin asked. “We laid down our lives to come and get you two. You and Vanessa, you’re ours now, you’re one of us, one of the gang. You can’t leave.”
"There are things I need to do." I gazed around the room, at Sly, at Malordo, at Moritz. Vanessa stared at me with wounded eyes, her brow furrowing as she bit at her bottom lip. I sighed. "I love you guys, but I can't do what I need to do as a member of FountainCorp Security. I'd only put you all in danger."
"You can't go." Edmund pushed Kevin aside, his face getting that pre-berserk look. "You’re full of bullshit. We'll protect you from asshats like Gorovitz."
"Edmund?" I inched toward him, not wanting to get any closer than I needed to, realizing the reason for my vision becoming blurry was from tears in my eyes. Tears? What? I shook my head, blinking my eyes, licking my lips, swallowing. "Someone has to exact revenge for Santina, and she reminded me I have ghosts out there running free in the solar system. Ghosts who owe me."
Vanessa said, "Don't do this."
"You need someone to watch your back." Sly jabbed his finger into my chest. "I quit."
"No, Sly," I said. "You can't give everything up."
"Yeah," Vanessa said. "I quit, too."
"I love you guys." I bowed my head. "But calm the fuck down already."
Moritz shouted over me, "Why?"
"Listen,” I said. “I appreciate all this, I do, but you guys have your careers, you have your lives. I'll be fine. I have something I need to do. Something I need to do alone."
"What are you going to do?" Edmund asked.
I laughed. "Hunt for answers to those questions I asked the First Father."
Frankl grinned. “I might be able to assist with that.”
# # #
Frankl tilted his stool back, watching a young girl dance on a pole, twirling about it, her young thighs squeezing the pole, climbing up it. He smiled, sighed, and took a slow sip of his drink—sweet, the alcohol searing his throat, burning all the way down his esophagus, exploding in his stomach like the fireworks on Founder’s Day at FountainCorp corporate HQ.
A large, brown-haired, green-eyed man, wearing a tight tee-shirt to show off his steroid-enhanced biceps and triceps and with gold chains encrusted in diamonds piled up around his neck, pulled out the chair across from Mick and leaned his elbows on the table, glaring at Mick, hatred bubbling in his eyes. "You got some words for me on why I shouldn't throw your beaten, bloody, but still living carcass out the vent into deep space with tomorrow morning's trash?"
"Roscoe, Roscoe, Roscoe. I took care of a situation, a bad situation, a situation which would have gotten much worse." Frankl raised his hands, smiling and shaking his head, daring the Family man to take his shot. "Everything had gone wrong, and I salvaged it for all of us. You, more than anyon
e, should be thanking me."
"You killed the First Father." Roscoe slapped his hand down on the table, shooting to his feet, his chair tumbling to the ground. The man's begoggled cousins and children moved away from the doorways where they'd been lounging, hands moving inside their baggy jackets, ready to pull out weapons. The other patrons of the club eased away from Frankl, eyes darting, searching for escape routes, their attention distracted from the entertainment on the stage.
Frankl straightened up in his chair, setting his left elbow on the table and edging in toward Roscoe, leering up at him. "I had a hand in ending the Second, as well, which means you're the First now, right?" Mick spread his hands out. "Like I said, you should be thanking me. Your circumstances are significantly better. I was looking out for you, buddy, the whole damned way."
"We are not some soulless corporation where people sacrifice each other for monetary gain," Roscoe growled down at Mick. "We are a Family."
"Anything you say." Mick nodded, grinning. "We owe you a blood-debt, right? But someone else owes you more. That station?" Mick shook his head. "You know we didn't do that. We just went in to retrieve our own people. A Family man should understand that sort of loyalty. But LightDream? Or was it Unity? Who paid you to pick up those kids from Foxfire? Who tried to end you with that bioweapon of theirs? Not FountainCorp. Not me."
"Unity?" Roscoe stared down at Mick, eyes narrowing, nostrils flaring, fists clenching. The other Family members in the club looked to him, their hands still in their jackets. "Nieve worked for LightDream."
"He worked for Unity on the side. LightDream had no knowledge of that project. The Unity, that's who those kids were for—a great weapon for terrorists. They're the assholes here. Not you guys, not us, not even LightDream. We are willing to leave all our current contracts in place, with an extra two percent over the next year as recompense. There are some new arrangements we would like to make, a few new operations, and a few new opportunities we would like to discuss with you. I know you guys took the worst hit, and I have convinced my bosses to back me on this. I know what you've lost is priceless, but we'd like to give you some consideration and offer this as a kind of condolence for your loss, not a replacement by any stretch of the imagination."
