“What?” P’riti asked from where she’d come around Beth’s side with Carmine before spotting the blaster, “Ah, fuck…”
“Yeah,” I sighed, raising my hands in the air without dropping the shovel or the case, “thanks.”
“Yeah,” P’riti snapped, punching Carmine in the arm as she did, “good going, dumbass.”
CHAPTER 4
Still rubbing his arm from the punch, Carmine not-so-discreetly reached for the pistol on his thigh while I continued to assess the situation as best as I could.
“Don’t try it, dipshit,” Dutan warned, raising his blaster and gesturing for P’riti and Carmine to join me, “by now you’ll have figured out that your options are as follows; drop the shovel, give me the case, and leave town, or try something stupid and cop a laser bolt through your chest cavity.”
“Wait… what are we doing guys?” Carmine scoffed, lowering his arms, “As of yesterday, we’re level one Spacefarers and he’s at least level fift-”
“That’s why he got me to slap him, rim job,” I sighed, “we’ve got, what, another couple minutes ‘til level cap kicks in again?”
“Like I said, you’re a clever one,” Dutan replied cockily, “so, what’s it going to be?”
“Are you seriously going to let him do this?” P’riti asked the utterly bewildered Beth, “I know we had some kind of… I don’t know, falling out or whatever, but you’re really just going to stand there while he holds us at gunpoint?”
“I-” Beth got out before Dutan signaled for her to keep her mouth shut.
“I know y’all have some history, and it so breaks my heart to push a wedge between you,” Dutan chuckled, looking to the conflicted Beth, “but I hired you for a job and I expect you to-”
Knowing that was my only chance, I dropped the case and charged Dutan, tackling him to the ground with ease where the stunned scum’s body kicked up a good amount of dust while he did his best to fire his blaster at me.
Managing to scramble off him and to my feet, I pinned his gun-wielding wrist with my boot before he could fire off another blast and proceeded to, without so much as a hint of hesitation, smash the slimy prick’s head in with the shovel.
Breathless and having some trouble seeing through the dust, I chose to focus on the ‘+25(x46)XP PUNCHING UP’, ‘+500XP KILL’, and ‘LEVEL UP! 50 Skill Points Awarded’ popups, surprised at the turn the start of our adventure had taken.
“That could’ve gone better.” I chuckled as I slowly turned to face P’riti and Beth, Carmine having apparently fainted, and tilting my head at the horrified expressions on the girls’ faces, “What?”
At the time, I struggled to understand why they were having such a hard time answering what I thought was a pretty simple question, but I suppose I’d have struggled with what to say if the tables were reversed.
“Seriously, wha…” I trailed off, a faint burning sensation radiating from my dust-filled left eye.
Correction, what I thought was a dust-filled left eye.
“No…” I murmured, slowly running my fingers up my cheek, “C’mon, i-”
That’s when I hit it, the edge of the singed remains of a large portion of the left side of my face, my brain becoming aware of the crisping red swirls burning out where Dutan’s blaster had struck true and near-instantly cauterized.
“Here,” Beth said after handing P’riti her shotgun and pulling an autoinjecter out of her pocket, “this’ll help.”
A mixture of shock, despair, and rage kept me from moving, let alone responding, as the fuckhead who’d just taken off a chunk of my face’s bodyguard grabbed my shovel-holding hand and hit me with the autoinjecter in my bicep.
‘BETHANY KOROS administered STIM’ read my feed as the powerful meds near-instantly numbed the pain that my brain had been struggling to register.
Truth be told, I found it a little disconcerting.
“Mother. Fucking. Piece. Of. Shit!” I growled as I turned to Dutan’s corpse and went to work caving his chest in with my boot heel, stopping only to rip the blaster from his dead hands and attempt to dump the charge into his fat face.
After a few unsuccessful attempts to discharge the blaster and several ‘THIS WEAPON IS LEVEL CAPPED’, I gave in and stuffed it down the back of my pants.
“You alright, B?” Beth asked concernedly while I patted Dutan’s body down in search of anything else useful or potentially valuable.
“Pretty far from alright, sweet cheeks.” I muttered once I realized Dutan had been smart enough to not carry anything out with him, “Wake up Carmine so we can get out of here.”
“He’s dead.” P’riti remarked, sounding more disappointed than anything else, “Look.”
“Oh for…” I grumbled as I turned to face P’riti as she rolled Carmine’s corpse over with her boot, annoyed that I’d missed that particular notification, “Know what? Fuck it, we got his money, that’s all we needed. You know where the ship is?”
It took a moment for Beth to register the fact that I was talking to her, “Me?” she asked, “I… Yeah, yeah, it’s not far. Out by the rear stack.”
“Good,” I replied with a nod, “you comin’ with?”
A look of apprehension washed over her face as she took a moment to look between P’riti and me, “To the ship?” she asked, evidently worried we were planning to take her hostage or something.
“And parts beyond, yeah,” I said reassuringly, “your boss is dead, and we could use a third.”
Beth’s concerned look immediately dissipated at that, replaced instead by one of cautious optimism, “Are you su-”
“I’m sure.” I interjected with a kind smile, a crackle dangerously close to my ear telling me I needed some kind of salve fast, “Now, if you are coming with, grab that case and let’s get a move on. Despite what you might think, I’d actually like to get this sorted out sooner rather than later.”
“Of course,” Beth agreed enthusiastically, grabbing up the case as she did, “ship’s medical firmware’s all up to date, so you should be able to get that fixed right quick.”
“Let’s hope so…” I murmured, giving the dead Carmine one final look before starting off towards the ship, quietly hoping I’d feel something about the dead man in the red shirt as the ‘BETHANY KOROS has joined your party’ notification faded.
Guilt? Anguish? Anything?
However, all I could muster up was a worrying relief that made me question whether I was some sort of sociopath.
To be fair though, he was annoying.
CHAPTER 5
The small trek around the junkyard was made significantly shorter by Beth and P’riti’s conversation about what had pushed her to join up with Dutan in the first place.
Granted, I struggled to offer anything as I went through a brief period where I was unable to talk due to a mildly inflated tongue, but it was good to listen to.
Apparently Carmine, who had evidently eavesdropped, had told her that we were considering bringing him on, conveniently leaving out the part that he was our second choice.
Wanting to avoid any awkwardness, she’d decided a swift bifurcation was her best bet and that her meeting Dutan had presented a good opportunity for just that.
“Still though, could’ve talked to us.” P’riti pointed out, “We would’ve had the whole thing cleared up in seconds.”
“Yeah, but then we wouldn’t be walking away with all this money.” Beth replied amusedly.
“And I’d probably still have an eye.” I mumbled as best as my mush mouth would let me.
I’d have probably taken another whack at getting the words out if we hadn’t made our way around the corner of a stack and found our ship.
She wasn’t the biggest bird I’d ever seen, her slightly curved styling making her look more compact than she was, but she sure as Hell wasn’t a canary either.
With her four car-sized landing thrusters deployed at each of the corners of the ship, she was about 150 feet wide, quadruple that long from nose
to her bulky rear thrusters, and stood a little over a hundred feet tall without taking into account her landing feet, of which she had three; two at the rear, one just under the nose.
“Yellow?” P’riti let out confusedly as we approached the building-sized craft, me being too busy smiling to come up with any questions.
“She was a part of a construction fleet before they went bankrupt,” Beth explained, “since then she’s gone through a couple of hands, replaced the mining lasers with blasters, got an armory, etcetera. Armory’s been cleared out for obvious reasons though.”
“Speaking of, how are the guns?” I asked, running my hand along the front-most of the landing feet, briefly forgetting my damaged eye as I looked up at the twin-linked heavy blasters on either side of the nose that caught my attention.
“Operational near as we can tell,” Beth replied, smiling at me, “we charged them up for a test this morning. Didn’t fire for obvious reasons, but fair to assume they’re working.”
“Got anything that’ll punch a through a ship though?” P’riti chimed in, her obsession with anything that goes ‘boom’ coming out in her excited tone, “Splitter missiles perhaps?”
“Those guns should overload most tier one shield well enough,” Beth said, nodding at the blasters, “and they have the electrical charge option fitted which makes it easy to set most low class ships adrift with a few good hits.”
“So no…” P’riti sighed disappointedly, “Ah well, guess we can work up to something a bit more fire and brimstone once we’re off.”
“Speaking of, mind if we crack this bird open?” I chuckled weakly, my stim beginning to wear off, “Not to be a pain, but I could use some medical attention.”
“Right, right, of course.” Beth agreed on her way over to me before tapping a blue button on the landing gear at about eye-level, revealing a panel that requested a five-digit numerical code.
“Eight double-oh eight five.” I read aloud as Beth typed it in, smirking as the panel flashed green and a number of systems fired up, “That’s good. I’m goin’ to keep that.”
“Huh?” P’riti asked, having not read it before it disappeared, only to realize as the ship lowered slightly and port side of the ship opened up to allow a ten foot wide ramp to extend to the ground, “Oh, that’s funny.”
“Just a little bit,” Beth remarked with a smile on our way over to the ramp, “now, I should warn you, the ship’s AI can be a bit of a… presence.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, ignoring the pain radiating from the edge of my wound.
“It’s hard to explain,” Beth replied before handing me the case, “you’ll probably also need that.”
“Good point,” I said as we mounted the steel ramp, “looking at it, how much do you reckon this’ll set me back?”
“Honestly?” Beth seethed, tilting her head from side-to-side, “Let’s just say it’s probably a good thing you’re getting the ship for free.”
“That bad, huh?” I chuckled meekly as I took my first step into our ship.
We were in a hallway, stairs a ways to our right leading the engines, stairs over to our left leading to the rest of the ship, and a set of large folding doors in front of us that clearly opened up into a cargo hold.
“Who in the bloody Hell are you?” a nineteenth century British explorer-sounding voice barked irritatedly, “Please find your way to the nearest exit and-oh, Miss Koros, I didn’t see you there.”
“The AI?” I asked as I made room for Beth and P’riti to climb aboard, the heavy doors that had blocked the cargo hold sliding up and folding along the forty-foot-tall ceiling to reveal a truly massive open space.
“Prescott,” Beth confirmed with a nod, “someone thought it would be funny to upload this personality and lock the system out.”
“I’ll have you know that there’s nothing ‘funny’ about my personality, Miss Koros,” Prescott replied matter-of-factly, “where’s Master Dutan?”
“Dead,” Beth said before gesturing to me with her head, “this is the new owner.”
“Him?” Prescott asked incredulously, “Surely not, he’s only half a face.”
“I’ve got other parts, too,” I scoffed, slightly disappointed in myself for being offended by a few snarky lines of code, “medical facilities?”
“Up the stairs and towards the bridge,” Beth replied, “door’s marked. Need a hand?”
“I’ll be alright,” I said reassuringly, “go on and show P’riti the cargo hold and where we’ll be sleeping though.”
“And I’ll be sure to guide him should he get lost,” Prescott added with a slightly mocking tone before dropping a yellow waypoint at the top of the stairs, “right this way.”
I went to say something about being more than capable of making my way up some stairs but stumbling twice on my way to them kept my mouth shut.
“Shall I get you a walker?” Prescott asked.
“You can suck my meaty clackers is what you can do.” I replied on my way up the stairs, looking over my shoulder at the girls going through the cargo hold.
“I think you’ll find that I, in fact, cannot.” Prescott said as I reached the top of the stairs, finding a curved corner that pointed towards another set of stairs on the opposite side of the ship that looped back down to the cargo hold.
Looking over the guardrail, I smiled as I pictured the bare steel chamber before me packed to the brim with all manner of loot and cargo.
Considering we’d bought sight unseen, I couldn’t help but feel just a little bit lucky.
“Do you need another waypoint, or can we keep moving?” Prescott chided.
“We’re going to have to work on this attitude of yours,” I said, turning to face the next compartment and sauntering towards the front of the ship, “that or get rid of the speakers.”
“Good luck with that.” Prescott mocked before taking on a more tour guide-like tone as I made my way through the hallway, “You’ll notice the three doors on either side of you, each leading to a room fit for one person.”
“How big?” I asked, pausing in front of one of the rooms for a moment and wondering if I had time to stick my head in.
“Think a dorm room at a cheap university,” Prescott replied as I decided my slow pace was probably pushing it as it was, “although I recognize that example might be a bit outside your realm of knowledge.”
“I could’ve gone to college,” I scoffed, “you don’t know me.”
“Yes, I’m sure many alum of the Exceptional Ten end up mining in some backwater piss-hole.” Prescott jabbed, “Now, this class of ship was designed with the old style of submarine in mind, each section serving its own purpose and capable of closing itself off from the rest of ship.”
“What about life support?” I sighed, slightly disappointed in myself at falling for Prescott’s ability to remove any ability to respond to his insults by dropping fun facts as punctuation.
“Snaked through the whole ship,” Prescott explained, “each section has an autonomous system that automatically triggers if it detects separation, but that’ll only last you a few weeks at most.”
“Try not to get blown up, got it,” I chuckled, noticing a hatch in the middle of the hall’s floor as we passed it, “what’s that?”
“Leads down into the armory,” Prescott replied, “emptied I’m afraid, but there’s enough room down there to arm a small company of soldiers.”
“Handy to know,” I remarked as we reached the dividing wall between the dorm section and the rest of the ship, “mind opening up?”
“Hmm?” Prescott let out innocently, “Oh, oh yes, of course.”
Barely half-jokingly, I was starting to wonder if it’d be worth it for me to just let my eye go septic to save myself the trouble of dealing with Prescott in the future.
After a few more seconds of pretending he was having a difficult time getting the door open, the heavy metal shifted violently to the right.
On the left of the significantly more open compa
rtment was a kitchen-dining set up, complete with a large table, cooking appliances, so on and so forth, while on the right was an area clearly dedicated to R&R.
There was a pinball machine, a small table dedicated to a chess set, and two shelves stacked with books and board games.
“Can’t get the Net out in the void?” I chuckled.
“We can, though unrestricted use leaves us open to getting tracked or worse,” Prescott clarified, “you may trust your crew, but I don’t need unwelcome visitors in my brain.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed, spotting a guardrail blocking off a set of stairs leading below against the far wall, “so what’s beneath this level?”
“Showers.” Prescott replied, “I’d have thought having them nearer the quarters would’ve been a smarter move, but what do I know?”
Having apparently warmed up to me a little, Prescott opened the door I was coming up to a few seconds before I reached it, revealing a dark room with a large oval standing table in the center, a wall-sized draw-screen on the right wall, and an intergalactic map on the left.
“Here we have the war room,” Prescott explained as I stepped into the room, “and if you move that table, you’ll find a hatch down to the club.”
“I… Do we really need that?” I asked confusedly.
“Which one?” Prescott sighed
“Either. Both.” I replied, ignoring the AI’s bitter tone.
“You’re not that likeable,” Prescott said, leaving a few seconds to let the insult really settle, “so that’s why you’ll need a war room. As to the club, a previous owner thought it’d be a good way to earn some extra bits when they were portside.”
“Don’t suppose it was, eh?” I huffed amusedly, masking some genuine hope that I had an extra income on the way.
“For a time,” Prescott replied, “but eventually, and rather predictably, a ‘party group’ hitched a ride and murdered everyone in their sleep.”
“Damn,” I murmured, both shocked by the story and disappointed that the club was essentially a non-option, “what happened after that?”
Let's Be Bad Guys Page 2
