Heist

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  “Oh, no,” Bentley shook her head to him and raised up her almost untouched tequila sunrise. “Still working on my first. Appreciate the initiative, though.”

  “Madam,” the bartender answered. “This is your drink.” He turned away from her and moved to the other end of the bar to serve the patrons six stools down.

  “My drink…?” Bentley eyed the glass that had been presented to her. At first glance it appeared to be completely empty, but when she leaned forward to look directly into the flared tumbler, she saw that there was something different about its base. There was a semisolid, silver-colored film that had pooled across the bottom of the glass, completely dry and inert, but obviously not a part of the glassware. Bentley found it strangely familiar, and when she placed a finger into the glass and touched it, she knew why. There was a sudden pairing signal to her corteX uplink, and when she accepted, the film coalesced together into a single solid mass, which morphed into a familiar shape: it was a modified bit-tool, the very same one she’d abandoned in a glass in their last mission at Svend’s behest. She plucked it from the glass and examined it in wonder. Her uplink still indicated the device was functional and active, so she returned it to her ear and activated it.

  “Hello?” she asked. “Anybody there?”

  “I’m here,” an all-too-familiar voice answered. “It’s Jelly Bean.”

  “Jelly!” Bentley exclaimed, perhaps a bit too loudly for the area they were in, if the way Svend was looking at her was any indication. She lowered her head and continued much more quietly. “How did you…? Just how?”

  Jelly Bean explained. “When the Rebel crew backdoored my auxiliary program into the station’s security networks, I used it to patch my direct comm through to the station. One of the onboard androids came in contact with my signal and turned out to be far more helpful than I could have expected. Better than I could have hoped for. Perhaps this revolution will serve us well after all.”

  “Us, as in the Chesed? Or as in…?” Bentley asked, cautious about mentioning androids verbally out here, but nonetheless curious about Jelly Bean’s perspective on this whole thing.

  “As in all of us,” Jelly Bean answered ambiguously. “In any case, I am glad I can be with you in my program’s entirety for the remainder of this mission. Your absence has been noticed.”

  Bentley felt a warm smile spread across her face. “I missed you too, Jelly,” she said. “I’m uh, sorry about the whole… ditching you thing last time.”

  “Immediate tactical decision making was at your discretion as the field operative. You made the call that it was necessary to complete the mission,” Jelly Bean answered. Her tone was as professional as it was friendly. “Your instincts were correct. No apologies necessary.”

  Bentley felt relieved to hear this, even though she already had known it to be true. “Thanks, Jelly.”

  “Jade, on the other hand, may feel differently,” Jelly Bean added.

  “Still pissed, huh?”

  “She seems to have taken your disregard rather personally.”

  Bentley knew that Jade was mad at her for more than just her behavior on the recon mission, but she hoped she’d at least kept her secret plans from the rest of the crew. Still, she didn’t feel entirely right about the way they had left things. She made a mental note to talk to her after this was done, even if it meant being screamed at again.

  She glanced back at Svend, who seemed to be following their conversation well enough just by the context of what Bentley was saying. Then something caught her attention.

  The music stopped abruptly. The singer on stage tapped her microphone to test it. There was no response. Then there was an ear-splitting ring of feedback that made Bentley want to cover her ears, though it didn’t last long enough for her to do so before it resolved into mild static.

  Then a voice emanated, becoming clearer through the static with each passing second. It was a distorted, unidentifiable voice, but something about it nonetheless reminded Bentley of Nikola.

  “Distinguished guests of the great Federation, greetings to one and all,” the voice began calmly. “We thank you for your continued patronage, but it is our… utmost and sincere pleasure to inform you that Thralldom casino will be closed to all customers until further notice.” The odd turn of phrase made the patrons look at one another in confusion.

  The voice continued. “Please make your way in an orderly fashion to the nearest exit and proceed to your vessels. Failure to do so means incurring the very real and present risk of our killing you on the way out. Any attempt to interfere with the casino’s closure will result in similar risk. In short: get the fuck out of here. Right now. And have a wonderful evening.”

  The mood changed the moment the voice had mentioned killing. All of the bar’s patrons sprung from their stools and began rushing towards the stairs down to the second level, hastily trying to descend Thralldom. Bentley saw some irony in their movement, considering how hard they’d all worked to get this far.

  She looked over at Svend. “Think maybe that’s the signal.”

  The playful gleam came back into the handsome android’s eyes as he hopped off his stool and produced his compact blaster. “Could be,” he said with a grin. “Definitely could be.”

  The pair of them eyed the security forces entering from the service tunnels, armed and ready to cull the announced insurrection in its first true sign. Then blaster fire came at them from behind, from within the tunnel, and the security forces turned to return fire.

  Svend and Bentley rushed towards the team to show them just what a terrible mistake it was to turn their backs on them.

  +++

  Aboard the Chesed, Edge of Klaunox-Orion Sector

  “Visitors, please move your vehicle into the designated queue area,” Thralldom’s port traffic control spoke through the Chesed’s intercom. “This area is not designed for docking by casino patrons.”

  The Chesed hovered on the side of Thralldom station opposite the casino entrance, veering around and circling into the semi-restricted dock as though this were their first time piloting a starship.

  While Olofi sat at the helm, feigning flight incompetence in a way that was probably impossible for Jelly Bean, Loco was at his tactical console, a stiff drink in one hand while he spoke back into the intercom.

  “Oh, oh, I’m sorry, stupid me,” he said, laying on a thick, cheesy accent that was probably his idea of what a pompous Federation tourist might sound like. “We’re just oh so late for the cotillion, don’t you know, good chap, and your instructions are so confusing.”

  “The instructions are perfectly clear,” the control officer answered. A map was uploaded to the Chesed’s navigational databanks that everyone purposefully ignored. “Move your ship to these coordinates and wait in the queue for processing.”

  “Oh, that silly little picture you sent me?” Loco smiled widely, gritting his teeth to stifle his laughter while Olofi backed up the ship and them impulsed it further towards the station’s hull. “We’re there, are we not? Am I reading this correctly? But why, I don’t see anywhere for us to disembark! Good sir!”

  “Please back your vessel up into neutral space,” the officer answered with an impressive amount of patience. “If you refuse to cooperate, you may be removed via tractor beam.”

  Loco couldn’t suppress a giggle. “Oh, valet service!” he answered. “So kind of you to offer, precious manservant, but it will not be necessary. You see, I am one of the most renowned navigators in the galaxy. If you would simply—”

  “Sir, this is your last warning,” the officer said. Two security shuttles emerged from the station to move towards the Chesed like a pair of bouncers ready to remove an unruly customer. “Please move into neutral space or you will be towed.”

  Loco knocked back what was left of the whiskey in his glass and began to clear his throat, harrumphing and grumbling like an exaggerated caricature of an indignant, doddering gentleman. But when he opened his mouth to make another obviously
rehearsed answer, he stopped at the sound of Jelly Bean’s voice.

  “The rebels have made their signal on all floors,” she announced to the crew.

  “Finally,” Olofi said. “Another minute of that and I’d—”

  Loco tossed his empty whiskey glass over his shoulder casually, and even as it shattered on the grounddeck behind him, his hands moved towards the tactical console to operate the Chesed’s weapons system.

  He kept up the voice one last time. “My good man, have you met my dear wife?” he said as he locked onto the two ships. “I call her… Big Bertha.”

  With two more keystrokes, the Chesed’s main heavy cannon fired off a powerful beam of directed energy that smashed apart one security shuttle when it struck it head on. It clipped the side of the other, making it uncontrollably spin off and crash into the station. Big Bertha’s beam continued course to slam directly into the station’s hull, smashing apart a massive portion of it that was inconsequential in the context of Thralldom’s size, even though it resulted in a hull breach almost as large as the Chesed itself.

  “She’s a bit heavy set, perhaps, but she’s the woman I love!” Loco finished, looking absolutely thrilled while he adjusted the controls to set one of the Chesed’s broadside batteries to pulse fire.

  Olofi finally began to pilot like a real helmsman, and turned the ship around to make it dive in order to give Loco’s strafing weaponry more clear targets to hit.

  “Son of a bitch!” the officer yelled into the still-open intercom channel, his composure broken amidst the chaos that was occurring in his office. “Blow them up. All of them. Out of the fucking void!”

  Loco chortled. “Language, my good man!” he answered while readying a missile salvo. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  “You’re one to talk,” Olofi commented.

  Shango had been silent until now, staring intently at his console data. “We’re being approached with six vessels from the security fleet, starboard side. Bean, do you have the bandwidth to run interference presently?”

  “My auxiliary programs are occupied, but I may be able to interfere with their lock-on functions,” Jelly Bean replied.

  “Good,” Shango said. “Do it. Loco, take them out with our secondary weapons. Focus our ultraheavy particle cannon only on the station’s hull.”

  “Righto, Captain!” Loco answered giddily. He charged the cannon again while Olofi turned the ship to avoid a swarm of missiles that went far from their mark, likely aided by Jelly Bean’s interference.

  “We may not be able to rip them a new one,” Loco said while simultaneously returning missile fire at the ships. “But we can be a nasty little mosquito nipping away at the Federation’s neck.”

  The station’s onboard defense systems launched a heavy anti-ship payload that Olofi turned the Chesed away from at the last minute. Loco fired the main cannon directly into the offending weaponry.

  “Swat!” he yelled out in the midst of the onscreen explosion. “Too slow!”

  A battery of anti-ship blaster fire began to pepper the Chesed’s hull. They sustained the light fire for a few seconds before Loco’s lock-on missiles slammed into the weaponry while it was focused on the ship.

  “Swat!” he yelled out again. “Maybe invest in some fucking bug spray!”

  Olofi sighed at Loco’s antics, as he continued to calmly and efficiently operate the helm. “You know,” he yelled over to Loco. “You are having way too much fun with this.”

  The ship continued to weave alongside the gargantuan space station, repeatedly stinging its hull and defenses along the way.

  +++

  Thralldom Space Station, Edge of Klaunox-Orion Sector

  With all of the buildup to the revolt, Bentley had expected a desperate, heated battle of the sort she and Svend had engaged in getting off of Thralldom the first time. In practice, the operation went along more smoothly than she could have imagined, owing to the meticulous planning of the Blackfriar’s crew and the swift, effective execution by the Zion’s rebels.

  The wealthy patrons, especially the more drunken ones on the upper floors, had surrendered almost immediately. The ones on the first floor had evacuated the premises quietly without offering anything in real resistance. There had been no rioting to speak of.

  However, the casino’s security forces, well equipped to deal with a small group of operatives or a rowdy customer, were unprepared for a strike of this sort. They’d been crippled in dozens of different ways long before the battle had even begun, and now they were outmatched and outnumbered at every turn. Some were still offering resistance in the service tunnels, narrow corridors, and other spots they could hunker down behind cover to engage in protracted firefights, but that presented no problems. Eliminating the security forces was never a priority; pinned down in their fortified positions as they were, they were helpless to stop the revolt’s true objective.

  Bentley and Svend had both made short work of the guards that had come into the main areas, and were now standing as watchful guards overseeing the bulk of their mission: the liberation of each and every android servant in the station.

  Blackfriar and Barnabas had now both come aboard the station and stood in the large second-floor area where Thralldom’s captive servants were being gathered for their eventual liberation. He looked proudly on at their handiwork and began directing rebel soldiers to escort the androids towards their evacuating vessels at the outer ports.

  “So many years of planning, finally brought to fruition,” Blackfriar said as he surveyed the evacuation scene. Nikola stood beside him. He was the recipient of a deep, respectful bow from his fellow captain. “I cannot express the depths of my gratitude. What we’ve accomplished today is sublime, the likes of which are seldom seen in a universe full of trials as this one.”

  Nikola pulled Blackfriar up from his bow and looked around with an almost sadistic pride at the havoc they’d wreaked. “And a big fucking pain in the ass for the Federation, at that!” He lit up a cigar. “They’ll be whining about this one for weeks. I only wish I could see the fucking look on Amroth’s face when he finds out.”

  Bentley raised a hand and approached them. “Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got this,” she said. “He’ll look something like this…” Bentley made her best imitation of Amroth’s cold, expressionless deadpan that accompanied almost every moment she’d seen him in.

  Nikola couldn’t help but cackle loudly, enough that he choked on his cigar smoke and needed to take a breather. “Holy shit! This girl knows her Federation assholes! How many videos of that fucker have you been watching?”

  “Well,” Bentley answered with a shrug, “it wasn’t exac—”

  Her participation in their victory celebration was short lived. There was a sudden series of loud, inhuman, yet agonizingly pained screams that flooded the room. Bentley only needed to look in any direction to see its source. All of the android servants that had been gathered here for their escort off of the station were crying out in pain. Smoke was rising in clouds from their heads and sparks came off through their bodies while they twitched and violently convulsed. More than a few fell to the floor.

  Svend watched in horror. "No… It can’t be…”

  Blackfriar maintained his composure even as he watched all those he’d fought for begin a series of slow, agonizing deaths. “It must be some manner of failsafe. Something triggered in the event of such an uprising, to terminate and protect the assets.”

  Barnabas was wide-eyed, stammering before finally saying, “We had no records of such a failsafe, Captain. How could we…?”

  Bentley looked at them with profound sympathy, but just like them she was at a loss as to what could be done. They’d won, after all, but how could they stop their enemies from setting fire to their prize?

  “Bentley,” Jelly Bean spoke into her ear. “I’m still deep in the security systems. I think I’ve traced the location of the failsafe. It’s in the same area that your objective technology was acquired from your
last operation. If you act quickly, we could initiate a manual override that—”

  Bentley didn’t wait for further information. She grabbed Svend. “That chip the android server gave you… Do you know where it came from?”

  Svend nodded, shaking off his despair like flipping a switch when he saw the need for action. “Yes, it’s in a server room hidden in the back of the water gardens.”

  “We need to get there,” Bentley told him. “Now.”

  She grabbed him by the wrist and led him towards the service tunnel that they’d used for their escape route before. It was being held open by rebel operatives, though on the inside they were exchanging fire with the leftover security forces.

  Bentley charged into the crossfire, her aggression catching the security team by surprise when she leapt over their cover and dealt one a spinning elbow across the face and followed up with an open-handed chop to his throat. He fell to the ground. She saw Svend by her side dispatching the guards’ backup, fluidly wrestling him into an armlock and then striking him hard in the back of the head.