by James Chalk
So, thanks to Mom and Dad, and to our colony’s excellent health care system, I only had around one thousand fractures. My internal armor, which included a reinforced ribcage and skull, had successfully protected my vital organs. However, I had lost most of my blood and my heart had stopped.
If not for the ship’s excellent medical facilities I would have been gone - just a hunk of dead meat. Using stasis-drugs, various external medical devices, and about a trillion medical nanobots, Mary was able to keep my brain alive and ultimately rebuilt and revived my body.
I had lost most of my internal nanos when the majority of my flesh and blood had splattered all over the side of the Mary Rose. Fortunately, the remaining few nanobots did a remarkable job preventing organ necrosis. I can thank those millions of little bugs for my not ending up a pathetic, mindless vegetable. They took over the job for my empty cardio-vascular system and directly oxygenated my brain.
I can also thank my pet cat for dragging my shredded ass onto the ship. Yup, you heard me. My cat dragged me into the ship. In fact, she dragged me all the way up onto the medical bed and then sat guard at the foot of the bed until I was better.
She is no ordinary domestic cat. Originally a diplomatic gift for my mother, she has been growing up in exile with me. She was about the size of a house cat when the Zhōng Xiàn Ambassador handed her to me saying, “Bai Hu, Bai Hu!” I can recall how his eyes twinkled and how he seemed strangely excited as he smiled and bowed while repeating her name. Since then, Baihu has grown at a ridiculous rate! At the time of the explosion, she was about five feet long and weighed about three hundred pounds.
Baihu has luxurious, white fur with a spectacular, black-stripe pattern. She is much smarter than an ordinary cat. I think she might be related to an extinct predator called a “tiger,” but her color is wrong and she’s too tame.
From what I’ve been able to learn, the tigers died out during the twenty-first century. I have seen some old sensos of tigers and they were all a reddish orange color, not white. But the stripes and body shape look right. Also, why didn’t Baihu eat me when I was indistinguishable from a pile of chopped synthflesh? Wouldn’t a real wild animal lose control? She is a carnivore.
Anyway, Baihu is definitely some kind of cat and my very best friend in the world. Her loyalty and devotion is absolute. I am forever grateful to the Zhōng Xiàns for their most precious gift. I would be so alone without her!
The moment Mary turned that damn field off, I got right out of bed. Swinging my arms around and taking deep breaths, I marched off to inspect myself in a mirror. My important bits seemed to be in place. Yay! My skin looked shiny and new. All my scars and tattoos were missing. I guess that’s a small loss in exchange for your life, but I felt kind of sad about it anyway. They told the story of my life, and now, like so much else from my past, they were gone - erased by the Democs.
I settled into my office chair and started to review Mary’s logs for the past week. I had been out for a fucking week! Three days unconscious and then two more a fucking prisoner on my own ship! Mary and I were going to need to have a serious talk.
At least she had come through for me at work. Mary had contacted the bar simulating my voice. She told them I was ill with a local virus they call the “flu.” Sanctity is such a fucking backward colony, they won’t even use nanotech. Their medicine is just plain primitive. Viruses. Can you believe that shit? They get fucking viruses!
Good thing the explosion had happened in the “wee hours of the morn,” as my Uncle Angus would say. HMS Mary Rose has a full compliment of robotic maintenance peripherals. They were able to clean up enough damage so that the authorities never noticed. Otherwise, Mary would have had to break loose and run. She would never have been able to stand up to an investigation by the Sanctity Inquisition; way too much of her tech is against their stupid, religious laws.
The synthflesh process alone would have been enough to get me executed. Those religiopricks would never accept the bio-engineering used to grow flesh, in an accelerated process, from an embryo to an adult in mere days. Nor would they tolerate the triumph of genetic engineering that allows for cell proliferation without the benefit of a brain, or even a body. We would have had to skip out, never to return, and I would permanently lose an easy source of badly needed credits.
Mary’s logs showed that there had been no further sign of Democs, and that no suspicious people or packages had been near the ship since the attack. Reassured we were in no immediate danger, I activated my sensostream receiver to catch up on the latest news and check for personal messages from my family. Most of the time, the damn Democs succeed in blocking all communications with the palace, but occasionally a message gets through. None had arrived while I was recovering, but there was a very upsetting local news report.
The news hit me hard, way harder than I would have imagined. It was the big story for the week. There was no chance that I, or anyone else, would have missed it. “A terrible murder robbery, the entire family butchered, the house ransacked, no suspects, details at six!”
My news accumulator had stored the story because it mentioned the bikini bar. One of the victims had worked there. It had been sensocast three days after I was attacked. The news report intimately detailed the horrific aftermath of a home invasion that had happened the previous night. The bodies had been discovered in the morning by a nosy neighbor. She must have also been a greedy neighbor because she had contacted the news station before the inquisition.
The reporter recorded a full sensostream of the trashed house and all the bloody remains. You got to walk through the house and witness the wanton destruction; smell the blood, the coppery taste coating the back of your tongue and throat. A sensostream experience for the whole fucking family!
Upstairs, I saw the old lady sprawled in the hall, her house-dress stained with thickening blood. In the bedroom, the old man seemed like a wax doll, staring lifelessly at the ceiling, a ventilation device hanging from the side of his mouth. The medical monitor’s alarm was shrill in the otherwise quiet house. Clothes and personal items were strewn all over the ransacked room. There was something on the floor, behind the bed. I stepped forward to get a better view.
It took time for me to process what I was seeing. Somehow I still hadn’t put it all together. I stared at her curly brown hair, plastered to the side of her head with thick, dark blood. I forced myself to look into hard, lifeless eyes, that had once been vibrant and soft. I stared at her slightly open lips, through which I could see a familiar gap between her two front teeth. I held her cold, waxy hand while the horror hit me. Jerking back, I slipped in the fucking blood. Blood that had puddled beneath Carla’s sliced throat. The sensostream was so real, I almost believed my vomit contaminated the crime scene.
Chapter 5
Welcome Back Johnny
“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place. It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit, it is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much can you take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!” -Rocky Balboa
“If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” - Sun Tzu
*******
There was a new girl at the weapons check counter. I tried to be friendly, when all I wanted to do was scream at her, “GET THE FUCK OUT OF CARLA’S CHAIR!” After I told her who I was, she told me that Vic, the security manager, wanted to see me in his office. I thanked her and walked into the bar.
Angel was on stage dancing. She looked up when I entered the room, but quickly looked away. I watched her for a moment, appreciating the length of her slender torso and the protrusion of her hipbones above the enticing slope of her bikini line. I admired her as she whipped her long blond hair around and then dipped with her flung-back head towards the lap of an entranced customer. He gasped as t
he golden strands brushed across his lap. I bet the fucking little religioprick came in his pants.
I headed into the back to check-in with Vic. His office was at the end of a hallway lined with lockers. It was time for the shift change so the place was packed with dancers, waitresses, and security guys. Several people asked how I was feeling after my “flu” and a couple remarked about Carla’s terrible murder. I tried to politely make my way through as quickly as possible, but it seemed as if everyone was in gossip mode. I really didn’t want to talk about those things. Did I know that Steve, the bartender, is fucking Janet? How about Sheila and the new cook? Did I know that Brenda quit? Or that they fired Cherry for being underage?
Finally, I made it to Vic’s office. Two nasty looking guys from the permanent security pool were at the door. They recognized me and let me in with the usual sneer they bestowed on all the transients. The door latched, sealing out the voices from the locker room and the incessant bass beat from the club beyond. I had an uneasy feeling at the back of my neck, but I didn’t know why.
Vic was sitting behind his huge earthwood desk, an affable smile on his face. His wide nose and thick eyebrows fit well amongst the rough features of his overly large face. His fingers were adorned with rings and he had several heavy, gold chains hanging down the open neckline of his shirt. His slicked-back hair was black on top and gray halfway down the sides. Cut just over the tops of his ears, it looked like he had little, silver wings.
I figured I was interrupting a meeting because four other guys were in the room. They were all big bruisers with that blank look that screams dumb muscle. I hadn’t met any of them before, so I assumed they were either new hires or they worked the VIP Lounge. Transient security guys, like me, are never allowed inside the lounge.
“Welcome back, Johnny. We all missed you.” Vic grinned at me. “Will you please have a seat? I just have a few questions.” He indicated the chair in front of his desk.
As I sat down, the bruisers arose from their seats and dispersed to the four corners of the room. Each slouched against a wall. My unease increased. I could feel the little hairs on my neck standing up. I smiled at Vic and said, “Sure, ask me anything.” Right, like either of us believed that bullshit!
Vic smiled back at me. We were just good buddies shooting the breeze. “I hear you had the flu? You were out a long time.”
I smiled back and gave him the cover story about spending a miserable week in bed. He went along with it, but I could tell he didn’t believe a word I was saying. I knew something was wrong. “Could he know about the bombing? Could he know who I am?” Shit!
Then the conversation took an unexpected turn. Vic started questioning me about Brenda and our dinner at the diner. He wanted to know who was there, who we spoke to, and where we went after dinner? I wondered how the fuck he knew about that? I was surprised and confused, yet saw no harm, so I answered the questions honestly.
His smile turned predatory and he sounded sarcastic when he asked me about where I went after leaving Brenda at the bar. I was really starting to worry. My gut said he knew about the explosion. I thought about how my Aunt Monica always said, “trust your niggles!” I don’t know what exactly niggles are, but they were niggling right then! I started to stand up, but suddenly two large hands clamped down on my shoulders. Bruiser number four had stepped up behind my chair.
It’s funny how your mind fucks with time during an emergency. Things go by in a flash, or they slow down. Time can seem to halt entirely, leaving you free for contemplation. I remembered sitting in self-defense class with the other palace rugrats. Aunt Monica was an endless font of enthusiasm and knowledge. A bizarre mix of wholesome sunshine and ruthless ferocity, she would cheerily tell us how to snap fingers, crush windpipes, and (her personal favorite) squeeze testicles.
That day’s lesson had been on wrist and finger locks. “Wrist action is the key to small-circle jujitsu.” She had told us. “Apply rotational momentum, focusing on the smallest point possible. Flow through your transitions, exerting continual pain. Be accurate with the direction of force. All small-circle techniques employ dual action of the wrists…”
I reached up slapping my right hand onto the meaty hand holding my left shoulder. My fingers curled around the bruiser’s pinkie and ring-finger. With my thumb pointed down, my wrist and arm rotated up while I surged out of the chair, turning my shoulders to the right. His fingers snapped like carrots, but I didn’t let go. Keeping the pressure on, I continued the dual rotation of my wrist and body, driving him to his knees.
Even as I was finishing him with a knee to the nose, I planned for bruiser number three’s attack. He was by the door and I was standing with my back to him. I knew he would charge in to grab me from behind. Without pause, I converted the raised knee into a thrusting back-kick that caught him square in the solar plexus. Turning, I slipped behind him so that his body was between me and the other guys.
Uncle Hattori’s lessons flooded my thoughts. “When facing multiple attackers, do not allow yourself to be surrounded. Confound them with their own numbers. You must be efficient. Strike quickly without hesitation. Make each attack count…”
Slamming my instep into the back of his knee, I stomped down hard while I wrapped my right arm around his neck, controlling his collapse to the floor. My left hand grabbed the back of his head, while my right hand slipped into the crook of my elbow. I levered the left arm forward and listened to the strange crunch of his neck while my eyes tracked the last two bruisers.
They were getting in each other’s way trying to get past the desk and bodies. I took my opportunity to lunge for the door, only to discover it was locked. Valuable time had been lost. Grabbing me by the arms from both sides, they were on me. Two quick stomps with my boot on number one’s instep, and his grip on my right arm faltered. I slipped my left leg behind number two while forcing my left arm up across his chest. A hard twist left ripped me free of number one, and pushed number two backward over my leg. Without allowing the momentum to slow, I continued the rotation, whipping my elbow into number one’s head, just below his ear. The edge of my forearm slammed simultaneously into his jaw and chin, putting his lights out.
I felt sickening pain when number two landed a solid blow, from beneath me, to my balls. I doubled over and he dragged me to the floor. Before I could regain my focus, he was on top of me raining down blows. Grabbing one of his hands, I thrust my hips up, trying to buck him off. He was off-balance, unable to use the arm to brace. We rolled. I was on top, but his legs were wrapped around my body. I sat back, bringing my body posture more upright, and drove my elbow into the inside of his thigh. Using the opening I had just created, I slipped my arm under his leg and began to pass his guard.
That’s when Vic hit me in the back of the neck with a stun bar.
*******
When I awakened I was on my back in the dark. “What the fuck?” I wondered, “Is this the medstation? Had I been I dreaming?” I tried to get up but, that wasn’t happening. “Shit.” I thought, “The damn restraining field is on. Didn’t I tell Mary to turn that thing off?”
I needed to get up and move my arms around. I needed to get some answers from Mary! Controlling my growing claustrophobia, I took a deep breath and asked, “Mary, will you please activate the lights and deactivate the restraining field?” There was no reply. I tried to thrash around, to break free, but I could barely twitch.
I think that if I hadn’t been so busy trying to remain calm, I would have noticed sooner. Something was off, wrong. I shouldn’t be able to twitch, and why the fuck was the diagnostic bed so hard? Also, it felt like there was a rough edge pressing around my mouth. My panic ratcheted up several notches. I WASN’T ON MY SHIP! I needed to know where I was. I needed to see.
Since I wasn’t in the medstation, I could activate my internal hardware. I tried switching my eyes to light gathering mode, but that didn’t help, so I cycled into infra-red vision. I was able to see a cool surface above my head with thin, warm line
s of various thicknesses running through it. One line terminated at a hot, circular blob. Depth perception is all screwed up in infra-red. I couldn’t tell if the lines were between me and the surface, or inside it, or behind it. What I could tell was that I sure as hell wasn’t on my fucking ship!
I thought about it for a moment and decided that the lines were probably power cables and the hot blob an active lighting fixture. But why was there no light in the visible spectrum? The only explanation I could come up with was that I had been blindfolded.
I was blindfolded and restrained, helpless on my back! I could feel the darkness pressing on me like a wet blanket - like a thousand pounds of mud. I stifled the scream growing in my throat and sent an urgent command to my neurointerface. My panic subsided, washed away in a tide of neuro-inhibiters and enhancers. It was replaced by a detached analytical mood, a surreal feeling devoid of emotion. I conjured up memories from my palace training.
Uncle Rob teaching us how to use our neurointerfaces to manipulate our brain chemistry. Quoting some old book, I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer…
Aunt Karina lecturing, “Your captors will attempt to make you feel isolated and helpless. They will try to degrade you, force you to feel less than human. You have the power to overcome these manipulations. Use your implant tech and the nanobots in your system. Harden your mind and body against both physical and psychological assaults. Carefully observe your captors. Hide your abilities from them, at least until you make a decision about whether it is better to appear weak or strong…”
I remembered lying on the floor, helplessly bound during a training exercise, my Aunt Mei whispering through the com in my head, “Will you just lie there until they come back and beat you? Your primary responsibility is to survive! The best way to do that is to escape. How will you make that happen? Remember the three A’s; Assess, Analyze, Act!”
