by Greco, J. I.
“Except for the superstructure maintenance shaft,” Loy said flatly.
Hackenthrush’s left eyebrow went up. “The what now?”
Loy pursed her lips and pointed at the section of bulkhead between the Tertiary Rocket Control and Navigation stations that was clearly marked REMOVABLE PANEL // SUPERSTRUCTURE MAINTENANCE SHAFT ACCESS.
“As you are no doubt aware, it runs the whole length of the ship between the outer and inner hulls,” Loy noted. “It’s fairly narrow but I should be able to squeeze in, and from there I can get the jump on her.”
“Oh, well, obviously, yes, the superstructure maintenance shaft,” Hackenthrush said, clearing his throat and squirming in his commander’s chair. “I was just going to suggest that myself…”
“I’ve completed charting the course to the Otulak system,” 8724 announced over the mess’ intercom. “Now, are you at all sentimental about your life boat?”
Sitting with her boots up on a table, Cortez said “No” around a mouthful of Dagwood. She lowered the sandwich and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Why?”
“I can’t go to superluminal speed with it attached.”
Cortez reached for the glass of iced tea on the table. “Then by all means, cut it loose.”
“Undocking. Give me a minute and we’ll be on our way.”
“Gracias.” Cortez said, sipping the iced tea through a pink bendy straw. “Think I might make another sandwich.”
“Make that two,” a woman’s voice said.
Cortez slowly put the iced tea down and looked back over her shoulder. Junior Officer Loy stood in the mess’s hatchway, panting, her service raygun out and pointed almost confidently at Cortez.
“Don’t tell me this old model has Jeffries tubes?” Cortez asked, and took another bite of her sandwich.
“Nothing that fancy,” Loy said, catching her breath. “Just a good old fashioned superstructure crawl space between the hulls.” She glanced down at her formerly intact uniform, now covered in dirt and dust, with several fresh rips and snags in the fabric. Her hair was disheveled under her crumpled pill-box cap. “And it’s a lot tighter in there than the schematics would lead you to believe.”
“It’s so hard to judge scale from those things,” Cortez said. “So… you wanted a sandwich?”
“Gladys Swartzbaum, a.k.a. Didi Hershell, a.k.a. etcetera,” Loy said, thumbing the raygun’s safety off and reaching behind her to pull a pair of handcuffs from her belt, “I’m placing you under arrest.”
“Sure, why not?” Cortez chuckled. “For what?”
“Hijacking a police rocketship for a start.”
Cortez popped the last of her Dagwood into her mouth and licked her fingertips. “Well, here’s the thing about that–”
BOOM!
The explosion came from somewhere aft. It shook 8724’s bulkheads, flickered her lights, and sent her tumbling end over end briefly before her attitude thrusters kicked in. Loy reflexively dropped down into a crouch, throwing her arms over her head. “What the hell was that?” she asked.
“Sounded like a rocket engine blowing up,” Cortez said, casually swinging her boots off the table and standing. “Ship?”
“It was indeed a rocket engine blowing up,” 8724 said. “One of mine. We are being fired on.”
“Who’d be stupid enough to fire on the cops?” Loy asked, lowering her arms and coming out of her crouch.
“I’ve got an idea about that,” Cortez said, heading for the hatchway. She called back at Loy as she stepped into the corridor: “Well, you coming or what?”
SIX
“What the deuce is going on?” Lieutenant Detective Hackenthrush asked as a second explosion rocked Patrol Rocketship 8724.
“How should I know?” Rikki asked, yanking an EVA-life jacket from an overhead supply locker. He unfurled it and shrugged into it, zipping the half-suit’s transparent hood closed over his head. “Whatever it is, it’s every man for himself.”
“Well that goes without saying, doesn’t it?” Hackenthrush snapped back, cautiously peering out from his hiding place behind his commander’s chair.
A sharp cah-lunk came from the hatch in the deck and it swung open.
“Miss Swartzbaum! You’re alive!” Hackenthrush called out as Cortez climbed up through the hole into the bridge. He hurriedly got to his feet, patting the wrinkles out of his uniform jacket and then reaching up to straighten his toupee–only to discover it wasn’t on his head. He swallowed, spotting it lying on the deck, thrown free in the panic after the first explosion. He quickly picked it up, then spun around to place his back to Cortez as he put the toupee back on. “I’ll be with you in just a moment.”
“Take your time,” Cortez said, walking past him. “Ship, restore power to the bridge and give me a situation report.”
The red emergency lights in the recesses of the bridge’s ceiling blinked out, plunging the bridge into darkness momentarily before the normal lights came back on and the various system stations with their assortment of indicators and gauges lit up.
“An unidentified vessel approached me from a telemetry blind spot and opened fire without warning,” 8724 said. “I have taken direct hits to both of my rockets, rendering them inoperative. I have managed to arrest the spin caused by the explosions, but except for maneuvering jets, I am otherwise immobile.”
“Let’s see it,” Cortez said as she stopped in front of the main CRT.
“Image coming right up,” 8724 said, the main CRT blinking on. “Sorry, it takes a couple seconds for it to warm up sometimes.”
Cortez nodded absently, staring at the bulky ship coming into focus on the screen.
“You recognize it?” Junior Officer Loy asked, stepping up beside Cortez. On the screen, the ship fired sputtering maneuvering thrusters to come to a lumbering stop in front of 8724.
“Does nobody in this system use a ship that’s less than a hundred years old?” Cortez asked.
“Hey, that looks like an old Poytr B-Hull cargo trawler,” Rikki noted. Everyone looked at him, wondering how he knew. Rikki shrugged. “My grandfather was a janitor on one.”
Loy pointed at a cluster of armatures on the ship’s prow. “Those cargo cranes look like they’ve been modified for in-space salvage recovery.”
Cortez nodded. “Of course. Scavengers. –Ship, give me a connection between us and them.”
“Connected,” 8724 said.
The image of the scavenger ship on the CRT blinked away, replaced by a black-and-white image of a short, triple-eyed robot standing in front of some kind of nest made of wires and shredded, mucous-hardened paper. The robot was singing in a high-pitched warble. “...oh where oh where has my little sheep gone...”
Cortez winced, recognizing the tone of voice if not the voice itself. “Hello, Igon. That is you, right?”
Igon stopped singing. “Hello, dead girl.”
Cortez smiled curtly and jogged her head at the frog-headed Halgorian crouched behind him in the nest. “Aww, you made new friends. And got yourself another body. A really crappy one. Congrats.”
“It’ll do until I get my old one back. You still have it, I take it?”
“And here I thought you just wanted to see me.”
“Lieutenant Detective,” Loy said out of the corner of her mouth, “isn’t there something you want to say?”
“Umm…” Hackenthrush said as he rummaged around in the First Aid locker. “Anyone else want a drink?”
Rikki nodded inside his life-vest hood. “An Old Fashion would really hit the spot about now.”
“I think there’s some Bitters powder in here somewhere…”
“Okay, don’t know why I’m surprised,” Loy said. She nudged Cortez out from in front of the CRT and cleared her throat nervously. “Robot… you are firing on a DUPES patrol rocketship.”
“Yeah, so what?”
Loy swallowed. “Um… please power down your vessel and prepare to be boarded.”
Igon laughed. “Oh, she�
��s quite the hoot, isn’t she?”
“Look, robot, I’m completely serious. I’m an officer of the law.” Loy’s voice cracked only slightly. “And if you surrender now… you still might avoid the death penalty.”
“The death penalty?” the Halgorian interrupted. “The death penalty was not part of our deal, robot. Neither was firing on the authorities, for that matter.”
Igon swiveled his oblong head around 180 degrees at the Halgorian. “I already said I’d give you an extra one percent to open fire.”
“One percent won’t begin to cover our legal expenses if we’re caught,” the Halgorian said.
“Alright – two percent extra, then,” Igon told them, throwing up his hands. He swiveled his head back around to look at Loy. “You’re dead in space, cop. The next shot will put a hole through your hull wide enough to drive through. But it doesn’t have to come to that if you hand Gladys – and her luggage – over. I’ve got no beef with you – hand her over and you get to go on with your lives.”
Loy squared her shoulders. “DUPES does not negotiate with criminals. –8724, cut audio.”
“Umm,” 8724 said, “Miss Swartzbaum?”
“Cut it,” Cortez said.
“It’s cut,” 8724 said.
Loy sneered at Cortez. “Anytime you want to hand control of 8724 back, feel free.”
“Let’s see how the rest of the day goes,” Cortez said. On the CRT screen, Igon soundlessly waved his arms at them and jumped up and down, trying to get their attention. Cortez ignored him and turned to Loy. “What’s your plan, Junior Officer?”
“Uh, my plan?” Loy asked. Blushing, she glanced back at Hackenthrush. The Lieutenant Detective, a pouch of tequila in each hand, swiveled back and forth idly in his commander’s chair, softly singing an alcohol-slurred version of La Cucaracha to himself. Loy shrugged, and bit her lower lip in thought. After a moment, she said, “Protocol says first we ask nicely, then we ask a little less nicely. –8724, transmit the standard cease-and-desist order to compel their Ship’s Brain to turn off her engines and disengage.”
“Miss Swartzbaum?” 8724 asked.
“All right,” Cortez said with a slight nod as she watched Igon gesture emphatically at the Halgorian.
“Transmitting cease and desist,” 8724 announced.
“Any effect?” Loy asked.
“You tell me,” 8724 said, switching the main CRT over to a feed from one of her external hull cameras. The scavenger ship was slowly backing away, the glow from the converters on her plasma cannon getting brighter as it charged up. “My hunch is they don’t have a Ship’s Brain. And that they’re going to, as the robot threatened, put a hole in me wide enough to drive through. Which I must say, I am not looking forward to.”
“What kind of ship doesn’t have a Brain?” Rikki asked, squeezing in between Loy and Cortez. He gave Cortez a snaggle-toothed smile from behind the pouch of tequila he’d wedged inside his life-hood.
Cortez snorted. “The kind that would fire on a cop. –Ship, what weaponry are you packing?”
Loy answered before 8724 could. “Stock for a Corbel class patrol rocketship is two twin plasma cannon turrets, a compliment of six ship-to-ship mid-yield atomic torpedoes, and a grappling hook for boarding and rescue actions.”
“That’s it?” Cortez asked.
“More or less,” 8724 said.
“What do you mean more or less?” Loy asked. “That’s the standard load out for patrol duty.”
“That’s the standard, yes, but we have not re-stocked since Lieutenant Detective Hackenthrush and Rikki used all of my torpedoes destroying an asteroid whose orbit threatened to intersect a trade lane last week.”
“They used all six taking out a single asteroid?” Loy asked.
“It was my birthday.” Rikki hiccupped. “There may have been drink involved.”
Loy shook her head sadly. “Okay… So that leaves turrets. At least say they’re working.”
“They are,” 8724 said. “Can’t point the one backwards, and the other can only fire at half power, but, other than that…”
“Doesn’t matter,” Cortez said. “Plasma beams won’t have a chance of cutting through that trawler’s hull. How do you feel about ramming?”
“Generally against,” 8724 said.
“Hey, here’s a suggestion,” Hackenthrush said, tapping the last of both tequila pouches onto his outstretched tongue at the same time. “How about we run away?”
“They took out both rockets, sir,” Loy reminded him.
Hackenthrush grunted. “I know that, rookie… but we’ve still got a superluminal drive, don’t we?”
Cortez slapped her palm against her own forehead. “Son of a… where the hell is my head today? Superluminal engine still online, ship?”
“With your requested destination charted, yes.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Cortez asked. “Hit it.”
“I’d like nothing better,” 8724 said. “But alas…”
“What’s the problem?” Loy asked. “You said it was online.”
“And it is. But the battery lost the capacitor charge as collateral damage from the first explosion. It will take approximately one hour to recharge the battery to the point I can initiate the jump to superluminal. –I hate to be rude, but the robotic gentleman is getting quite insistent. He is giving us ten more seconds to surrender.”
“Guess we’re back to ramming,” Loy said.
“Nobody’s considering surrender as a viable option, then?” 8724 asked.
“I am,” Hackenthrush said. “And I’m all for it.”
“Ship, give me audio to the little bastard,” Cortez said.
A moment later, the video image of Igon reappeared in the CRT, with sound. “…two seconds,” the robot was saying, “…one second…”
“All right, robot,” Cortez said, “you want me. You got me. I surrender.”
“You do?” Igon asked.
“You do?” Loy asked as well.
“Know when I’m licked,” Cortez said to both of them.
On the CRT, Igon nodded cautiously. “Well, okay then.”
“Meet me at the airlock?” Cortez asked.
“I was just gonna suggest that.”
“Bet you were.”
Igon pointed a stubby single-knuckled finger at her. “No tricks. Bring my body, and the data.”
Cortez let her arms slide behind her, and out of sight of Igon, began tapping commands on the underside of her robomechanical arm. “Do I look like a kid, silly rabbit?”
She tapped a last key and her palm holoflat lit up.
INITIATING ROUTINE CONTINGENCY FIVE - BASTARD ROBOT CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD. ROCKETSHIP CONTROL RELAY: TRANSFERRING BOOTY ONE DATA PACKAGE FROM ROBOTIC DEVICE TO SHIP’S BRAIN SECONDARY MEMORY.
Junior Officer Loy drew her service raygun and leveled it at Cortez.
“Oh, now you remember you’ve got a gun?” Cortez asked.
“I can’t let you turn yourself over,” Loy said.
Cortez jogged her head at the CRT screen. “I don’t, the crazy robot there will blow us all up.”
“I will, too,” Igon said.
Cortez smirked at Loy. “See?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Loy said.
Hackenthrush raised a finger. “I beg to differ.”
“Quiet, the adults are talking,” Cortez snapped back at him. She turned to Loy. “Listen, you don’t understand what’s going on here. You’re gonna just have to let me do this and trust it’ll all work out.”
“Trust you?” Loy shook her head. “You’re our prisoner, and I have a duty...”
Cortez nodded. “And so do I.”
And then her robomechanical hand was flashing out and grabbing the barrel of Loy’s raygun. Before the Junior Officer could react, Cortez twitched her wrist and sent forks of electricity dancing over the raygun and into Loy’s hand.
Loy’s eyes rolled to white as she convulsed and collapsed to the deck.
; On the CRT screen, Igon let out a laugh.
Cortez tossed Loy’s raygun down next to her. “Shut up, robot.”
“Hey there, now, missy,” Hackenthrush said, getting to his feet. “You can’t just–” Cortez shot eye-daggers at him and he collapsed back into his commander’s chair. “Carry on, then,” Hackenthrush said, avoiding Rikki’s accusing stare. “So… lock ourselves in after you’ve gone?”
Cortez headed for the hatch. “Could you, please?”
“Gladys!” Igon threw his arms wide open as one of the Halgorians pulled back the Exalted Refuse’s inner airlock hatch to let Cortez onto the trawler. “You came back to me!”
Igon’s old cylindrical body slung over her back, Cortez stepped out of the airlock and kept on walking – right past Igon and his new body and the two other Halgorians standing behind the robot. One of the Halgorians held an old, beat-up beam autorifle that didn’t look like it could fire, even if it had had a powercell – but the stunstick hanging from his belt, that looked like it was in working shape.
The Halgorian’s sloped heads followed her as she walked up to the engineering nest-station and laid Igon’s old body out on the rim. She absently looked out at the field of junk piles in the middle of the cavernous hold. “Nice ship you got yourself here, robot. Air’s a little dry,” she noted, and tapped a single key on the underside of her robomechanical arm.
Igon ran up to her and grabbed her arm, wrenching it around to try and get a look at the holoflat in her palm. “I do seem to remember telling you, no tricks.”
Cortez shrugged her arm free of Igon’s grasp. “Relax, I was just locking the cop ship down by remote. So they don’t give you any trouble.”
“Oh. Good idea,” Igon said, and turned to caress his former body. “There you are you handsome devil.” His eyes fixed on his body, he gestured over his shoulder at the Halgorians. “–Take her. And her hand.”
Rikki unzipped his life-hood and pulled it off as he crouched down at Loy’s side. He knocked on her forehead gently with a furry knuckle. “You okay?”
