by Jake Bible
“That explains it. No one, not even a genetically built fighter like Jonny Nebula, could hold up over decades. That body would break down eventually,” Roak said. “Makes sense. The Klav did this?”
“The Klav came up with the genetic formula,” Ple said. “They refined it so that the information transfer would be complete from clone to clone. No data lost, no memory lost, no experience lost.”
“Except…?”
“Except the process led to certain madness,” Ple said. “You’ve seen Orb fighters on the vids, right? Out with starlets and celebrities?”
“Yeah, sure,” Roak said. “Used to see some with Jonny Nebula too.”
“No, you didn’t,” Ple said. “You saw fakes. Staged events where the new clone appeared briefly then was whisked away to prepare for the next fight. The previous clone was disposed of as soon as a fight was done. They had to be. They’d turn into berserkers otherwise. A dozen Gwreqs would get their stone asses handed to them while trying to get a spent clone under control. We’d walk the winning Jonny Nebula out of the Orb and to a back room where he’d be hooked up and have his mind transferred to storage then he’d receive a bolt to the back of the head. All done.”
“So what went wrong?” Roak asked.
“One of them figured it out,” Ple said. “Or was told what was going to happen. None of the Jonny Nebula’s knew they were just another clone. They always thought they were the real one. They’d wake up fresh and think they had just fought in the Orbs, not some dead copy. They’d get a couple weeks of training, a little fun on Jafla Base, then it would be time for the next Orb fight and the process would repeat.”
“Except the final Jonny Nebula died,” Roak said. “On galactic vid for everyone to witness. No going back from that. Then what? You received a message that Jonny Nebula was going to make a comeback which would mean Shava Stemn Shava’s empire is at risk? I get that, but there has to be more.”
“Yeah, there’s more,” Ple said. “The Gas Chamber.”
Roak frowned then nodded. “Shava Stemn Shava has been trying to recreate the process, but the code he has is wrong. Wrong enough that the clones explode.”
“Yes,” Ple said. “We’re losing good fighters. That’s the real issue. Shava Stemn Shava can probably survive Jonny Nebula’s genetic build being exposed and those fights coming into question. He wouldn’t be the only promoter to get hit with the accusation. But a promoter is nothing without fighters.”
“I thought it felt fishy,” Roak said. “So? What’s the real reason he needs new clones? Why go to all the trouble of framing my ass and putting me on this job?”
“A shadow competitor has come onto the Orb fight scene,” Ple said. “We have plenty of smaller organizations that are part of the league, but like all fighting sports, they are subservient to the dominant organization. They take Shava Stemn Shava’s lead. This new organization made it known that not only would they not follow his lead, they planned on taking the lead.”
“And the only way to do that was to find the House of Teeth and get the clone tech from the Klav for themselves,” Roak said. “But you needed me to get to it first.”
“Something like that,” Ple said. “Then use you as a scapegoat in the end to cover all tracks. Personally, that is out of my hands. I was here to kill you, but what came next was up to Shava Stemn Shava. He loves that kind of thing.”
“Okay. It all fits,” Roak said.
“We are approaching the other facility, Roak,” Hessa announced. “Are you sure you need to do this? We have very little time left in this system before we will be forced to leave or suffer serious damage to the ship.”
“I have to find the trail,” Roak said. “She’s good. But she’ll leave a trail. The job isn’t done until I find Jonny Nebula and right now, she has him. Or it. Whatever Jonny Nebula began as. A jar of gunk?”
“A line of genetic code,” Ple said and shrugged. “A tube of genetic material. Blue gel.”
“She has that,” Roak said. “I have to find out who she is taking it to and get it back before she can hand it over.”
“Why would there be any clue here as to where that could be?” Ple asked.
“There will be,” Roak said. “The Klav keep excellent records. Always count on a Klav to leave some bit of useful information.”
“We do not have time for you to scour their database, Roak,” Hessa said.
“Don’t worry,” Roak replied. “I know what I’m looking for. Now that I know what the hunt is. This should be easy.”
“Easy?” Ple almost choked on the word.
“Maybe easy isn’t the word,” Roak admitted. “More like clear.”
Roak laughed.
“You know, Shava Stemn Shava is the one to blame for all of this,” Roak said. “When he framed me for this job, he put himself on her radar. She had this all figured out before I even knew I was being forced into the job. She told me where to go. She told me where she was going. If Shava Stemn Shava had hired someone else–”
“No one else would take the job,” Ple interrupted. “The new organization has bought them all off.”
“Huh,” Roak said. “You’re probably right. That changes things.” Roak sat bolt upright. “Oh, this gets better and better.”
“Roak? I do not like the way your vital signs are spiking,” Hessa said. “I certainly do not like that tone in your voice.”
“She lied,” Roak said. “She’s been lying. She’s not out too.”
Roak stood up and grabbed his helmet.
“Are we there?” he asked.
“I am connecting to the external airlock now,” Hessa replied. “All systems are functioning within the facility.”
“I thought you said there was no power?” Ple asked as he stood and grabbed his helmet as well, although without Roak’s enthusiasm.
“No power signature,” Roak said. “The place is shielded because of the stars. That’s why I went to the first location. That little bit of a power reading told me the message would be there. I know how she works.”
“Does this mean she knows how you work?” Hessa asked. “Whoever she is.”
“Thank you for voicing the obvious,” Ple said with a good amount of exasperation.
“She does,” Roak said. “But that won’t help her. I’m not hard to figure out. Come on, Ple. We have a comm signature to find.”
“A what?” Ple asked.
“You’ll see,” Roak said and left the bridge.
“He is crazy as shit, right?” Ple asked.
“I am afraid that might be the case,” Hessa said. “However, he does seem to thrive on crazy.”
“I hear you,” Roak said from the lift. “Ple! Come on!”
Ple followed him into the lift and they rode down in silence with Ple giving Roak constant side glances. Once down on the main airlock deck, Roak took a short detour to the armory and loaded his belt with two KL09s, several knives, and a heavy plasma rifle.
“Take your pick,” Roak said to Ple. “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“Do you expect the facility to still be occupied?” Ple asked.
Roak looked at Ple and frowned. “Why the hell wouldn’t it be?”
Roak left the armory, and Ple only had time to grab a couple of small pistols and attach them to his suit’s belt before he was forced to sprint after the bounty hunter to the main airlock. Roak was waiting with the plasma rifle to his shoulder.
“Open it,” Roak said.
Ple opened the inner door and the two men stepped into the airlock compartment. Inner door was closed, countdown began, then the outer door opened onto the House of Teeth.
Roak opened fire and ripped apart three armored soldiers before they could get a shot off. He marched forward, his aim never missing, as he took down soldier after soldier that had been kneeling in the airlock corridor, waiting for him.
Ple followed in Roak’s wake as the bounty hunter systematically annihilated every single opponent that got in his way. There
wasn’t much for Ple to do except put a couple of laser blasts in the chests of soldiers that weren’t quite dead. Not that they looked like they could get up, but Ple wasn’t taking any chances. Roak had that insanity covered.
After several turns, the two men found themselves in front of a set of lift doors.
“Get back,” Roak said as the doors began to open. He pulled a plasma concussion grenade from his belt and tossed it through the doors as soon as they were wide enough. The six soldiers in the lift forgot about trying to fire on Roak and all scrambled for the grenade.
Roak shoved Ple to one side of the doors as he dove to the other side. The grenade went off and a shower of blood, guts, and armor came flying out of the lift. Roak was up and hurrying inside before Ple could wipe some of the gunk from his helmet’s faceplate. Roak grabbed his arm and yanked him in.
The lift doors closed and Roak went to work reloading the plasma rifle.
“Now you see why I said to keep your suit on,” Roak said, rifle loaded and back up to his shoulder. He aimed at the lift doors. “Ready?”
“You’re crazy,” Ple said as the doors opened and Roak continued his onslaught of violence, with Ple in tow as more of a witness than participant.
Soldiers fell, one after the other, two after the other, three after the other. They fell, they died, were replaced with more, and those fell. Roak’s finger never left the plasma rifle’s trigger until it powered down and he had to throw it aside to pull the KL09s from his belt.
Double fisted, Roak kept marching down the corridor until he found the room he wanted.
“Communications room?” Ple asked. “Why here? The project database would be more useful.”
“I don’t want the project database,” Roak said as he put two blasts into a soldier’s belly then shoved Ple into the communications room. He slid the door closed and locked it tight. “Won’t hold for long so you best be getting to work.”
“Me? Roak, I don’t understand,” Ple said.
“Go through the logs,” Roak said. “Scan them until you see a name you recognize. When you do then you’ll know who’s connected to this new shadow organization making a play at Shava Stemn Shava. We follow that lead to the target. We get the genetic code, make sure it hasn’t been duplicated, and return to Shava Stemn Shava where I get paid and you go back to being an attaché. Shava Stemn Shava can fight his own empirical battles and I get to go on my way.”
“Shit,” Ple said as he blinked at Roak a few times. “Now I get it.”
“Get what?” Roak asked.
“Why people pay you instead of kill you,” Ple said. “It’s better business.”
“That’s what I always say,” Roak said as he aimed the KL09s at the door. “Now, hurry your lizard ass. They’ll be through this door soon.”
Ple got to work at the console. He brought up the comm logs and started scouring the entries for record of a name, any name, he might recognize.
“Feel free to go faster,” Roak said as an orange glow began to fill the middle of the door. “Really. Faster is best.”
“Hold on,” Ple said. “I’m not finding anything.”
“You don’t recognize a single name?” Roak asked, his eyes focused on the brightening glow.
“No, I recognize a few names,” Ple said. “But none of them have the pull to take on Shava Stemn Shava.”
“How far back did you go?”
“Two years,” Ple said. “That’s when we first heard rumors. No one on these logs could even come close to touching Shava Stemn Shava.”
“Exactly,” Roak said. “But they’re connected to someone that can. Make note of the names you recognize and we’ll–”
The middle of the door melted and a blast of plasma came ripping into the communications room. Roak dodged to the side, but Ple didn’t get out of the way fast enough. He took the full force of the blast in the chest and went flying into the far wall.
“Eight Million Gods damnit!” Roak roared as he faced the door and opened fire through the hole, forcing the soldiers back and away.
“Roak,” Ple grunted from the floor by the wall. He looked like a limp ragdoll as he lay in a pool of his blood. “Here.”
He held up an arm, a data disc in his hand. Then he shuddered and the arm fell into his bloody lap.
“Shit,” Roak said. “That sucks.”
Roak crossed the room, took the disc from the dead hand, and tucked it into a pouch on his belt. He stared at Ple’s dead body for a couple seconds then holstered his KL09s, pulled two more plasma concussion grenades from his belt, activated them and expertly tossed them through the hole in the door.
The sound of boots on the deck scrambling to get away could be heard just before the grenades went off. Roak pulled his KL09s again, forced the communications room door open, and stepped out into the corridor. He killed two stunned soldiers then spun around and took off, running for the next closest lift.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” Roak snarled as he found the lift and stepped inside.
He sent blast after blast out of the lift as another group of soldiers came for him, but the doors closed before the men and women could get close.
Roak checked the lift numbers and found what he was looking for. He punched the button and waited for the lift to take him to where he needed to go.
25.
Roak stood outside the fortified blast doors and waited. After a minute with no response, he tapped the barrel of one of his pistols against the blast doors.
“I’m not leaving,” he said. He glanced down the corridor at the smoldering remains of the lift. The only lift to that level. “Nowhere for me to go.”
Roak looked for the vid camera in the corridor and found it. He pointed his pistol up at it.
“You know who I am,” he said straight into the camera. “You know what I can do and you know I don’t quit. I’m a big fan of your people, you all make some damn fine whiskey, but respect will not buy you a reprieve.”
Roak holstered a pistol and pulled out the data disc.
“I don’t need you to break any trusts or breach any contracts,” Roak said. “I only need to know what connects these names. I know you can tell me without compromising your integrity. I mean, come on, your facility has been occupied by private security soldiers. They’re the problem, not me. This’ll happen again. Some other organization or entity will come here and attack you. They’ll kill and steal. Only way out of this is to ally with me so I can go finish my job. I finish my job and the whole galaxy knows that if anyone messes with the House of Teeth, there will be consequences. I won’t even charge you.”
There was a bleep from a panel by the door.
“You will not charge us?” a voice with a thick Klav accent asked from a tinny speaker.
The voice was speaking Common, but it took all of Roak’s concentration to understand the words through the accent.
“No,” Roak said. “Help me with these names and that’s all the payment I need.”
“You do not hold a grudge against us?” the voice asked. “You do not blame us for your comrade’s death?”
“He knew the business he was in,” Roak said. “Anyway, I’ve got someone else to blame.” He shook the disc at the camera. “Deal?”
“Deal,” the voice said and the blast doors began to come apart in an intricate pattern that made Roak’s already stressed brain hurt.
He couldn’t see any use for the pattern, but then the Klav were a strange race even among a galaxy of strange races. Once the blast doors were open, four beings came rolling to the threshold, their many, many eyes blinking and looking about.
“We’ll want to go inside,” Roak said. “They’ll be here soon.”
The Klav were a race of creatures that were basically balls of eyes with several long tentacles sticking from the flesh between. They were a race known for their intelligence and whiskey. Most other races believed that the two were, of course, interconnected. Roak never made assumptions based on race,
and he studied the four Klav carefully as the beings moved to the side to allow Roak to enter the large space. The blast doors closed behind him, reversing the same intricate pattern.
“Just have them slide apart,” Roak said as he hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Too damn much.”
“There is rhyme and reason to the pattern,” the Klav with the heavy accent said.
Roak spotted a good dozen more huddled over a control console in the far corner of the room. It was a good-sized space, easily two hundred or more meters square. Set in rows that ran up and down the space were shelves filled with tubes of glowing blue gel. Suspended in the gel were small dots which Roak guessed had to be specific genetic materials crucial to the Klavs’ work.
“She took it?” Roak asked.
The Klav blinked several times which Roak knew was their version of a nod.
“This,” Roak said as he held out the data disc. “Specific names that my colleague… That my former colleague collected from your communications logs. I need you to analyze it and tell me the connection.”
“Can your AI not do that when you return to your ship?” the Klav asked.
“She can, but I’d rather she concentrate on getting us out of this system,” Roak said. “Not going to be easy.”
“No, it will not,” the Klav said. “She left a good many obstacles in your path.”
“Other than the soldiers? Great,” Roak said.
“You!” a Klav cried out as it rolled up to Roak. “Oh, it is you.”
“Who?” the first Klav asked.
“The not-quite-human bounty hunter,” the second Klav said. “Like her.”
The first Klav’s eyes widened as it rolled a little closer and looked Roak up and down.
“Oh, yes, it is he,” the first Klav said. “Convenient.”
“May we take a sample?” a third Klav asked as it rolled up with a scalpel in one tentacle and a small container in another. “A centimeter is all we need.”
“Oh, yes, a centimeter would do nicely,” the second Klav said.
“No centimeters,” Roak said as he placed a hand on the butt of one of his KL09s. He shoved the data disc forward. “Analyze now.”
