The Pleasure Dome (The Science Officer Book 4)

by Blaze Ward

  “And if not?” she asked.

  “I’m sure the Khatum can find a yardarm to hang us from.”

  Part Two

  Suvi had dialed the music down. Because now was most definitely not the time to get distracted by ten-finger, seventy-key piano solos.

  A little Tchaikovsky for the booms, but mostly petite, chamber orchestras or octets. It fit with the gray uniform that Javier had stolen from the linen closet, itself a match with the one the Dragoon had apparently seduced her way into.

  Ew.

  Javier was carrying her right now in a fabric bag that barely blocked her visual sensors, to say nothing of everything else she had cranked up. Listening on just about every wavelength and pitch imaginable.

  And he hadn’t even had to let her hack into anything to steal the secret plans to this mammoth starship. Some fool had just left them on the entertainment system for the traveling engineer who was bored and wanted to see how the ship worked.

  Suvi just knew that most people would never bother. Security by obscurity, after all, was as old as things to steal.

  And even her digital scan of the locks in the vault wasn’t going to be all that helpful. Boss was going to go and invent himself an icepick, or a lockpick, or a stungun for lock systems.

  Something.

  She was too pissed at the whole situation to be rational at a time like this.

  At least they had done a good job sneaking this far. But what fool put a simple air vent next to a secured door and expected everyone to miss it? Granted, Javier had, until she had highlighted it on the map and exploded it up as a full schematic with a small piano fanfare.

  I mean, hello?

  And Javier had finally stopped arguing with her and had let her hack the thing when they got there.

  Was that the right term? What do you call it when you fly up to a wall and unscrew the four bolts holding the damned screen in?

  Stupid and amateur, that’s what. Bad design engineering by a guy who really should have known better.

  And then back into the damned bag.

 

  Suvi pinged an A-flat below middle C. Not too loud. Just enough to get Javier’s attention.

  And the psycho, paranoid floozy.

  “What was that?” Sykora whispered in a tone shot through with adrenaline.

  And craziness.

  “Audio warning that we’re approaching the machine shop,” Javier murmured back in a tone right up there with soothing rabid Chihuahuas. “Remember, I programmed the probe to be much more autonomous than it used to be.”

  Or something like that.

  Whatever lies ya gotta tell these nutjob pirates until we can escape, boss.

  Javier’s big mitt was warm as he reached into the bag, wrapping around her nude body like King Kong on a cold, Gotham night.

  “Probe. Access Command Mode,” Javier said formally, the phrase they had agreed to so she could pretend to be smarter than the waffle-maker. “Initiate security perimeter surveillance.”

  And then she was flying.

  Free.

  Well, stuck in a hallway that was dim by human standards and probably smelled weird, from the olfactory bio-readings she was tracking.

  Good enough.

  Suvi peeked once at the passive readings, and then booped the hallway with an ultrasonic pulse. Bats would be annoyed and bitchy right now, but nothing she had seen so far indicated sensors capable of detecting her call.

  They were busy looking for radar and other silliness.

  Nothing in the hallway either direction for a damned good distance. It was the middle of the night.

  Next, she blasted the door with something kinda like X-rays, but not that far down the scale. Still let her see through walls.

  Or would have.

  Stupid bulkhead was apparently twice as thick as EVERY OTHER BULKHEAD ON THIS DAMNED SHIP.

  Fine.

  Suvi imagined big-girl panties she could pull up a notch, and then cranked the bass on her dashboard up to eleven.

 

  Oh, yeah. That’s more like it.

  Apparently, nobody needed to secure the machine shop from vandals. And nobody was home.

  She played a quick E-sharp/D trill. It sounded pleasant in her ears. A quick spotlight nailed the door handle rather than the lock mechanism.

  Javier grinned at her and nodded to the crazy woman.

  He put a hand on the knob and twisted it open silently.

  Inside was a paradise to make a girl engineer all tingly in the right places. Lathes, presses, laser beds. There was even a gas-flame welding bottle, for those times when you had to get all steel-welding and stuffff.

  When using your own hands to do the job was going to be so much more satisfying than relying on mechanical assistance.

  Suvi drifted into the room and took a deep sniff of heaven, the two humans trailing in her wake like amateur remorae.

  Javier turned right immediately after closing and locking the door. Really thin bar stock was in a pigeonhole system, waiting for him like a poisoned princess.

  Suvi was really pissed that the Dragoon was along.

  There was no way in hell that Javier’d let her drive all these awesome machines, just like the girl back on Storm Gauntlet had gotten to make the helmet because there was no way to explain Javier programming the CNC machines to that level of pure awesomeness.

  Still, he had promised her that the Dragoon was going to meet an unfortunate accident one of these days.

  Suvi could wait.

  Part Three

  It was one of the joys of a competent machine shop, Javier decided. And a well-organized one, as well. Everything was right where it was supposed to be.

  The device he had thrown together was ugly. Rough. Crap, really, but it should do the trick. According to Suvi, they used a six-pin system here, with four heights programmable, or whatever the term was. Paranoid, compared to what was in the file, but not impossible.

  Ninety-nine-point-something percent of the people that would pass through here would be stumped by all this. Of course, they hadn’t been studying piracy with monomaniacal devotion for the last year, either. Javier did not appreciate what Sokolov and the Dragoon had turned him into, but he’d be utterly damned if he was going to do a half-assed job of it.

  And now it was done. There was no locksmith shop in here for him to test against, but there were other ways.

  “Get the door,” he told Sykora as he moved that way.

  She had been standing around, politely keeping her mouth shut for the fifteen minutes this took.

  The woman just glowered at him.

  “Please,” Javier added.

  Navarre never said please. Too much of him around lately. Even with Sykora.

  “Probe. Access Command Mode,” Javier called. “Scan the hallway when the door opens.”

  He waited.

  The door opened on silent hinges, and nobody was standing there with a gun, waiting patiently.

  So far. So good.

  Suvi floated out, did her magic, and played him a happy trill.

  Now the hard part.

  Javier slid the thin metal bar into the lock awkwardly. Maybe some spray lubricant when they left? Something.

  The theory was sound, but there’d been nothing to experiment on, and he knew it was all touch from what the files said.

  Lock the latch from the back. Doorknob won’t turn.

  Damned barbarians and their lack of electronic keycards. At least the guest suites were civilized.

  Jam it all the way in. Extra tap to be sure. Turn the metal until it stops moving. Hold firm.

  Spin the little snapper thingee that was supposed to pop up all the pins at once.

  Nothing.

  Snap it again.

  Hey, that was motion. Maybe half the pins?

  “It’s not working,” Sykora said in a voice that somehow combined boredom with technical superiority.

  “You don’t get to use a c
rowbar to pry them open,” Javier snarled quietly back. “And that would take a powered ram anyway. No way they wouldn’t notice.”

  He turned back to the lock.

  Snap it a third time, turning a little harder and the lock turned in his grip.

  Stupid barbarians.

  Okay, we can open locks. Painfully slow. Stupidly primitive. Brilliantly secure.

  Bastards.

  Part Four

  Djamila felt her hands twitch, fingers itching for a firearm. Something lethal to hold.

  She had considered grabbing a piece of bar stock to carry, but that would be out of character for the crew. Ditto grinding an edge onto a piece of flat steel.

  Besides, there was nothing here that would make her any more dangerous than her bare hands and feet, anyway.

  Aritza’s poisonous apple floated out ahead, high and up in the left-hand corner of the ceiling as they went. Humans tended to look up and left when they walked, so it might be invisible on their right.

  Subtle things, but at least Aritza had programmed the device with some level of professional sense. Even if he never seemed to exhibit his own.

  He had the controls now, but they were in his bag, and he was controlling the device with quiet, verbal commands. Again, an improvement. He could watch where he walked.

  Djamila was torn on whether or not she missed the armed version that he had used to break her out of captivity. Any gun handy would make her feel better. Even in his hands.

  At least the hallway was empty.

  She knew they were close, having memorized a variety of entry and exit paths.

  The probe stopped over a closed door, dropped half a meter, and spun three-hundred-sixty degrees before bouncing back up to the ceiling.

  She had been trailing Aritza. He glanced back at her and nodded.

  The hallway was probably monitored by the man inside, if he was awake. The probe had carefully maneuvered to stay out of sight of the camera.

  Djamila put on her acting persona and broadcast bored as she walked up and kind of stood next to the man.

  Suspicious people act suspicious. She had just been called to duty to do something inane, when she could be out dancing. Djamila affected a slouch that wrapped her like a python, while maintaining a complete tactical perception field in three directions.

  Child’s play.

  Aritza held a can of spray lubricant in one hand, and his lock-pick device in the other. A quick hiss, nearly inaudible, and then the whine of metal on metal.

  Thrum-click.

  Thrum-click.

  Right about now, she came to know regret that she hadn’t secreted a pry bar by her side as she walked. Something a meter and a half long, forged of hull metal, with a point on one end, and a wedge tip on the other.

  Dumb-ass and his toy were going to fail. And the guard inside would wake up, panic, and trigger the alarm.

  Djamila doubted they would hang.

  The woman on the beach had looked like the kind to walk them out an airlock with a view portal, and make a party of it, with champagne and finger food, while a string quartet played.

  The kind of people who had made Djamila an outsider her entire life.

  One might not choose to be a pirate, but one can make the most of it.

  Thrum-click.

  Third time apparently was lucky.

  The handle turned.

  The door opened inward.

  Djamila already knew there was nobody in range, reinforced by the floating apple, so she stepped up and kicked the door with one, oversized, right foot.

  It moved about fifty centimeters and bounced. Not enough to stop her mass. That was why she had used a foot and not a shoulder. More oomph behind it.

  Someone inside had heard the noise and stood up to investigate. Djamila had just knocked him on his butt.

  Another dumb-ass. He should have signaled an alarm of some sort first.

  Maybe he had, and it just didn’t sound in the hallway. Not her job, right now.

  Djamila landed on the guy like a sack of potatoes as he struggled to get up.

  Quick fist to the nose. Not enough to kill him. Just a stinger to blind and stun. An old fashioned crowd-control technique.

  Open right palm to the cheekbone, backed by all her upper body. Again, not lethal. Just enough to rattle the brain around inside the skull. Mild concussion when done right.

  Left hand, open palm. Snap him back the other direction.

  Good night.

  Djamila could almost feel the man’s eyes roll back. He went limp under her.

  She rolled him over onto his face, so he wouldn’t choke on his tongue or anything, and checked over her shoulder.

  Net time, less than two seconds.

  Aritza and the probe were already inside the room, door closed and locked.

  What idiot forgot to put a simple bar on this side, to keep people from doing exactly what they just had?

  Oh, the arrogance of wealth.

  Aritza pulled some ties from his bag, but Djamila had already found the cuffs the man kept in a pouch. She pulled both hands back, made sure everything was good, and snapped them into place.

  She climbed off the poor man and moved around to check his pupils. Stunned and out cold, but nothing that a few hours of rest and some aspirin wouldn’t cure.

  A professional job.

  She stood up.

  The poor man even had a pistol in a holster he had never drawn. It was hers now. She attached it to her belt and drew the weapon.

  Standard stun model. Short range. Good to take down nearly anyone, but not kill them, unless they suffered a stress-induced heart attack in the struggle. At which point, why the hell were they here instead of at a hospital getting that fixed up?

  Aritza was already investigating the board with fingertips that never quite touched. He hummed quietly to himself as he did.

  “Probe. Access Command Mode,” he said, pulling a retractable cord from the console. “Standard i/o interlink available. Log in and review security systems.”

  The device dropped down and turned into a gray balloon floating above the console.

  “Doesn’t look like he sounded any alarms,” Aritza continued, turning to her. “Did you check him for keys?”

  Djamila blinked at him.

  “Didn’t think so,” Javier said, kneeling down and grabbing a spool from the man’s belt.

  “This gets us halfway,” he said as she continued to stare.

  Djamila felt a blush come on. But she deserved this one. She had been unprofessional. Sure, take the man down rapid and silent. But she had gotten wrapped up in the gun and forgotten to check him for anything else.

  She did now, but he had no radio tucked into a pocket, nor a knife. Nothing but pocket change.

  Djamila stood, chastened.

  And pissed.

  Aritza kept making her look junior varsity, when she was the professional pirate.

  She needed to up her game again. It was an arms race, now and forever.

  “Halfway?” she asked.

  “Every box has two keys,” he said. “Guest has one. House has one. His. Now I only have to pick one lock each time.”

  Djamila nodded, looking down at the poor sap on the floor.

  She had hoped otherwise, but her date with Farouz was definitely gone at this point.

  Something else she owed Aritza.

  Part Five

  Out of the security booth, down a short hall, and into the main vault Javier went, trailed by the two most important women in his life. Only one of them fell on the good side, but even the Amazon killer was important.

  At least for now. Maybe she would suffer an accident at some point.

  The risks of the profession.

  The Vault hadn’t changed in the last thirty-six hours.

  On his right, a bank of cubby-holes for people to rest a box and sift through it behind a privacy curtain, as he had done before handing over the box and getting a key back. Several overstuffed chairs and
a bench.

  And paradise.

  Six columns of lock-boxes. Six rows tall.

  Farthest left were the narrowest at twenty centimeters wide. The top one was ten centimeters tall, and each of the five beneath it was five centimeters bigger as it went.

  They got five centimeters wider with each column to the right.

  Javier touched the bottom box on the fifth row, just for luck.

  “This one is us,” he said to the air.

  Sykora just grunted back at him and moved to a spot where she could probably shoot anybody coming through either door into the place. She was like that.

  Javier had already had a long conversation with Suvi, but he brought up the handheld anyway to be sure. Three distinct maybes. Four outside her scan range. Or had been, from the overhead air vent.

  Not now.

  “Probe. Access Command Mode,” he called to her. “Hard scan the sixth column while I work.”

  He stuck the guard’s master key into the lock. Or, tried to.

  Wrong lock. Too wound up.

  Deep breath. Calm. Professional.

  Put it into the RIGHT lock and turn. Yes. There. Better.

  Javier felt his whole being blip for a moment.

  What the hell?

  Oh. Right. Hard scan. And that was just the back-scatter on her electromagnetic pulse? I wonder if we could turn it up and make a short-range weapon out of it, one of these days.

  Remember to ask her. Or have her make a note to remind you.

  Something.

  Javier sprayed the magic liquid into the first three locks Suvi had identified, and then put the bottle away for now.

  Give it a moment to go to work.

  Breathe.

  He stuck the pick bar into One-Two and snapped the spinner. His own key to Five-Six only showed four teeth, so maybe this would be easier.

  The lock turned. Either he was getting better at this, or he’d gotten lucky.

  And I’d rather be lucky than good.

  The outer face hinged open, revealing a fire-proof metal box.

  He pulled it out, sat it on the floor and flipped it open.

  Papers.

  Deeds. Will. Identity papers from five different planets, in five different names, all with the same picture.