by Naomi Lucas
“I don’t want this piece of shit. I want mine. Your captain took it and I will kill every single man, woman, and child who stands in my way to get it back.” He wouldn’t, but they didn’t need to know that. “We have something in common.”
The men quieted and glanced at each other, their faces half-shielded. He calculated the aim and distance for three consecutive headshots, three split-seconds of death, then another EMP went off and disrupted him.
“Juke,” one muttered. The strategic one.
“Juke,” Gunner concurred. “He left you out here to die, by my hand, and you will. You will die if you don’t join me or at least get out of my way.”
“If you’re so damn sure then why not turn around and finish the fucking job? The way to the bridge is behind you.”
“That’s just it.” His jaw ticked. God, this was embarrassing. But all he could think of was getting to Elodie. “I don’t want up, I want down. I need information. I need leverage.”
He was taking a risk.
One of the men lowered his weapon. “The cargo.”
“Yes.”
“They’ll just gas you out.”
“Who? As far as we all know, no one’s leaving the top-deck.”
“How do we know you won’t kill us?”
You don’t. “I have nothing to gain from killing you. Why waste my ammo? But if you take that lift down, you’re guaranteeing your own death. If you stay and fight, you’re guaranteeing your own death. Trusting me could go either way, but that’s still your best chance of survival.” Gunner tossed all of the blood-covered bullets he had pulled out of himself toward the pirates, enjoying their sickened faces as the slugs bounced off the metal floor. “I’ll give you my word. I’ll let you live if you let me by. And...”
“And?”
“When the time comes, I’ll give you the captain to kill.” Gunner raised his weapon sideways in a show of peace, then let it dangle from his finger, and slowly lowered it to the ground. The men watched him warily as he moved to the center of the aisle with nothing but their dead companion’s pants and the random weapons he’d collected. He kept his hands up and away from all of them.
Like hawks in the distance, they watched his every movement. He, in turn, calculated every outcome.
“And when this is over?” one of the pirates asked. “What happens then?”
“Fuck if I care, you can have this trash heap and all the cargo in the hold. Just not the prisoners, they’re mine. I’m sworn to protect them. I’ll swear to protect you too.”
They looked at each other. I almost have them.
Gunner was poised to take his chances and kill them when the smart one walked out. Another minute went by before a second man followed.
The third muttered, “Not worth it,” before he emerged too.
They closed the distance, meeting in the middle where most of the dead bodies were beginning to stiffen. It took everything in Gunner’s power to hide the short-circuiting constantly stabbing through his systems.
The pirates eyed the bullet holes littering his body with disbelief. “Who the hell are you?”
“A Cyborg employed by the EPED.”
“Damn. We never stood a chance.”
“No,” Gunner agreed.
“You swear you won’t kill us?” the last one asked.
Gunner’s face hardened as he pinned him with his eyes. “I will if you betray me.”
“What do we do now?”
Gunner turned and stormed past them, making a beeline for the elevator. “Whatever the fuck you want.”
They called after him. He heard the click of a gun. Shoot me in the back, I dare you. But it never came.
“That’s it?”
“Be ready,” he said.
HE RODE THE ELEVATOR down the shaft, leaning up against the wall. The blood that had coated the floor earlier had dried into a rusty smear at his feet. The ride couldn’t go fast enough. He hated large ships.
His was small, compact, and airtight. There wasn’t a place he couldn’t get to in less than five minutes. His ship was a god amongst ships, and his AI, APOLLO, was named for it. The Greek god of the sun. Speed. Light. His jackal hated the confinement but his other half loved it. He couldn’t please every part of himself all the time. That war, the war in his head, never ended.
Gunner dug another bullet out of his thigh as he waited, pinching the metal between his fingers until it flattened into a disc.
From the moment he opened his eyes, introduced to life for the first time, the two halves of his soul had been at odds. Staring out from inside a clear, crystalline vat, he warred. Sometimes he thought the only reason he didn’t go mad were the codes that denied it.
I got close.
So fucking close.
It had been its own kind of madness, when his logical side faltered and his animal took over completely. He had become the god Anubis reincarnated, with slitted red eyes and long pointed ears only bested in splendor by the points of his canines. He had set a Trentian planet ablaze, single-handedly taking control of one of their main bastions.
Gliese hadn’t always been ruled by humans. Not before he came along. And even now, after forty-eight years, portions of the planet remained uninhabitable.
The elevator door zipped open and Gunner narrowed his eyes. The bodies have been moved. He stepped out cautiously, scanning the area around him, his nostrils flaring and filling with new and familiar scents.
Ely. He shuddered and stormed past the corpses without another glance, pulling a gun from his strap. Her smell was thicker than it should’ve been. It drew him like a dog on a leash. A tether. The wracking pulses from the nanobots still coursed through him, but they were getting weaker and he ignored them.
There. The brig. The door was half-closed and the lights within the room were off. Voices. They were muffled.
Gunner inhaled again. Elodie. The prisoners. The decaying scents of the guards. Kallan. Even a lingering twinge of Royce. And others...
He rushed the door and slammed the panels the rest of the way open, breaking the metal without care.
“Ely,” he roared, already sensing her gone. The darkness hit him just as he switched to night vision. “Where is she?”
Gunner went to their cells but she wasn’t inside. Her door was open. “Where!?” His voice thundered.
The remaining prisoners scurried and rose as the reek of fear took hold. His own.
“She?” one man asked in puzzlement.
“She was taken out of here,” the man in the cell across from hers spoke up. Gunner didn’t turn around, his eyes burning a hole in the spot where he last saw her. Where he left her. Her safe place next to him at the bars.
“When?”
Metal crumpled in his fists. He willed her to materialize, already seeding what was left of his energy back into the systems, though he knew that it would do no good. Ballsy had fried all the relays connecting the security cameras to the mainframe.
“A couple of hours ago, more maybe, not long after the gunfire started.”
Gunfire. Hours ago. Before he had left the underbelly. The feel of tearing that pirate’s leg off came to mind, and he itched to feel it again.
Gunner turned slowly and approached the prisoner across the way. The man backed up. “Details!”
“Chesnik came back and freed him. Her. Is Ely really a woman?”
Chesnik. Her dad. The knowledge did little to calm him. “Then why is Kallan’s stench thick in the air?”
It was thicker than Elodie’s. They weren’t here at the same time. She left before he slithered through here.
“He was also here. He got angry when he found Ely wasn’t here. What the fuck? What’s happening?”
Gunner felt his teeth fall out, heard the tinging sound as they scattered at his feet. He tore a metal bar clean off and dragged it behind him as he approached the nearest android. But before his hand touched it, the jolt of another string of shocks brought him to his knees.
All he
could see was red. First my ship. Now her. Slowly, bringing his hand up to connect with the android, he replayed what happened through its eyes.
She left with a strange man. Chesnik, he assumed. Good. Now I know which pirate I’m not allowed to kill. He copied the image to his personal storage. Ely and her father’s heights and builds were alike.
He was out the brig door and searching the next moment, forcing his body to press onward.
He went back to the lounge room and found nothing. His snout shifted, extending from his face, his beast taking a little more control. It liked the hunt.
Kallan was everywhere. Fresh, fresher than Elodie.
Where are they? Where is she?
A terrible vibration, a growl rose from the pit of his belly as he sought his target.
Gunner came back across the tampered bodies and this time he checked them over. The guns were gone. There were no footsteps leading from their pooled blood.
It had been avoided. The looting had been unhurried.
He rose up and pried the elevator doors back open with his hands, finding the scents weaker within, polluted with his own. They couldn’t have gone up. He would’ve known.
Then he caught it. A trail that led away and seemed to circle back.
The corridor he faced led to what most would consider a dead end; it led to the bowels of the ship, the machines that kept the crew supplied with breathable air, drinkable water, and all the other minutiae required for human survival. The parts of a spaceship that was all but off-limits except in case of emergency. It was too dangerous to be within when the machines were running. As far as the machines were concerned, the only distinction between recycled waste and a person was that one of the two had a name.
Behind him was the way to the storage containers. Kallan’s reek led that way, interlaced with drugs. Smoke. Kallan had taken full advantage of his new position as a crew member. Gunner lifted his head and his ear twitched. A noise came behind him and he twisted toward the storage units.
It’s where I would go.
But he didn’t take a step toward it. Elodie first? Or Kallan? Another viral blast flooded his core and his sense of smell reset. Kallan’s trail reignited before Elodie’s and he made up his mind.
Gunner moved swiftly and through the passageways opposite Ely’s scent, his soles digging into the dingy, grated floor. The sense of his target grew stronger and with it, his bloodlust. It was an allure he no longer cultivated but accepted. He could push his desires away, cloud his mind, but where was the fun in that?
Kallan’s fascination with Elodie made him Gunner’s number one target. If he was a better man, he’d convince himself that he was killing the opportunistic fuck for Elodie but he knew that wasn’t true. He hunted for his own pleasure.
He came upon a hatch, and like others he’d seen on the ship, it was locked by a personal access code. He smashed his fist into the tech while his mind flooded the systems. Within moments, the storage unit opened and Gunner entered. Large square and rectangular crates lined the dim, open space, each made with a variety of materials.
Stolen goods. His enemies’ acquisitions. A pirate’s treasure trove. He passed them by without a glance. He could hear Kallan now, the fear and stiffness overcoming the man’s body. He could sense the subtle shift in the shadows, his target hoping to hide from whoever approached.
“Kallan,” he taunted darkly, his fingers elongating. The scent of fear bloomed, filling his nose and caressing him like a lover. Gunner purposely walked past the place where his prey hid, allowing Kallan’s unease and restlessness to marinate. He circled back.
“I know you’re in here. I can hear you.” Another zip of Ballsy’s EMP virus shot through him. Gunner faced the corner where he sensed the prisoner-turned-pirate, hiding between two large crates where the dark was thickest in the room. Gunner stood, patient, his breath deepening into wolfish, wheezing pants. If there had been a light overhead, the silhouette he’d cast would be gaunt and hunched, half-poised to attack. But there were few lights strung about and so he remained a sentinel in the gloom.
He heard the click of a chamber being checked.
Minutes went by as Gunner waited for Kallan to peer around the crate’s corner to see if he was finally alone. To raise his weapon and check if the path was clear. To creep from the shadows and toward his own death.
The man had harassed Elodie, touched her against her will, and interrupted one too many conversations. I would’ve killed you in passing if you hadn’t come back.
For her. To sate your sick curiosity. Kallan and he were alike in that. All the more reason for him to die.
Movement, slow, deliberate, filled his ears; the brush of cloth and polyester against metal. His prey moved along the tiny gap between two crates one step at a time.
Kallan’s eyes met his the moment he appeared, freezing. Even in the dark, his bloodshot sclera was visible.
“Gunner,” Kallan swallowed sickly and backpedaled. “I want no trouble!” He tried to slink between the crates.
“No, you don’t!” Gunner shot forward and gripped Kallan by the neck, dragging him out into the open and tossing the man’s firearm to the ground contemptuously. He sank the protruding tips of his jackal claws into the clammy flesh of Kallan’s neck, feeling the blood blossom underneath them, enjoying its wet warmth. Soon to be cold.
Kallan sputtered and struggled. “I didn’t do anything!” he choked out. “There’s no sense in killing me! I came to break my boy out.” Noises bubbled up within Kallan’s tight throat, moving under Gunner’s palm.
“Is that so? Where’s your boy then? I was just in the brig.”
“Safe! In the back. I can show you!”
Gunner squeezed Kallan’s neck before releasing his hold. Kallan dropped and scurried away until his back hit the wall of a crate, hands clutching his throat.
“Lead me to him.” Gunner smirked. How far will the lies go? He knew Elodie wasn’t here. She’d never been in this space. Not a trace of her was present.
Kallan spat and rose to his feet, his eyes slitted and beady. “The pirates took your ship from you, same as me.” The man tried to change his angle.
“Lead me to Ely.”
“They don’t even have it onboard. The ship, I mean. You want your ship back, right?” He hissed, ignoring Gunner’s demand. “They have our ships somewhere else. I can find out where.”
Gunner’s smile twisted into a feral grin. “Oh?” Ballsy’s conversation replayed in his mind, and with it came another surge jolted through his mainframe. His jackal ears popped out of his head.
“T-they’re on their way to Elyria, but the rest of the fleet.” Kallan gulped, noticing his long, sharp ears. The outward metal mesh jittered, generating even more noise. “The rest of the fleet is elsewhere.”
“You’ve only told me what I already know. How does that help me get my ship?”
“I can find out where it is! We both want the same thing. We can work together. You need me!”
“Is that so?”
“Y-yes!”
Gunner cracked his neck. He had never wanted to work with someone less than he did Kallan. The jackal in him laughed, flashing his teeth and flaring the red glow of his eyes. “We can work together...if you show me to Ely.”
Kallan stammered, “Boy-o means nothing to us. H-he’s safe in the back but not needed.” He wiped his hand over his mouth. “We should move now and get the information. I saw the mutilated bodies.” Kallan checked him out. Gunner knew he was riddled with bullet wounds. Dried blood flaked from his body every time he moved. “They’ll be flooding the area soon, if we go now, we can ambush them... Together.”
“That’s not going to work for me.” Gunner took a step back. He was bored now.
“I can make it work. You’re not listening to me! I can get you what you want. What’re you doing?”
Another step back. It was time to end this. “Getting what I want.”
Kallan stiffened, head cocked to the side. His g
reasy hair fell over his shoulder in stringy masses. “You’re leaving?”
Gunner didn’t answer, instead he melted back into the shadows, and quieted his steps. He moved out of Kallan’s sight and stalked around to the back of the crates, listening to the stream of hissed curses his prey released. When the smell of fear began to dissipate and the thundering strums of the man’s heart lessened—when Kallan’s adrenaline hushed and a stressful sense of safety began to return—Gunner crept into the thin opening on the other side of the crates and waited for the man to return to his hiding hole.
That’s where Kallan met his gaze again, for the last time. Gunner savored the moment: the bright shock of Kallan’s terror, the predatory joy of prey caught, right before he pulled out his precious AutoMag and shot him in the head.
Chapter Fifteen
ELODIE HUNCHED OVER the table across from her dad, toying with the food he’d managed to create. Gummy pieces of popcorn sat in a cup of gelatin that was slowly dissolving. Balls of water teetered to the sides as she rolled them back and forth, her movements strained. She was captivated by what felt like a king’s ransom in water compared to the tiny gels they were given in the brig.
After weeks of no real food beyond the tasteless, chewy rations, she should’ve been ravenous, but she couldn’t manage to eat. Elodie pulled Gunner’s jacket further around her and shivered.
“What’s that?” she asked her dad. He had a contraption in his hands and several found tools and gadgets lying about.
“Found it hooked onto the wall outside our door. It’s an alarm but some of the older pieces are rusted out. The guts look serviceable though.”
“What’re you going to use it for?”
“Well,” he rubbed his lips, brow creasing, “if I can clean it up, I can switch its channel to broadcast and turn it into a distress beacon. But I’m aiming for a radio, something I can use to communicate instead of just broadcasting a canned message. Spacers are a little wary of distress beacons, we might just end up with more pirates. If we have communication, we have everything.”
Leave it to Dad to always be off the beaten path. A hopeful smile tugged her lips. “Good idea. Do you think you can get it to work?”
