Lexi was still pleased with her idea. While Geena worked on assembling the exoskeleton, Lexi took over the fabricators to build her weapons. She thought, somewhat wryly, that they couldn’t have done this at all without the pre-ordered hull metal. “Jis, love, I’m going to have to ask you to believe me. I understand your concerns; I really do. These will perform as well as I expect. What concerns me is that I might be underestimating them.”
When they signed off following brief discussion, Jis thought, So, it’s started. She shivered slightly, sat down, and began her meditations.
The next time they spoke Jis said, “Lexi, listen to me. This is more important than you rescuing us. I shopped around the concept of a breakthrough in weapon technology with KumKum, who is a little weird, but who I trust, and Kahvia. Neither one of them is going to talk about it. I presented it as a theoretical problem anyway. Something a new Plicora might have to deal with some day. Honey, I want to discuss it with the whole team once this is over, but if you’re right about what you’ve designed, the Accord can’t have it. We’re not ready. Even Ackalon can’t have it. You need to keep this as quiet as you can.” Lexi pointed out they would all be able to discuss it on the trip home and Jis let it go at that.
The cabin holding the fabricator wasn’t large enough to make the legs for the exoskeleton. They solved that problem by physically moving it into the cargo hold and opening the loading doors back there. Once their raw materials were converted into leg components, Geena built the leg assemblies from them, remarking, “This reminds me of the building sets we bought for Ron when he was little. I’m having fun.”
Lexi spent a lot of time helping once she had the two upscaled versions of the ray-guns worked out. The fabricator could produce the parts in under five hours. The time-consuming part was going to be modifying the pigeon launchers.
They were both working twenty-one hour days, eating high protein meals, avoiding alcohol and imbibing vast quantities of coffee. Urania grumbled that she could be much more helpful if she had robotic remotes. Her participation was limited to holding the newly assembled legs in place with a tractor beam while Geena and Lexi drilled holes into the hull and bolted them in place. They’d have to fill the holes before they left. They had a commercial product call “Masterly Hull Patch” for that.
Lexi originally wanted to build one of the primary beams for each side of the exoskeleton for the sake of symmetry. Urania talked her out of that, pointing out she wasn’t going into battle against a fleet of starships. As far as she was concerned, one unit was more than sufficient. Once they had everything assembled, Urania started working on programming the interface which would allow her activate the legs and fire the weapons.
The two women worked on the modification to the pigeon launchers together. Lexi grinned as the first one was completed. These were designed like small tanks to handle the terrain on Borgol. Who knew we’d wind up using them as small tanks. They weren’t hardened. A direct hit from one of the bunkers Jis reported would destroy them. But, on the other hand, they had eight of them. It should be enough.
She left to make her twice daily report to the gruff voice of Hepca Control that repairs were well underway. No one had come out from the mine or the chalet to verify that yet.
Chapter 27
Bullies
It was early morning four days after they landed before anyone came out to check on the repairs to Urania. By that point all of the physical labor of weaponizing the ship and the pigeon launchers was complete. Lexi and Geena both got in five hours of sleep the night before. Lexi reported slow but steady progress to Hepca Control on how repairs were progressing every twelve hours or so as she had been instructed just before landing.
All fiction, of course. After her most recent report, the gruff voice came back somewhat laconically, “Listen, Captain Honey, Hepca is private property. I know I must have mentioned that before. You have a beautiful voice. As much as I look forward to hearing it every twelve hours, you need to get your repairs done and get your ass off of my planet or I will start charging you for parking. Understood?”
Around forty minutes after that conversation, Urania announced, “You girls may as well suit up. We’re about to have visitors.” From the command chairs they watched the trail of dust kicked up as a rather ordinary looking vehicle drove over the parched landscape towards the ship. It looked so much like a Ford pickup truck that Lexi found herself trying to spot a logo. She knew that most Accord worlds imported firearms clandestinely from Earth. Why not motor vehicles as well? Practically all of the newer models were electric, so gas wouldn’t be needed. They did have that massive solar energy farm producing ample power to charge a few vehicles.
Lexi and Geena stepped outside moments later, outfitted in identical skin-tight black leather-look outfits with high collars inspired by the outfit the Sienna Miller character Anastasia DeCobray wore in The Rise of Cobra. Black leather boots reached to their knees. Sidearms were strapped to each thigh, with a knife suitable for throwing sheathed on the outside of the right boot and a second worn at the left shoulder.
Lexi completed her ensemble with one of the razor sharp Helgan swords she kept since her duel on Earth slung over her back. Both women both looked deadly, and they were. But as Geena remarked when they designed the outfits, “No reason not to look good too.” These were the outfits they wore to impress the Naragene Nine detectives. This morning, they wore them with the intent of looking deadly, not sexy.
Three men, armed with large hunting knives and holstered guns stepped out of the truck and approached them. Lexi thought, They look like they aren’t expecting trouble, but don’t doubt they can deal with whatever trouble finds them. The man in the lead had a whip coiled on one hip. He was tall, somewhere between Lexi’s and Geena’s height and built like a bull. He probably massed more than the two slim women taken together. His face and arms were browned and wrinkled from too much time in the sun. His face bore a long scar down his right cheek and it looked like his nose had been broken and poorly set more than once. With several days of beard stubble, he was not a handsome sight. He stood there, suspiciously eyeing the exoskeleton, and demanded, “What the hell is that?”
Ignoring his question, Lexi turned to Geena and said, “I want a whip, Geena. They’re cool.” She had visions of Indiana Jones in her head. Then she looked back at the ugly man and demanded in return, “And you are?”
“I’m Kree. I manage the mine. You’re trespassing. You’re supposed to be repairing your ship, not building a damn cage around it.” As he spoke, his two men walked closer, as though to examine the construction. Neither of them was nearly as large, nor as ugly, as their boss. Actually, they both were pretty decent looking. Not hunks, but decent enough looking. Slight potbellies, but nothing a few extra hours in the gym a week wouldn’t take care of.
As one of the men walked past, he grabbed Geena, forcing her right arm behind her back while preventing her from turning by clasping her below her breasts and pulling her into him. The second man, to his considerable shock, suddenly found a razor sharp sword at his throat and a trickle of blood seeping into his shirt collar as he tried to position himself to grab Lexi in a similar fashion. He wisely decided to stand very still. In her left hand, Lexi held her ray-gun steady, pointed at Kree’s chest.
“It’s like this, Kree. We landed under false pretenses,” Lexi admitted. “You have illegally taken and are now holding both my client and a member of my team assigned for bodyguard duty. His name is Ron. I want him back. Now. Then we’ll discuss my client’s situation. We may be open to negotiations. You made a mistake, and I do understand that people make mistakes. Cooperate and you might even get out of this alive.”
“Don’t know him,” Kree sneered at her, warily eyeing the situation with his two men.
“Tall man. Well built. Dark brown, almost black, hair. Came in on that freighter about four days ago.”
“Yes, I believe I do recall him,” Kree conceded. “Strong worker. Docile. I have
n’t had to whip him yet. I think maybe I’ll put you on the same crew. We never intended to let you leave Hepca anyway. You’re fast with that sticker, bitch. I’ll give you that.” He lowered his gaze to the gun pointed at him. “That’s the stupidest looking toy gun I’ve ever seen. Drop the sword or Pack will hurt your friend and I will personally make sure that what happens to you will be worse than your worse nightmares.”
Lexi heard an involuntary gasp from Geena as Pack twisted her arm. With a motion too quick and unexpected for any of the men to follow, Lexi’s sword tore through the neck of the man next to her, severing his windpipe and the major blood vessels. While he was occupied with collapsing to the ground and dying, she shifted position slightly, depressing the trigger on her “toy” pistol, piercing Pack in the side at the level of his heart, practically cutting the man in half as she moved the beam a fraction, away from Geena. The ray itself was invisible and silent, but as it cut through super heated air, an eerie sound could be heard. It reminded Lexi of the sound made by the electronic bug-zapper her father hung on their deck every summer at home in Connecticut.
Kree stood very still, the toy gun again centered on his chest, a shocked expression on his face. Lexi glared at him. “I don’t have nightmares, sonny. What I do have is a very particular set of skills, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. And I don’t tolerate bullies. You’ve heard of Helgan mercenaries?” Lexi asked, her voice hard.
She waited until he nodded mutely, before saying, “They crap their pants when they cross my path. You might want to keep that in mind. Throw your weapons on the ground, including the whip. I want it. Get back in your truck and head up to the chalet. Tell them I’ll be stopping by shortly to pick up my client. I’m not in the mood for negotiating after all. I’m also taking my partner back. Keep out of my way and you might survive.” Kree climbed back into his truck and drove off, leaving his two dead men behind.
Before he drove off, he leaned his head out the window and yelled, “Who’s your client?”
“All of them.”
***
Minutes later, back on the ship after collecting her trophy whip and the dead men’s weapons, drinking a chilled Borgolian beer despite the early hour, Lexi asked, “When did it become so easy for me to kill? Has the educator technology messed with my brain? Or have I always been this cold?” She continued looking out the window at the Hepca landscape. She knew it wasn’t a window. It was a computer monitor. She still thought of it from time to time as a window. It was very convincing.
“Back on Earth, I killed that first Helgan because I thought I had no choice. I believed it was them or us. And, yes, I guess it was, but it wasn’t until I was fighting the second one that I realized how inept they were. I could have just disarmed both of them and left it at that. Then instead of killing number two, I intentionally crippled him for what seemed like a good reason at the time. Now I’m not so sure.”
She was silent for a moment and Geena remained silent as well, giving her friend time to work through it. “I executed three men on Naragene Nine. I don’t know whether that was necessary or not. They were threatening us with loaded guns, but they might not have hurt us. They talked like they were only warning us off. I guess they alluded to beating us up.”
“Sweetie,” Geena said, “they alluded to worse than just beating us up.”
Lexi looked at her and Geena saw the pain and self-doubt in her eyes. She took a sip of her beer before continuing. “Today, I killed both of those men because one of them was hurting you, Geena. I don’t see how I could have done anything else, but what bothers me is how effortless it was. I just did it. That brings my body count up to six. I don’t want to have a body count, Geena. I don’t want to think of myself as a killer. Still, I would have killed them all to get Ron back. I still will, if that’s what it takes. I’m afraid it might. What happens to me when I can’t keep count of the number of people I’ve killed anymore?”
“I don’t think there is anything wrong with you, Lexi,” Geena finally replied, sensing Lexi was done. “You’re not happy about killing. That’s a good sign.” She added, “For the record, let me remind you I’ve been studying self-defense. I’m pretty sure I could have gotten out of that man’s hold and left him writhing on the ground. But, still, thank you for looking out for me.”
Urania added, "I’ve heard it said, dear, that life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
As Lexi was in the process of taking a swallow of beer, she choked and sent beer spewing out her nose and across the room as she involuntarily laughed. Geena looked surprised, then started laughing too. Urania asked, her voice guileless, “Did I use that appropriately?”
Her mood significantly lightened, Lexi, getting up to find some wipes, said, “Yes, Forrest. Very apropos. What’s left to be done on the exo?” While she was pleased that Urania’s sentience had progressed to the point where she could insert movie phrases into her conversations, she hoped the next time wouldn’t be when someone had a mouth full of liquid.
“I finished programming the remote interface, so we’re ready now,” Urania said, adding rather primly, “some of us work through the night.”
Chapter 28
Spider on a Plain
Lexi called Ron over the gear. “Ron, hon, we’re commencing the operation now. Kree and his men came by at first light to check on Urania. Two are dead. Kree is on his way to warn them at the chalet.” It was early enough in the morning that the miners would still be locked in their barracks, waiting to be released, to use the facilities and to be fed. Ron had already been briefed on the major parts of the plan. He was concerned about the safety of both Geena and Lexi. But he also trusted their judgment and their abilities. He knew the women where taking the damn pigeon launchers to storm the chalet while Urania simultaneously came for him; that he could not wait to see.
Come she did. As soon as Lexi and Geena departed, each riding on top of one of the hurriedly weaponized pigeon launchers, Urania surged to her new feet, prancing around a bit while she got the hang of it. The legs behaved as expected. The bolts clamping her hull in place to the exo framework seemed solid. She was somewhat ungainly, but it was manageable. Not a bad engineering job.
With that thought, she scuttled off toward the mining camp, but dammit, she scuttled with pride. Even with heavy duty plates on the end of each leg, her weight still forced them two or three feet into the sandy soil in places. Awkward. She wondered briefly what she looked like. She extended her foremost right leg straight out in front of her, pointing the built-in optics back toward herself. She wanted to laugh. Instead she took what Lexi would have termed a selfie. Maybe I’ll start a scrapbook. Then she quashed her fanciful musing and went hunting. Her primary target was the camp’s communications hut, easily identifiable by the parabolic antenna mounted next to it.
Ron thoroughly, and presumably accurately, described the layout of the camp, explicitly identifying each of the buildings Urania recorded during the landing. There were twenty large bunk rooms, laid out in a ring, in which the laborers were locked up at night. Each bunk room held from thirty to forty people. Inside the ring was a large, rude dining hall where the slaves were fed. Off to one side, but still inside the ring was a separate communal latrine.
Buckets were available in each of what the overseers laughingly called cottages for those who couldn’t wait until they were released in the morning. It was up to the inmates whether the buckets were dumped or not. Water was too scarce to rinse them out, so once emptied, they were left outside to dry.
Outside of the ring, clustered around the communications building, were three much smaller bunk rooms the overseers called home. The twenty identified by Ron were split between them. Kree was the only one who had a cabin to himself. The compound was surrounded by a twelve-foot high, chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Overkill. Even if someone managed to escape, there was absolutely nowhere on this planet to go, other than up to the chalet where the automat
ed defenses would quickly deal with an escapee.
Unlike the bunk rooms, Urania could safely blast Kree’s cabin. She knew he was still at the chalet. Unfortunately, there would almost certainly be slaves in the overseers’ bunks; according to Ron, the guards rarely slept alone. At this time of day, with the sun just up over the horizon, the camp should only now be stirring. If they were expecting trouble, it was likely the prisoners may be kept penned up later than usual. They should be expecting trouble. With two of their men dead and Kree on the run, the criminals must know that some sort of commando team was in the vicinity.
Despite the fact they absolutely had to be expecting trouble, no one saw her coming. She was certainly large enough, but no one expected a starship to quietly scuttle in. Simply put, no one was looking. She conceded had she flown in as a starship they might have picked up her atmospheric drive. She certainly wasn’t out of missile range of the chalet, assuming they had missiles. That would be nice to know. Those shielded towers must be hiding something.
Her exoskeleton boasted one primary and one smaller, antipersonnel “zapper,” the latter the size of the beam-weapon Lexi now had mounted on each of her tanks. Urania, or rather WA32198389-18-32405 as she was still officially designated, had been designed, back in her heyday, to carry a crew of eight, with supplies to last six years, weapons, a fusion plant, storage tanks for fuel, labs and cargo holds. With that many Vankovians on board, the quarters had been cramped. Still, she was basically the size of a house. With the fully extended spider legs adding twenty-two feet to her height, the top of her hull was just over forty feet above the ground.
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