Shockwave

by Lindsay Buroker

  Casmir lunged in the opposite direction. He’d wanted an explosive, but not like this.

  The guard spun toward it as it started spewing smoke.

  Was it some noxious knock-out gas? No, that wouldn’t affect someone in combat armor.

  Casmir covered his mouth and backed farther from the table. It would affect him.

  The soldier stomped out into the corridor, and the bzzzt of a DEW-Tek rifle firing sounded. Lopez ran out after him only to have him spin back toward her, pointing his weapon at her chest. She lifted her hands as Casmir had done earlier and backed into the lounge again.

  Smoke swirled about her ankles. It stung Casmir’s eyes, but he couldn’t yet tell if it would do anything more inimical. He did his best not to inhale.

  Something slammed into the armored guard from behind, hard enough to make him stumble forward. A hand appeared, tossing a weapon to Lopez, and a boom sounded as someone—Qin?—fired a weapon that could have blown a hole in the hull of the ship. But it struck the guard in the back, hurling him across the lounge. He crashed shoulder-first into the far wall. It left a dent. Both in his armor and in the wall.

  Unfortunately, he found his feet and fired back. Qin and Lopez leaped into the corridor and used the jamb for cover.

  “Qin!” Casmir called, torn between wanting to hide his unarmored body under the table and needing one of her explosives.

  She glanced at him as she leaned around the jamb to return the guard’s fire. Perhaps realizing the threat to the hull of the ship, she’d switched to bullets, but they didn’t do anything to hurt the armored thug. And he realized that. He strode toward them.

  “I need one of your things,” he yelled, deliberately vague, hoping the guard wouldn’t remember.

  When she glanced again, he waved at her bandolier and pointed to the explosive shells. Would she see? That smoke kept spewing into the room, creating a thick green haze in the air.

  The guard roared and charged, spraying his rifle fire and leaving scorch marks in the bulkhead opposite the hatchway. He disappeared into the corridor. Footsteps rang out. Qin and Lopez running from him? Or had more of the intruders heard the noise and come to help their man?

  A few oddly quiet seconds passed before an armored man stuck his head into the lounge. Casmir didn’t know if it was the same guy as before or a new one. He thrust his hands into the air and tried to appear as innocent as he could.

  The mirrored faceplate looked from him to the table full of parts and back to him. “Stay here. Keep working on that thing.”

  The guard left, clanging the hatch shut behind him.

  “If I don’t pass out first.” Casmir coughed at the smoke stinging his eyes and scouring his throat.

  He ran to the source, grabbed it, and threw it into the garbage chute. He sanitized his gloved hands under the kitchen spritzer and wiped them vigorously on a towel. He flapped at the air with that towel, hunted until he found a vent fan for the ship’s small stove, and turned it on.

  As the smoke curled toward it, he decided he didn’t have the urge to pass out. It seemed that Qin had only thrown a weapon designed to cloud the air. Maybe it did something to whatever scanners the men had built into their armor.

  Casmir headed toward the table but noticed something just inside the hatch. One of Qin’s explosive shells lay on the deck nestled against the wall.

  “Perfect,” he crooned, carefully picking it up with both hands.

  A clank came from the back of the lounge, and he jumped, almost dropping his prize. He clutched it to his chest as if it were an egg.

  One of the exercise cabinet doors opened, and Kim stuck her head out through a three-foot-high opening. She peered around the lounge and flinched when she saw Casmir. Her brow smoothed when she realized he was alone.

  “You were in there the whole time?” he whispered. “Didn’t they search in here?”

  “They searched. Someone opened my cabinet, and I thought they would spot me, with some technology if not their eyes, but I think the cabinet doors and interior walls are designed to scramble scanners. I was behind the exercise cycle and their equipment didn’t tell them.” She pointed her thumb into the depths of her cabinet. “Also, they were busy arguing while they looked. I gathered they were more interested in finding what they thought would be large crates of some illicit cargo rather than human beings.”

  “That’s good. I’m not sure when they’ll be back, so you may want to stay in there.”

  Kim couldn’t have made a more sour face if she were sucking a Devarian lemon.

  “Or come out and risk getting caught.” Casmir slid into his seat so he could continue working. “You can hold my tools for me.”

  “A cornucopia of delightful options.” Kim slithered out of her cabinet, gripped her back, and grimaced as she stretched. “I don’t suppose there’s a way to lock the hatch?” she asked as she walked to the table.

  “They might get suspicious if I lock it.”

  “Are you working on something for them? Who are they, anyway? Pirates?”

  “They neglected to introduce themselves.”

  “That’s rude.”

  “I thought so. I haven’t seen any faces yet, so I can’t run a network search. I’m afraid you know as much as I do.” Casmir made a bracket to secure the explosive inside his chosen robot. Now to work on a detonator. A remote one would be ideal, rather than a simple timer. “Though I did learn that there’s not a bounty on my head or a warrant out for my arrest.”

  “They checked?”

  “Yes, because of the message I sent, they thought I might be worth kidnapping. I’m pleased to learn that I’m not. But still puzzled.”

  “What are you making?” Kim asked.

  “It’s a…” Casmir glanced toward the speakers, not sure if there were cameras in the walls and if the intruders were monitoring them. Or if they were busy playing hide, seek, and attack with Qin and Lopez. “Device to detect things hidden in the walls. They’re having trouble finding the captain’s contraband, and I’d like to live, so I offered to help.”

  Kim raised her eyebrows. She might not be good at telling if strangers were lying, but he suspected she knew him well enough to decipher deceit. She didn’t call him on it.

  “Can I help?” She made a grasping motion in the air, maybe indicating that she felt useless.

  Casmir knew the feeling well. He was used to teaching and working with his team on projects every day. He’d never been good at taking days off. That was why he ended up making robotic birds in his spare time.

  “Sure. Screw the lid back on that one. He’s going to be our decoy.”

  Casmir secured a remote-control chip in the vacuum before pushing it toward Kim. Then he set one up inside of the second robot. If this worked, he would lose some of his spare parts forever, but if they survived and reached Forseti Station, he could buy new parts.

  Assuming he deemed it safe enough to use his banking chip. He still needed to figure out who was after him, but he felt reassured that this mess was about something else. Maybe he’d left his pursuers back on Odin. Of course, if he got himself killed here, flying along in the middle of nowhere, it wouldn’t matter that he had successfully eluded those crushers.

  “Let’s see if they’re ready.” Casmir grabbed the remote and set the two robots on the deck.

  He succeeded at moving them left and right, forward and back, and he’d given them both tiny cameras on their fronts. He was able to toggle between the two on his remote’s tiny display, which offered him slightly different views of the closed hatch.

  “I’d be impressed,” Kim said, “but they did all that before you started tinkering. I saw one vacuuming inside one of the kitchen cabinets this morning.”

  “Not on orders from my remote. And not with cameras.”

  “Because normal people don’t want a close-up of what’s being vacuumed.”

  “I might find it entertaining.”

  “That doesn’t negate my statement.”


  Casmir grinned at her. “Did you get a chance to look up the layout of that ship?”

  “Yes. The bridge and briefing rooms are at the top of the pyramid, cabins and lounges, a rifle range and a gym in the five middle decks, and then engineering, environmental controls, and cargo on the largest, bottom level. The airlock is extended from there.”

  “Is there a lift going up to the bridge?”

  “Ladders, I think.”

  “Aren’t spaceships supposed to be accessible for people with injuries or disabilities?”

  “I don’t imagine a lot of pirates roll around in wheelchairs.”

  “Did you get a map downloaded?” Casmir asked.

  “It’s just in my head.”

  “All right. Stand next to me while I drive them, please.” Casmir opened the hatch, listened for a moment, and grimaced at the sounds of fighting. They came from the hold down below, not from the corridor outside, but that would still be problematic. He had to navigate the vacuums through the hold and to the airlock. Maybe he would get lucky, and everyone would be too busy to notice what he was doing.

  “Drive them where?” Kim asked.

  Casmir set the robots in the corridor, nudged the remote, and they rolled toward the ladder well. Fortunately, they had no trouble navigating vertical walls. “Let’s hope that the signal is strong enough to get them the whole way there.”

  “Whole way where? The enemy ship?”

  “You’ll see.” He grinned at her again.

  “Has anyone told you that engineers are annoying?”

  “Engineers? No. I’ve been told I’m annoying.”

  “Good.”

  Bonita crouched behind the crates in the cargo hold, exchanging fire with one of the intruders. Qin had raced to the armory and was supposed to get her a weapon that would have a chance against their armor. She’d meant to select something herself, but they had her pinned down. Four of them. She didn’t know where the other two had gone.

  A crimson energy bolt slammed into one of the crates, hurling it backward. The lid flew open, and prepackaged meals flew about the cargo hold. Bonita ducked lower.

  One of the men strode straight toward her meager cover. She leaned out and fired four times with her pistol. Her bolts ricocheted off his chest plate, not even leaving scorch marks.

  “Qin,” Bonita shouted. “Now would be good.”

  She appreciated that Qin had come to the lounge to rescue her but wished she’d had more of a plan than sprinting into the cargo hold and hiding. The guard had been too close behind, and another intruder had been waiting by the airlock. There’d been no chance to hide.

  The man’s stride turned into a run, and he sprinted toward her crate. Bonita fired again, for all the good it did, and scrambled backward.

  He would have slammed into her, but Qin sprang over Bonita’s head and landed in front of her. She lunged and crashed into the man, taking him to the deck despite his armor. She landed astride him and slammed her helmet into his.

  For a second, he seemed stunned, and Qin used that pause to fire her Brockinger at a second man rushing toward them.

  Bonita winced at the explosion in the middle of her cargo hold, but it took the man in the chest, knocking him backward and peeling his armor open like a sardine can.

  The man under Qin recovered and slammed two armored fists into her chest. Though her galaxy suit insulated her somewhat, she gasped in pain. Only the grip she had on him with her legs kept her from flying up to the ceiling. She tried to load another round in her Brockinger, but he grabbed the big gun, attempting to wrest it from her.

  Bonita realized Qin had brought a Starhawk 5000 out for her and dropped it on the deck when she attacked. She snatched it up and rushed toward the grappling combatants.

  Even though the rifle had more power than her pistol, it was no Brockinger. Bonita didn’t bother to shoot but instead used the butt end, slamming it into the man’s faceplate over and over. That had to distract him, if nothing else.

  He roared and bucked Qin into the air. She flew backward, her helmet slamming into a crate. Hard.

  Bonita pointed the rifle at his chest but saw four determined intruders striding toward her. Only one was down, the one Qin had fired an explosive at. It had torn open his chest armor, but it had also blown a crater in her deck, revealing conduits and insulation underneath. Her cargo hold couldn’t take more abuse.

  Four rifles pointed at Bonita’s chest. She had no delusions about her galaxy suit repelling them all.

  The entire boarding party was down in the cargo hold again. That meant nobody was watching Casmir, but if all he was doing was building a robot to help her enemies, Bonita hardly cared. This escape had been pointless.

  Qin groaned faintly. She lay on her back under the crate, the fingers of one hand twitching. She must have struck it like a pile driver.

  “Qin,” Bonita whispered under her breath, trusting Qin’s enhanced hearing to catch it. She lowered her weapon to the deck and spread her arms. “Stop fighting. Pretend you’re knocked out. Until we get a better chance.”

  From the way Qin’s twitching fingers stilled and her helmet did not move, Bonita feared she truly was knocked out. Or worse.

  10

  “This is remarkable workmanship,” Yas said, eyeing the brain scan of Chief Engineer Jessamine Khonsari, the woman who’d been having coffee with the captain when he first met Rache—by collapsing in an injured mess at the base of their table.

  Now, she sat on one of the sickbay beds, rotating her shoulder and grimacing as she gripped one of the handholds to keep herself from floating away.

  “I knew about your arm and eyes and synthetic joints from your record,” he added, “but I hadn’t seen the full body scan. I didn’t realize you had circuitry integrated seamlessly into your brain.”

  “Yes, I’m a modern wonder. Drugs, Doctor. I’m here for some drugs.”

  Yas arched his eyebrows, the magnetic boots of his suit keeping him attached to the deck. The ship had docked at a second refinery orbiting Saga, so they were without gravity again.

  “You might have torn a ligament, Jessamine. Let me take a look.”

  “Might as well call me Jess, Doc. Seeing as how we’re getting intimate.” She pushed a hand through her short, curly black hair, then maneuvered the top half of her suit down to her waist. She stopped moving her shoulder so he could examine it with his fingers and a quick Hexscan.

  “Intimate? I suppose I’d be amenable to the offer…” Yas smiled, though he doubted she had anything sexual in mind. “But I’m only planning to scan your shoulder.”

  “You looked at my brain circuits, Doc. I don’t let many people do that.”

  “I hope that doesn’t mean you plan to kill me after I give you your medication. To keep me silent.”

  “Nah. I only kill people who try to blow up my engines. I’m a lady.”

  “Clearly.” He kept his tone dry and made a point of only examining her shoulder and none of her lady attributes. He hadn’t been here long enough to get desperate and horny and start hitting on the crew. Further, he was a professional, even if his world had been taken away from him. “Yes, a torn ligament. It shouldn’t need to be immobilized, but let me give you something to speed up the healing.”

  “Sparring with these men is not healthy.” Jessamine eyed the injector he extracted from his kit.

  “I imagine not. Two-thirds of the crewmen are enhanced with various legal and illegal implants. The ones that aren’t look to have been born hulking trolls.”

  “It’s not a profession that attracts beauty-pageant winners.”

  “With rare exceptions?” Yas raised his eyebrows.

  Nobody would call Jessamine a troll, not with those arched cheekbones, full lips, and elegant facial features. Despite all of the surgery she’d had done, Yas could tell from her scans that it had all been for medical purposes, likely to repair her body after a brutal accident, rather than to enhance strength and speed.

  She looked aw
ay from what he’d meant to be a compliment and said, “No. No exceptions.”

  Maybe she was self-conscious about the prosthetics.

  As the jet injector hissed, the captain’s voice sounded over the speakers. “Dr. Peshlakai, I need you on the refinery.”

  Yas frowned. After the mess at the last refinery, he had no desire to visit this one.

  “Is someone injured?” he asked.

  “Someone is dead.”

  “I can’t help you with that, Captain.”

  “Get over here. Now.”

  The ice in the captain’s tone chilled Yas, and he started packing his medical kit. He hadn’t seen Rache lose his temper yet, but he had witnessed him shoot one of his mercenaries in cold blood when the man had been discovered transmitting the ship’s coordinates to a Kingdom military outpost. Somehow, that frigid, remorseless calculation seemed worse than if he’d lost his temper and killed the man in a fit of rage.

  “I’m on my way, sir.” Yas selected a few extra scanners, a scalpel, and syringes for taking blood samples.

  All he could guess was that there was something strange about the dead man and Rache would want an autopsy and answers. He hadn’t mentioned which crew member it was.

  “Have fun,” Jess said. “See the sights. Don’t forget my drugs when you get back. The last doc always gave me trylochanix.”

  “For… injuries from sparring? That’s a very strong and addictive analgesic. And an antidepressant.” He arched his eyebrows. Jess, with her easygoing smiles, hardly seemed like someone in need of that aspect of the drug.

  “Yeah, it’s what they gave me after my surgery. It was the only thing that helped with the pain and the neuropathy I got from my body getting jury-rigged back together. Doc Otero kept it in that cabinet right there.” Jess smiled and pointed at the main enclosure for the ship’s medications. It was out along the wall and without a lock on it, something Yas intended to change when he could requisition the help to move it somewhere more secure. He’d already walked in on one of the mercenaries helping himself.