by Elle E. Ire
I’m guessing we’re about halfway across the body of water. If I narrow my eyes, I can just make out the outline of something flat jutting into the lake from an opposite shore—the landing dock, and beyond that another tunnel mouth leading farther into the installation. There’s movement too, a number of indiscernible figures milling about, waiting for the raft to take them to where we came from. Some of them stop and wave, an odd gesture for people I assume to be guards or servants, but I give a faint wave back. There’s also sound, like… shouts of welcome? I can’t make out specific words in this echo chamber, especially with the raft’s sail flapping so loudly in the… wind?
Lakes surrounded by shields in the center of moons don’t have wind.
And the raft has a motor, not a sail. So what—?
A chorus of shrieks like a cross between the gemstone drill and otherworldly banshees reverberates off the unseen cavern walls, and I realize those on the opposite shore aren’t waving. They’re gesticulating wildly and pointing.
“Watch out!” Felix and Petala shout in unison, lowering their heads. We follow suit, but not before something catches in my hair, yanking out my businesslike bun so that my blond locks tumble around my face, blinding me. Then we’re all swarmed by a mass of flying things, dozens and dozens of scaly bodies brushing over my skin, snagging the fabric of my professional attire. I shove my hair aside, focusing on leathery wings attached to foot-long lizard-like creatures in metallic colors of red, green, gold, and silver, shiny in the raft’s light.
They would be lovely if they weren’t attacking us.
There’s a yell of surprise from behind me, and I whirl. Several of the creatures are working in tandem, talons gripping the shoulders of Vick’s suit jacket and her skin beneath. Small trails of blood show through the material—nothing life-threatening but certainly painful, reinforced by the hint of red in her emotional aura, and I raise my shields to avoid the empathic echo. The creatures must be stronger than their size would suggest, their wings powerful enough to have her over a foot off the floor of the raft. She’s got a hold on the handrail, but one of her hands slips as I watch so that she’s tugged upward at a sideways angle.
I grab the person beside me, Petala, shaking her. “Do something! I thought you said they aren’t carnivorous.”
“They aren’t,” the guard says, pulling her pistol from its holster, a strange plastic-coated model I’m not familiar with. Not that I’m a gun expert. That’s Vick’s area. But this one is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. “This behavior isn’t normal. If they bother passengers at all, they buzz the group, maybe pull a little hair or some clothing, and fly off. They’re just territorial.”
“How territorial?” I growl, getting in her face.
Her mouth sets in a grim line while she adjusts her weapon, searching for a clear shot. “If they truly feel threatened? Deadly so. But they live on the cavern ceiling and in narrow tunnels along the lake walls. We shouldn’t be considered a threat….” Petala trails off and shakes her head.
I turn back to Vick. Alex and Lyle each have one of her legs, and they’re pulling her downward, but it’s a tug-of-war with the lizards actually gaining height and more joining them every moment.
What I don’t understand is why Vick doesn’t do something. She’s dangerous as hell, and I’m betting she has more weapons secreted on her than the one they confiscated in the landing bay. Why isn’t she fighting back instead of depending on—
Oh. Right. A businesswoman isn’t supposed to be a trained warrior. And her weapons would be concealed in the lining of her clothing for later use once we drop our covers. She doesn’t want to reveal them now, doesn’t want to give us all away before we’ve even begun to accomplish our goal, and I wonder how much is her own desire and how much is her brainwashing to finish the mission at all costs.
I stare at her face, frustration warring with determination in her features, the gray hue of her emotional turmoil almost black in its complexity. She hates helplessness. She hates relying on others.
Especially when those others aren’t succeeding in saving her.
Chapter 7: Vick—Infrastructure
I am a target.
I’M WONDERING which of my prime directives wins out in a situation like this—the one that says I must finish the mission or the one that allows me to protect myself to prevent the loss of expensive Fighting Storm equipment.
The two are not mutually exclusive, VC1 reminds me. It would not be out of character for a slave buyer to have concealed weapons on her person.
No, it wouldn’t. Except that if I reveal them, I’ll likely lose them. And these are the expensive toys made from composite metal alloys that won’t register on scanners. Regardless, as I’m lifted higher by the swarm of tiny flying lizard-dragons, and my left hand also loses its grip on the rail, my right slips inside my suit jacket and fingers the loosely sewn covering on the hidden inner lining compartment.
Alex yanks hard on one of my legs while Lyle grips the other in his viselike hands, and still I’m being dragged over the railing. If these things manage to drop me overboard….
The water is toxic with elements from the moon’s core. Not fatal but corrosive if not treated quickly. You do not want to end up in the lake.
That’s all I need to hear.
I rip the fabric covering free and slip the palm-pistol into my hand, preparing to draw it on the tiny beasties when another, louder tearing sound freezes my arm in place. The shoulder seams are separating from the arms of the suit jacket, threads severing at the joints. Both arm pieces snip apart at the same moment, and the lizards holding me screech with victory as they pull the body of the jacket—along with strips of my collared shirt and two chunks of shoulder skin—away from me and fly off with it clutched in their glinting metallic talons.
I fall and am caught by Alex and Lyle, the three of us tumbling in a heap to the raft’s deck, the palm-pistol clutched in my white-knuckled fingers. I’m aware of rapid shuffling movement around us and a further blotting out of the ambient light while Jacks’s guards form a protective dome over our crouched bodies.
My relief is short-lived when Kelly’s bare legs aren’t among those in trousers blocking us in on all sides.
I work my free hand loose from the tangled limbs and yank on the nearest pantleg. Petala’s face leans down into my line of sight. She activates a handlamp and lights our human body cave within its real counterpart. “Where’s my assistant?” I demand.
“Just behind me. I’ve got her. Don’t worry.”
“You’ll forgive me if I’m not entirely confident in your abilities to keep her safe,” I growl. The raft’s engine increases in volume, and the craft rocks side to side as it gains momentum. “Are you telling me we could have gone faster all along?” I’m almost shouting, but I rein in my anger, keeping my tone more like an irritated CEO at a multimillion-dollar company board meeting.
“We go slow to avoid catching the lizard-dragons’ attention.” Her gaze narrows on me. “But no point in that now. You’ve already caught it. Come clean,” Petala says, eyes narrowing on my closed fist, her light glinting off the palm-pistol clutched within it and barely visible. “What else were you carrying in that jacket of yours? How much metal? And what have you still got on you?” She leans back, gazing upward, then ducks down to close our huddle once more. “They’re not leaving. They almost never go after anyone in particular unless that person is carrying a significant amount of metal. Lizard-dragons like metal. There’s quite a bit of ferrousalcate in their scale structure. It’s what gives them that shiny appearance, and they line their nests with any bits of discarded metal they can snatch and steal.”
Kelly pops her head between another guard’s legs to catch Petala’s last few comments. She glances up at someone’s crotch, flushes deep red, visible even in the dim light, and shifts her position so she’s now between two different guards’ outer thighs, her own knees on the deck. Behind her, a couple of strangely muted laser pistol pulses tell
me the other guards are still trying to chase off the flying swarm. Their weapons sound odd, as if they are made of something other than metal, and under the circumstances, I guess that makes sense. A pitiful, high-pitched screech is followed by the plop of something hitting the water beside the raft.
I consider Petala’s question. A cold, empty pit forms in my stomach.
“I’ve got some personal arms sewn into my pants and boots,” I admit, allowing myself a sheepish smile. It’s a truth. It’s just not the truth. “If someone had warned us, I might have made different choices.”
“If you’d followed the rules, you wouldn’t have needed the warning,” the guard counters. She shakes her head, then grins. “Tell you what. You let us patch you up when we reach the dock, and transfer a couple hundred credits into your escorts’ accounts, and we won’t mention to Jacks that you can’t follow instructions. Deal?”
“Deal,” I mutter. I signal to Alex to make that happen, and he pulls his datapad from a cargo pocket, frowning all the while. It’s a simple matter to use the dummy account we’ve got set up under Valeria Court’s name to distribute the funds. I’m too distracted by inner thoughts to argue or haggle.
Kelly reaches out, her hand landing on my thigh, her expression concerned. She’s picking up on my despair, reaching the same conclusions I have.
The dragons didn’t want my jacket. My shoulders just gave them something easy to sink their talons into, and most of the weapons left on my person are small.
But my skull. My skull is mostly medical-grade steel fused with a little remaining bone structure. Very little.
They wanted, and still want me because I’m more machine than human.
We bump the opposite dock before I can sink into a full-blown depression, Kelly’s presence the only thing keeping me on an outwardly even keel while my internal emotions whirl and flash and collide in angry, violent, screaming impacts of stomach acid, painfully tight muscles, and cold sweat. My human shield stands back, allowing me and Alex and Lyle to rise to our feet. I turn to the bow. The dragons hover in a glittering cloud a few yards offshore, hesitant to come closer to so many humans in one place.
And many there are. A dozen sets of helping hands pull us from the rocking raft to the stable dock. I nod my thanks, surprised when they release me and my knees buckle. I have to grab for one of the mooring pylons or risk falling into the water.
Lyle and Alex are on either side of me in an instant, shoring me up by providing strong shoulders to lean on. “You okay?” Alex asks under his breath.
“Yeah,” I manage. “And thanks for not letting go out there. Wasn’t in much mood for a swim.”
Lyle touches my arm briefly, then steps away when he’s certain I’ve found my footing. “We’ve got your back. And the rest of you. Just figure out how to finish this job.”
Without us all getting killed goes unsaid.
There’s a wooden box on the dock painted with the universal symbol for medical aid. I’m betting there was an identical one on the opposite shore, but I didn’t take notice of it.
Yes, there was, VC1 assures me.
Well, at least they’re prepared.
Petala unlocks the box with a touch of her own personal locater bracelet to the lock, making me wonder what else the devices do. She removes a second, smaller container, also wood, and sets it beside me, gesturing for me to sit down. Wood boxes. Of course. Because the lizard-dragons would have been attracted to the standard metal ones. I really should have picked up on that oddity sooner. Too busy gawking at the lake.
While Petala strips off the ragged sleeves of my lost jacket and peels away the tatters of shirt clinging to my shoulder wounds, I ask her, “What about the drills? And the breather receptacles? Those were metal, weren’t they?” VC1 flashes me an image of one, made of wood, but still. No mining operation could function without metal-based machinery, not to mention the shield and artificial gravity generators.
The guard shrugs, her hands moving quickly and efficiently to clean, seal, and bandage the wounds. They don’t look too bad, from what I can see by craning my neck around to watch her. I’ve lost about two inches of flesh on each side, but VC1 provides an internal scan showing me no nerve or muscle damage and no significant blood loss.
“They like the lake area,” Petala explains when she’s finished, answering my earlier question. “They eat the fish. They live in the alcoves and short tunnels around it. We never see them farther out.”
Good. Though I’m wondering how my trip back across the lake will go. But that’s a problem for later. I have a mission to complete before I worry about the local fauna.
Petala speaks rapidly into a pocket comm unit, my enhanced hearing picking up something about replacement clothing, and a few minutes later another guard arrives carrying a dark suit jacket not too far off from the one the dragons took. I slip into it, hiding my wounds beneath. It isn’t of as fine a material as mine, and the color complements but doesn’t exactly match my trousers. It’s also a more masculine cut. Still, it’s a passable substitute and shouldn’t raise questions.
“You keep spare clothing around for your buyers?” Kelly asks before I can. She and Alex reach down to give me a hand up from the dock.
Another shrug from Petala. “Let’s just say that when guests are caught breaking the rules, Jacks doesn’t let them take their belongings with them outside the dome.”
Kelly pales beside me while a new shiver makes its way along my spine. I’m wearing a dead man’s jacket.
An image of a shabbily dressed figure standing at a crossroads appears in my internal display.
Beggars and choosers. Right. I get it.
Making certain my entire team witnesses the definitive action—yes, I’m in control, this isn’t throwing me—I fasten the front jacket button and settle the fabric more evenly on my shoulders. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Chapter 8: Kelly—Roles to Play
Vick is distracted.
THE GUARDS deposit us in a two-bedroom suite with reminders to monitor our personal locator bracelets if we should choose to explore. I’m surprised they don’t forbid wandering about, but I guess when you have the threat of asphyxiation on your doorstep for stepping out of the approved zones, you don’t worry so much. There’s a gym facility down the corridor/tunnel and a communal lounge area with snacks and beverages beyond that.
Our accommodations are luxurious, opulent, and tacky all at the same time, with the central living room and the two bedrooms carved straight from the core stone, and velvet wall-hangings in reds and blacks hiding the rock itself and giving the illusion that there could be windows behind them. Maybe that’s to counter the claustrophobia of the space. Even I have the urge to rush out of doors, see the sky, breathe nonrecycled air. My walls are up, but Vick’s got to be suffering far worse. It’s illogical. We live in our own enclosed environment back at Girard Moon Base. But there’s something about being surrounded by rough stone rather than the pristine, modern, solid steel that makes everything feel like it’s caving in. Literally.
While Alex and Lyle scan the rooms for bugs and cameras, I head straight for the environmental controls and raise the temperature by several degrees. Shield or no shield, these caves are chilly and would be worse without the wall hangings.
Vick makes for the garbage incinerator by the main entry. She shrugs out of the suit jacket and the remains of her shirt, stuffs them inside, and slams the lid shut. The device gives a satisfactory whir while it breaks down the composition of the dead man’s clothing. Shaking herself like a wet dog, she locates the luggage in the center of the seating area, presses her palm to the genetic codelock on her brand-new designer-label suitcase, and yanks out a replacement shirt and dinner jacket that coordinate with her pants. Despite the journey, they’re wrinkle-free, thanks to a fabric-flattening mist produced by the carrying case itself. It costs a small fortune, but a slave buyer wouldn’t quibble about such things. I wonder if the Storm will let her keep it once the mission is
complete.
Like in the corridors, the dim lighting also assists in fooling one’s eyes, but it adds to the medieval castle-like setting and creates shadows that shift and deceive. More than once I catch Vick darting glances into corners and peering hard where there’s nothing to see.
Her paranoia is on overdrive.
“We’re clean,” Alex announces, he and Lyle returning from opposite bedrooms. Lyle concurs.
“VC1, what do you see?” Vick asks, glancing toward the now active vidcom unit set up on a desk against the side of the gathering space.
“This unit is secure,” not-Vick’s voice responds while Lyle shifts his feet at the sound of her speech coming from the embedded speakers. “This is an internal communications system only—incapable of off-moon transmissions. Given time, I can link it to the slavers’ more advanced system for a much farther reach.”
Lyle pulls his personal comm off his belt and studies its screen. “No long-range signal on these down here either, though we can reach each other. Not like that’s a surprise, but we can’t contact our orbital backup.”
I nod. “Make the connection, VC1. How long will it take? And can you keep it undetectable?”
“Approximately six hours.” The monotone takes on a decidedly offended note. “And of course.”
I grin. Nothing like offending a sentient computer.
“Sorry,” Vick says, grinning as well. “I shouldn’t doubt your skill set.”
Alex approaches the vidcom, looking at first one speaker, then the other, as if he’s not quite sure how to address it. “Hey, um, VC1? Would you mind if I, well, watch what you’re doing with the comms? I mean, can you show me and talk me through it? It would be so cool if I could learn to do that.”
