Jolo helped him back to his spot and put Betsy next to him.
“I ain’t goin’ either, and don’t take one of the boys and get them killed,” said Riley
“What would you have me do?”
“I don’t know. But not this. You’re just one man against a small army of idiots with guns.”
“They’ve got my ship and my crew and I ain’t gonna stand here and do nothing. Cage. Then guns. Then get my pilot. Then go home.”
Riley just stood there shaking his head.
The boy led Jolo to the entrance of the cage. It was dark, but they stayed close to the shops on one side. Jolo tried to mark each one off on the map in his mind, but most were so covered in black dirt that it was hard to tell. But he could clearly see the word Paco and the -ille of Grille, even at a safe distance on the other side of the wide hallway. He looked at Korley and pointed back towards the book store. The boy nodded and crept back quietly staying in the shadows.
Jolo waited for the boy to get clear. There were two guards in front with energy rifles. They were recent models, each with a small hole drilled into the stock with wires coming out that fed into a box taped to the side. They were overriding the lockout. Most Fed weapons had a bio lockout code that paired it with a specific solider or group of soldiers. It would only fire if you were a match to that weapon. Unless you could override it.
It’s a difficult thing to walk up and shoot a man with no provocation. Jolo tried to think of the crew. Of the cage. Then he thought of Hazuki and his resolve grew. This would be easier if he had Greeley to distract them and then cover his rear in case he needed to retreat. Riley, the freighter jockey, had flat refused to come. Jolo didn’t mind though. The man was not a soldier.
At a certain point he knew the best thing to do was turn off his brain and just go. The two guards looked similar to the men who’d attacked earlier: mismatched rags for clothes, skinny, and even at this distance he could see they were missing teeth. He stepped out of the shadows and walked casually towards the two skinny men.
They didn’t notice him until he was well within Colt range.
“How y’all doin’?” he said, smiling and waving with his left hand, his right gripping the Colt held close to his side. They turned to face him and he gave one sharp command: “Raise your weapon and die.”
The man on the left brought up his weapon but never even got his hand near the trigger guard. Jolo fired once and his legs buckled and he fell to his knees, teetered there a moment then hit the dirt. A small dark hole in his forehead.
The other man was frozen, his energy rifle pointed down at the earth. “If you want to live stay quiet, don’t try to call anyone. Now throw both weapons that way as far as you can,” said Jolo.
“If I do that, Mr. Hazuki’ll kill me.”
“Die now or die later. You choose.”
The man pondered his situation a moment and then he made a bad decision. He started yelling, then turned an ran for the entrance.
He didn’t make it.
Jolo ran straight for the dead men, right under what remained of the Paco sign, then threw their weapons back into the dark cavern. Instantly he started to get worried. There was only one way in and out and he knew Hazuki was no idiot. There was a small, well-lit entrance area that had stainless steel walls like a kitchen, and small round holes in the wall with female ports he figured were old-style electrical connectors from long ago.
Above a dirty counter was a picture of a man with a funny white hat and a smile. “Best pie’s in the Eastern Safe Zone” was written in cursive underneath. There was a hole in the wall in back dug straight into the earth. Jolo could just make out a torch, a flickering orange glow at the far end of the tunnel.
This ain’t good, thought Jolo. But if the cage is here I’m going to find it. It’s on me now. If anyone’s alive I don’t want them to be eaten while I was sitting in a room with Greeley and the kids. For a split second he almost decided to stop and head to the top of the hotel and find Katy, guns blaring. But then a calmness overcame him. See what we see. Try to get the crew out of the cage, then get the guns, then get Katy. Riley said they wouldn’t hurt Katy.
He jumped over the counter and stepped into the dark tunnel heading for the light at the end. With every step Jolo became a little more wired and tense. Or was it just fear, he wondered? Either way, it was foolish to enter like a mouse into a snake’s hole. He went slow and quiet, listening for anyone coming from behind to block his retreat.
He made it to the torch with no incident and then had a decision: right or left. He went left because right might take him closer to the bookstore and the kids’ hideaway. The path used to be some kind of man made hallway. There were pipes running along the ceiling, long sections with missing sections here and there. Soon the piping ended and the hall turned into another dug out hole and with the dirt there came the bad smell again like before when the butcher was leading them to Hazuki. He shook his head. He’d been a fool to think the man would have taken them to the ship. Now I’m being a fool again, he thought.
He heard a sharp cry and stopped dead in his tracks and squatted down in the darkness. There was a hint of light coming from the single torch behind him at the turn and one further down, but he couldn’t see more than ten meters or so down the way.
Another sharp cry, and then a scream, followed by men’s voices. Jolo’s heart was pounding and he took a deep breath, wiped the sweat from his trigger hand and gripped the wooden handle of the Colt.
And then he heard a high pitched voice. “Baaarth!” It was Koba.
Jolo jumped up and started running for the sounds. He made it to the second torch and turned right and suddenly he was standing next to a railing on the upper level staring down into a large room, as big as one of the freighter holds. The cage was on a lower level, just like Korley said. A gunboat could fit down there easily. In the dim light he could just make out a smooth floor below, colored walls with a giant ball hanging down. On the far wall there was a sign that said The Cage, in script. It was an old bar with a dance floor.
The scream came again from the floor near one of the walls. And there along the wall were a series of cells. Hazuki’s men were dragging a man out of a cell.
“Right on time!” came a voice from his right. Across the room on the second level, there was the man in the white jacket: Hazuki. He waved.
Jolo’s heart was filled with anger, yet with it came a calmness and clarity. All the worrying and fretting from before was a waste of time. In an instant Jolo calculated the fastest way to get a shot. Instead of running around the second level along the railing, he jumped straight down onto the bottom level then jumped again straight up to Hazuki. He took out one of his men holding an old-style kinetic rifle on the ground, then another coming to support Hazuki on the second, all before anyone had a chance to react.
The speed of Jolo’s attack caught Hazuki off guard. Jolo made it back up and over the railing on Hazuki’s side of the room and was about to take the man out but then an unexpected thing happened.
Hazuki jumped free of the rail, flew twenty meters out over the big floor and grabbed the thick cable holding the mirror ball.
How could this be? thought Jolo. There was only one explanation: Hazuki was a synth.
By this time Hazuki had swung around, gun in his free hand coming to bear on Jolo. But Hazuki was too late. Jolo fired and caught Hazuki in the chest. He held on to the cable, but his gun fell to the floor.
“Jolo!” came a high-pitched voice. Koba.
Jolo jumped down to the row of cells that looked to be part of a small intra-stellar hauler’s cargo holds. Koba was in one of the cells, iron bars and old piping instead of an energy field keeping them all inside. Koba yelled again and pointed to his left. Several men were wrestling with a large man with a mechanical arm and getting the worst of it.
There were five men surrounding Barth. Jolo took two out but the others were too close for even Jolo to risk a shot. Barth’s face was covered
in blood. He was bare chested and there were cut marks above his mech arm like they’d tried to take it off. Barth had one man’s neck in his tri-grip mech hand. And Jolo could hear a gurgling noise followed by a pop as the man’s neck snapped. Jolo bowled into one of the men, knocking him into the wall and he fell to the ground. Jolo turned on the last man but he had the gun pointed at Barth. Jolo shot him in the head before the man knew what happened. Barth grabbed the man Jolo shot and pushed him into the corner. He disappeared into a large hole.
The man guarding the cell took a shot at Jolo and missed. Barth backhanded him with his mech arm and the man crashed into the cell bars and Jolo took his weapon. For moment it was quiet. Hazuki was still clinging to the giant mirror ball high up on the ceiling, his energy blaster on the dance floor underneath. Jolo heard a deep rumbling sound coming from underground, but Hazuki’s men were either dead or had run off.
Barth fell onto the ground, his bare chest and back were covered in blood and he took short shallow breaths. Koba was in a panic trying to open the padlock with a tiny piece of metal.
“It’s an ancient mechanical tumbler lock. I can get it open if I had more time.” He stuck the thin piece of metal into the hole and jiggled it around, his arms and face dirty and sweaty.
Just then the ground shook and the rumbling got louder and louder.
“It’s the Queen, coming to feed,” said Koba, his eyes red, wet and fearful. Jolo stepped back to take a shot at the lock with the Colt, but he lost his feet. Suddenly light filled the room and loud music bounced off the walls of The Cage.
“…it’s fun to stay at the Y. M. C. A. Y - M - C - A ayy…”
The mirror ball started to spin and little squares of light raced around the dirty walls of the old night club. Jolo turned to face his attacker but there was no one. And then a funny thing happened: his body got light and then he started to float upwards. Koba and Hurley floated up as well inside the cell. Chairs, tables, old glass bottles with cursive writing on the side, bits of rusted pipe, Barth, who’d passed out, all went up. Dirt and dust filled the air, the lights so bright that Jolo couldn’t see. Even the mirror ball itself rose, everything suspended in the air as if the gravity had somehow been sucked out of the room.
Jolo couldn’t get a hold of anything to steady himself. He was in a spin and couldn’t stop it. Then he saw Hazuki’s blaster floating in the mess above the floor. The loud music kept on going and Jolo couldn’t hear anything else.
Young man, are you listening to me? I said, young man, what do you want to be?
“Artimus, you sodding idiot! I told you to unplug the electronics!” Hazuki yelled from above Jolo. Jolo spun around again but couldn’t get a shot off because the mirror ball was in the way. He fired twice anyway and glass shattered, floating into a big wooden desk.
Firing the Colt sent Jolo into a backwards spin and he tried to grab the railing on the second floor but it was just out of reach. He waited until he spun around towards the mirror ball again and took another two shots which pushed him even closer.
His fingers just touched the edge of the railing.
No man does it all by himself. I said, young man, put your pride—
And just like that the music stopped and the lights went out. And the gravity kicked in again full force. Jolo’s body got heavy and he dropped like a rock. He tried to get his feet under him but ended up crashing down on his back, the impact knocking the Colt from his hands. He glanced up and saw a flash of white coat and then his field of vision was blocked by a light brown, wooden desk. It caught him in the head at an angle, the bulk of it crashing down on his chest.
Jolo cried out in pain and then his vision went black.
George, Part 2
George followed the man until the darkness swallowed up the big Argossy behind them. “Stop,” he said to the skinny man.
The man came to a dead stop, reached into his pocket and nibbled on some of the black stuff.
“I want to avoid any more men with guns,” said George.
“Cain’t do that.”
“Maybe I’ll just shoot you right here then.”
The man changed his tune a bit. “Well, maybe we could go up top. Mr. Hazuki don’t go up much unless a ship come.”
George considered this for a moment. Down here he was at the mercy of a skinny man with missing teeth that smelled like urine. At least up on the ice he could see a good ways around and could spot any potential threats.
“We go up top. Then what?”
“Then we drop down near the cage. There’s where yo people gonna be if they ain’t been et yet.”
“Exactly who’s going to eat them?”
“Queen.”
“Can’t wait to meet her.”
An hour later they were up top again and they trudged over the ice with nothing around them as far as they could see. This was safer, George thought, but his chances of finding the crew still largely depended on the man with a wet spot on his pants. If he had the capacity for human emotion, he should be feeling a bit of worry right about now, he thought. They walked for about thirty minutes and the man suddenly stopped, and there, ten meters or so off, was a small hole with a stairway leading down into the ice.
He said nothing, just started down.
“Wait,” said George. “What’s on the other end?”
“Side entrance to the cave.”
“If you call out to anyone I’ll kill you.” The man eyed the blaster George carried, and started down. Lying can be more effective than killing, thought George.
They dropped down into a tight tunnel, and the man pointed to a torch on one end. “That’s the entrance to the cave.”
George’s sensors picked up a foul odor again, but it intrigued him. It was microbial, chemicals released when organic matter decomposes plant—or animal—matter. The fact there were microbes at work was a good sign, at least some organic activity was present, but he hoped they were not working on his friends.
They were thirty meters or so from the torch and out of nowhere there was a loud noise and flashing lights at the end of the tunnel, and suddenly George found himself floating up to the top of the narrow pathway, his back to the dirt ceiling. There was yelling from the end near the torch light and he heard the distinct report of an old kinetic hand gun: the Colt.
George was pinned to the ceiling, but found he could crawl along on his back upside down and make slow progress towards the light and sound and gunfire. Jolo was there. The skinny man was laying upside down on the ceiling with his eyes closed, like he was taking a nap, still chewing of bits of the black stuff from a pouch in his pocket.
Four more shots were fired and George heard Jolo’s voice, maybe Koba’s, too. He struggled to make it to the entrance. Several feet before the end of the tunnel he fell back down to the floor and the lights and music stopped. There was a big crashing noise as everything in the cage hit the ground. Dust kicked up and filled the dimly lit room as George stepped inside. He was standing on the second level staring down onto some kind of old world pub or dance hall. On the far wall was a neon sign, out of power but still glowing: The Cage.
He heard a voice yell out. It sounded like Jolo, but there on the dance floor was the man in the white coat: Hazuki. He was staring down at something. He kicked at it and laughed. And then George heard a moan and saw Jolo’s boot sticking out from behind a big piece of furniture. He was behind a large, broken desk, drawers sticking out. Plastic chairs, shattered glass and other debris lay scattered around.
George quietly set the energy blaster to stun, that way he could go for a high percentage body shot with no risk of killing the man. Ironic, he thought, the very safety protocols designed to protect humans would hamper his efforts to save Jolo.
He calculated his options. A shot at this distance: 52.4% success rate. Not good enough, he thought. He could try to use the energy rifle which had better accuracy but that would only bring him into the 67.2% success rate range. Not good enough. Hazuki did not yet have a weapon
in his hand so George had a moment, but needed to act fast.
“Mr. Hazuki! Up here!” the skinny man yelled from behind him.
Well, that decides it, thought George. He sprinted forward, two quick steps, then he jumped, pushing off the railing with his right foot. He flew high into the air, and once within range he fired the energy blaster, hitting Hazuki square in the chest. The man fell next to Jolo and George landed on the far edge of the floor. He glanced up at the railing and there was the skinny man standing there like a target. One shot on stun and he went down. George ran to Jolo, who was out cold.
“George!” Koba yelled from inside a makeshift cell. Jolo was breathing, but unconscious and bleeding from a cut on his forehead. George carefully pulled Jolo to the edge of the dance floor closest to the cells, then ran to Koba and Hurley.
“Get us out of here!” screamed Koba.
“Stand back.” George pulled out the energy rifle and melted the old lock off. The bars were red hot so Koba kicked them and the door flew open. He and Hurley rushed out.
“Where’s Barth?” said George.
“He was hurt bad,” said Hurley.
They found him still near the hole, barely breathing. It took all three of them to pull the big man closer to Jolo and the cells where the dim light was a little better. The stench coming from the hole in the ground was so bad Koba and Hurley couldn’t breath the air.
There were several of Hazuki’s men dead on the floor. Jolo was here, indeed, thought George. He took out his knife and cut off part of one man’s shirt.
“What are you doing?” said Koba. “Let’s go.”
“Stop the bleeding, then go.”
George wrapped the cloth tightly around Jolo’s head wound, then went to check Barth. “More cloth. Try to get clean strips if you can,” said George, handing the knife to Koba.
“Better let me do it. He’s a little out o’ sorts,” said Hurley.
The Jolo Vargas Space Opera Series Box Set Page 51
