Free Radicals

by S E Zbasnik

  “You’re in the wrong place, scarper.”

  The old racial epithet surprised Monde. It’d fallen mostly out of favor by the time the war began for far more colorful ones. “I see,” was all the orc said as the human strode forward with his blade. Second eyelids slid into place instinctively as Monde easily dodged the poorly done thrust. Thicker orc hands wrapped around the wrist and he yanked the man forward, jamming his claws into the human’s fingers around the knife. Screaming as if he’d wet himself, the human tried to flail against his adversary, but the orc was immoveable.

  There’d been something about a vulnerable spot in the pelvic region for humans, but orcs knew two mantras by heart, “When in doubt, go for the eyes.” and “It was like that when I got here.” Slicing his claws deep into the man’s ocular cavities, he felt the wrist fall limp, the knife scattering to the ground. With his other hand free, Monde grabbed hold of the human’s shoulder. Applying pressure in opposite directions, he shattered the vertebrae in the neck. The body offered no resistance as the scarper picked up its blade and inspected it.

  Monde tucked it into the narrow gap in his tight waistband, he’d need his hands free soon, and turned towards the other humans trying to comprehend what just happened. As the lights rose above their heads, he waved his fingers in a wave and shouted, “Now!”

  Not much happened and Monde sputtered, his legs in a squat. The humans — at first startled by his exclamation — rebounded, lifting their weapons and taking aim. “Please?” the orc asked, fairly certain even he could not survive that bullet barrage.

  A belt snapped below his feet, and as he squatted lower down onto his knees, the bottom balloon exploded shooting him into the air. They’d have practiced this a few times if Ferra wasn’t afraid it’d only work once, but the math was sound. She assured him the math was sound. Repeatedly.

  Darkened levels shot past as the orc ricocheted through the shaft. He tried to count but he zipped up so rapidly the numbers fell away. His brain could only shout that it had been quite a few, then quite a lot, then too many.

  Deck 14, Ferra said that was the highest he could drop from and survive. He’d probably fly a few above it due to the force, so counting was very, very important. A count he was trying to recreate in a brain even as other numbers zipped past. He felt his body slowing while it reached the crescendo. As the artificial gravity reclaimed its greedy hold, he made a professional choice and decided to count to four goblin carcasses before reaching for the platform edge.

  One goblin carcass, two goblin carcasses, ah! Instinctively, his hands grabbed for the edge of one of the docking stations. It began to fall with him but stuck fast at the edge of its allowable floating space. The weight of a full adult orc shattered through his fingers and shoulders, the biceps screamed, and his upper back threatened to separate entirely. The toes didn’t notice and were rather enjoying the reprieve as his feet kicked in the air.

  A voice called from dangerously far below, echoing through the back shaft, “How many?”

  “Four!” Monde shouted through his toes.

  “Wait for my signal!” Ferra answered back as she peered over her perch, her fingers poised around the button. She couldn’t see the other humans, only the glistening shoes on the dead one. Thankfully, Monde remembered to dump most of the body outside the shaft or they’d have a flopping dead body to compensate for.

  The jerry rigged device in her hand beeped as a red light turned green. Reset and ready for another go. Just have to wait. Slow, deep breaths. The timing had to be perfect. Seeds, what the hell takes humans so long to come to a decision?

  As if answering the mental cry, the barrel of some kind of gun poked into the elevator. An arm followed, then a head. It looked up at the shaft, only darkness visible. And then it proved its species idiocy by firing directly upward. The bullets reached their apex, missing Monde — probably — and fell back down. Dodging from his own weapons fire, the human shouted back to its others, “Bring a light!”

  A gaggle of men scattered into the elevator, well one or two could have been female. It was hard to tell with humans. They seemed to consider the default male and who was the woman about to kill them all to argue? She tried to count the heads but they were all in the same black armor uniform and every time she thought she got an accurate assessment, they scattered again like startled henkin birds. It was like trying to census children after an all day feast of berry cream, or track down her husband.

  “Ferra?” Monde’s voice drifted down from where he dangled helpless. She didn’t stress all of the ways this plan of hers could go horribly wrong and kill them both. It didn’t seem prudent to worry him.

  She didn’t respond. The humans were yanking in a spotlight, aiming it up the elevator. Come on, stand still for one second. Just before the beam of light burst from the ground floor, four little heads gazed up, hoping to spot their prey. Got you!

  Ferra jammed her finger on the button and peered over the edge. She could hear one of the human’s shouting, his voice staccato as if he were gesturing wildly at something. A trio of guns aimed upwards, this time with a purpose. The lead human let “fi-“ slip from his lips when the ground rose around him. Like the loving embrace of a smothering marshmallow, the first bubble cuddled around the four humans, smashing them together. The elevator could barely hold two people, it was pushing on the lungs, digging into intimate places of the four.

  Sounds of shots punctuated the air, but there was nothing getting through that foam bubble. Probably nothing. With her finger poised over the second button she called up to Monde, “Do it now!”

  He didn’t answer her. She was about to crank her head out to yell at him when two hundred and fifty pounds of Orc blew past her face, the wind and light smell of cologne buffeting back her hair. She jammed on the red button. As the terminal velocity of Monde met with foam bubble, the bottom cushion crushed into four humans. The sound wasn’t as sickening as she’d expected. With all the padding, it sounded like a kid stomping on beetles. A lot of juicy beetles.

  Ferra shouted for the Orc to slide out of the way. The bubble depressed with his sliding weight, then popped back to full size. Saying goodbye to her hacking module, she swung her legs off the side and jumped down, trying to land on her back. Her knees sunk into the bubble, her much smaller size barely deflating it but she could have sworn she felt something hard graze her hand as she pushed herself out of the elevator.

  As she emerged into the docking bay she patted at her knees. “That went better than I calculat…shit!” She lifted her hands as the one unharmed fifth guard pointed his weapon into the skull of Monde.

  “Hands up!” he shouted despite Ferra’s already in that general direction.

  “I thought you said four,” she hissed, anger more palpable than fear. “Do doctors not know math?”

  “One liver or two, it matters little in the end,” Monde said as the human twisted its anonymous helmet from the orc to the elf.

  “Who are you?!” the human shouted. Shouting seemed all it was able to do.

  “Your pixie godmother?” Ferra tried, getting the gun turned on her. This would have been the time for the orc to maybe throw an elbow to the guard’s head region, bull rush him across the room and stab him in the heart, but Monde had the tactical training of a rutabaga. For once, she wished they had a female orc on board.

  As the human returned his gun to what he perceived to be the larger threat, a mist wafted from behind Ferra.

  “What are you doing?!” the human once again shouted, the reflective helmet bouncing between his two captives.

  She tried to think if anything could catch the foam bubble on fire. Her field wasn’t in material mechanics so, maybe. Then a familiar sheen emanated through the fog. It glittered in the light as a spark of life connected every floating gas particle.

  “I’m sorry,” Ferra said, waving her hands behind her rear end to try and hurry the mist along, “I had tal for dinner. It has a wicked kick.”

  Monde turne
d up his flat nose as if he could smell something that didn’t exist and raised his hands higher. Her lie began to dawn on the human. He was about to reach the shoot first, ask questions later part, but it was too late. The mist clumped together, shifting to fog, then smoke as it sucked in through the man’s venting ports. He swallowed a deep breath in fear. That was all it took; the fog washing down his trachea, into his lungs and sealing the airways.

  The human fell back, trying to scream, but no air meant no noise. This also would have been a good time for Monde to wrest the gun for him, smash him to the floor, or to have done anything but stand there gawping. As the smothered human flailed his limbs, Ferra yanked at the back of the doctor’s shirt, pulling him into a crouch when the first round of bullets fired from the gun. Another futile round shattered the wall, but it was useless. How do you shoot air?

  Finally, he staggered to one knee, then another. The gun scattered from his hands, another bullet striking the beleaguered vending machine who simply wanted to bring joy and cake to the world. Clutching at a throat that would never expand he rolled his helmeted head back and collapsed to the floor.

  The mist began to filter out of the dead body, seeping from the pores. It collected into what could have almost been a hominid form before shimmering once and then disappearing back up the elevator shaft. Finally, the doctor picked up the gun as if it were some alien utensil for eating fire slugs and asked, “What in the galaxy was that?”

  Ferra watched the last of the mist vanish as she said, “I believe our djinn just provided backup.”

  “He can do that?”

  “Evidently.” Ferra added that to something she’d have to ask Variel about. No one knew much of anything about Gene beyond his name and his tendency to hover over the captain as if she were his mother. Shit, they didn’t even know if his real name was Gene or if he was even a he. Variel seemed to make most of it up as she went along.

  “Pick up whatever weapons and ammo you can find,” Ferra said gesturing towards the dead man’s pockets.

  Monde poked at it with his foot, “You wish me to go through his things?”

  “If it makes you feel any better, he’d have probably done the same if you were dead.”

  A thin line crossed the orc’s lips, “This seems…”

  “Do not say dishonorable.”

  “I was going to use macabre, but I can see the necessity.”

  As Monde rifled through the meager clips, Ferra yanked out the wyrm pinch location and tried to synch it up with the map she’d sweet talked WEST into giving her. Sweet talked, threatened, they were practically the same. “We have four decks to climb down and another three kilometers to the east,” she looked up from her device and sighed. “We don’t need the damn cupcakes.”

  The orc wiped at the frosting around his mouth and said, “What if we become peckish on our journey?”

  “Okay, but just two,” Ferra said then stopped, “actually make that four.” She damn well better find Orn by the end of this.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Your movements are erratic,” Taliesin’s voice tried to whisper through the halls.

  “Eh?” his companion’s voice barreled out of the obscuring helmet in the decibel range of an air bike.

  He stopped his walk beside her and gestured to the bandied way she shook her legs. Variel tried to follow what he was getting at and then adjusted her inseam, yanking down on the midsection with the oversized gloves. “Damn thing keeps crawling up my ass. Who the hell designs armor with a butt crack?”

  She tried to shift again, knocking off the safety cap on the gas lines she’d severed before suiting up. The elf sighed and replaced them again, keeping up the illusion she was still hooked into a personal tank instead of breathing the filthy non-corporeal air.

  “Perhaps it would have been more prudent if I wore it,” Taliesin said, wiping sweat off his forehead. It had been a long climb through the decks. He was surprised at how well Variel maintained, but humans noticed the heat about as much as dwarves.

  “Ha, this stuff would rotate around your skinny ass,” she said.

  “I am not as thin as you proclaim.”

  He wished he could see her face through the mask, but he could feel the slow lifting of the eyes, the slight flattening of one lip, and the hand upon the hip that said, “Uh huh.”

  The elf swallowed down a response, it didn’t much matter what he said. He seemed far more concerned with their blatant species differences than she did. “Are we getting near?”

  Variel pushed hard upon her gloved hand with her other. As the screen tried to adjust through armor, she dug the second to last of the stolen chips out of her pocket and tossed it to the ground. The macabre breadcrumb trail should keep the terrorists looking for quite awhile, assuming they cared about their fallen companions.

  “Looks like one more deck down. Where are we?” she glanced across the hallway, her eyes drawn by a rotating advertisement suggesting they try something called “Amora’s Salts.” By the lack of clothing upon Amora, Taliesin was left wondering what these salts were for precisely.

  Every deck they slowly crossed, watching for Party-23, appeared nearly identical. It was a miracle the inhabitants of the station did not become hopelessly lost as the store for kitchen hardware on deck five mimicked the layout of another hawking eyescans. He suffered a continuous feeling of deja vu with each passing step, rendered worse as he did pass some of them earlier with Orn, but failed to see them. A fact he suspected the captain would bring up soon enough.

  “Any idea if there’s a platform past the anchor pillars?” Variel asked, gesturing to one of the thick structural supports blinding them to the turn. It took over the area that had a “Stab’n’Grab” two decks above.

  “I am uncertain,” the elf said, his hands slipping behind his back as he walked forward.

  He felt the eyes below the helmet raise in confusion, “Didn’t you come this way with Orn?”

  “I was not admiring the scenery at the time.”

  “Oh?” she paused as his back grew even straighter, preparing for an onslaught of accusations. “Oh. Right. Well, if not, we double back.”

  “After the last dodge we would need to triple back,” Taliesin responded, still not turning towards the faceless void of the uniform. He shouldn’t feel the shame swirling around his toes, but it was there. It would always be there.

  But Variel chuckled, the laugh sounding more demonic filtered through the helmet, “He never saw you coming.”

  “I would be a very poor assassin if he did.”

  She seemed to be weighing her words. It concerned him when she did that, holding back for her sake or his? He was never entirely certain and she’d usually change the subject before he could inquire deeper.

  As he passed around the blind spot of the anchor, his foot faltered, and he flattened against the wall. Variel followed suit, but still tried to see around him. “What? What is it? Bad?”

  “Would the answer ‘very very bad’ count?”

  “Depends on your measure of very,” she said.

  “About ten armed mercs is the equivalent of one very.”

  “Shit!”

  “That is also acceptable,” Taliesin said as he peered one eye around the wall. He couldn’t see the tableau properly, half his vision obscured by flat white wall, but ten humans paced around the outer perimeter of a stage area propped five stairs above them. Another three were clustered around a makeshift workstation, attaching wires and shiny bits into the panel on the wall. Two more held their tools and looked as bored as one could without a face.

  It was the last few that concerned him the most. “There is another problem,” he whispered to his companion.

  “Of course there bloody is.”

  “They have hostages,” Taliesin said and Variel stepped around him, taking in the sight for herself.

  Thirty, perhaps forty, of the denizens of Whisper were corralled inside the closest thing organics had to a non-corporeal jail. It was di
fficult to count the translucent ones stretched thin like the skin of an onion, but a few goblins paced in between the frozen NCs as did a centaur, a pair of sirens, and one very peeved dwarf. The dwarf’s finger pointed at the human in the flashiest of armor and her mouth flapped in rage, but no sound filtered through.

  “Why are they taking hostages?” Variel asked the wind. “They haven’t made demands of anyone.”

  Taliesin didn’t answer, his hand resting upon her shoulder as he turned to take in more of the scene. “There are another two circling the perimeter,” he gestured to the outer guards orbiting the scene.

  But Variel wasn’t listening to him, she was still trapped at the question of the hostages, trying to inject sense into the senseless. “What’s the point? They make you vulnerable. If you’re not going to use them, why take people alive?”

  “That is a morbid decision.”

  His hand rose with her shoulder shrug, “Perhaps, but it doesn’t make it any less true.”

  Not for the first time Taliesin wondered what kind of training went into the knight class for the humans. While her current skills seemed more in line with the average class of mercenaries, every once in awhile she seemed prepared to combat an alien invasion or start one herself. “We could slide on past,” the elf pointed out. “I remember there is a platform past the antique ray gun store.”

  The nod took awhile to start from her, as if she really didn’t want to agree but the odds were stacked so far against them to go contrary would be suicide. While she began to slide out of the cover, two of the computer mages stepped away from their station. A spark lit on the panel as if it didn’t wish to comply but had no choice, and a door on the wall opened. It was rimmed in warning red and whined at the intrusion, but the man in the shiniest armor didn’t care as he strode towards it. He placed one hand upon the wall and stuck his head inside. Yanking it back out, he gestured to the third mage, who picked up a canister almost his height and half carried/half rolled it over.