Free Radicals

by S E Zbasnik

  Ferra switched off her torch and leaned back as a set of footsteps broke above her head, then another. The rattling of a cart on the move approached, weighed down from something that shouldn’t exist. As it approached the sabotaged bulkhead the guards seemed to pause, sensing something was off. This was exactly the wrong thing to do and, when the man in charge of it all pushed his cart forward quickly to overcome a bend in the floor, gravity finally got off her lazy bum and finished the job.

  The crash wasn’t as spectacular as Ferra hoped, but the wheel of the cart wedged into the grating and the grey corner of a flat box began to slide down the incline. A pair of hands reached to stop it, but the engineer was faster, her torch slicing quickly through the cart until it crumpled and deposited Sepsis in her lap. It glowed a disturbing green. Computers shouldn’t glow green. Blue, maybe red when it’s being dramatic, but green? That was never a good color.

  Ferra tossed the box at Monde as the agitated voices of a bunch of people who just done fucked up their big plans grew in agitation above her head. Closing off her torch, she placed one of the borrowed tiny round things from Variel’s arsenal on the cart and pushed it. An encouraging hum began as a ring of red lights seemed to countdown in shortening cycles. She had no idea what that meant but it couldn’t be good. “Run!”

  “How?” Monde pleaded as his head banged into the ceiling.

  “Then crawl, quickly,” she shouted, shoving her hands into his shoulders, tipping him onto his back. The doc rolled and, with one hand pushing the computer, crawled as rapdily as he could.

  “Go faster!” Ferra shouted.

  “Why? They don’t appear to be attacking us.” In fact, the guards seemed to mostly be bickering amongst themselves about who screwed the kobold.

  “I left one of Variel’s toys behind,” Ferra said.

  “Oh, shit,” Monde said, and with speed reserved for fleeing the talons of death, he scooted on shredded knees through the tunnels, Ferra after him. “How long do we have?”

  “I didn’t read the fucking manual!”

  “Engineers,” the orc muttered.

  “You wanna say that to my face?”

  “Assuming we survive, yes, I believe I will,” Monde shrieked. He wasn’t used to this uncertain death at every corner. Normally, he knew exactly why death was clawing upon his window. “And when this is over, it is you I shall bill for my AAAAHH….”

  “Your Aaaaah?” Was all Ferra could ask before she too found the more dramatic drop off. Her fingers scrambled for a handhold, but they only sliced up and didn’t slow her descent. As her body landed upon something partially squishy, Monde groaned and tried to shove her off.

  “Sepsis?” she asked, rising upon her elbows to look him in the eye. He knocked his finger against a box that took the fall the same as she did, landing upon the orc’s chest. “Excellent.”

  “Glad to see you care, oof,” he said as she rolled off him. Her fingers were already cracking the unsealed case.

  “Not even a password? Who designed this thing? Blundey?” she muttered as she poked at a few buttons, bathed in the haunting green.

  “Who is this Blundey?” Monde asked, trying to wiggle away from the elf he’d become dangerously intimate with lately.

  “Blundey? You know, ‘Don’t pull a Blundey! Back up your data!’”

  “Is that supposed to be a coherent sentence?”

  Her massive eyes raised to the ceiling as she shook her head, “You orcs miss out on all the good stuff.”

  Monde tried to massage his neck and, rather than wondering where they were or how they were getting out, he asked, “Can you shut it down.”

  “Eventually. Maybe? I’d rather do it without ripping this entire station into a Wyrm pinch if it’s all the same to you,” Ferra said.

  Monde raised his hands at her tone and lapsed into silence. Only the sound of her pecking away at keys broke the air, as well as the mumble of “And they didn’t even leave a cursor director? Seriously. I wouldn’t wipe my duct rat’s ass with this.”

  As the lack of loud booms continued to fail to fill the void, Monde wondered aloud, “When do you think the bomb will go off?”

  Ferra paused from her cursing at the font choice and looked up, “Huh, must have been a dud.”

  Because there are certain ironies required of a universe, as the words left her mouth, the incendiary device cracked and the entire group of guards were swallowed in hell fire.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Orn didn’t look at the black object taking up the space behind the counter. Their goblin friend shuddered as Brena dragged it back herself, swallowing a grunt from the exertion while Orn kept the gun pointed where a living man had been. He was gone now.

  Darya wheezed, her breath ragged and catching in an exhausted throat. Most of her faux-adult face had cracked and melted away when a fever burst under her skin. She looked like death left a little too close to the lava vents. “Hey,” Orn said, rising from his funk. The black dot caught the edge of his eye but he didn’t look at it. “You in there?”

  The girl wheezed again and rolled her eyes, “No, I left an hour ago.”

  “Didn’t your family teach you how to properly respect adults?” Orn huffed.

  “If one gets here, I’ll be sure to respect her,” she muttered, the vitriol only a world weary teenager could manufacture coating every syllable.

  Brena leaned back off her knees, losing the line of sight she’d kept ever since they bunkered down behind the counter. The wounded girl took up most of the space, the few remaining satin display fabrics stretched below her chilled frame. Orn offered her his second sweater, which she turned her nose up at first. But as the empty veins deflated across her body, she gave in and draped it across her shoulders.

  “This is accomplishing nothing,” Snouty grumbled, a weird slime coating the top of his bulbous head. He didn’t wipe at it, barely even noticed it. Orn made certain to not go near it for fear it’d lash out at his face.

  “If we do not keep our voices low, they will hear us,” Brena whispered, pulling one leg, then another to her chin as she stretched. The elf took her position as sentry seriously.

  “What’s the point?” Darya asked, her first time questioning the elf she clung to.

  “I am sorry?” Brena asked, massaging her head. Lines cracked across the white pieces of her face.

  “Who cares if they kill us?”

  “I care quite a bit, thank you very much,” Orn interrupted the two as he shifted from his squatting position by her shoulder. There hadn’t been time to properly sweep all the glass away, “And you should too, being alive and all.”

  The bottom lip of the teenager lifted, almost enveloping the top as she pouted, “But I’m not.”

  Orn glanced around, his movements overtly dramatic as he said, “Did we get pulled into one of them alternate dimensions where the NCs are in charge and we’re all the dead ones? No?”

  “I don’t have any legs!” Darya shouted, putting to breath what rested upon her sweating brow for hours. “I’m better off dead than a part.”

  Brena grew quiet as she rose back to her knees, staring across the vast expanse. Even the goblin was silent as he polished one of the few rings he rescued from the shattered horde across his apron.

  Orn’s voice rose in a rare rage as he sputtered in her weeping face, “You know what, we’re all given a sliver of life. We ain’t promised ‘oh you’ll get riches, and love, and sexy ships.’ We ain’t even promised we’ll get to keep all the bits we started with, or that they’ll work proper, but you know what we do get? We get life. That little spark, and we fucking cling to it with our fingernails because it’s the last thing anyone can take from us.”

  He jabbed a finger in her ceiling rolled eyes as he cursed, “And bitching about how ‘woe is me, we should all keel over and die because I ain’t perfect anymore’ is a load of koboldshit. Life is worth it. So shut it, ‘cause right now you’re carrying on like a spoiled brat, as if it weren’t.”
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br />   Darya’s pouting lip trembled, in rage or fear it was hard to say. Probably both as her quivering voice demanded of him, “What gives you the right to speak to me like that?”

  Without pausing, Orn grabbed his right hand with his left and cranked the wrist 90 degrees. It snapped, getting a shocked panic in the girl’s eyes as he lifted his hand from his wrist. Holding it before her eyes, while the mechanoid fingers spasmed from the draining battery, he said, “Because I am a part.”

  No one ever personally knew a part, just heard stories of them. Or read inspirational quotes about how impressive it was that they didn’t all lay down in the tunnels and die. To come face to face with one who admitted they weren’t whole, who was sick and tired of pretending to be whole to make everyone else feel better, was even rarer.

  A hiss of static scratched across his left hand, and then the light of the PALM sprayed across the still terrified girl’s face. Still sneering at the girl who told him to lay down and die, Orn pressed on his PALM expecting it to whine about low battery or needing a software update. Not much point as it was as useful as a toothpick right now. Static responded again, then a voice called from within, “Orn? *indecipherable noise* are you…Orn?”

  “Oh shit!” Orn cursed as he jammed his hand back in place. The voice over the comm line continued to inquire if he was still there. “Out of all the times for me to crack it off,” he muttered to himself. The edge of his glove rolled up, keeping the connections from catching, but he batted it away and reattached his hand. Extending the fingers twice to restart the battery, he quickly poked at his comm line, doing the few things he knew to clean it up. This involved hitting control over and over. Ferra told him it’d work every time.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” the dwarf said as Brena stepped away from her perch.

  The voice paused and even the goblin leaned in to see what would happen. “By the shit, Orn. You nearly gave me a heart attack. Answer your damn PALM,” Ferra’s gorgeous voice shouted at him through his hand.

  “Glad to see you care,” he said, a grin crossing his lips and dragging off his chest a weight he didn’t know he had. He should have known, if anyone could break this comm silence it’d be his wife.

  “How…are you hurt?” she asked, the voice losing the crackle with every word. Whatever magic she was weaving was working.

  “I’m fine. Brena’s fine, too.” He tried to cover the snort of ‘Who give’s a shit?’ from his wife with his hand and then continued, “but we need medical assistance, quickly.”

  “Medical…what the shit do you think ‘fine’ means?” His wife sounded like she was about to strangle him for daring to get a booboo.

  “Not me, there’s someone else here caught in the blast. Lost her…blood, lost a lot of blood.”

  “Blast? What in the hell is going on?”

  Orn glanced to Brena and she turned behind her to look, uncertain what he wanted out of her. “Didn’t the Captain give you the update?”

  “I haven’t contacted her yet,” Ferra said, an awkward silence falling on both ends.

  One Orn wasn’t about to let pass, “Awe…”

  “Stuff it before I do,” Ferra grumbled, all business. “Okay, let’s see if I can crack into their…oh, come on guys. It’s not even password protected. Security curtains should be dropping all across the blockaded decks. Can’t tell if anyone outside is listening, so…” Her voice fell silent as she worked. She booted up the various speakers hidden throughout the shopping center to keep species calm with the kind of music that would drive anything sentient to mass murder if it was played above a barely audible volume.

  “Hello…citizens,” Ferra’s official voice called through the speakers, slightly modulated so she sounded more like a computer. An angry computer, “Assistance is on the way. Your communication devices should work properly. Please dial…oh shit, what is it here? How the hell should I…? Uh 422 to speak with someone to help you in your time of helplessness.”

  As the speakers cut out, Brena asked aloud, “How much resistance is left?”

  “The screen isn’t bigger than my face on this thing, so slow your plasma,” she said and a flurry of typing sounds punctuated her occasional curse at the stupidity of whoever’s system she liberated.

  Orn beamed, “Typing and talking on the PALM. My wife’s a miracle.”

  “I’m not on my hand,” Ferra muttered in response, “Monde’s here.”

  “Hello?” the orc’s voice said.

  “Doc? How ya doing?”

  “After the bullets ceased firing at us, I am well.”

  Orn laughed, “Sounds like our honeymoon.”

  “He’s exaggerating,” Ferra explained. “They weren’t firing at us, exactly.”

  “I am certain your marital exploits are the stuff of legend, but we need to keep our voices down!” the goblin grumbled, throwing his polishing rag to the ground where it floated onto the glass.

  “Who the shit was that?” Ferra asked.

  “Ol’ Snouty. We been crashing at his place ’til this blows over,” Orn said, and slapped the goblin on the back. His mood was so improved it was almost infectious.

  “He is correct,” Brena whispered, trying to refer to ol’ snouty and not the jubilant dwarf. “Is there any information on the happenstance of the captain or my brother?”

  “Is she with…of course she’s with him,” Ferra said as she punched in a few more keys and shouted at a cursor that failed to live up to her specifications. “Okay, searching through the few security cameras hooked to this line… I’ve got a lot of broken glass, a few empty hallways, and WOAH! Troll butt.”

  Brena sucked in air loudly through her nose, the closest she came to a ‘get on with it!’ but Orn patted her hand in a friendly gesture. He would be sorely put out if the Captain didn’t survive. For starters, he’d be out of a job, and one of his closer friends would be dead. He didn’t have a damn thing to wear to a funeral.

  “Don’t get your pantaloons in a knot, a lot of cameras seem to be damaged. I can’t make any sense of the feed. Where did you guys say you were?” Ferra’s voice asked to the ether.

  Suddenly, an armored hand snaked across the counter and grabbed onto the first warm body it could. In this case, it belonged to Brena. As it hooked around her shoulder, she tried to twist around to pluck the wrist off, but it yanked her back. Her shoulder smashed into glass, blood smeared over the embedded glass as the hand slid her across the desk.

  Orn rose, fumbling for the gun on his side, when he froze, the barrel pointed impotently at four terrorists glaring him down. One threw Brena’s body to the ground, and her fingers slipped from his wrist leaving behind welts in the armor where she gripped him.

  A voice like a synthesizer rubbed across a lightbulb popped from the middle man’s helmet, “Put it down, dwarf, or I kill her right now.” He didn’t carry a gun. His fingers clutched a knife long enough to be something you’d carry through a jungle planet while whining about mansquitos. Grabbing Brena by her frilly hair, he pulled her light form up and held the blade to her throat.

  “Okay,” Orn said, lifting up his one good hand, “you really don’t want to do what you’re thinking of doing.”

  “Pleading for her life? How noble.”

  “Pleading for yours, actually. I know her brother,” Orn said. “Or does that make me even more noble?” As he laid the gun against the glass floor, his eyes watching the mad man, he held one finger up to his lips hoping Darya saw. If they were lucky, the men wouldn’t notice. Or, they’d be even more lucky if the assholes suddenly all came down with food poisoning and had to rush off to the lavatories. Or realized that terrorism wasn’t their calling in life and dashed off to form a barbershop quartet. Each scenario was about as likely as Orn taking down four armed guys with only a legless teenager and a goblin wetting his forehead for backup.

  “Get up, dwarf,” the leader guy commanded and Orn followed, his hands raised. “Commander,” he shouted into his hand, “We have discovered an el
f and a dwarf.” Then he rose onto his tiptoes to find the body splayed across the back of the counter, “And they appear to have killed one of our own. Permission to execute?” Nothing answered back. “Commander? Come in.”

  “Maybe she had to pee,” Orn said, getting another set of laser scopes on his chest. “Oh come on, I’m like ten feet away. Who needs a guidance laser?”

  “Do not inflame them,” Brena gurgled from below the blade nipping into her neck. Elf necks were not as fragile as humans, but she could still bleed to death the same as Orn, or Dabore, or Darya.

  “You heard it, dwarf. Don’t inflame me,” the lead guy snarled even as his communication remained silent.

  “Well, seems your boss has done a runner. Ain’t ya heard? The corps is on its way, so unless you want to spend your life in a teeny, tiny cell you might want to do the same,” Orn was notorious for failing to hear or understand sound advice.

  “Sir,” one of the other four approached his leader, “the announcement…”

  “You are correct,” the Commander nodded to his lieutenant, “We can explain what happened here later, or not at all.” He twisted Brena around so Orn could look her in the eyes as he drew back the knife. The dwarf glanced at the floor looking for something, anything. Maybe a fist full of glass could…

  A shot burst through the air ,and brains splattered over the back of the leader as the whisperer’s body collapsed to the floor. A new uniformed thug entered, this one’s gun trained upon the man holding Brena. “Let her go,” Variel’s voice was less demonic through her suit, but just as muffled.

  “Captain!” Orn shouted, getting the glare of one of the three remaining guards.

  The leader gripped Brena tighter, “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll blow your fucking head off,” she countered as another elf skidded through the broken glass. He eyed up the man clutching onto his sister and looked about to leap forward and snap the bastard’s neck, when the captain threw up her arm to stop him. “Four on three.”