Star Scrapper, page 28
“Why not you?” Ned asked, sounding bored by the change of subject.
“Because the two of us used the opportunity while the chaperones were distracted to sneak into the gift shop and snag a few things. Hank, as always, distracted the clerk and I pinched a few toys for us. We got so much use out of those toy soldiers, I can't even tell you.”
In a dull, mocking droll, Ned said, “Oh, please go on.”
“She stuck a bag of toy soldiers under her dress and snuck it all the way back to the orphanage and we played with them for years. That boy, Myles, stepped on one of them and broke his gun; Lara broke his nose.”
She put her feet up on the console. “I did.”
“Also,” I said, turning to her. “It was great that you picked up on exactly what I was doing with Thorpe.”
“I knew that move the second I saw it,” she said excitedly. “It was like we picked up exactly where we had left off. I mean, obviously you look quite a bit older and... I don't think dumpy is the right word but...”
I cut in. “It’s the Scrapper outfit!”
She chuckled. “I know, I know.”
“I used the MediScanner on you when you were checking it out and determined that you're well within a healthy weight range for a man your age,” Ned added.
I ran my hands down my face, feeling my smooth chin for the first time since I was old enough to grow a beard. “I don't like either of you,” I said without any intonation.
“Nah, he's lying,” Lara said with a broad smile on her face.
“I know this,” Ned said as though he hadn't picked up on the sarcasm. “Arriving at Port Tortue.”
We strapped back in and prepared to wash out at the space station. When we did, something seemed different. The normal traffic that had surrounded the port was nowhere to be seen and bits of scrap and pieces of junk floated in the area like around the wreckage of a ship.
A knot formed in the pit of my stomach, and I only had one thought. “Get us in there, I have to check on Edgar.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Ned asked.
Lara added, “Whatever did this might be on the station.”
“It could be a trap,” Ned continued.
“It’s almost certainly a trap,” Lara added before a realization dawned on her. “My ship! Ned, take us in and we will have a look around.”
“Shall I start hacking the systems to discover what happened?” Ned asked as he took control of the Buzzard from me and began to guide us into port.
“Not yet,” I said. “We will have a look around and let you know what we find. I don’t want you to get caught intruding on a system and drawing Inquisition attention unless you absolutely have to.”
“Understood,” Ned said. “But I will begin poking around while keeping myself veiled just in case you change your mind.”
“Fine,” I said, staring out the window at all the debris.
A pirate ship spun slowly in place. When it turned into the lights from the Buzzard, we discovered that it was only half a ship, torn in two by missiles.
We pushed through toward a closed docking bay door. As we approached, the heavy metal began to separate, allowing us in.
“What the hell happened here?” Lara said, less as a question than an exclamation.
“Illegal industries run the risk of being shut down by the Consortium,” Ned said. “Throughout history, piracy has been cracked down on by many, but specifically, by politicians looking to advance their careers by saying they defeated pirates. Famously, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus waged a war on the Cilician pirates in the year—”
“Not now, Ned,” Lara barked, and he stopped speaking immediately.
He set the Buzzard down and we disembarked quickly, our newly refurbished weapons at the ready.
When the door to the port opened, we were met by an eerie silence. It was like entering Libby’s station for the first time but this time, it was real. The blood stains that streaked the walls were fresh. When we knocked on the closed doors we passed, they were locked tight. The occupants were either dead or too terrified to open up. Either way, we weren’t getting any information from them.
After stepping over a dead mechanic, still clutching a red wound in his belly, I broke into a sprint down the hallway, desperate to get to the center. Lara was right by my side, and I registered that she was speaking but not the words she was saying. I was so focused on checking on Edgar that I was aware of almost nothing else.
When we reached the walkway that faced the pillar of businesses at the center of Port Tortue, I stopped, my heart thundering as I stared at licking flames and ruptured metal. The place had been torn apart. A few of the floating platforms lay crashed along the catwalk but I rushed around and over them, tearing for the nearest bridge.
Recognizing some of the businesses I was passing, I realized that Ned had put the ship on the same level as Edgar’s bar. It was a small kindness, but I appreciated it. Looking back and forth, I saw that there were no people to be seen anywhere. An occasional body littered the path but, for the most part, it seemed that the occupants had fled.
This place had been so full of life, so packed with people milling about and having a good time and now it was destitute, a lifeless shell of what had existed before. I couldn’t believe that the government would do something like this but also figured that it was the only entity in the universe with enough manpower to achieve something like this.
When I rushed around the corner, closing in on the El Tropico 2, my foot skidded on a pool of blood and I slipped, sliding down the hallway and coating half of my body, staining my jacket. I coughed and got to my feet, taking careful steps toward the bar, not knowing what to expect but fearing the worst.
Smoke billowed down the hall when I approached the bar and I saw embers sparking from the scorched tables and bar. Bright red and yellow glowed from inside blackened wood and the false wood’s melted plastics drooped and dipped, frozen in time as the melt solidified.
Black air singed my throat when I hurried to the bar and looked over. Edgar wasn’t there. Perhaps he had made it out alive, was hiding in the back, or had used the same tunnel to escape that he had sent me through.
A hint of gray caught my eye, and I turned to see the hand protruding from around the side of the counter behind the bar. After leaping over the bar in a quick move, my feet landed heavy on the ground, and I braced myself so as not to slip on the blood still coating the bottom of my boots.
I ran to the end of the counter to see Edgar, his lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling.
The sound that surged out from within me seemed to shake the very walls of the station. My guttural scream of misery, anguish and guilt roared from my very soul. Seeing the cauterized skin on his chest under the burned ring of his Hawaiian shirt through my tears, I suspected what had happened.
But when my eyes focused enough on his face to truly see him, I knew with absolute certainty. In the skin of his forehead was burned the mark of the Inquisition.
This wasn’t just the Consortium cracking down on pirates.
This was for me.
This was all for me and Ned.
I screamed another time, standing and pressing the trigger of my stomper toward the wall, riddling it with bullets just to feel something.
“Hank Spears and Lara Shen,” a voice thundered from behind us, and I turned with the heavy handgun leveled right at his helmeted face. The Inquisitorial armor protected him from head to toe, the red plates shimmering in the low light and the black robes flowing in the air of the fire response systems. “You stand accused of conspiring with the enemy, of working with the inorganic, of colluding against the Consortium and disrupting universal peace.”
I didn’t let him continue. Though I knew it wouldn’t do anything to damage him, I unloaded the rest of my magazine into him, bullets crunching against the reinforced armor. The man did not flinch.
“Turn yourselves in and no further harm will come to anyone,” he threatened.
Lara looked at me then back at him, slowly beginning to unsheathe her blade.
“No further harm?” I roared. “You killed all these people. Destroyed the lives of everyone here. You murdered…” I looked back at the body of my uncle, the lifeless remains of my family.
But before I could speak, the Inquisitor took another step toward me, hand on the hilt of his own weapon. “It is a small price to pay. A small price for protecting the universe from the greatest threat it has ever known. A small price to cut the infection before it can spread.
“I would burn entire planets to protect the people of the Consortium. There is no cost too great. No line in the proverbial sand.”
He took another step toward me and Lara moved to the side by another stride. She was good and I knew that if we had any chance to defeat this man, it would be together.
“The threat is not the AI,” I said through gritted teeth. “The threat is you.”
“If you believe that, then you are truly lost. You have been corrupted by the purest of evils and you will be cleansed before the universe can be cleansed.”
“Cleansed like all these people?” I demanded, sliding out the magazine and replacing it with a steady hand. I was overwhelmed with anger, fear and grief but I remained in control of myself.
Lutch had instilled in me a calm determination. The harder and more challenging things got, the calmer and more resolute I had taught myself to be. After falling through the floor of the CubiHouse that first time, I never did again. I learned. I learned because my father taught me.
So, now, in the face of a threat the likes of which I had never seen, my hand didn't shake.
“Yes,” John Gregory said through the thick red helmet with grim, frowning features. “That is precisely what I mean.”
He moved toward me once more, each footfall like a thunderclap, and Lara swung even further to his flank. Slowly, our plan was working.
Then the station shook as a distant explosion tore through the port.
“That will be your starship, Miss Shen,” he said, and I realized that it wasn’t us who were setting the trap.
Lara’s rage immediately overtook her, and her blue blade sliced the air from her side as she rushed toward the man.
His sword met Lara’s, the molten glow sparking against the oceanic sapphire of hers. She swung wildly, attacking without her usual grace and form. The Inquisitor’s movements were smooth and calculating, his parries fluid and easy as though he was her instructor trying to exemplify how to properly fight.
In her anger, she continued her relentless onslaught, and he kept batting her away with ease.
I raised my stomper but there was no shot to take in the confusion of combat and no way I could enter the fray without only making things worse for Lara. If I survived this, I would need to train and learn to fight so that I would never find myself in this situation again. Until then, I kept the barrel of the weapon trained at the Inquisitor, waiting for an opening.
One came when Lara overextended herself, slicing down through the air with a wild move that John Gregory easily sidestepped before swinging a massive, gloved hand to strike the side of her face, sending her hurtling into one of the tables. Mugs and glasses shattered and crashed to the ground beside one of the most adept fighters I had ever seen—now totally outmatched.
Looking for the gaps in his armor, I began firing the stomper again, watching the bullets tink harmlessly off him. He turned and began stalking toward me and I realized that I had no plan other than to get him away from Lara.
At his approach, I turned and took a few steps away from him, looking over his shoulder to see Lara lying limp on the ground. His weapon glowed, heat crackling the air around it.
That gave me an idea and, knowing that I had to do something, I turned toward the bar and grabbed a bottle of Starfarer's Finest, an incongruously named alcohol that tasted like paint thinner. The moment that John Gregory got close enough to swing his blade and remove my head from my shoulders, I whipped the bottle at him, the flammable liquid exploding against his sword and spraying liquid fire around the bar.
Having known what was about to happen, I turned my body away from the flames, took one massive step down the bar, and then grabbed hold of the counter and threw myself over in the direction of Lara.
The Inquisitor let out a furious grunt, the fire dousing him but not slowing him.
As patches of flame licked at his body before sizzling out, he looked like a vision of evil, turning toward us. I knelt and picked up Lara from under her shoulder, her head limp but small mutters escaping from inside her mask as she came to after the hammering blow.
“We have to get out of here,” I told her, beginning to walk out of the bar, waiting for her feet to catch up. “We have to get to the Buzzard before his acolyte does.”
The words seemed to rouse her some and I felt her legs begin to pump, the two of us running for our lives from a man who seemed to want nothing more than to watch us suffer. Any pretense of interrogating us was long gone and now he just wanted us dead.
So, we ran.
Lara could not keep up her usual pace and her blade looked as though it was going to fall limply from her hands at any moment, but she kept pushing, kept running.
But the man was close behind. With long strides, he seemed to be keeping pace with us without even having to jog. Every time I checked over my shoulder, he was bridging the gap between us, getting closer and closer by the moment. Smoke trailed from his billowing robes, giving him the appearance of some monstrous ethereal presence. He was the Inquisition made flesh.
Soon, we had neared the docking bay hallways, knowing we were closing in on the Buzzard. I hoped, more than anything, that we reached it before the woman who the Inquisitor had called Imogen. If she got there first, we were done for.
This would be where our story ended.
I would have come this far, survived this long just to see it end at the tip of a blade.
But soon, we saw the door to the docking bay, both of our bodies pushing to reach it, but before we did, the pale young woman with red hair and huge eyes with red irises stepped from a hallway, blocking our path.
In her leather glove clad hands, she gripped a long, ornate spear whose hooked point was alight with a low flame. When she twirled it in front of her, the air was left with red streaks floating between us.
Inquisitor Gregory stopped behind us and Lara and I looked back and forth like trapped rats on a sinking ship. The man lumbered toward us as his acolyte continued to slice the air with her flaming weapon.
“I’ll take him, you take her,” Lara suggested. “Maybe one of us will get out of this alive.”
“No, we both will,” I said. “We'll take her together and then get to the Buzzard.”
She didn't wait for me to say anything else and the two of us moved in on Imogen at once. I raised my weapon, squeezing off a few shots into her chest plate and causing her to react just long enough for Lara to strike out with her blade. The internal power of the weapon crashed against the woman's Inquisitorial armor, blue sparks streaking the air.
Imogen swung the spear, the shaft striking Lara’s shoulder, but I took the opportunity to leap forward and grab the weapon just below the flaming point. Imogen’s eyes registered shock just before Lara’s foot struck her side. She was thrown back and lost her grip on the spear, which I yanked free.
I turned with the weapon in my hand and threw it straight for the chest of the Inquisitor lumbering toward us, hoping that the flaming tip could penetrate his armor.
All hope was dashed when he batted it away, sending the spear clattering to the ground beside him and he continued to walk forward. He was in no hurry to reach us and, as seemed to be his nature, was savoring this moment, enjoying the fear he inflicted on us.
I bent down and picked up the stomper which I had dropped to grab the spear while the two women continued to battle behind me. When I glanced back at them, it seemed that Lara was the more skilled combatant, but it was hard to be sure. I raised my handgun and, knowing that it was pointless, began taking slow, single shots, one after the other.
Crack.
A bullet sparked against his helmet.
Crack.
Another tore through his robe.
Crack.
His chest erupted in a torrent of bullet fire, sending him staggering back.
Turning, I saw a turret blazing with relentless shots. Shells fell like smoking metal rain and I took the opportunity to turn my back on the Inquisitor. I bull rushed toward Imogen but when she saw me, she fell back, clearing a path for us down the hall.
The barrels of the turret turned a deep crimson, the storm of bullets not letting up.
“Get out of there!” Ned ordered.
He had come through for us. He had been watching through the earpiece and hacked the Port’s security system just in time.
If the Inquisitor had any doubt that we were working with an AI, there would be no question left now. But, as we ran toward the Buzzard, none of that mattered. What mattered was that we were going to survive. We were going to live to see another day.
The door to the docking bay opened and I took one last look back, seeing the turret run out of ammunition just before Imogen hurried over to aid her Master. As I turned back to the ship, I could have sworn she stole a glance at us, but I didn't know for sure.
Ned had the Buzzard activated and facing toward the bay doors, retracting the ramp as soon as our feet were on it.
The two of us dragged ourselves to the cockpit just in time for the door to the station to seal as the large bay doors to space opened. In the rear-facing camera, the tip of the Inquisitor’s blade began to sear through the metal, but it was too late.
Ned took us out, and we entered space only long enough to activate the already charged Tidal Drive and wash us into a gyre.
We had escaped. Such as we were.
While the gyre rolled around us, I thought about Edgar. About his child and his mate. All of the people who had lost their lives or livelihood because of us. Or because of those who wished to harm us.
My mind was a soup, and when I looked at Lara, I knew hers was as well.
