“Letterman said Bi-MARP has a Chamber-certified bioengineer to recreate the population of these adorable little guys and return them to the planet they once ruled,” Professor Mims said.
“Yes, that’s been the plan all along for Bi-MARP,” Electra lied. “Antarctica will once again swarm with green pachyderms and circuses will feature peanut-guzzling performers…all because of your generosity.”
“Four hundred million units,” Professor Mims said. “That’s what I was promised.”
“That is ten times more than my entire operation’s credit line,” Electra growled at Letterman.
“Correction. It will be your entire operation’s credit line when you turn in the items you’ve collected,” Letterman said. “The delivery of the elephant DNA, along with everything else you’ve acquired, will cover the repayment, interest and may even provide a small profit, depending on your expedience, thus clearing your debt entirely.”
“Fine. As long as I end up in the black, this stressful trip into a cesspool will have been worth it,” Electra said. “Transfer the funds.”
A few lights flashed on the front of Letterman’s frame. Corresponding lights flashed on a console on the desk near Professor Mims.
“Wonderful doing business with you,” Professor Mims said. “I hope this will mean I get an invitation to the grand opening of the Bi-MARP amusement park.”
“I’m sure it will,” Electra said.
Professor Mims’ tail swirled around with excitement at the prospect. She gathered a syringe gun, touched it to Georgie’s side and extracted a sample of blood, encasing it immediately in a cooling chamber before it even popped out of the handle of the device. Georgie glanced back to what she was doing but returned to his docile cuddling when his trunk found a stash of peanuts in the Professor’s pocket. Professor Mims offered the sample to Electra. Before she could accept it, one of Letterman’s tentacle arms reached past her and grabbed it, depositing the frozen sample in a collection chamber.
“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” Treasure said while guiding a stunned and irritated Electra out of the dome.
“Don’t forget my invitation to the grand opening!” Professor Mims called after them.
The numbers weren’t adding up. Electra struggled to both walk through the crowded streets and do the math in her head to figure out how Letterman had come up with the four hundred million units. She couldn’t remember the exact percentage of operational credit she’d earned by turning in the Bort Pod, but she knew it wasn’t large enough to get her to four hundred million by turning in the Volkswagen Beetle, the data crystal from Paul, the board games and the screwdriver Treasure had snagged on New Wolfsburg. Luckily Treasure and Letterman were able to guide her while she ran through the complex mental calculations required to explain the four hundred million she’d just spent on elephant blood.
They were at the base of the gangplank before she finally put it all together.
“If it isn’t the thief extraordinaire who keeps snaking my finds and smashing up my ships,” Sempa called from behind her.
Electra pushed Treasure in front of Letterman and ushered them both up the gangplank ahead of her while she walked backward to keep an eye on Sempa and his crew. The Glott raiders were filtering out of the busy streets, armed to the teeth and angry as a fresh bruise. It hadn’t even occurred to her that someone planning to collect the bounty on her wouldn’t even try to apprehend her themselves but rather drop the dime as it were and call in Sempa. Electra felt incredibly stupid for overlooking the more obvious outcome. She couldn’t let Sempa see her blink, though.
“Sempa, you’re getting faster,” Electra said. “Not fast enough to beat me anywhere, but you’re going to get a much better view of me leaving this time.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” another voice said from the right of Sempa and his men.
A small squadron of debt-collection bots rolled through the Glott-choked streets to create a semi-circle of metal orbs, wheels and tentacles that would block any potential escape. Each collection bot was comprised of an expandable collection orb body, three tilted wheels for stability and a writhing swarm of metal, prehensile tentacle arms to grab everything in sight in the most efficient way possible.
“The Lien Enforcement Technology Bureau was notified that you are in possession of assets in excess of your outstanding debts,” the collection bots said in unison. “Collection and liquidation of said assets must occur immediately according to corporate procedural standards.”
They meant Treasure. That was how Letterman had come up with the four hundred million. He was borrowing against the fifty billion units she would fetch when turned over to Bi-MARP. It was the only way the math made sense.
“You can’t collect on what is mine,” Sempa roared. “Her ship, her gains, her body all belong to me and my crew.”
“No such transaction is found in…” The first collection bot in the row exploded, struck by a rocket from Sempa’s body-mounted weapon pod.
“Why don’t you all sort out the confusion out among yourselves and let me know who gets to be mad at me first when you’re finished.” Electra ran up the gangplank, hitting the button to close it behind her even as the battle between the Glott pirates and phalanx of collection bots began in earnest. Lasers, rockets, bullets, flamethrowers and a bunch of other weapons she wasn’t interested in being hit by roared to life and were suddenly silenced when the gangplank on her ship closed up.
“Ivy, get us out of here,” Electra yelled. “Ivy? Did you hear me?”
Electra reached the top of the stairs to head toward the cockpit, wondering why Ivy wasn’t responding and where Letterman and Treasure had gone. She heard Treasure scream from the cargo hold. Electra sprinted back the way she came, turned toward the rear of the ship, all the while yelling at the unresponsive Ivy to get the ship started.
By the time she reached the cargo hold, Letterman had Treasure gripped by the ankles, lifting her ten feet off the floor. Treasure had a death grip on the roof rack of the Volkswagen Beetle to keep from being dropped into the open, waiting main collection chamber of Letterman’s body. To try to facilitate the collection, Letterman had tilted his entire frame backward to create a box of himself with the top open.
At a dead sprint, Electra scooped the globauncher and a full brace of glob balls from brackets on the wall and tossed all twenty of the glob balls into Letterman’s open collection chamber. Leaping from the top of the cargo-block holding the Volkswagen in place, Electra flattened out, dropkicking Letterman’s door to close it, sliding across the top of his slanted position and striking the activation trigger on the globauncher tube in her hand when she’d rolled off the other side.
Twenty ten-by-ten-by-ten cubes of semi-solid globs held within Letterman’s body expanded instantaneously. Letterman’s main collection chamber didn’t have even a fraction of the space required to contain so much swiftly swelling material. His frame buckled, glob leaked from every seam, smoke and sparks erupted from the top mounting point where his arms emerged and all controlled functions ceased. Treasure lowered herself onto the top of the Volkswagen when the tentacle holding her ankles shorted out.
Electra scooped the souvenir screwdriver from the nearby bench and ran to the disabled enforcement bot. She dug at the opened panel on the side and swatted away quickly sizzling wires until she got at his primary signal transmitter. If she could get to the transmitter before he sent the lockdown code, the ship might still fly. Four hard jabs with the flathead screwdriver and the transmitter came free from its mounting. Another twist and tug broke the wires connecting it to Letterman’s CPU. He’d jammed Ivy’s signal, summoned collection bots probably before they’d even landed and tried to kidnap the woman she was pretty sure she was falling head over heels in love with. She didn’t care that she’d be charged for the massive amount of damage she’d inflicted on Letterman. It was his turn to pay.
“Ivy, can you hear me?” Electra shouted.
“I can, Miss Electr
a. There’s no need to yell,” Ivy said.
“Get us the hell out of here!”
Chapter Fourteen
Too much was going on…way too much. The only plan she could think of was to run like hell. She had an expensive ship filled with an insane number of valuables and the most important person in her life. She hadn’t been remotely cautious enough. Electra grabbed Treasure by the hand and helped her off the top of the Volkswagen. Step one had to be getting Treasure away from everyone trying to kidnap her.
“He attacked me,” Treasure said, with a thousand-yard stare aimed at Letterman’s glob-filled body. “I thought we were friends.”
“I know, baby,” Electra said. “Right now, I need to get to the cockpit and I want you with me.”
Dragging Treasure along wasn’t strictly necessary, but Electra pulled her by the hand all the same. If she had physical contact with Treasure at all times, Electra believed she could prevent another attack from happening. By the time they reached the cockpit, Ivy had already guided them through the docking bay, which was becoming something of a war zone between Glott pirates and collection bots.
Electra vaulted into the captain’s seat and studied the controls, hoping a plan would formulate organically. There would be raider ships outside and at least one debt collection mother-orb. If she were lucky, they’d be fighting each other. The Glott pirates would want to board her ship to plunder all the Bi-MARP treasures, but the debt collection ship wouldn’t bother with such provincial looting, since a mother-orb could swallow the Cadillux whole without scratching the paint.
The Cadillux passed from the inner airlock to the vacuum of space. The outer doors opened, green lights flashed on the walls, telling her to get out so the next ship in line could leave. She couldn’t see the small fleet of vessels waiting in the nebula for her and her scopes wouldn’t work until she was in the thick of it.
“What do we do?” Treasure asked.
“We…um…make a decoy!” Electra leaped back out of the captain’s seat, bounded down the stairs and ran for the cargo hold, bouncing off walls here and there along the way. A datapad, an uplink tether to Letterman’s removed transmitter and a general distress signal for an escaped debtor… After stripping off her smelly Dickies jumpsuit, she wrapped the datapad connected to the transmitter in the unwanted garment and dropped the bundle into the airlock garbage chute. A whoosh of air and a light above the airlock going from red to green sent the bundle out of the ship. “Ivy?”
“Yes, Miss Electra?”
“How close can you get us to the ceiling in the exit bay?”
“With the repulse engines turned off, less than a meter, while still accounting for drift,” Ivy said.
“Works for me,” Electra said. “Do it.” Gone were the days of being overly cautious about putting the Cadillux in danger, apparently. Without a moment’s hesitation, she was going to put it a meter away from the top of essentially a garbage chute with the repulse engines turned off, all to save Treasure, the only thing she cared about anymore.
Electra made a quick stop by the Spatronic to place her face in the adjustment port. She set the tuner for her ocular implants to change her vision to a broader range of the ultraviolet spectrum. After a disorienting series of flashes from the machine, her eyesight glassed over in white for a moment. When her vision returned, she saw the world in an entirely different series of colors and detail. Relying on the scopes for what she intended would only slow her down.
By the time Electra returned to the cockpit, the Cadillux was nearly to the top of the exterior airlock chamber. Electra checked the scopes. To push off in order to float to the top, the repulse engines had knocked her little transmitter bundle into the bottom corner of the airlock by the door back into Station 111. She watched the space in front of the doorway. Flashes of light spoke of a battle moving closer within the sickly yellow nebula. With her newly enhanced visual spectrum she spotted a series of small spheres launched into the docking bay—collection bots, chased by two pirate skiffs. More dark shapes came toward the open doors, and the green flashing lights went red, warning of a jam in the docking procedures. Impact warnings flashed on the screens all around the cockpit. Electra slammed the accelerator to the floor and pulled straight up the moment they cleared the bay. She watched the front window at the very top edge to keep the curved exterior of Station 111 directly above the ship, as close as she was able with Ivy’s help, until they crested the top, scraping the paint off the tops of the Cadillux’s fins along the station’s hull.
It was tempting, oh-so-tempting, to dump spare oxygen into the methane field and light it. She could scorch the debt collectors, the pirates, everyone making her life a living hell. But it wasn’t the Glott gas farmers’ fault she was caught, and it would be their crops she’d be torching. Technically, at least one of the Glotts had screwed her over by calling Sempa, but they weren’t going to get paid now that she’d slipped the noose. Ruthlessness wasn’t in her nature, even if she wished it were sometimes.
“Ivy, are any skiffs or collection bots following?” Electra asked. “I can’t make sense of the readings.”
“Both groups appear to have been forcibly ejected from the airlock shortly after our departure, Miss Electra,” Ivy said, “and are currently drifting into the gas fields opposite the station from us.”
“We need a wormhole spawn—and not the one we used to get here.” Electra tabbed through the options. Two existed on the other side of the red dwarf cluster, rarely used and designated primarily for heavy freighters. It’d take hours to get there even at top speed and she could only hope it wasn’t guarded by either or both of the groups after her. At least it’d give her time to figure out where they were going after that—if they were going anywhere.
“You saved me, again,” Treasure said. “In a badass way, I might add. And now you’re naked, flying a ship like a pro.”
“I couldn’t keep the jumpsuit on a second longer,” Electra admitted. “Plus, I needed it as wadding for the datapad and transmitter. Otherwise they might have bounced around in the chute and broken.”
“I’m not complaining about the view,” Treasure said. “Why was Letterman after me?”
“Who even knows what that bastard was planning?” Electra said. For several fairly obvious reasons, it was exceedingly difficult to lie effectively while naked. She tried to lean back and turn her chest in an appealing way in hopes of distracting Treasure from the fib. It wasn’t a full lie—a mere question, rhetorical perhaps. Sure, she knew the answer, but that didn’t matter, especially if she could get Treasure to look at her girls. A wayward glance down from Treasure’s big, brown eyes to Electra’s chest, and the matter was set aside.
“How long will it take to reach the wormhole spawns, Ivy?” Treasure asked.
“Two point six-six-six-six-repeating-infinitely hours, Miss Treasure.”
“Let’s be nudists for two point six-six-six-six-repeating-infinitely hours. Letterman isn’t able to walk in on us anymore. And I used to be a secret nudist whenever I had my apartment to myself.” Treasure practically leaped from her Dickies jumpsuit and dropped it into the nearest fabricator recycling port.
“Works for me,” Electra said. “Somehow you look even more amazing in an expanded light spectrum.”
“Hey, you got to use your ocular implants,” Treasure exclaimed. “We need champagne to celebrate!”
“What are we celebrating?” Electra asked.
“Staying one step ahead of the space pirates,” Treasure replied. “Also, another heroic moment to add to the growing legend of the daring Captain Rex. That part I’m not joking about. I’m going to tell everyone what you’ve done, embellishments all over the place. Nobody is going to trust a word of it because even the simple truth is too crazy to believe.”
Electra chuckled and walked to the fabricator by the stairwell into the cockpit. That used to be her dream, to be rich and famous, swimming in renown, respect and adoration from a fanatical public. It seemed like a f
rivolous goal in hindsight. Ivy had already brought up the headings for beverages closely approximating champagne on the fabricator console, which apparently required some strange-looking glasses to drink properly. Whatever. They had the molecules to spare, especially of silica and hydrocarbons. She hit the print button and waited.
“What must the galaxy know about me?” Electra asked, preening a little to gild the question, even as her stomach did somersaults. She’d have to tell Treasure the truth. There was no way around it. They weren’t hiding from Sempa and his merry band of fuck-ups. She’d already proven she could outrun them whenever she needed to. The Lien Enforcement Agency was after them now, and they weren’t going to give up—not for the tens of billions Electra owed—and they weren’t bungling pirates in rickety ships.
“A daring starship captain and pilot,” Treasure said. “That is essential. Granted, you’re the only starship captain I’ve flown with, but I’m impressed. Besides, you have to be good considering that multiple times now you’ve out-flown pirates that feed themselves by catching people.”
“Daring or reckless?” Electra accepted the printed bottle of champagne and two crystal flutes. The bottle was closed in a peculiar way she couldn’t make heads or tails of. She brought the items to Treasure in hopes she knew what was meant to be done or if the sealing on the top of the bottle was a mistake by the fabricator.
“Daring and reckless, but, more importantly, skilled and creative.” Treasure took the bottle, peeled away the thin layer of metal, twisted a wire contraption then worried free a chunk of fibrous material from the neck of the bottle using her thumbs. A loud pop sounded when the plug leaped free and bounced across the floor. Treasure got the mouth of the bottle over one of the glasses in Electra’s hand a moment before white foam poured out. “That reminds me… The galaxy also must know what a gifted, attentive, physically blessed lover you are.”
“I think the credit for that needs to be shared by my partner,” Electra said. “There are two people making that dance what it is.”
Electra Rex Page 15