by N M Tatum
Dr. Soff nodded. “I couldn’t continue working with her after that. Our philosophies diverged too much. She was in it for the money. I was and am in it for the advancement. Though I may not be good with people, I do want what is best for everyone, and I believe the best way for us all to move forward is through major scientific advancements like AI. I’ve continued to provide the blueprints for much of my work for free to others who might be able to achieve this.”
“What about the stuff in the other labs here?” Cody asked. “The ones that are off limits to non-staff?”
“Those projects are still in development and can be rather volatile. I won’t open source something that is still potentially dangerous.”
Sam slugged the rest of her beer before getting another. “That’s great and everything, yay science, but you know that Suzz is coming after you, right? She’s been targeting Layton’s competitors, destroying entire space stations, killing people. But it sounds personal with you. She’ll burn the galaxy down to get to you.”
Dr. Soff shrugged.
“Is this one of those instances where your genius brain prevents you from understanding the basics of a situation?” Joel said. “She’s going to kill you. By sending super mutant monsters to eat you.”
Dr. Soff shrugged again. “I understand why my apparent nonchalance regarding the matter may concern you. Most people react very differently when faced with the possibility of death. I remain calm for the simple reason that I don’t feel that I am facing the possibility of death.” Dr. Soff checked her watch, a sleek tablet that fit nicely on her wrist. “I know Patty. I know how she thinks and operates. And I know how the universe reacts to her machinations. The closer she gets to her ultimate goal, the more volatile she and everything around her becomes. She implodes. If I am her ultimate goal, then all her plans are about to fall apart.”
“No offense, Dr. Soff,” Cody said, “but you seem to be putting a lot of faith in how well you know Dr. Suzz. Couldn’t she have changed since you knew her?”
“People are like rocks,” Dr. Soff said. “They may change outwardly over time when exposed to certain environmental conditions, but, at their core, they remain the same.”
She checked her watch again. A light flashed, casting a red glow on her face. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your time here. Goodbye.” She walked back toward the door behind the painting.
“Wait,” Cody said. “That’s it? You aren’t going to help us? Or fortify the place or anything?”
“Return to your ship,” Dr. Soff said. “I believe you will find that my help is not needed. Things have already begun falling apart.”
The picture slid back as she entered the door, and she was gone.
Frustration filled the room. Even Cody, who had been caught in the thralls of fanboy-dom, scoffed at the spot where Dr. Soff had stood a second before.
“I can’t believe that. She shrugged. She just shrugged.”
Reggie clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry your hero is a little crazy.”
They double-timed it back to the ship, Dr. Soff’s last words to them hanging like a guillotine. Cody made straight for the bridge when they boarded Ragnarok. The hailing beacon flashed, signaling an incoming call.
“Ragnarok, do you read?”
“This is Ragnarok,” Cody answered. “Go ahead.”
“Finally. This is Director Dewayne. I’ve been trying to contact you for over an hour.” His voice was fraught from stress and overuse. “I cannot meet you at the predesignated location.”
Cody sank into his chair. “Don’t worry about it. It was a bust, anyway. Have you ever met Dr. Soff? She’s kind of—”
“Listen,” Dewayne snapped. “I can’t make it because that entire sector is closed. It’s been placed under a lockdown order. No traffic in or out.”
Dr. Soff’s ominous warning rang in Cody’s ears as he asked, “Why?”
“Reports of unknown creatures attacking ships. They all appear to be heading toward one central location in that sector. I can’t get close. If you’re still there, I suggest you get as far away as you can. Head to the other end of the sector. Good luck.”
The call went dead.
Cody checked the radar display. There were no signs of any creatures. Not yet.
His heart leapt when something on the control panel beeped and blinked, and his mind immediately raced to the conclusion that they were surrounded by some vile space monster and were about to be swallowed whole. Again. He breathed easy when he saw that it was only the comm, signaling another incoming call.
He answered it, assuming it was Dewayne calling to relay some information he’d forgotten.
“I meant to ask you,” Cody said. “Do we still get paid for that convention center job?”
“I don’t see why you would,” the caller answered, though she was clearly not Dewayne. “You failed quite miserably.”
Cody’s hand hovered over the comm, ready to end the call. Instead, he traced the signal back to its source, sure it would disprove the wild theory that had sprouted in his head the second she spoke. The signal wasn’t even encrypted. She made no effort to disguise herself. No attempt to hide. After all this time.
Why now?
“Who is this?” he asked.
“You know who this is,” she said. “If I’m correct, which I always am, I’m speaking with Cody. You’re the smart one, yes? You’ve already traced my signal. You know this is a straightforward call, no attempt at subterfuge, no attempt to attack your ship with a virus through the comm link.”
Cody hadn’t even thought of that. He ran a quick diagnostic of the computers. Everything was clean.
“Okay,” he said. “Then what you do want, Dr. Suzz?”
“Your help.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Joel blinked several times at Cody, like each time his eyes opened, he hoped Cody wouldn’t be there, that he and his nonsense would have been teleported somewhere far, far away. Reggie rubbed his palms into his eyes so hard Cody thought he might be trying to make himself go blind. Sam silently sharpened her blade, which may have been the most disconcerting reaction of them all.
“So…?” Cody felt a compulsive need to fill the awkward silence. “Are we mulling it over or…?”
“Mulling it over?” Joel said, his voice exploding out of him. “Are you shitting me? We are certainly not mulling it over. I’ve never wanted to mull anything less. I can’t believe we’re even talking about this.”
Reggie dropped his hands and blinked through the field of bright spots dancing across his vision. “Yeah, remind me again why we are talking about this.”
“Because this could be our chance to end the whole thing,” Cody said. “No more attacks from Layton. No more mutant space beast infestations.”
“After this one,” Sam amended.
“Right.” Cody nodded. “After this one.”
Joel’s chest heaved. He was fuming with a rage that he didn’t know where to direct. “But why wouldn’t we just let Suzz die? She started all this. Isn’t she just reaping what she sowed? Let’s let her get reaped.”
The thought made Reggie squirm like he had a cramp in his gut. “We can’t let her die.”
“Why not?” Sam asked.
The question caught Cody off guard. “Because she’s a person. Is that not enough?”
The others didn’t seem to think so.
“Then how about the possibility that if we let whatever is attacking her station win, then it will multiply and spread and take over the galaxy?”
They still didn’t seem too convinced.
Cody’s face burned hot with frustration. “Seriously?”
“Have you never heard of the concept of a trap?” Joel said. “This woman has been doing dastardly shit for months, and we keep foiling her plans. Now she calls and claims to need help? As soon as we land the ship, mutant rats are going eat us.”
Sam slid a whetstone down the length of her sword blade, a harmonic note singing in the air. “That
seems to fit her style. Sending all those Trojan horses to those companies. Inviting us into her home so she can stab us in the back. They aren’t that far apart.”
Cody raised the radar display of the sector on his wristcom. “A system-wide alert has been issued by three separate agencies—both military and civil. The sector is totally locked down. You think Dr. Suzz could have orchestrated that? That would take some serious sway with the decision makers of those agencies. Pulling off something on that scale would be a lot to go through just to set us up.”
Reggie leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “What do you want to do?”
“I think we should at least check it out,” Cody said. “Fly to Layton Station and check it out. If it feels fishy, we’ll leave.”
Joel chewed on his knuckle. “I think we have very different bars for determining what’s fishy. But fine. I’m good with that.”
The others agreed.
“Dr. Suzz sent the coordinates to Layton Station earlier. She also mapped the best course so we can get there without any resistance.”
“That’s so nice of her,” Joel said. “Very thoughtful. I’m going to prep all the guns.” He left the bridge.
“I’ll go with him,” Reggie said. “Not that I don’t believe you. Totally believe you. I just like to be prepared.”
Cody paid them no attention. He input the coordinates and mapped out the course Dr. Suzz had provided.
Sam sheathed her sword and sat in the chair just vacated by Reggie. She stared into the side of Cody’s head.
“What?” Cody said.
“You don’t actually trust her, do you?”
“I trust that she’d do anything to survive. She’s ruthless and practical.”
“And that doesn’t strike you as someone who would lure us into a trap?”
Cody finished mapping their course. He activated the engines and let the autopilot take over. “Of course she would. If she was still in control. I think this is like Dr. Soff said. I think the wheels are starting to come off Dr. Suzz’s plan, and the whole thing is getting away from her. She’s desperate.”
Sam stared at Cody a long moment before finally nodding. “Okay. Just remember that desperate people are the most dangerous.”
The path Dr. Suzz had charted was clear…at least, of any monsters. But there was evidence that whatever was coming for Suzz had passed through. A mining trawler had been torn in two. The halves of the dead ship floated by like garbage.
Cody refused to look at Sam, but he felt her eyes on him, saying, “Told you so.” That dead ship showed that Suzz was no longer in control.
The rest of the trip was quiet, inside and outside of Ragnarok. Tension aboard the ship spiked. Reggie and Joel stayed in the ready room, packing, planning, seething. Cody didn’t take it personally. They weren’t mad at him, they were mad at Dr. Suzz. They were mad that she was once again putting them in a position with a high likelihood of death and dismemberment. The fact that she had the nerve to call on them when her plan to destroy thousands of lives backfired, a plan they had been on the wrong side of for months, lit a fire in them that could not be extinguished.
That same fire raged in Cody and Sam. They hated Suzz as much as the others. But Cody saw this as an ending, where the guys saw this as another hole to fall into. He knew that one way or another, the battle against Layton ended here.
Layton Station looked fine from a distance. But the closer Cody flew Ragnarok, the more apparent it was that something was wrong. A section along the top ridge of the station had been breached. Cody could see the air still venting out, so the damage must have been recent. And the way the hull was bent outward…something had broken out, not in.
“It’s about time you got here.” Dr. Suzz’s voice sounded over the comm. “My station is coming apart.”
Joel and Reggie entered the bridge. Joel looked ready to scream, but Sam silenced him with a look.
“Sorry we didn’t come dashing to your rescue at an appropriate speed,” Cody said. “What is the situation aboard the station?”
“Awful,” Suzz said. “Now get in here and fix it.”
Joel’s jaw tightened.
“No,” Cody said to the surprise of everyone. “First you tell us the situation inside. We won’t march into a warzone without knowing what we’re getting into.”
Suzz unleashed a flurry of curses that made Reggie squirm.
Cody didn’t budge. “We can just as easily turn around.”
“No!” Suzz shouted. “Fine. The station has been overrun by lophius. I assume you know what those are.” Her voice rang with a cockiness that stabbed at Cody’s ears.
“We’re familiar,” he replied.
“They possess a trait that I was unaware of until now. Something like that of salmon. They return to the place they were born.”
An idea sprouted in Cody’s head.
“So, you’re saying the lophius were born on Layton Station?” he clarified.
Dr. Suzz went silent. Her pause was pregnant with suspicion, but her suspicion wasn’t as powerful as her sense of self-preservation.
“Yes, they were born on this station.”
“And by ‘born,’ you mean—”
“I created them,” Suzz snapped, cutting Cody off. “Is that what you wanted to hear? Are you recording this? What kind of person blackmails another in the midst of a life or death situation?”
“A smart one,” Sam said, smiling at Cody.
“Yes, well, congratulations,” Suzz said, her voice almost a growl. “You are very smart. Now come here and kill these monsters.”
“I’m not done with the blackmail yet,” Cody said. “If we do this, you have to turn yourself in after.”
Suzz scoffed on the other end of the line. “Why would I make it easy for you?”
“Because there’s a chance you could salvage something of your company if you go quietly,” Cody said. “Because you’re right – I am recording this conversation. And if I release it to the media, Layton is finished. Your company, your legacy, gets torn down. Come quietly, and maybe Layton can survive.”
Dr. Suzz yelled. It was a guttural sound, pure anger. An animalistic expression of rage. For a moment, Sam thought the woman was being torn apart by lophius. The thought made her smile.
But then, Suzz said, “Fine.”
“Good. Evacuate the station,” Cody said. “We’re coming aboard. I’m sending you coordinates—if you aren’t there when we arrive, I’ll release the tape of this conversation.”
He ended the call and then spun to face the others. He was surprised to see the wide smiles on their faces.
“What?” he demanded.
Joel shrugged. “Who knew you could be such a hardass?”
Cody’s cheeks burned. “Just get down to the ready room. I’m going to pilot us in.”
The others slapped him on the back as they left the bridge, and Cody couldn’t keep the smile from spreading across his face.
Reggie packed the portable footlocker so full that he had to sit on the lid in order to close it. It was loaded with enough extra ammo and medical supplies that they could invade a country if they wanted to. In a way, it felt like they were. Layton had been looming over them since the beginning, a hostile power. Now, they were storming its stronghold.
He set his gatling on top of the footlocker as he suited up, strapping his body armor on and checking his semiautomatic. He tightened his gloves and checked their power packs. He squeezed his fists and felt the power run through his fingers. He couldn’t help but think back to their first jobs, how they’d walked in blind, expecting to step on a few bugs and get paid. How he had been crippled by fear and anxiety after. How he would freeze at the sound of skittering feet.
There was still a small part of his mind, a nagging voice tucked in a dark closet at the back of his head, that urged him to hide, to run. But it was only a whisper now.
Sam twirled her sword. She extended her shield and retracted it again, smoothing
out the kinks, making sure it was ready. Making sure she was ready.
She stared at the shield as the overhead lights reflected off it. It hadn’t struck her until then how heavy it was on her arm, how strange it was to wield it. Not for any fault of its design, but for the simple fact that she was wielding a defensive tool. She had always been one of offense, of attack, she, herself, a weapon. But the shield was as important to her now as her sword because she had something worth protecting: her friends and this new life she was building.
She caught her reflection in the surface of her shield. Her smile was wide and glistening.
“Grab onto something,” Cody warned the Notches over the general comm. “We’re coming in hot.”
The ship rocked violently, like they’d hit something. Or like something had hit them.
A lophius slammed into the hull, but Ragnarok was too close to the station to take evasive action. Cody kept a steady course, just meters away from docking. The lophius floated away, seemingly growing uninterested.
Cody set the ship down in a crowded and frantic hangar bay. The entire population of the station was rushing to evacuate. The hectic energy of the environment seeped into Cody’s blood and set his heart racing. He ran to regroup with the others in the ready room.
“Good news,” he said as he entered. “We’re docked and ready for action. Bad news, looks like there’s a lot of action.”
He displayed a series of images on the ready room monitor. Each image looked like a map pocked with swarms of red dots.
“I ran some scans of the station,” he continued. “Not only are we dealing with lophius, but we’ve got ShimVens and Rapoo, too.”
“The trifecta of mutant space beasts,” Joel said. “Cool.”
Reggie scanned through the images. “Looks like chaos out there. If our past experience with these things is any indication, we can assume they’re all trying to kill each other. Let’s use that.”
“What if the Rapoo and ShimVens have been mutated to guard the lophius, like the ones from the storage house?” Sam said.
Cody shook his head as he zeroed the sight on his scatterblaster. “Dr. Suzz planned that. She knew the lophius needed protecting until they evolved. But she wasn’t expecting the lophius to return here. It should be every mutant for itself now.”