“I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life,” Preggers says.
Hildy gasps. “I know that line.”
I push myself up from the workstation. “Phil Collins.”
“Yes!” Hildy says. Seems to be oblivious to the fact that we’re about to be captured by the very evil empire we’ve just agreed to stop. “‘In the Air Tonight.’”
Preggers takes a swing. Then another.
I bob and weave, avoiding the strikes, but I can’t keep it up forever.
“Hildy,” I say, noticing how loosely the Overseers are holding her arms.
“Yeah?”
“Remember who you are now. What you are now.”
“Pirates,” she says, wistfully.
“Right. Time to start acting like it.”
I block two punches with my forearms, but I miss the third—an aggravated backhand slap that stings more than a good punch would. Punching is what you do in a fight. A slap is disrespectful. An insult. She’s calling me out. Calling me a pansy.
“Okay, that’s it,” I say, taking a fighting stance.
“You shame the Overseer’s uniform you’re wearing,” Preggers says to me.
A slew of comebacks flit through my mind, but they all have to do with being pregnant, and that’s just low. I can’t bring myself to say them aloud, so I just wait for her next attack.
Hildy, on the other hand, has an epiphany. “Act like a pirate… How does a pirate act?” She turns to the Overseer on her right. “Do you know how a pirate acts?” She smiles. “Because I do. They fight…dirty!”
Hildy lets out a piratey “Argh!” and stomps on the Overseer’s foot, drawing a shout of pain. She yanks an arm free, twists around, and delivers a devastating kick to the crotch of the second Overseer. If she’d been a man, the woman would have dropped to the floor in a heap, but the Overseer doesn’t have balls, and her crotch is padded.
The woman lifts Hildy off the ground and throws her. She sails past Preggers, crashes into a console behind me, and falls to the floor.
I back step toward her. “You okay?”
She sits up. Winces. Puts her hand to a fresh gash on her cheek. It comes away bloody.
Her wide eyes turn to me, and I swear, she does the best impression of Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon that I’ve ever seen, tasting her own blood.
“Kid, you are my new favorite person.”
Beaming, she pushes herself up beside me. “Let’s kick their pregnant asses.”
“My ass is not pregnant,” Captain Preggers says, and then she charges Hildy instead of me.
Despite Hildy’s enthusiasm, she’s not a fighter, and if I don’t do something she’s going to take a haymaker to the temple that could turn her into a vegetable with a natural perm.
I catch Preggers’s wrist mid-punch and use her momentum to spin her around. Before she can react, I’ve got my right arm around her neck and my left squeezing it tight. She fights against me, trying to strike my face with the back of her head, but there is no escaping a rear naked choke.
When her compatriots charge to the rescue, I maneuver Preggers between us, stopping them in their tracks. As savage as they might be, they’re also concerned about each other’s babies.
“I’m not killing her,” I assure them. “Just putting her to sleep.”
I don’t think it will matter. The moment I put Preggers down, the others will charge. And we’ve got about thirty seconds before the others arrive behind us. I take a wide stance to maintain balance, as I move Preggers toward the floor.
“When I put her down,” I say to Hildy, “grab hold of me.”
A five-step plan solidifies in my psyche. One, let go of Preggers. Two, grab hold of Hildy. Three, rotate away. Four, rotate back into the hallway with Carter and Burnett. Five, get the fuck out.
Easy peasy lemon squeez—
Preggers’s body jerks. I’m vaguely aware of one of her feet leaving the floor.
Then her heel connects with the back side of my balls and steamrolls them forward.
The pain is instantaneous and excruciating. Preggers falls from my hands, as I drop back to the floor, twisting into a fetal position, hands between my legs. Through gritted teeth, I hiss, “Grab hold!”
Hildy either understands why, or she just knows how to listen. She wraps her body over mine, holding on tight. Blinded by pain, I put a hand to my side, activate the slew drive, and then rotate away from the Database.
When we rotate out, I’m lost. Using a slew drive with your eyes closed and your mind whirling with white hot agony is like flying blind in a jet that can transport you anywhere in the galaxy. The only thing I know about where we emerge is that the air is breathable and the floor is hard. Every other detail beyond that is lost in a haze of agony.”
“Are you okay?” Hildy asks, leaning up to look down at me.
“Gonna be…a minute…before I can move,” I tell her.
“I’ve seen men get kicked in the nuts,” she says with a chuckle. “It happens in a lot of movies. But, honestly, I didn’t think it would actually hurt that bad.”
“Well, it does.” The knot in my stomach loosens a bit, allowing me to breathe. I still haven’t exited I-Might-Pukesville, but I’m at least on the road out of town. “Do you know where we are?”
Hildy looks around, seeing the same thing I am: a featureless hallway. Then an alarm blares. Sounds like an angry electronic donkey. “Well, we didn’t go far. Can’t we just…” She motions to the Slew Drive on my belt. “What is that, anyway?”
I push myself up. “Slew Drive.”
“Slew…” She’s aghast. “You have a Slew Drive…on your belt. And you used it…” She counts on her fingers. “…five times in less than a minute. Are you crazy? Don’t you know what could—”
“Big explosion,” I say.
“Badaboom.”
“Right,” I say.
“Big badabigboom.”
“What?”
“After your time,” she says. “Sorry. Can’t we just rotate out of here? Back to your ship. Back to Bitch’n?”
“Yes.” I stand, hands on knees, catching my breath. “And no. Without knowing where we are and which way to go, we could end up moving farther away.”
“Or inside a wall,” she says. “Or a person. Gross.”
Slew Drives are meant to be used in outer space. Ships travel to predetermined locations carefully selected by Predictors like Hildy. That keeps them from rotating out of the fourth dimension and into a star. “Actually,” I say, “My PSD—Personal Slew Drive—prevents me from emerging in solid objects, inert or living.”
“What? How?”
“Turns out funny looking guys can still have really smart brains. Porter’s probably a genius. You’ll meet him if we get out of here without, you know, dying.”
“Really?”
“Really.” I stretch my back. The pain is going to linger for a while, but I’m functional again. I point to a nearby closed doorway. “Let’s try door number one. If we can figure out where we are, you can point me in the correct direction, right?”
“That’s my job.”
“Perfect.” I limp-walk toward the door with Hildy by my side. The hatch slides open at my approach, and I barrel into the room beyond, making it five steps before the severity of my mistake delivers another kick to the nuts.
All around me, women in beds are screaming. For a moment, I mistake it for a torture chamber, but then I hear a chorus of younger voices, screaming along with the women. All around me, babies are being born. Hundreds of them.”
“I know where we are,” Hildy says.
“Me too,” I say, backing up. “The wrong damn place.”
An Overseer with a bulging belly sits up in bed. Her top half is still in uniform. Still masked. Her lower half is covered by a blanket, beneath which a nurse is attempting to withdraw a newborn.
The Overseer’s head snaps up to a ceiling mounted screen. I follow her gaze and see an image of Hildy looking down at me,
curled up in pain on the floor. The Overseer’s finger stabs in my direction. “Neither of you move!”
Then she clenches her whole body tight, screams, and pushes. A moment later, the nurse emerges with a baby. “It’s a girl!”
The Overseer kicks the blankets away and swivels her feet to the floor.
“Which way?” I ask Hildy, desperate to leave this twisted chamber of horrors.
“Where are you parked?” she asks.
“Uhh, I don’t know. Visitor parking?”
“There is no visitor parking!”
I’m vaguely aware of bare feet slapping on the floor, coming our way, but I don’t look. I can’t look. The sight of a woman wielding a placenta like a mace will scar me for the rest of my life.
“Someplace where a spaceship can park, where security is lax!”
“Receiving!” She holds onto me with one arm and points back the way we came. “Five thousand feet that way!”
I’m not big on trusting people I’ve just met, certainly not with my life, but she’s trusting me with hers, so here we go. I rotate out of the birth ward and exit a moment later, back outside, just two hundred feet away from Lil’ Bitch’n. Problem is, two very pregnant Overseers are charging straight toward us.
18
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” one of the two charging Overseers shouts, as I ready myself for a fight. The voice is familiar, but I definitely don’t know any pregnant women. The smaller of the two women is oddly shaped. Her round belly and lanky limbs make her look like a four-legged spider.
Hold up. I know that weird body…
I turn to the one who spoke. “Carter?”
She pulls off the mask, swooshes her hair around like she’s in a Vidal Sassoon commercial and gives me a smile. “We ran into a little trouble, but we improvised.”
“Same,” I say, already trying to erase the birth ward from my memory.
Carter reaches under her BCS and pulls out her original, non-Overseer BCS, bunched up to look like a pregnant belly.
“Do we have to?” Burnett asks. He’s standing with both hands on either side of his belly in a classic Sears-photoshoot ‘I’m pregnant’ pose. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to feel maternal.”
“You’ve got clothing stuffed under your suit,” I point out. “Not a baby.”
“But it feels more real than the times I’ve used VR to…” He pulls the BCS out, clearing his throat. “Never mind.”
“Don’t need to ask me twice.” I turn toward Lil’ Bitch’n, ready to bolt, but there are two more Overseers blocking our path. “They’re not with you, right?” I ask Carter.
“No,” she says, striding toward them. Had Carter and Burnett stayed in character longer, we might have been able to ruse our way close enough to subdue the pair. But they’ve seen everything, and they already have their lazzer pistols aimed.
“Might not be the best idea,” I tell Carter.
She raises her hands, still approaching the Overseers. “Hi there. Hello.”
“On the ground!” a woman built like an ox shouts, taking a step forward and aiming her pistol toward Carter. Lazzer weapons, like any good sci-fi gun, have adjustable power settings. They can knock you out, or burn a hole straight through you, and I don’t want to find out what an Overseer’s default setting is. Given the severity of our crime, combined with the fact that these Overseers haven’t seen a day of action—probably ever—I think they’ll happily fill us with cauterized holes. All they need is an excuse.
And Carter is giving them one.
The second Overseer, a tall, lithe woman, steps up next to her partner and screams, “Face to the floor!”
“I just want to talk,” Carter says.
I slide behind Carter and hurry to catch up to her. Probably looks like I’m going to use her as a meat shield, but I just don’t want the Overseers noticing me right away. Right now, Carter is the threat. Their adrenaline-fueled, narrowed vision is locked on her.
The Overseers’ faces are hidden behind masks, and their muscles by full body BCSs. But I can still read their body language, and the tension in their trigger fingers. Both of them are a sneeze away from firing. Four more steps, I think, and then Carter is toast.
A finger twitches.
Carter shouts in surprise as I tackle her from behind. We fall to the metal floor, landing hard, my weight crushing her down.
“What are you doing?” she grunts out.
“Saving your ass,” I say, slowly moving off her, while keeping an eye on the Overseers. They’re aiming at me now, but they appear more confused than angry. Saving someone probably isn’t a part of the Overseer lexicon.
“I was in control of the situation,” Carter says, sliding out from under me.
I point behind us. “You were in control of shit.” Beyond Burnett and Hildy, who are clinging to each other and crouched in fear, are two smoldering orange holes in a metal wall. Definitely not on stun. “That was almost your head. And mine.”
“Oh,” Carter says. “But…I didn’t—”
“Hear anything?” I’m losing my patience. “You’re in the future. Not everything is going to work the way you expect or plan. Unlike what you see in movies, future weapons don’t make ‘pew pew’ noises. They don’t make any sound at all. And the beams move at the speed of light. You’re dead before your eyes can register the flash. You just go from not having a hole in you to having a hole in you.”
“Face down!” the skinny Overseer shouts, stepping closer.
I motion to Hildy and Burnett to get on the ground, and then I lie face down, toggling my comms as I go. “Chuy,” I whisper.
“We see it, boss,” Chuy says in my ear. “Way ahead of you.”
“You are all under arrest!” the skinny Overseer shouts.
Her partner steps closer. “You have no rights. Confess now, and you will live to have a trial.”
“That’s a little harsh,” I say. “Don’t you think?”
“Confess now!”
The whir and clunk of opening gun ports fills the air.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Also, you might want to drop your weapons.” I turn my head so I can see both women glance back at Lil’ Bitch’n. Two large lazzer cannons on her underside are trained on the pair. A lazzer pistol makes a quarter sized whole. The cannons will erase the women’s top halves.
To me, it’s an obvious bluff. The Overseers are both pregnant, and we’re not monsters. But they don’t know that. If they value their lives, and those of their unborn—
“Then we all die together!” the sturdy Overseer shouts, aiming at me again.
Or not.
A fist flies into view, colliding with the skinny Overseer’s head. She sprawls into her shorter partner, but the strong woman just bats her aside and points her weapon at the newcomer.
Drago catches the gun and shoves it up, as the woman fires. Then he steps forward and delivers a headbutt that knocks her unconscious.
“Holy shit, dude,” I say. “She’s pregnant!”
He catches the woman and lays her down on her back. Then he shrugs. “Next time I let her shoot you?”
I twist my lips and then say, “No.”
“Baby will live.” He takes my hand and pulls me to my feet.
I don’t bother taking the women’s weapons. Neither would work in my hands. “Thanks.”
“You would save me, too,” he says.
“I’d think about it.”
He has a chuckle and then looks over our group. “Have everything?” He draws his weapon. “Or we do my way now?”
“We have everything,” I say, pulling Hildy to her feet. “And we are leaving. Now!”
A small army of Overseers rushes out of two large doorways. All of them are armed, half of them are clutching their pregnant bellies in one hand.
“This shit just got real,” I say.
Hildy’s head snaps toward me. She’s squinty-eyed and suspicious. “You said you were from 1989.”
“I a
m,” I say, confused by the sudden shift.
“You just quoted Bad Boys. Two. That came out in 2003.”
“Bad Boys is a song, and it came out in ’87.”
“Right song, but you quoted the movie,” she says.
“You found small blonde version of Dark Horse in Union Database?” Drago asks, as Carter and Burnett run past him, heading for Lil’ Bitch’n.
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” Hildy presses. “Will Smith kicks so much ass, you wouldn’t forget—”
“Hold on. The Fresh Prince becomes an action star?”
“Uh, yeah. One of the best. I have—”
“Shit isn’t about to get real. Is about to rain down from sky in great big fiery balls of…flaming shit.” Drago hauls us toward Lil’ Bitch’n. “Finish argument inside!” A final shove sets us off and running, as lazzer blasts begin charring the ground around us and the outer layers of my ship’s hull.
The hatch closes behind us as we run inside the cargo bay, blocking several rounds.
“Sit there,” I tell Hildy, pointing at a bench seat.
She strolls past me and heads for the cockpit. I’m about to complain when she gives me a grin. “Trust me.”
“Kid,” I say, but I stop short. She’s earned a little bit of trust, and anything but escape right now means death for all of us—including her.
She returns from the cockpit, her smile wide now.
“What did you do?” I ask.
She sits down across from me, beside Chuy. “You’ll see.” Then to Chuy she says, “Hi, I’m Hildy.”
Chuy turns to me. “What is happening?”
“This is Hildy,” I say, then I motion to Chuy. “Hildy, Chuy. Chuy, Hildy.”
Chuy purses her lips, about to unstrap and slap me silly.
“I’m a pirate now, too,” Hildy says.
Chuy is about to protest when the ship shudders. We’ve left the ground.
This part of a voyage is usually quiet, but this time, a strange noise fills the whole ship.
“What is this?” Drago asks, a little panicked. “What is happening?”
Hildy laughs, watching my face, looking for a reaction, which she gets a second later when the sound plows through my memories, hits me full-on, and launches me back in time, to another world.
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